THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION OF JACQUES MARITAIN

AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

BY

LUZ M. IBARRA, Ph.D.

Mentor
JohnL. Elias,Ed. D.

Readers
Gloria Durka, Ph.D.
German Martinez, Ph.D.

DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF RELIGION
AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
FORDHAM UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK
2009
 UMI Number: 3399511

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 FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF RELIGION
AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

This dissertation prepared under my direction by

Luz M. Ibarra

entitled

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION OF JACQUES MARITAIN

AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

has been accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Education

<rU I'YJUA
(signature)

(date) 7
 Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to those who have offered guidance and advice in the course of the
work of this dissertation:

o John Elias, Ed.D., who has supplied me with valuable insights, and with wisdom,
during my work, offering his time so generously, with such accurate and precious
observations, and with heart and commitment,

o Gloria Durka, Ed.D., who has supported me with her expert advice, motivating
me to strive for my goals as well as having taken the responsibility of joining my
dissertation-reading committee,

o German Martinez, Ph.D. who has not only prayed for me, but believed in me
enough to travel from Spain to join my committee,

o Robert R. Barr, S.T.D., who has patiently helped me with my English and syntax,
and motivated me with his professional effort,

o my colleagues, professors, and staff, whom I have met at the Graduate School of
Religious Education, for all of their support, especially Fr. Anthony Ciorra, dean
of the school, who invited me to pursue this great adventure,

o Joseph W. Koterski Ph.D. of the Philosophy Department at the Graduate School

of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University, for his valuable insights on
Thomism,

o Mario O. D'Souza, Ph.D. of the University of Toronto at the School of Theology,

for his comments and suggestions pertaining to the field of Philosophy of
Education,

o my loving and incredible husband, Jose Enrique Aguilar, who has surrounded me
with love, patience, and understanding in the pursuit of my doctoral work,

o my family and friends, from Mexico, U.S.A., and Europe, whose support and
encouragement have reached me, especially Luis Jorge Gonzalez,

o and Fordham University Library, the College of St. Marie de Neuilly, the Catholic
Institute of Paris, the French community of "Saint Louis des Francais" in Rome,
the Pontifical University of Mexico, the Catholic University of Washington and
Fordham Library that have given me space and opportunity to do my research,
some providing me with original materials of Jacques Maritain.
Thanks very much to all of you.
 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction vi

I. Thesis Statement vii

II. Method ix

III. Organization of the Study ix

IV. Contribution xiii

CHAPTER ONE
Maritain's Philosophical Background 1

1. Philosophy of Education 2

A. Definition 2

B. Importance 8

C. Catholic Philosophy of Education 15

2. Maritain's Philosophical Background 21

A. Maritain andThomism 21

B. Maritain and Neo-Thomism 27

C. American Educational Pragmatism 34

3. Conclusion 40

CHAPTER TWO
The Life and Work of Maritain 43

1. His life 43
 ii

A. Early Years 43

B. Marriage and Conversion 46

C.Thomistic Philosopher 50

D. The American Years 60

E. The Later Years 86

2. Maritain's Works Related to Education 90

CHAPTER THREE
The Philosophy of Education of Maritain 93

1. Maritain's Christian Philosophy of Education 93

2. The Human Person 99

A. A Philosophical-Religious Idea of the Human Person 101

B. Person-Centered Philosophy 104

3. The Concept of Education 107

A. A Human Awakening and an Ethical Art 108

B. Democratic Education and Liberal Education 110

4. The Aims of Education 113

A. The Conquest of Freedom and Truth 114

B. The Virtue of Wisdom 116

C. Religious Education and Moral Life 117

5. The Fundamental Dispositions of the Student 122

A. The Five Dispositions 123

 iii

B. Imagination, Intuition, and Natural Reason 125

C. The Education of Women 130

6. The Role of the Teacher 133

A. Teachers are Artists 134

B. Teaching's Domain of Truth 136

C. The Christian Teacher 138

CHAPTER FOUR
Philosophy of Education and Religious Education 142

1. The Importance of a Philosophy of Education in Religious Education 143

A. Religious Education and Culture 145

B. Theory and Praxis 147

2. Religious Education as an Integrative Education 150

A. Theocentric Humanism in Religious Education 152

B. Social Aspect and Context 156

3. Aims of Religious Education 160

A. Spiritual Liberation 162

B. Wisdom and Moral Education 166

4. Theology and Religious Education 169

A. Theology as Part of the Curriculum 171

B. Theologies in Religious Education 175

C. Fostering the Spiritual Life 179

 iv

D. Religious Educators as Spiritual Teachers 183

5. The Teaching-Learning Process 186

A. The Process of Learning 187

B. The Process of Teaching 189

C. The Family and the Grasping of Faith 190

D.TheRoleoftheSchoool 192

6. Conclusion 195

CHAPTER FIVE
Personal Reflections and Conclusions 197

1. Philosophy of education is necessary in religious education 197

2. The philosophical-religious idea of the human person proposed

by Maritain serves as a foundation for religious education 200

3. The theocentric humanism of Maritain stresses not only the relation

between God and humanity, but that between humanity and the world 202

4. The philosophy of education of Maritain considers the human person

as a unity, and hence fosters unity in religious education 204

5. Maritain's philosophy of education is based in the interaction of persons,

and this agrees with the goal of religious education, which seeks to unite

the human person with the Person of God 206

 V

6. Maritain regards education as a liberating process with social implications,

and one which agrees with the goal of religious education: to deliver

persons from all that can present an obstacle to their being united to God 208

7. Maritain's proposal of including theology is essential for religious education,

since theology helps people to know their faith better in order to live it,

and consequently helps them to achieve their own religious identity 211

8. The fostering of the spiritual life as proposed by Maritain constitutes

an essential aspect of religious education 215

9. Spirituality of the Religious Educator 218

10. Role of Religious Education in Society 220

Bibliography 223

Abstract

Vita
 Introduction

Philosophy of education has had difficulty finding its proper role or voice in

recent years (Elias 1995, 1). Jacques Maritain, a French philosopher who influenced

education in the United States during the years 1940-45 and 1948-60, fostered a revival

of Thomism. His Education at the Crossroads (1943a) is a work devoted to education

viewed from the perspective of Neo-Thomistic philosophy. In this book, he argued for

including religion in education, and, thanks to him, by mid-twentieth century Neo-

Thomism seemed temporarily to regain a place.

But today it is commonly thought that Neo-Thomism has quietly faded away,

save perhaps in a few seminaries (Clarke, 2007). The history of the modern Neo-Thomist

movement, whose magna carta was Mterni Patris, seemed to have reached its end with

the Second Vatican Council's Decree on Priestly Formation.

On these grounds, this dissertation proposes that the disappearance of the Catholic

philosophy of education, and the neglect of metaphysical analysis in educational issues,

has adversely affected the formulation of philosophical reflection on education.

It is in this context that this dissertation seeks to make the case that the work of

Jacques Maritain is immensely promising in the field of religious education. In fact,

Maritain's philosophy of education is based on Thomism, which recognizes the integral

role of the spiritual and metaphysical dimensions of the human person. This is the basis

for his contribution to an understanding of education and religious responsibility that

refuses to be circumscribed by the limits of an early specialization, or diminished by

 vii

isolating religious education as just another subject in the curriculum.

This dissertation argues that Jacques Maritain's Catholic philosophy of

education is a crucial tool for recovering valuable truths, and for bringing fundamental

principles to bear on the educational dilemmas of the present day. This dissertation lays

claim to the status of an accurate study of the Catholic philosophy of education of

Jacques Maritain, as set forth in his published writings. It will attempt to demonstrate that

such philosophy is still relevant, and that, being metaphysically based, a consideration of

the philosophical-religious idea of the human person is an indispensable point of

departure for any educational theory. This dissertation also maintains that Maritain's

thought offers light, direction, foundation, and integration for future educational theory.

His thoughts offer a model for the specific field of religious education. The long list of

scholars who have based their contributions on Neo-Thomism constitutes a reassuring

indication that a consideration of Maritain's work can lead to a valid integrative

educational theory.

I. Thesis Statement

This dissertation will argue that the main contribution of Maritain's philosophy of

education is his consideration of the philosophical and religious idea of the human

person in society (Maritain 1943a, 6) as the starting point for the elaboration of a

philosophy of education that claims to be complete and systematic. Such a view of the

human person is the prerequisite for an integral education. The integral idea of the human

person, that includes his/her relation to God, provides an indispensable and lasting

contribution to modern theories of education, especially in the field of religious

 viii

education.

