Human Nature, Contemplation, and the Political Order: Essays Inspired by Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics

by Peter Paul Koritansky (Editor)

Overview

In the Introduction to his 1940 publication, Scholasticism and Politics, Jacques Maritain asserts that "the modern world has sought good things in bad ways; it has thus compromised the search for authentic human values, which men must save now by an intellectual grasp of a profounder truth, by a substantial recasting of humanism." In the essays that follow, Maritain explores the cultural and philosophical dimensions of this claim and sketches on outline for addressing what he famously calls the "crisis of modern times." The answer is a new humanism that appropriates the important insights of modern thought, but which is also grounded in a classical tradition that reaches its full philosophical development in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. It is a humanism that acknowledges the dignity of both man's body and his soul, and which does not close his soul off to the transcendent. The authors of Human Nature, Contemplation, and the Political Order: Essays Inspired by Jacques Maritain's Scholasticism and Politics carry Maritain's philosophical and cultural insights into the twenty-first century. They do so by exploring Maritain's understanding of the human soul with particular emphasis upon Maritain's extremely thoughtful critique of Freud. Others investigate the moral and political dimension of Maritain's thought by bringing him into dialogue with modern figures as diverse as Niccolò Machiavelli, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Pope Benedict XVI. Still others develop the modern significance of and connection between Maritain's humanism and the Thomistic identification of human happiness with contemplation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780982711958
Publisher:	American Maritain Association
Publication date:	02/28/2014
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

PETER KARL KORITANSKY is associate professor of history, philosophy, and religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is the author of Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment (CUA Press, 2012) and editor of The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought (The University of Missouri Press, 2011).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Recovering Maritain's Personalism Amidst the Challenge of Modernity Peter Karl Koritansky xi

I Human Nature and the Challenge of Modernity

Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon on Freedom of Choice Michael D. Torre 3

Freud as Political Adversarius John J. Conley, S.J. 19

Aquinas, Psychoanalysis, and the Internal Sense Faculties Stephen Chamberlain 26

The Freudian and Maritainian Theories of Sublimation and Their Ontological Bases Bernadette E. O'Connor 41

Individuality and Personality in Maritain and Classical Hindu Philosophy Raymond Hain 63

From Maritain to Aquinas: Beyond the Polarity between Individual and Person Federico Tedesco 74

II Freedom, Morality, and Civil Society

Dirty Hands in Politics? Maritain's Answer to Machiavelli Terry Hall 93

The End of Democracy: Authority or Freedom from Truth? Peter Pagan Aguiar 104

Maritain and Ratzinger on the Crisis of Modern Times Denis A. Scrandis 114

Perceptions of Islam: Pope Benedict XVI and Jacques Maritain Cornelia A. Tsakiridou 123

Maritain, Anscombe, and Contemporary Virtue Ethics Jonathan J. Sanford 149

Habit, Natural Law, and Natural Rights Anne M. Wiles 163

Beatitude as the Foundation of Freedom: Re-Reading the First Amendment in Light of Maritain Eric Manchester 175

III Contemplation and Human Perfection

The Mountain and the Valley: Medieval Orderings of Contemplation and Action Heather M. Erb 193

Contemplation in America? Maritainian Reflections on Life in the New World Michael Krom 216

Contemplation, Martyrdom, and the Principle of Gratuitousness James Hanink 232

Comtemplata aliis tradere: The Universal Call to Contemplation and Its Implications Anne Frances Ai Le, O.P. 242

About The Authors 257

Index 263