Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T21:45:42.265Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

9 - Jacques Maritain

Peter A. Redpath
Affiliation:
St John's University
Graham Oppy
Affiliation:
Monash University, Austrailia
Get access

Summary

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), maternal grandson of Jules Favre, a leading architect of the Third French Republic, was the only son of a divorced, virulently anti-Catholic, Protestant, rationalist mother, Geneviève Favre and her lawyer husband, Paul Maritain. Maritain spent 1898–9 studying at the Lycée Henri IV, where he became friends with Ernest Renan's grandson Ernest Psichari. In 1900 Maritain began studies at the Sorbonne, where he met his Jewish girlfriend and later wife, Raïssa Oumançoff, as well as Étienne Gilson and Charles Péguy, who took Jacques and Raïssa to attend Henri Bergson's course at the Collège de France. In 1905 he met his spiritual godfather, Léon Bloy. An early and outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism before the Second World War, Maritain was later appointed by Charles de Gaulle as leader of the Free French in the United States and as his representative to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the war. A political liberal, turned conservative, turned again liberal, maybe turned again conservative, Maritain was actively involved in major political issues of his day. He was a personal friend, among others, of Mortimer J. Adler, Saul Alinsky, Marc Chagall, Paul Claudel, Jean Cocteau, Dorothea Day, Caroline Gordon, Julien Green, John Howard Griffin, Robert M. Hutchins, Walter Lippmann, Gabriel Marcel, Thomas Merton, Pope Paul VI, Yves R. Simon and Allen Tate. After the Second World War, de Gaulle appointed Maritain French ambassador to the Vatican. Together with Gilson, Maritain was a major architect in designing and founding the United Nations and UNESCO, and was a chief author of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Jacques Maritain
  • Edited by Graham Oppy, Monash University, Austrailia
  • Book: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654673.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Jacques Maritain
  • Edited by Graham Oppy, Monash University, Austrailia
  • Book: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654673.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Jacques Maritain
  • Edited by Graham Oppy, Monash University, Austrailia
  • Book: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion
  • Online publication: 05 February 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/UPO9781844654673.010
Available formats
×