Second, this dissertation contends that Maritain defines a coherent educational

theory. Here the learner is considered integrally, as a human person in relation within her/

himself, with others and with God. Maritain's philosophy, firmly grounded upon the

foundation of sensory knowledge, advocates a spiritualization of the given experience

through the faculties of knowledge and intelligence, good will and love.

This dissertation will therefore argue that Jacques Maritain, influenced by

Thomas Aquinas, is a keystone for the illumination of, and bestowal of integration and

direction on, the philosophy of education. This point needs to be emphasized. Catholic

educators today are not "doing" philosophy of education, but theology of education or

philosophy of schooling (Donohue 1973; Buetow 1988; Elias, 1999, 94).

The dissertation will tender an accurate account of the Catholic philosophy of

education of Jacques Maritain, on the basis of his published writings, in order to

demonstrate that this philosophy is still relevant, and that it can be used as the foundation

of a superlative educational theory, especially in the field of religious education. Indeed,

for Maritain, an integrated education is religious, and the essence of education must focus

on the "formation... and the inner liberation of the human person" (Maritain 1943a, 91).

Catholic schools are more than just institutions staffed by Catholics, with a

celebration of the sacraments, and "half-an-hour's doctrinal instruction sandwiched in

between the other subjects of the scholastic program" (Leen 1944, 80). The Catholic

school needs a clear vision to guide it, especially as more and more of the laity take their

rightful place as educators and administrators.

 ix

II. Method

The methods to be utilized in this dissertation will be fourfold: historical,

analytical, critical, and synthetic. First, then, a historical examination, along with an

analytical reflection, will be offered concerning the fundamental nature of the historical,

theological, and philosophical situation which shaped Maritain's philosophy of education.

Second, we shall offer a historical reflection on Maritain's life and writings, as well as on

his legacy as a teacher for almost twenty-five years in the United States of America.

Third, we shall present a critical examination of his writings on education, which

demonstrate his Catholic philosophy of education. Finally, we shall organize a synthetic

and critical exposition of the results and implications of a consideration of this

philosophical-religious idea of the human person. We shall propose this concept as a

point of departure both for an integrative Catholic philosophy of education, and for future

theories of education as applied in the field of religious education.

III. Organization of the Study

This dissertation contains five chapters. Chapter one, Maritain's Philosophical

Background sets the stage, so that the reader may come to understand Maritain's

philosophical perspectives. First comes the definition, importance and necessity of a

philosophy of education, especially a Catholic philosophy of education. This dissertation

therefore undertakes to understand the philosophical background of Maritain's Thomism,

along with his enterprise of crafting its revival in a new philosophical movement that

would come to be called Neo-Thomism. Maritain's philosophical background has links

with American educational pragmatism, as well, and it is upon this latter that he bases the
 X

criticism that he will find so useful in his construction of a philosophy of education. This

first chapter is divided into two sections. The first section will be devoted to defining the

meaning of both philosophy and education, inasmuch as, in recent years, a philosophy of

education has had difficulty in finding its proper role or voice.1 Then, after defining both

terms, philosophy and education, the writer joins the two concepts, in order to be able to

offer various reasons and arguments for the need of a philosophy of education today.

Here, special attention will be given to the Catholic philosophy of education, which is the

specific background of Maritain's particular philosophy of education across the board.

The second section of chapter one will present a brief sketch of Maritain's

Thomism, and of the revival of Thomism as "Neo-Thomism." Thereby will appear the

general background of the development of Maritain's philosophy of education, along with

the status of this philosophy as the principal influence on his thought. His thinking in the

area of education was developed principally in the United States between 1933 and 1960,

the years in which he lectured throughout the country, in the most prestigious

universities, as at Chicago, Notre Dame, New York, or Princeton. Special attention will

be given in this second section to American educational pragmatism, since pragmatism is

the philosophy that was most influential in education in the United States at that

particular moment and is the theory used by Maritain to develop his Thomistic principles

in education.

Chapter two, The Life and Work of Maritain, is an exploration of Maritain's

own life, with special attention to his American years. This chapter is likewise divided
1
John L. Elias, "Whatever Happened to Catholic Philosophy of Education?" in Religious Education 94
(1999), 92.
 xi

into two sections. The first will present Maritain's biography, together with his most

important writings. Here special attention will be given to the time when he has settled in

the United States ("the American years," 1933-45, 1948-60), since his lectures and books

of that time, especially his Education at the Crossroads, have been so influential in the

field of education. Maritain's philosophy of education became a prominent one. He dared

to philosophize about education during a time of flux, crisis, and ambivalence. It was at

that time that he was able to carry the light of Thomism to the problems of our times.

Special mention will be made of "the Chicago fight" (a controversy that took place in the

late 1930s, when Robert Hutchins, Chicago University's new president, attempted to

reform the curriculum). This conflict influenced and helped shape Maritain's philosophy

of education, at that moment, and against its American background.

Chapter three, The Philosophy of Education ofMaritain, is divided into six

sections, describing Maritain's philosophy of education as presented in his principal

writings on education. The first section is an introduction to the entire chapter, and

contains some ideas on Maritain's Christian philosophy of education. This will help to

situate the ideas he entertains on education itself. The other five sections cover various

important themes in his philosophy of education: the human person, the concept of

education, the aims of education, the fundamental dispositions of the student, and the role

of the teacher.

Chapter four, Philosophy of Education and Religious Education, shows how

Maritain's philosophy of education can be put into practice in the field of religious
 xii

education,2 and how religious education has need of the theoretical foundation of this

particular philosophy of education. This application is virtually unique to this

dissertation, since no major scholarly work has so far been done that would aim to

connect Maritain's philosophy of education with the specific field of religious education,3

and thereby make the case for Maritain's position as still relevant, and eminently useful

for religious education today.

An application of Maritain's philosophy of education to religious education will

have important consequences. This dissertation will attempt to integrate all the

dimensions of the human person, and will raise our consciousness of that person's natural

and supernatural ends, as she or he is being guided through the educational process. It

will also imply a spiritual liberation: Maritain urges the fostering of the spiritual life and

the inclusion of theology in a curriculum, since, after all, a religious educator is also a

spiritual teacher. Finally, this dissertation will now open the teaching-learning process

upon new horizons, such as a sponsorship of people toward a maturity of faith, their

reinforcement in giving expression to a transcendent dimension of life, their

empowerment in their quest for God, their education for a life according to religious and

moral values, encouragement in their faith tradition, and finally, their common bond with

other religious views, regardless of the identity of the particular religious community

with which a bond has been, or is to be, struck.

2
With regard to religious education, I shall be referring specifically to Christian religious education in its
Catholic expression.
3
I have found only one article on this subject: Mario O. D'Souza, "The Christian Philosophy of Education
and Christian Religious Education," Journal of Educational Thought 34,1 (2002), 11-28.
 xiii

Maritain's philosophy of education as applied to the field of religious education

provides a suitable foundation for that education, bestowing upon it direction and unity,

and taking as its point of departure the philosophical and religious idea of the human

being, which encompasses the affirmation of God as creator and the human being as

image and creature of God, with a view to a reestablishment of the relationship broken by

sin but restored to expectation by grace.

Chapter five, Personal Reflections and Conclusions, is the production of this

writer's own insights, both in her understanding of Maritain's philosophy of education,

and in her personal experience in the field of religious education. The philosophy of

education of Jacques Maritain, as a philosophy of life, can be put into practice in the field

of religious education, and can there provide direction, foundation, and integration, as

shown in chapter four. This application is in and of itself the intended contribution of this

dissertation, inasmuch as the quest of the latter is to make the case for Maritain's position

as still relevant, and superlatively useful, for religious education today.

Contribution

This dissertation seeks to make the case for Maritain's philosophy of education

as still relevant for the field of religious education. Two important insights are

interrelated: the Catholic philosophy of education, and the philosophical-religious idea of

the human person. A combination of both is sure to afford light to future educational

theories. While much has been written on Maritain's theories of education, the pair of

insights in question here has not been brought to bear in any significant way either upon

the integrative theory of education, or in the field of religious education.

 xiv

This dissertation will seek to contribute to this important task. It will also be the

first work in the field of religious education to bring together the Catholic philosophy of

education and the philosophical-religious idea of the human person.

 1

Chapter One

Maritain's Philosophical Background

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section will be devoted to

defining the meaning of both philosophy and education, inasmuch as philosophy of

education has had difficulty in finding its proper role or voice in recent years.1 Then, after

defining both terms, philosophy and education, we shall put them together, offering

various reasons and arguments for the need for a philosophy of education today. Here,

special attention will be given to the particular Catholic philosophy of education that is

the specific background of Maritain's own philosophy of education.

