Scholasticism and Politics - by Jacques Maritain (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published: New York: Macmillan Co., 1940.

Book Synopsis

Scholasticism and Politics, first published in 1940, is a collection of nine lectures Maritain delivered at the University of Chicago in 1938. Maritain championed the cause of what he called personalist democracy--a regime committed to popular sovereignty, constitutionalism, limited government, and individual freedom. He believed a personalist democracy offered the modern world the possibility of a political order most in keeping with the demands of human dignity, Christian values, and the common good.

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a French political thinker and philosopher and is widely recognized as one of the most influential interpreters of Thomistic thought to modern culture.

Review Quotes

Book New, Inc.
December 2011

This volume contains nine lectures, originally delivered in 1938, by French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), presenting the view of his democratic brand of Thomistic Scholasticism on the nature of human political order to audiences in the United States. The lectures reflect on the nature of the human person, the deficiencies of materialistic theories of humanity (particularly as derived from "false interpretation of Freud's theories"), and the Thomist perspective on democracy and the political landscape of the inter-war period.