The Renewal of Civilization:
Essays in Honor of Jacques Maritain
Edited by Gavin T. Colvert
Book Overview
One of the twentieth century's leading Catholic philosophers, Jacques Maritain uniquely wove together religious belief with the various cultural, intellectual, and political concerns of his time. Toward the end of his life, the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope): The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (1965) appeared and provided a blueprint for a new engagement between the Church and modernity. The challenge issued by this document was breathtaking in its scope and purpose. The Church, while “scrutinizing the signs of the times” and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, must “respond to the perennial questions which men ask about the present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other.”
Surveying this situation, Maritain understood with clarity that Gaudium et Spes invited an internal renewal within the Church that would also be the catalyst for a renewal of civilization. A true dialogue with modernity could not simply review traditional sources without striving for new insight in engagement with the new situation. Eternal truth could be applied to achieve true aggiornamento in light of modernity's deep and accelerating difficulties.
In this collection of essays published by the American Maritain Association, leading philosophers address the project of civilizational renewal including its ethical, political, aesthetic, and religious dimensions. The authors provide a variety of perspectives, both critical and hopeful, concerning such questions as the common good, moral truth, the virtues, culture, art and the beautiful, Christian morality and metaphysics, and the vocation of a Christian intellectual. In addition to referencing the work of Jacques Maritain, the essays draw on traditional and contemporary philosophical and theological sources.
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Contents
Gavin T. Colvert, “Introduction”
Peter L. P. Simpson, “‘We Are Bruised Souls’: Maritain's America Fifty Years On”
John G. Trapani, Jr., “We Hold These Truths: Objective Truth, Reasoned Conviction, and the Survival of Democracy”
Joseph M. de Torre, “The Common Good and the Good Society: The Genesis of a Concept and its Consequences”
James M. Jacobs, “Moral Absolutes, Moral Relativism, and Political Representation”
Michael D. Torre, “Murray After Fifty Years: Reflecting on America and its Proposition”
James V. Schall, S.J., “The Real Alternatives to Just War”
Alice Ramos, “Toward a Recovery of the Moral Sense”
Marie I. George, “Aquinas on Trust and Our Social Nature”
Robert Sokolowski, “Visual Intelligence in Painting”
Cornelia A. Tsakiridou, “When Art Fails Humanity: Jacques Maritain on Jean Cocteau, Modernism and the Crisis of European Civilization”
J. L. A. Garcia, “White Nights of the Soul: Christopher Nolan's Insomnia & the Renewal of Moral Reflection in Film”
Carlos A. Casanova, “Christian Identity and Scholarly Vocation in a Secularized Society”
Denis A. Scrandis, “Christian Morality: A Morality of the Divine Good Supremely Loved According to Jacques Maritain and John Paul II”
Patrick Lee, “St. Thomas on Love of Sex and Love of Others”
James G. Hanink, “Analogy: Mischief, Malice, and Metaphysics”
Joseph J. Califano, “Truth and Suffering”
Index of Names
Contributors