The second section will present a brief sketch of Maritain's Thomism, and of the

revival of Thomism as "Neo-Thomism," as the general background of the development of

his philosophy of education and as the principal influence on his thought. His thinking in

the area of education was developed principally in the United States between 1933 and

1960, the years in which he lectured throughout the country, in the most prestigious

universities, as at Chicago, Notre Dame, New York, or Princeton. Special attention will

be given in this second section to American educational pragmatism, since pragmatism is

the philosophy that was most influential in education in the United States at that

particular moment, and is the framework used by Maritain for his application of

Thomistic principles in education.

1
John L. Elias, "Whatever Happened to Catholic Philosophy of Education?" in Religious Education 94
(1999), 92.
 2

1. Philosophy of Education

A. Definition
Philosophy is an attempt to ask and answer, in a disciplined way, the great

questions of life that human persons might pose themselves. Philosophers were once

called wise persons. It was Pythagoras who coined the term philosophy (philo-sophia, the

"love of wisdom"). Philosophy, alone among the branches of human knowledge, has for

its object everything which is. But in everything which is, it investigates only the first

causes. The other sciences, by contrast, have for their object some particular province of

being, of which they investigate only the secondary causes or proximate principles.

The term "education" refers to any effort to nurture, modify, change, or develop

human behavior; or it may also refer to organized schooling. The word "education"

derives from e-ducare, "to bring out," "to draw forth," and from e-ducere, "to lead out."

Its double etymology suggests both drawing something out of the learner and leading the

learner to a new place.2 Education also concerns itself with three different aspects of

transmitting and fostering the arts and science: instruction, the administration of schools,

and guidance of students.3 Education includes any and all learning purposefully directed

toward desired effects upon behavior in the learner.

According to Jerome Bruner, emerging as a mark of our generation may be a

widespread renewal of concern for the quality and intellectual aims of education-without

2
Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, "The Ruling History of Education," in Philosophers on Education, ed. Amelie
Oksenberg Rorty (London: Routledge, 1998), 11.
3
Kingsley Price, "Is Philosophy of Education Necessary?" in What is Philosophy of Education? ed.
Christopher Lucas (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 123.
 3

abandonment of the ideal that education should serve as means of training well-balanced

citizens for a democracy.4

Modern thinkers in philosophy of education, like Randall Curren, will assert that

education consists in the "initiation of others into activities, modes of conduct, and

thought which have standards written into them by reference to which it is possible to act,

think, and feel with varying degrees of skill, relevance, and taste."5 So when we speak of

education, we speak also of changing behaviors. The latter is possible due to the

confluence and overlapping of multiple practices.6 The present writer, however, is

convinced that only philosophy is able to give direction and sense of purpose.

Philosophy of education is philosophy applied to education. Every theory of

education is based on a conception of life, and consequently, is necessarily associated

with a system of philosophy.7 This means: the systematic discussion of educational

problems on a philosophical level.8 But the idea of applying philosophy to education does

not mean that there is agreement as to how philosophy is to be applied. In broad terms,

one can say that philosophy might be applied to education by applying the answers

philosophers have given to various questions that might be of concern to education.9

4
Jerome Bruner, The Process of Education: A Landmark in Educational Theory (25 ed.) (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 1.
5
Randall Curren, Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.,
2007), 67.
6
Randall Curren, A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
1988), 223.
7
Jacques Maritain. Education of Man: The Educational Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, eds. Donald and
Idella Gallagher (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1963), 39.
8
Harry S. Broudy, Building a Philosophy of Education (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1954), 3.
9
Nathaniel Champlin et al. "The Distinctive Nature of the Discipline of the Philosophy of Education," in
Educational Theory 4 (1954), 1.
 4

For Mario O. D'Souza, the role of philosophy of education has become seriously

blurred with constant cries for practical and immediate answers. He says that "the nature

of the discipline is such that when 'practical' solutions are demanded of it, it loses its

vitality."10 He admits that philosophy is an intellectual and contemplative exercise. But

this activity is of service to the practical concerns of education, he says, because choice,

action and judgment depend upon intellectual knowledge, and therefore philosophy of

education is an essential discipline in the education of the student or teacher.

Philosophy of education studies the basic, crucial, and ultimate questions

concerning education. But we have to be aware that philosophy of education is more than

a mere critical analysis of education. Indeed, as Albert Taylor has pointed out, "It is a

process with two aspects: clarifying the problems of education (analysis); and presenting

possible alternatives (synthesis)."11

Therefore, philosophy of education hopes to find the guides for answering such

questions as: What is the meaning, the nature, and the function of education? What are

the proper ends and the final values of education? What should be the means used to

reach these ends and obtain these values? Of what materials should the curriculum

consist, and why should those be selected? What is the impact of social culture and

religion upon educational affairs?12

10
Mario O. D' Souza, "Philosophy, Philosophy of Education, and the Education of Teachers," in
Interchange 23, 3 (1992), 255.
11
Albert Taylor, "What is Philosophy of Education?" in What is Philosophy of Education? ed. Christopher
Lucas (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 203.
12
Don-Chean Chu, Philosophic Foundations of American Education (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt
Publishing Company, 1971), 3.
 5

According to Nel Noddings, philosophers of education are interested in analyzing

and clarifying concepts and questions central to education. What should be the aims or

purposes of education? Who should be educated? Should education differ according to

natural interests and abilities? What role should the state play in education? All of these

questions are still asked today.13

As has been said, "The question of what is philosophy of education opens a

Pandora's box of other questions."14 In every age, questions have elicited better and

worse responses. In Noddings' opinion, thoughtful people continue to examine the old

responses in order to generate new ones induced by changing conditions, and in order to

reflect on current responses in the interest of making education as good as it can be.15

Philosophy of education is one of the oldest, yet one of the newest, disciplines. It

is one of the oldest, since, as early as the fourth century B.C.E., Greek philosopher Plato

(424-348 B.C.E.) devoted considerable attention to the nature, purposes, and content of

education. Plato held that education was the key to creating and sustaining his Republic.

The modern predecessors of philosophy of education are: F. Herbart, I. Kant, J. Locke

and J.-J. Rousseau; but the philosophical reflection it involves begins with Plato, then

Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, along with others.16 Philosophy of education is

one of the newest disciplines since it began to emerge as a separate discipline only in the

13
Nel Noddings, Philosophy of Education (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2007), 1.
14
Christopher Lucas, What is Philosophy of Education? (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), iii.
15
Noddings, Philosophy of Education, 1.
16
Fermoso Estebanez, "Historia de la Filosofia de la Educacion," in Filosofia de la Educacion Hoy: Temas
(Madrid: Dykinson, 1998), 57.
 6

twentieth century. In fact, according to A. M. Dupuis,17 John Dewey (1859-1952) might

be regarded as the first systematic proponent of philosophy of education of our time, as

well as the most important philosopher of education in the United States at any time.

According to John L. Elias, "Philosophy of education is a discipline that presents

visions of what education and schools should be, and details criticism of current efforts to

realize these visions."18 If this is true, then the educational philosopher is half philosopher

and half educator, whose chief function is to take what philosophy may give, and apply it

to education as best as can be.19 Most philosophers of education are employed in schools

and departments of education, and of course their questions are philosophical. They have

to maintain serious discussion of educational problems. But this promptly leads to a

consideration of educational aims and becomes a conversation about the good life, the

nature of man, and the varieties of experience.20 And if ever such questions cannot be

satisfactorily answered, then why ask them? The reason is that every society must answer

them as well as it can, for the benefit of its people and the future of the earth.21

Philosophy of education can take knowledge into account, relate it to problems,

and then suggest possible alternatives. It can examine the relationship between ends and

means, and therefore can evaluate consequences.22 One must bring philosophy to bear

17
Adrian M. Dupuis, Philosophy of Education in Historical Perspective (New York: University Press of
America, 1985), 1.
18
John L. Elias, Philosophy of Education: Classical and Contemporary (Florida: Krieger Publishing
Company, 1995), 2.
19
George L. Newsome Jr., "Educational Philosophy and the Educational Philosopher," in What is
Philosophy of Education? ed. Christopher Lucas (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 164.
20
Robin Barrow and Ronald Woods, An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (London: Methuen and
Co., 1982), 6.
21
Noddings, Philosophy of Education, 1.
22
Taylor, "What is Philosophy?" 207.
 7

upon the problems of education as efficiently, clearly and systematically as possible.23

Philosophy and education saturate every fiber of our culture, presenting many

opportunities. They call upon philosophy to exercise the highest possible integrity, in

order that institutions, habits, and faiths may be scrutinized, reaffirmed, modified, or, if

need be, reconstructed.24 That is why some might think that education is by nature a

function of philosophy, and even that the term "educational philosophy" should be

substituted for "education."25

Therefore we must remember that a philosopher is someone in search of

wisdom,26 and that a philosopher of education bears witness in society to the supreme

dignity of thought. That philosopher points to what is eternal in us, and stimulates our

thirst for a pure knowledge of the fundamentals in the nature of thingsincluding the

nature of the mind, of human beings themselves, and of God. After all, our practical

decisions depend on the stand we take on the most ultimate questions that human thought

can ask.27 It is philosophy of education that provides a touch of eternity.28

23
Theodore B.H. Brameld, Patterns of Educational Philosophy: A Democratic Interpretation (New York:
World Book Company, 1955), 29.
24
Theodore B.H. Brameld, Philosophies of Education in Cultural Perspective (New York: The Dryden
Press, 1955), 70.
25
Franz De Hovre, "Preface to Philosophy and Education," in The Education of Man: The Educational
Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, trans. Edward B. Jordan, eds. Donald and Idella Gallagher (Notre Dame,
Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1963), 4 1 .
26
Jacques Maritain, On the Use of Philosophy: Three Essays (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press,
1961),3.
27
Ibid., 7.
28
Curren, Philosophy of Education, 67.
 8

B. Importance
The importance of philosophy of education cannot be overestimated. As Michel

de Montaigne (1533-1592), one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance,

wrote: "In truth, I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the

greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that

area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them."29

Indeed, education is related to life, and so must be a concern of the philosopher.

One cannot deal with education alone, or treat education separately from the rest of

experience. One cannot explain education merely in terms of education. That is why

George Newsome claims that the world should show concern for the functions of

educational philosophers as philosophers.30

Here is why, then, we need a philosophy of education. We need it because a

learning theory should not be divorced from the philosophical analysis of what it means

to have understood a particular concept, or a particular principle, or a way of doing

things.31 Richard Pring sees in an education detached from a moral perspective no driving

and unifying ideal, no coherent set of values from which to derive one's moral

engagement. Hence the need for a philosophy of education. We need it in order to have a

clear distinction between the ends of education and the means of achieving those ends ,32

29
Montaigne, Essays, Book 1, Chapter XXV: Of the Institution and Education of Children to the Lady
Diana of Foix, Countesse of Gurson.
30
Newsome, "Educational Philosophy," 165.
31
Richard Pring, Philosophy of Education: Aims, Theory, Common Sense, and Research (New York:
Continuum, 2004), 72.
32
Ibid., 12.
 9

The number of publications devoted to philosophy of education evinces the

importance of the subject. Among the most important we can mention Educational

Theory?2, published by The John Dewey Society and The Philosophy of Education

Society, and the Harvard Educational Review?* which has sponsored several symposia

on philosophy of education.

Recent periodical literature also seems to reveal that a growing number of

philosophers in education are philosophizing about real social educational problems.

They are becoming more critical of, and concerned about, their own role as

philosophers.35 In a recent publication, in 2007, on philosophy of education, Nel

Noddings declares that there have been philosophers of education since the time of

Socrates. Some are the product of our own time and culture, but "all of them require

deep and careful thought, imagination, reflection, and a great capacity for patience in

casting both questions and answers in a variety of ways designed to shed light on a

problem of considerable importance."36

John Elias, however, as cited above, has noticed that "philosophy of education

has had difficulty finding its proper role or voice in recent years."37 The reason is that "at

times it has become too philosophical and consequently irrelevant to practicing educators.

At other times, when it attempts to be relevant, it fails to do justice to the task and

33
Educational Theory (Champaign, Illi.: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing Limited) v. 1 (1951) - v. 59 (2009).
34
Harvard Educational Review (Graduate School of Education, Harvard University; Cambridge, Mass.) v.l
(1930) v.79 (2009). See in particular the issue: Harvard Educational Review 26, 2 (Spring 1956) 94-203.
which includes 25 important articles on philosophy of education.
35
Newsome, "Educational Philosophy," 166.
36
Noddings, Philosophy of Education, 3. (This book published in 2007 includes a chapter on feminism).
37
Elias, "Whatever Happened," 92.
 10

methods of philosophy."38

There have been a great number of "philosophies of education" over the last two

centuries. The National Society for Study of Education dedicated its Yearbook for 1942:

Philosophies of Education^ to a review of the most important philosophies of education

in the United States. The Spring 1956 issue of the Harvard Educational Review, which

deals with the question of what the aims and content of philosophy of education ought to

be, presents many contributors with divergent views, such as: Kenneth D. Benne,40 Max

Black,41 Theodore Brameld,42 C J. Ducasse,43 Abraham Edel,44 Lewis S. Feuer,45 Elizabeth

F. Flower,46 Charles Frankel,47 William K. Frankena,48 and Richard Knowles Morris.49

The Yearbook for 1981 of The National Society for the Study of Education

38
Ibid.
39
Nelson B. Henry - John S. Brubacher, eds. "Philosophies of Education," in The National Society for
Study of Education 41 (Yearbook for 1942) (New York: Columbia University and Gottesman Libraries,
1942).
40
Kenneth D. Benne, "The Content of a Contemporary Philosophy of Education," in Harvard Educational
Review 26, 2 (1956): 127-130.
41
Max Black, "A Note on Philosophy of Education," in Harvard Educational Review 26, 2 (1956): 154-55.
42
Theodore Brameld, "Philosophy, Education and the Human Sciences," in Harvard Educational Review
26,2(1956): 137-38.
43
C.J. Ducasse, "On the Function and Nature of the Philosophy of Education," in Harvard Educational
Review 26,2 (1956): 103-111.
44
Abraham Edel, "What Should be the Aims and Content of a Philosophy of Education?" in Harvard
Educational Review 26, 2 (1956): 119-126.
45
Lewis S. Feuer, "The Aims of a Philosophy of Education," in Harvard Educational Review 26, 2 (1956):
112-13.
46
Elizabeth F. Flower, "In Two Keys," in Harvard Educational Review 26, 2 (1956): 99-102.
47
Charles Frankel, "What is a Philosophy of Education?" in Harvard Educational Review 26, 2 (1956):
127-30.
48
William K. Frankena, "Toward a Philosophy of the Philosophy of Education," in Harvard Educational
Review 26,2 (1956): 94-98.
49
Richard K. Morris, "The Philosophy of Education: A Quality of its Own," in Harvard Educational
Review 26,2 (1956): 142-44.
 11

entitled Philosophy and Education,50 reflects some of the changes that have occurred in

the field over twenty-five years. Some of the contributors were: Clive M. Beck,51 H.S.

Broudy,52 Robert H. Ennis,53 Maxine Greene,54 Donna H. Kerr,55 Jane Roland Martin,56

Jonas F. Soltis,57 and Kenneth A. Strike.58

Contemporary philosophies of education are interpretations in some form or other

of our precarious and bewildered culture.59 This is the reason why philosophy provides a

pattern of final destiny for human beings, learned day to day, year to year, generation to

generation, in the field of education. Philosophy of education can be regarded as the

effort of a culture to become conscious of, and articulate to, itself.60

But since our times are different, a new philosophy of education is needed more

than ever. We need philosophy of education for building a new and better educational

system for our particular culture and time. We need it even in a postmodern world where

individual differences may be accounted for in a variety of ways that are not mutually

exclusive. We must consider biological and socio-cultural conditions for learning,

50
Kenneth J. Rehage - Jonas F. Soltis, eds. "Philosophy and Education," in The National Society for Study
of Education 80 (Yearbook for 1981) (New York: Columbia University and Gottesman Libraries, 1981).
51
See Clive M. Beck, Educational Philosophy and Theory: An Introduction (Boston: Little Brown, 1974).
52
See Harry S. Broudy, The Uses of Schooling (London: Routledge, 1988).
53
See Robert H. Ennis, Logic in Teaching (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969).
54
See Maxine Greene, Landscapes of Learning (New York: Teachers College Press, 1978).
55
See Donna H. Kerr, Educational Policy: Analysis, Structure, and Justification (Philadelphia: McKay
Publisher, 1976).
56
See, Jane Roland Martin, Educational Metamorphoses: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Culture
(Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).
57
See Jonas F. Soltis, Reforming Teacher Education: The Impact of the Holmes Group Report (Columbia:
Teachers College, Columbia University, 1987)
58
See Kenneth A. Strike, The Ethics of Teaching (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998).
59
Brameld, Patterns of Educational Philosophy, xv.
60
Ibid., 82.
 12

affective factors, multiple intelligences and learning disabilities61 if we want a coherent

philosophy of education.

A number of questions require critical reflection and answers. What is the proper

role of philosophy of education? Is philosophy of education necessary? Should

philosophy of education have a part to play in the education of teachers? Who is being

taught, and when and how?62 Is it important in the education of teachers? In Edward J.

Power's opinion, teachers have to become aware of philosophy of education, and he

hopes they recognize it as essential.63

Knowing what and how to do it is not enough. We must know why we are doing

it. Our new world needs philosophical principles for redesigning and reconstructing

something better, and therefore philosophy of education is the basis of many educational

enterprises. On this matter, Kenneth H. Hansen wrote, "Educational philosophy is

necessary, if the basic questions about reality, truth, and value which bear directly on

problems of education are to be adequately answered."64 If all teachers were to sideline

philosophy, the result would be that educational practice would go its own way.

Philosophy for educators is not a luxury. It is a way to make educational leaders and

teachers more rational and critical in their thinking and acting where education is

concerned.65

61
Curren, A Companion, 253.
62
Bruner, The Process of Education, 3.
63
Edward Power, Educational Philosophy: A History from the Ancient World to Modern America (New
York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996), 217.
64
Kenneth H. Hansen, Philosophy for American Education (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960),
12.
65
Elias, Philosophy of Education, 2.
 13

Philosophy helps us to evaluate known principles for making better choices.

Thus, because we belong to a community, to a nation and to the world, education has to

be our enterprise. Every teacher, and all persons involved in education, should have a

philosophical comprehension of the meaning, the value, the unique role and, above all,

the final goal of the school, so that we may have a sound basis for action.66 Thus, it is

philosophy that, for persons in education, provides a pattern of final destiny. For this

reason we must cultivate excellence, with reference not only to schooling the better

student, but also to helping each student achieve his/her optimum intellectual

development,67 as well as to allow each to see clearly what his/her purpose in life is.

That is why John Dewey68 thought that philosophy was concerned, not with easy

solutions to so-called practical problems, but rather with locating significant problems

and devising methods for dealing with them.

A philosopher who is unwilling to listen to, and learn from, the educator, may be

a linguistic technician in some restricted area, but is hardly a philosopher. An educator

who is not philosophically literate in relation to her or his educational aims and

presuppositions may be an educational technician, but is operating blindly.69

Are we committed to seeking truth, freedom, wisdom, and love in this world?

These questions have to be addressed to philosophers of education. But these do not

seem to have taken such a comprehensive view of their field of scholarship, and only few

66
Chu, Philosophic Foundations, 4.
67
Bruner, The Process of Education, 9.
68
John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Free Press, 1944), 381.
69
Richard Millard, Jr. and Peter A. Bertocci, "Philosophy and Philosophy of Education," in What is
Philosophy of Education? ed. Christopher Lucas (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), 194.
 14

(growing in number, however) are working in this direction. It is only authors like Myron

Lieberman (Education as a Profession) and L.G. Thomas (Occupational Structure and

Education) who are bringing philosophy to bear on real problems that heretofore have

been outside the domain of educational philosophy.70

The active agent of culture is education and philosophies of education provide the

foundations of schools.71 Therefore, on the one hand, we need philosophy of education

for building a new and better educational system for a particular culture at a particular

time. On the other hand, we need re-examining and developing educational principles.

But what is clear is that no one should be satisfied with traditional modes of thought. If

the human being longs for better ones, it is because our times are different, and a new

philosophy of education is needed more than ever.

Others might think that an alternative to having a national philosophy to guide

educational practice is educational pluralism, like Adrian Dupuis. He even argues that if

"the American public (and their educators) agree that no official philosophy is needed or

desirable, this agreement in itself constitutes a certain type of unity."72

Any philosophy of education that attempts the task of interpreting our times and

setting a future course must utilize as many resources of knowledge and art as possible. A

meaningful philosophy of education must be interdisciplinary and integrative, and "will

spring from its capacity to learn from as many sources as possible and to fuse what it

learns into a reconstructed theory that can be tested on a small or large scale in

Newsome, "Educational Philosophy," 166.

71
Brameld, Philosophies of Education, 395-6.
72
Dupuis, Philosophy of Education, 292.
 15

educational practice."73 We deserve to be able to prepare our children not only to be good

citizens, but to lead good human lives.74

The value of philosophy of education derives from principles and standards

implicit in it, therefore we can conclude that, to be educated is not only to have arrived at

a destination, but also to be traveling with a different view75 and still enjoy traveling

because we know there is a sure destination.

C. Catholic Philosophy of Education

The term "Catholic" is essentially universal and comprehensive. The terms

"Christian" and "Catholic" will be used interchangeably here, in spite of some opinions

that would have them antithetical to each other. As John W. Donohue notes, "Christian"

or "Christianity" designates beliefs and attitudes shared by Catholics and Protestants

alike.76 In talking about a Catholic philosophy of education one must be very clear about

the fact that there have been Catholic philosophers influenced by their religious

experience whose "philosophy itself was not a deduction from their faith but essentially

the work of their reflection on life."77

For J. L. Allard, the expression "Christian philosophy" is ambiguous. It can be

used in a "material sense" to designate Western philosophy, because the themes of the

73
Theodore B.H. Brameld, Toward a Reconstructed Philosophy of Education (New York: The Dryden
Press, 1956), 4.
74
Mortimer J. Adler, Paideia Proposal (New York: First Touchstone, 1982), 20.
75
Curren, Philosophy of Education, 67.
76
John W. Donohue, Catholicism and Education (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), 6.
77
Ibid., 16.
 16

latter are inspired by Christian philosophy.78 But if philosophy is considered in its "formal

sense," it becomes an activity of natural reason, and "depends only on the evidence and

criteria of natural reason."79

There are some Catholic thinkers who regard "Christian philosophy" as a mixture

of faith and reason in response to such criticism. Donald and Idella Gallagher say that

"the Christian philosopher, while following a properly philosophical method, have

philosophized within the Faith."80 A Christian philosopher can and even ought to

philosophize taking into account the contribution of faith. On the other hand, Thomistic

philosophy is valuable as philosophy not because it is Christian, but because it is

demonstrably valid.81

According to Jacques Maritain, an educational theory built on the principles of St.

Thomas, and drawing its inspiration from his store of wisdom, will be able to give real

scientific consistency to Catholic thought and practice in the field of education.82

Christian philosophers have a specific calling. It is a calling to treat, generally,

philosophical issues in the particular state that these assume by reason of their relation to

Christian faith and theology.83 In the history of Christian thought there has been a

confusion between the connection between philosophy and religion, and we must not

78
Jean-Louis Allard, Education for Freedom: The Philosophy of Education of Jacques Maritain (Ottawa,
Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 1982), 4.
79
Jacques Maritain, Science and Wisdom (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), 138.
80
Donald and Idella Gallagher, eds., "Preface," in A Maritain Reader: Selected Writings of Jacques
Maritain (New Jersey: Doubleday and Co: 1966), 9.
81
Jacques Maritain, "Le Thomisme et la Civilisation," in Revue de Philosophic, 35 (1928), 110.
82
De Hovre, "Philosophy and Education," 42.
83
Yves R. Simon, "Jacques Maritain: The Growth of a Christian Philosopher," in Jacques Maritain: The
Man and His Achievement, ed. Joseph W. Evans (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 23.
 17

allow those orders to be confused. According to Yves R. Simon, the problem is solved if

we designate a state of philosophy, and not an essence. "If it designated an essence, it

would be granted that philosophy receives premises from revelation, and of the great

statements of St. Thomas concerning philosophy, theology, and their relationship, nothing

would be left."84 When these positions are clearly formulated, the question remains as to

whether it is desirable that philosophical issues be treated in a state of abstraction or in a

concrete condition of association with the problems of our supernatural destiny.

The virtue of faith, says Maritain, enables the philosopher who knows of the

existence of God by purely natural means to adhere rationally to this truth.85 For that

philosopher, "what counts" in a philosophy is not that it is Christian, but that it is true.86

For Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas was essentially committed to the equipping of

Christian reason,. That is to say, Christian reason for him was "the arming of reason with

an equipment thoroughly adapted to reality, thanks to those basic intuitionsfirst of all

the intuition of being and the primacy of the act of existing."87

In particular, we can say that Catholic philosophy of education is the application

of the fundamental principles of a philosophy of life to the work of education. These

principles guide educational theory and practice, aims and objectives, content and

methods, offering a set of principles and scale of values for each division of the entire

84
Ibid.
85
Jacques Maritain, An Essay on Christian Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 26.
86
Ibid., 31.
87
Jacques Maritain, "Angelic Doctor" First Award of the Cardinal Spellman-Aquinas Medal to M. Jacques
Maritain, in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, XXV (27-28 March 1951),
7.
 18

field of education.88

Catholic philosophy of education raises two important questions. What is the

ultimate reality? How much can a man or woman know about this reality, and how valid

is this knowledge? The answer to the first question will be answered through ontology.

The second will be answered through ontology, epistemology, and ethics, because it deals

with values.

As it has been said above, every system of education is based on a philosophy of

life. Therefore in order to interpret the Catholic philosophy of education, it is necessary

to understand the Catholic philosophy of life. And "a system of education that is

constructed without a philosophy, that takes no account of life values, is a system from

which both man/woman and life are to all intents and purposes eliminated. It is a system

of education without a child to educate."89

Catholic philosophy of education holds that there is reality outside material

things: the soulthe freedom of the will, the different operations of the intellect. Thus,

moral values have to be taken into account in a true conception of education. And why

moral values? Because all serious educational practice is the attempt to actualize an ideal

of the good person.90 And so it must know what ends and means, values, and the Good

are. It is through the guidance and direction of the teacher that moral values, habits and

skills, attitudes and appreciations are acquired.

Catholic philosophy of education regards teachers as seriously responsible for

88
Ibid., 10-11.
89
Franz De Hovre, Catholicism in Education (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1934), 7.
90
Donohue, Catholicism and Education, 19.
 19

transmitting to the pupil not only knowledge, but a definite cultural and spiritual heritage

as well. But we know that, by nature, the parent is the first teacher and the home is the

first school. On the other hand, schools must also contribute to the social and emotional

development of the child if they are to fulfill their function of education for life in a

democratic community as well as for a fruitful family life.91

In words of Pope Pius XI, " the purpose of Catholic education is simply this

the development of other Christs. Christ came not to teach us the way to die, merely, but

also to teach us the way to live. That is platitude, of course, but the educated Catholic is

merely a man or woman who has learned how to live. And there is no way of Christian

living except in imitation of Christ, the Son of God and the most perfect of human

beings. . . . "92 Every method of [Christian] education is founded, wholly or in part, on an

avoidance of forgetfulness of original sin and grace, and on [the truth that] relying on the

sole powers of human nature is unsound."93

When fundamental definitions about human beings, their origin and destiny, are

established, a dependence of education on philosophy becomes clear. This relationship

will be reflected in the field of aims, content, and methods. It is evident that the aims of

education must always be determined by the aims of life. It is also important to

distinguish between the elements of Christian education that are fundamental and

constant, and those that change either in the course of their development or through social

emphasis. The constant elements are fundamental truths or principles about man's/

91
Bruner, The Process of Education, 9.
92
Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (The Christian Education of Youth) (New York: America Press, 1936),
23-24.
93
Ibid., 20.
 20

woman's nature, origin, destiny, and their relationship to God. The variable elements

include theories, practices, methods of teaching and techniques of administration. These

last must have their source in, and take their direction from, the fundamental truths. We

may conclude that there is no aspect of education that does not depend upon philosophy.

Catholic philosophy of education has three characteristics. It makes religion the

foundation of life and of education; it is universal and objective in its application,

regardless of time, place, or social conditions; and it has possibilities for the constructive

guidance of the future.

According to Pope Paul VI, there is also a social sphere to be considered in a

Catholic philosophy of education. "In the social sphere, the Church has always wished to

assume a double function: first to enlighten minds in order to assist them to discover the

truth and find the right path to follow . . . and secondly to take part in action and to

spread, with a real care for service and effectiveness, the energies of the Gospel."94

Of all the aims of Catholic education, none is so difficult as that of bringing

people to accept and serve social purposes.95 This implies self-denial, service, and a

generous love. Education is not merely an individual process. It is also a process of the

community, and we must rejoice, knowing that the Christian evangelical principles are

simplenot in the sense of easy, but in a deeper sense: "Love one another as I have loved

you" (Jn. 15:12).

94
Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens, ("On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the encyclical Rerum
Novarum"), Apostolic letter sent to Cardinal Maurice Roy, as President of the Council on the Laity and the
Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace, n. 48 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Conference, 1971): 28.
95
Donohue, Catholicism and Education, 137.
 21

2. Maritain's Philosophical Background

This section aims to present an overview of Thomism, since this is the

philosophical current that constitutes the background and core of the thought of Maritain,

along with the modern philosophical current of "Neo-Thomism." This section will also

examine the American pragmatism of William James and John Dewey, because Maritain

developed his work partly in reaction to the thought of those two scholars.

A. Maritain and Thomism

Maritain's philosophy was influenced by Henri Bergson, Aristotle, St. Augustine,

and most of all by St. Thomas Aquinas.96 He considered Thomism as a philosophy that

presupposed both a strong foundation of common sense and a fidelity to intellectual

insight:

One wants to seek out what is true by allowing oneself to be taught by the
whole range of human thought, in order not to neglect anything of that
which is. Aristotle and St. Thomas occupy a privileged place for us only
because, thanks to their supreme docility to the lessons of the real, we find
in them the principles and the scale of values through which the total effort
of this universal thought can be preserved without running the risk of
eclecticism and confusion.97

Maritain was convinced that Thomism is destined to actualize, in the course of its own

96
Jacques Maritain described his philosophical sources during a conference in New York on 9 January
1943, saying: "An old lady whom I venerate, spoke about me to one of my friends, some time ago, saying:
'He is Catholic, you know, but from a particular sect: he is Thomistic as well.' My God, Thomism is not a
sect such as Christian Science; it is simply the philosophy of Aristotle baptized by St. Thomas Aquinas. It
relies on a synthesis of the principles of reason and faith to face the sharpest problems of our time. It has
been twenty-five years since I have let Thomism go out from the historic chests or from manuals of the
seminars in order to construct a vivid philosophy, and this was an absurd enterprise, an enterprise for
people in despair. I want to believe that our adventure turned out well, because from its very beginning it
was led by the freedom of the spirit." (Trans. Luz M. Ibarra) {Jacques Maritain, Son (Euvre Philosophique.
Bibliotheque de la Revue Thomiste (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer editeurs, 1947-): xi-xii.
97
Ibid, xiv.
 22

progress, the progress of philosophy itself.98 In fact, according to Gerald Phelan, Maritain

saw Thomism not merely as an historical thing or as a historical phase of human

reflection. It must be studied not only historically, he was sure, but also in connection

with contemporary problems. Maritain stood for a living, not an archaeological,

Thomism."

In the philosophical thought of Thomas Aquinas, Maritain discovered the

approach that he had long been seeking in order to understand the world around him. We

could say that he was Thomas Aquinas' faithful disciple.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) appeared as the great philosopher and theologian

of the Middle Ages.100 He was a Dominican priest, who, after discovering his vocation to

that priesthood,101 produced commentaries on Aristotle and treatises on the perfection of

the spiritual life, along with their elaboration in his Summa Theologica, which he wrote in

1265-1274. He was resolutely fixed on a single objective: "to see and to demonstrate the

first Truth."

Thomas Aquinas was a theologian, absorbed all of his life in the "holy

doctrine" (sacra doctrina), and his whole work was essentially a work of theology. But

being a theologianthat is, someone who uses reason to acquire some understanding of

the mysteries of faithhe relied greatly on philosophy. The use of philosophy was

essential for Aquinas, as it was for Maritain. Indeed, Maritain wrote, "in the hand of a

98
Ibid.
99
Gerald B. Phelan, Jacques Maritain (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937), 31.
100
According to Guillaume de Tocco, his first biographer, Thomas Aquinas was a man of extraordinary
humility and was given in contemplation the knowledge of what he taught, and it was near the altar that he
would go seeking guidance.
101
At the convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris, hearing Albertus Magnus, Thomas discovered his vocation.
 23

theologian, philosophy is only an instrument, an ancilla. But this instrument is very

necessaryjust as is a rocket for an astronaut who seeks to explore interplanetary

space."102

Thomas Aquinas found the best approach, the one that was the best grounded in

truth, in the philosophy of Aristotle. But to say that the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is

the philosophy of Aristotle is a mistake, as Maritain once said. "The philosophy of St.

Thomas is that of St. Thomas."103 The greatest difference is that Aquinas's philosophy is

inspired by his Christian faith. He was careful, however, to distinguish between

philosophy and theology. Indeed, according to Maritain, "Thomist philosophy was not

theology, since [St. Thomas] had withdrawn it from the light proper to theology to

transfer it into the kingdom of reason using only its natural powers."104

In his famous and controversial work The Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain

maintained that the doctrine of St. Thomas combined faith and reason, together. Reason

has its own domain, and faith its. But reason can enter the domain of faith as well, by

bringing to it its need to ask questions, its desire to discover the internal order of the true

and its aspiration to wisdom, and that is what happens with theology. And faith can enter

the domain of reason by bringing along the help of a light and a truth which are superior,

and which elevate reason in its own order. This is what happens with Christian

philosophy.105

102
Jacques Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself About the Present
Time (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 133.
103
Ibid., 135.
104
Ibid., 136.
105
Ibid., 142.
 24

In Maritain's opinion, "One is a Thomist because one has repudiated every

attempt to find philosophical truth in any system fabricated by an individual and because

one wants to seek out what is true by allowing oneself to be taught by the whole range of

human thought, in order not to neglect anything of that which is."106 Thomas Aquinas'

and Aristotle's philosophical approach came to occupy a privileged place in Maritain's

thinking. He realized that the fundamental principles and the scale of values that he was

looking for, were to be found through the total effort of this universal philosophical

thought, preserved by the Catholic Church, without running the risk of eclecticism and

confusion.

Although Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas belonged to the past, Maritain

considered that their philosophies did not belong in a museum. He was convinced that the

philosophy of Aquinas was a living Thomism.107 Even more, Maritain found in the

teachings of Thomas Aquinas not only a solid doctrinal armature conformed to his

expectation and to his particular intuitions, but also the source of a life experience.

Consequently, one cannot classify Thomism as "anti-modern" simply because it

opposes some ideas and philosophies of the twentieth century, such as voluntarism,

pragmatism, or intellectualism. Maritain addressed this matter himself:

What I call anti-modern here could just as well be called ultramodern [...]
anti-modern against the mistakes of the present time and ultramodern
because of the multiple truths to be developed in the future time [...]

m
Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1959),
xiv.
107
Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (London: Sheed and Ward, 1945), 1.
 25
Thomas' thought is not a thought of a century or a sect. It is a universal
and timeless thought elaborated by the natural reason of humankind.108

Thomist philosophy is founded on the intellectual perception of being (what we call

metaphysics), of being as grasped in its real, integral, and singular existence. It

rehabilitates the autonomy, the distinct value, and dignity of the human person in their

'liaison to God," and its spiritual fulfillment. Thomas Aquinas suggested that account

should be taken of "all that there is in the human person," so that the unity of distinct

truths in the person can be made real by the conciliation of nature and grace, reason and

faith.109

Thomism was decisive for Maritain's work. His philosophical effort was to re-

establish the real hierarchy of being, both human and divine, and to give rightful priority

to spiritual and metaphysical values.110 In sum, the major theme for Aquinas is being,

which is the order of all essence to its existence. The human person knows God in a

natural way, and tends to God as his/her last goal, knowing that God's law must be kept.

Therefore human life is governed by ethics, which guides it toward the plenitude of

personal perfection, through the active observance of human values, as virtue, wisdom

and happiness.

In reaction to skepticism, Thomas considered the human person to be a rational

being, guided by knowledge of the truth. Hence last goal of the human being is their

integral perfection, happiness, and salvation. By nature, the human person is directed

108
Jacques Maritain, Antimoderne (Paris: Editions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1922), 14-16.
"19 Jean-Luc Barre, Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2005), 102.
110
Maritain, Education of Man, 41.
 26

toward social life, in order to achieve the common good, the virtuous life and happiness.

Thomas considered the human person to be a unity composed of soul and body, that is,

with a spiritual and a material component.

For Maritain, this doctrine of Aquinas was open and without frontiers. It was

open to every reality wherever that reality is to be found, and open to every truth, from

wherever it comes, especially the new truths which the evolution of culture or science

bring forth. It is open to the various problematics it may see while renewing them in the

light of its own fundamental intuitions in other universes of thought formed under

other heavens.111

For Olivier Lacombe, these past twenty centuries of the life of human reason in

the climate of Christian grace have confirmed the thought of Aquinas as a powerful

source of truth. "It affirms itself eminently fruitful, to the degree that it stands faithful to

an intellectual tradition which has been able, by its fullness and depth, to liberate and

give a permanent place to the intelligible treasures accumulated by Western

civilization."112

Thomas Aquinas was attacked during his epoch by the Catholic Church itself, and

his writings were approved only many years after his death. It is not strange, therefore,

that his followers negotiate the same unlucky path. Thomism is alive, and its internal

conflicts are not yet over. Not all of its contributions to contemporary thought have yet

been made.113

111
Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne, 130.
112
Olivier Lacombe, Sagesse (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1951), 33-34.
113
Gerald A. McCool, From Unity to Pluralism (New York: Fordham University, 1992), 3.
 27

Maritain was a philosopher, not a theologian, and as such, he considered

Thomism as a philosophy. While the philosophy of Aquinas was a philosophy guided by

faith, Maritain emphasized the value of Thomism as rational, not as Christian.114 "The fact

remains that what counts in a philosophy is not that it is Christian but that it is true."115

This philosophical approach of Maritain's allowed him to apply Thomism to his world,

and to engage in a conversation with that world on a rational basis. Maritain was a

"believer" indeed, but he preferred to address a number of issues, including that of

education, on the basis of reason. He was convinced that the philosophy of St. Thomas,

unlike other, incomplete philosophies, presented the correct and true understanding of the

human world.

B. Maritain and Neo-Thomism

Although it is common to hear the word "Neo-Thomism" as a designation of the

revival of "Thomism," Maritain disliked both terms, "neo-scholasticism" and "Neo-

Thomism," arguing that each "involves the risk of pulling us down from the higher plane

of wisdom to the lower plane of the problematic sciences and thereby leading us logically

to demand for "Thomism," too, a progress-by-substitution in which the "Neo-" would

devour the "Thomism."116

Fernand Brunner regards the work of Maritain as an important tendency in Neo-

114
"Philosophy is 'Christian,'" says Leo Sweeney, "inasmuch as faith in divine revelation enables the
reason more easily to know that God exists. . . Christian faith helps the human knower realize that actually
to be is supremely important for every existent" (Leo Sweeney "The Christian Existentialism of Jacques
Maritain," in Maritain: A Philosopher in the World, 37).
115
Maritain, An Essay on Christian Philosophy, 30-31.
116
Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, 13.
 28

Thomism, ll7 and Gerald McCool states that, between 1930 and 1960, the Neo-Thomistic

movement flourished especially in North America because of French Dominican Fathers,

Jacques Maritain and transcendental Thomism.118

Interest in Thomism goes back to the time of Pope Leo XIII, who urged the

restoration of the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas in his encyclical /Eternis Patris (August 4,

1879).119 Here he called for a return to this traditional philosophy, given the spread and

dominance of positivism in all areas of knowledge and culture. It would be quite

unjustified to accuse the neo-scholastics of a lack of originality, arguing that they all said

the same thing. No school is exactly like another, and a revival does not mean to live the

Middle Ages again.

After a setback in the thirteenth century by a Parisian judgment in 1227, which

condemned certain alleged errors, Thomism continued to grow through the fourteenth

century and first part of the fifteenth. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it saw

another revival, with the work of Cardinal Cajetan and John of St. Thomas. Then a new

revival came, as has already been mentioned, in the middle of the nineteenth century,

with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Mterni Patris.

A Thomist revival took root in the United States after World War II, in

translations, articles, and textbooks. Between 1911 and 1935, the Dominican Fathers of

the English Province issued an English translation of the Summa Theologica, which

117
Fernand Brunner, "Opening Address," in Actes du XVI " Congres des Socie'tes de Philosophic de Langue
Francois (Reims, 3-6 September 1974) (Paris: La Culture VanderNauwelaerts, 1975): 5.
1,8
Gerald A. McCool, "Is Thomas's Way still Viable Today?, in The Future of Thomism, eds. Deal W.
Hudson and Dennis W. Moran (Notre Dame, Ind.: American Maritain Association, 1992): 53.
119
Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter on the Restoration of Christian Philosophy:Aiterni Patris (New York:
Daughters of St. Paul, 1979).
 29

helped to arouse interest in Thomism in the United States. At the beginning of this

revival, only Catholics were interested. But from the 1930s to the early 1950s, Thomism

was the locus of philosophical action for both Catholic philosophers and a number of

prominent scholars in secular universities. New journals provided a forum for readers

exploring Thomism in depth or trying to relate it to modern philosophies. In 1927, the

American Catholic Philosophical Association began publication of The New

Scholasticism,120 while the American Dominicans started another journal called The

Thomistm in 1929.

This new revival, which preceded Vatican II, was called "Neo-Thomism," and

produced two schools of interpretation. One of these was "Aristotelian Thomism,"122

whose distinguished adherents included Benedict M. Ashley,123 Vincent E. Smith124 and

William A. Wallace.125 The other school was "existential Thomism, "126 which claimed

120
The New Scholasticism. Journal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America) v.l (1927) v.63 (1989). This periodical is now being published
with the title: American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, v.64 (1990) v.82 (2008).
121
The Thomist. A Speculative Quarterly Review (Washington, D.C.: The Thomist Press) v.l (1939) v.72
(2008).
122
Aristotelian Thomism is based on Aristotle's theory of hylemorphism, which explains how a substance is
changeable, although it does not explain how a substance exists. This theory states that all things have
"potentiality" and "actuality," passing from the former to the latter, and that this new "actuality" includes a
new potentiality. In addition, Aristotle's epistemology asserts that knowledge derives its content from a
contact (sensation) with reality.
123
See Benedict M. Ashley, Spiritual Direction in the Dominican Tradition (New York: Paulist Press,
1995).
,24
See Vincent E. Smith, St. Thomas on the Object of Geometry: Under the Auspice of the Aristotelian
Society of Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette University Press, 1954).
125
See William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in
Synthesis (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
126
By contrast, existential Thomism considers the substance as existing but still waiting for a further act to
become a being. Human beings exist and their process of knowing is derived from an internal vital
principle which God gives through grace. Whereas Aristotelian Thomism is concerned with "what I come to
know," existential Thomism focuses on "who the one is who knows."
 30

Etienne Gilson127 and Jacques Maritain, both of them French philosophers living in the

United States. Maritain was an important figure, who wrote more than fifty philosophical

books, along with countless articles for philosophical journals.

According to John Knasas128, there was also a third group, called "transcendental

Thomism."129 This version of Thomism was represented by Jesuit theologians Bernard J.

F. Lonergan,130 Henri de Lubac,131 and Karl Rahner.132 But the metamorphosis of the

Thomistic revival from Neo-Thomism into transcendental Thomism, says Knasas, was a

"disaster for Thomism itself," in the sense that it was not "pure" Thomism. After all, he

alleged, transcendental Thomism133 invoked Immanuel Kant's idealism.

Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) and Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) were the most

important figures representing the revival of Thomistic philosophy in the 1940s and

1950s.134 Gilson was the peerless historian of medieval thought, and Maritain the

127
See Etienne Gilson, Introduction a la Philosophic Chretienne (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997).
128
John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists. (New York: Fordham University Press,
2003), 30-31.
129
Joseph W. Koterski prefers to distinguish within Neo-Thomism the following: "Existential Thomism" of
thinkers like Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Josef Piper; the "Transcendental Thomism" of figures
like Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Marechal, Karl Rahner and Pierre Rousselot; and the "Analytical Thomism"
of individuals like Brian Davies, John Finnis, John Haldane and Norman Kretzmann. More traditional
scholars, such as Jan Aersten, Benedict M. Ashley, W. Norris Clarke, William A. Wallace and John Wippel,
still represent contemporary Thomism (Joseph W. Koterski, "Neo-Thomism," in New Catholic
Encyclopedia (Electronic Edition) (This entry will publish in June 2010 in the 2010 Supplement to the New
Catholic Encyclopedia)
130
Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Philosophical and Theological Papers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for
Lonergan Research Institute, 2004).
131
See Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme: Les Aspects Sociaux du Dogme (Paris: Du Cerf, 1947).
132
See Karl Rahner, Christliches Leben: Aufsdtze, Betrachtungen, Predigten (Freiburg: Herder, 2006).
133
Transcendental Thomism claims that human knowing does not involve reception from the real, but is a
projection of the knower upon the real. The intellect's basic contact with reality is not through abstracted
concepts, but through its own dynamism towards an infinite Being. See Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-
Century Thomists, 18-24.
134
Elias, "Whatever Happened," 93.
 31

preeminent Thomistic commentator on contemporary epistemology, political philosophy,

metaphysics, culture, and education. Since both were laymen, their Thomism seemed less

like a forbidding clerical preserve.

The impact of Gilson and Maritain has been greater in the United States than in

France. In fact, Maritain was a key instrument in the development of Neo-Thomism,

especially in education, thanks to his Terry Lectures at Yale in 1943 (on which the reader

will find comments in chapter three). Charles Fecher commented on that event: "In the

most vital phase of his work [...] [he carried] scholasticism beyond seminary walls and

into the world [...] Maritain came [...] like a breath of air into a room long sealed."135

Maritain's Neo-Thomistic Catholic philosophy of education was a reaction to

progressive and pragmatic philosophies of education. It aimed at helping persons to

achieve a supernatural destiny as a primary end, and placed "emphasis on the inner

resources of the student and the vital spontaneity of the child."136 Neo-Thomism offered

"a rigorous and a coherent synthesis of human nature, society, and God."137

Neo-Thomism reconnected with Aristotle and St. Thomas. After all, it was the

Angelic Doctor who supported the Aristotelian idea of science, in which many of the

mysteries of human life could be revealed through the application of human reason to the

beginnings of faith. Neo-Thomist philosophy therefore drew its principles from both

religious and philosophical sources. It sought to recover fundamental truths, valid

135
Charles A. Fecher, The Philosophy of Jacques Maritain (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1953),
340.
136
Elias, "Whatever Happened," 94.
137
Anthony Bryk, Valerie E. Lee, and Peter B. Holland, Catholic Schools and the Common Good
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 36.
 32

principles, and moral values, and incorporate them into the philosophical discussions of

the present day.

Impetus for the revival continued to be supplied at Rome, by Popes Pius XI

(1922-1939) and Paul VI (1897-1978), and later even with Pope John Paul II

(1920-2005), in his encyclical Angelicum in commemoration of the centenary of Leo

XIII's Aiterni Patris, where John Paul said, "The philosophy of St. Thomas deserves to be

attentively studied [...] It is a distinctive mark of the Christian faith, whose specific

countermark is its Catholicity."138

For John Knasas, Aquinas's philosophy does not claim to embrace the totality of

truth. It claims only to be "open" to all truth. "Christian philosophy, of which Thomism

is a model example, follows a methodology in which faith prompts one's thinking to the

limits and so helps to avoid the limitedness of viewpoint that plagues historical, that is,

secular, forms of philosophy."139

Neo-Thomism took deeper root in the United States than in Europe, thanks to

Maritain, of whom Charles A. Fecher once said, "No one man could have done the whole

job, but Maritain certainly made the foundations firm, set the pace, pointed out the

direction to follow."140 Maritain was not afraid of getting his shoes muddy or his knuckles

bruised, and much less afraid of having his feelings hurt.141

W. Norris Clarke thinks that it was in the sixties and early seventies with the

138
John Paul II. "Perennial Philosophy of St. Thomas for the Youth of our Times," in Angelicum 57 (Citta
del Vaticano, 1980), 130-140.
139
Knasas, Being and Some, xiii.
140
Fecher, The Philosophy, 340.
141
Ibid., 346.
 33

Second Vatican Council, the general revolt against authority and the weight of the past in

all fieldsthat quite different winds began to blow. He says that, over some ten or fifteen

years, a sudden decline took place in the prestige and predominance of Thomism in

Catholic circles, in both philosophy and theology. However, he argues, the teaching of St.

Thomas continued to maintain a certain primacy in the education of priests, and the

reasons are many and complex. Even more, "younger people are now able to approach

[Thomas] as worth studying for his own sake. Not a few, in fact, I can testify personally,

are rediscovering him with surprise and considerable intellectual satisfaction."142

The future of Thomism will be, as it has been, an ongoing dialogue, for the

purpose of discovering ever more nuanced and effective ways of applying the measure of

the real to judgments about reality.143 A historical assessment of Neo-Thomism may be

that it is dead and gone, but the philosophical assessment is that Neo-Thomism is alive

and well.144

Ralph Mclnerny comments that Maritain set his face against main currents of

modern thought, but that this lack of sympathy did not prevent him from being extremely

interested in the various aspects of culture, or from extending and developing his

Thomism so that it became a more comprehensive system than it had been when he

142
W. Norris Clarke, "Thomism and Contemporary Philosohical Pluralism," in The Future of Thomism, eds.
Deal W. