The range of reason

by Jacques Maritain

philosophy

Genres: Philosophy

227 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

T. S. Eliot once called Jacques Maritain "the most conspicuous figure and probably the most powerful force in contemporary philosophy." His wife and devoted intellectual companion, Raissa Maritain, was of Jewish descent but joined the Catholic church with him in 1906. Maritain studied under Henri Bergson but was dissatisfied with his teacher's philosophy, eventually finding certainty in the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. He lectured widely in Europe and in North and South America, and lived and taught in New York during World War II. Appointed French ambassador to the Vatican in 1945, he resigned in 1948 to teach philosophy at Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1953. He was prominent in the Catholic intellectual resurgence, with a keen perception of modern French literature. Although Maritain regarded metaphysics as central to civilization and metaphysically his position was Thomism, he took full measure of the intellectual currents of his time and articulated a resilient and vital Thomism, applying the principles of scholasticism to contemporary issues. In 1963, Maritain was honored by the French literary world with the national Grand Prize for letters. He learned of the award at his retreat in a small monastery near Toulouse where he had been living in ascetic retirement for some years. In 1967, the publication of "The Peasant of the Garonne" disturbed the French Roman Catholic world. In it, Maritain attacked the "neo-modernism" that he had seen developing in the church in recent decades, especially since the Second Vatican Council. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, "He laments that in avant-garde Roman Catholic theology today he can 'read nothing about the redeeming sacrifice or the merits of the Passion.' In his interpretation, the whole of the Christian tradition has identified redemption with the sacrifice of the cross. But now, all of that is being discarded, along with the idea of hell, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, the infancy narratives of the Gospels, and belief in the immortality of the human soul." Maritain's wife, Raissa, also distinguished herself as a philosophical author and poet. The project of publishing Oeuvres Completes of Jacques and Raissa Maritain has been in progress since 1982, with seven volumes now in print.

Reviews

[notgettingenough · Rating 4 out of 5]

My edition is the original Bles 1953, which is not listed on Goodreads.

I am not likely to find the time ever to read this, but I must record for posterity the inscription:

Jo Wells,

Hoping that this small volume may correct a few of your weird notions, thereby saving your friends from the torture of having to listen to them.

From Pat Martin
Christmas 1953

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN INTEGRATED COLLECTION WRITINGS FROM 1942-1952

Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote in the Foreword to this book, “This book of seventeen chapters contains ten from ‘Raison et Raison’ … and some additional essays not contained in the French edition. I hope it has thus been possible to attain a more satisfactory degree of unity. I hesitated to insert the short essay which constitutes Chapter XII because it is only a first draft of some more completely developed pages in my book ‘Man and the State.’ I have nevertheless kept it, for it seems to me to represent a logical step in the development of the views that I express in the second part of the present meditation on ‘The Range of Reason.’”

He states in the first chapter, “The crucial error of the School of Vienna has been to assume as self-evident that whatever has no meaning FOR THE SCIENTIST has no meaning AT ALL. In this respect logical positivism remains under the yoke of positivistic prejudices. But, as to science itself… and what has a meaning for the scientist AS SUCH, the analysis of the School of Vienna is, I believe, generally accurate and well-founded. We are thus rid, at one stroke, of many forms of pseudometaphysics…which were parasites of science while claiming to be part of it… But is it possible that this other fields of knowledge, the field of the knowledge of being, is beyond the reach of the human intellect and under no circumstances has any meaning for it?” (Pg. 6)

He asks. “‘Can philosophers co-operate?’ … in my opinion, co-operation between philosophers can only be a conquest of the intellect over itself and the very universe of thought it has created---a difficult and precarious conquest achieved by intellectual rigor and justice on the basis of irreducible and inevitably lasting antagonisms.” (Pg. 31)

He asserts, “the feeling of the lasting, immaterial and secret progression of out deeds and thoughts, long after the death of each one of us, in the mysterious texture of the world, corresponds to reality. But such a survival remains precarious and exceedingly far from including the whole of what we bear in ourselves.” (Pg. 53)

He argues, “if the act of the intellectual power is purely immaterial, that POWER itself if also purely immaterial… since intellectual power is spiritual, or purely immaterial in itself, its first substantial root.. is also spiritual… my own self is a bodily self; it involves matter; it is not a spiritual or purely immaterial subject… The intellect is not the whole man. Therefore the intellect… is only a part, albeit an essential part, of man’s substance. But man is not an aggregate… of two substances; man is a natural whole… a single substance. Consequently, we must conclude that the essence or substance of man is single, but that this single substance itself is a compound, the components of which are the body and the spiritual intellect… In this sense, Saint Thomas… says that the intellect is the form, the substantial form of the human body. That is the Scholastic notion of the human soul.” (Pg. 56-57)

He observes, “this primitive existential knowledge of God is within us an obscure preparation for and a secret call to the natural religious experiences which may come about in very different ways during the course of development of the moral life; and when the life of faith and of the gifts of the Spirt take hold of the soul, this same existential knowledge appears as an obscure preparation for and call to that experimental knowledge of God which is supernatural in its very MODE of operation, and which reaches its highest degree in mystical contemplation.” (Pg. 82-83)

He suggests, “The opportunity is now given for that reconciliation between science and wisdom for which the human mind thirsts. What is needed first and foremost is a rediscovery of Being, and by the same token a rediscovery of love. This means, axiomatically, a rediscovery of God. The existential philosophies which are today in fashion are but a sign of a certain deep want and desire to find again the sense of being. This want is now unfulfilled, for these philosophies are still enslaved by Irrationalism and seek for the revelation of existence … in the experience of Despair and Nothingness.” (Pg. 87)

He asserts, “Thus absolute atheism is in no way a mere absence of belief in God. It is rather a refusal of God, a fight against God, a challenge to God. And when it achieves victory it charges man in his own inner behavior, it gives man a kind of stolid solidity, as if the spirit of man had been stuffed with dead substance, and his organic tissues turned to stone.” (Pg. 98)

He states, “The strength of the Marxist revolutionaries stems much less from their ideology than from the fact that, while endeavoring everywhere to disintegrate the labor movement, they exist with the people---to the confusion of the people. They claim that in order to exist with the people it is a necessity to join their party or cooperate with it. That’s a lie. The shibboleth ‘unity of action of the working class’ … is but a political perversion of the genuine concept of existential communion with the people.” (Pg. 126)

He says, “In reality Machiavellianism does not succeed. To destroy is not to succeed… if absolute Machiavellianism were to succeed absolutely and definitely in the world, this would simply mean that political life would have disappeared from the face of the earth, giving place to an entanglement and commixture of the life of the animals and the slaves, and of the life of the saints.” (Pg.148)

In his Inaugural Address to the Second International Conference of UNESCO (November 6, 1947), he concluded, “If a state of peace worthy of the name, firm and enduring, is to be established one day among the peoples of the world, this will depend not only upon the economic, political and financial arrangements reached by diplomats and statesmen… it will depend also upon the deep adherence of men’s consciousness to practical problems… it will depend also upon that BIGGER SOUL,,, and upon a victorious outpouring of that supreme and free energy which comes to us from on high, and whose name we know… to be brotherly love, a name which has been pronounced in such a manner by the Gospels that it has stirred the conscience of man for all time.” (Pg. 184)

He summarizes, “As regards man himself, modern man… knew truths---without THE Truth; he was capable of the relative and changing truths of science, incapable and afraid of any supra-temporal truth reached by Reason’s metaphysical effort or of the divine Truth given by the Word of God… Modern man enjoyed human life and worshipped human life as having an infinite value---without possessing a soul or knowing the gift of oneself … And if a man does not give his soul to the one he loves, what can he give? He can give money, not himself.” (Pg. 186-187)

He concludes, “Even if the general status of the world and our stock of accumulated errors prevent such efforts from overcoming at present the evils which are streaming in from everywhere, they are preparing an era, under God, of greater dignity for man and of expanding love. Yet even that will be but a moment in the history of a small and perishable planet. And hope goes beyond time. For finally we are waiting for the resurrection of the dead, and life eternal. Such is the faith we live for, and, because we live for it, the faith we live by.” (Pg. 204)

This book will be of keen interest to those studying Maritain’s philosophy.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful introduction to Maritain’s thought as it is a broad set of his essays which touch upon a good cross section of the wide range of issues which the author was interested in, and upon which he wrote at length in other books. The ability of the essays to offer an introduction to Maritain’s thought may be why this book is made available free of charge online, at the University of Notre Dame Maritain centre

The content of the book covers philosophical metaphysics and epistemology, as well as doctrine and faith. They also touch upon political and ethical themes as well as questions of art, aesthetics and culture.

The depth of individual chapters varies considerably, as some of them were originally speeches or letters, rather than chapters written specifically for a book. However, the chapters on faith, belief in God, atheism and Machiavellianism are particularly detailed and offer considerable scope for thoughtful reflection. One of the things that I wish the book had take a little more time over, was achieving a more balanced depth to each of the topics it deals with, even if that had meant a couple of chapters had to be omitted.

There are almost too many interesting topics to single any out for specific comment, but Chapter 7 on Maritain’s argument for God’s existence is particularly worth mentioning. As a committed Thomist, the author was fully committed to Aquinas’ five ways for establishing God’s existence. But this chapter offers a slightly different set of considerations, albeit drawn from the same basic font.

What Maritain argues for is effectively an intuition which is a pre-apprehension of being. This is initially formulated in the context of his Realist metaphysics. When people perceive objects like a rock, their experience leads to the formulation of a concept of the rock, but also of a very real sense of the beingness (or reality) of the rock. That realism is why Maritain has no sympathy for the Kantian Idealism which troubled so many of his colleagues.

That intuition of reality includes a sense of the self, and also a sense of the limitedness of being. And thus (the author believes) it points beyond itself to the unlimited being of God. That is a somewhat crude (over)simplification of the argument, but what is interesting about the argument is the way that it builds upon the initial intuition of being.

Whether it should really be called an argument or not is a question in itself. It isn’t arguing from premises to conclusion, its rather unfolding the implications of an intuition which Maritain suggests is a fundamental requisite for anyone who would do philosophy. He admits that many philosophers do not possess that intuition, and he numbers Kant among them. Is it right that such an intuition exists, or is his intuition effectively a delusion? That is one of the questions unformulated but nevertheless implicitly posed by chapter 7?

Overall this is an enjoyably eclectic set of essays which give a good sense of the author’s academic interests and viewpoints. They are largely free of jargon, although the author does have a well known penchant to sometimes create his own words. This means that they can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in the topics, but there may be an occasional need to re-read and think deeper about some passages.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a sort of "best of" from Maritain. It is made up of a collection of essays and speeches covering topics from human knowledge to artistic judgment, from the meaning of contemporary atheism to a new Christendom. Maritain opens the books by stating, "Nothing is more important than the events which occur within that invisible universe which is the mind of man. And the light of that universe is knowledge." It was a joy to travel with Maritain through that universe bathed in light.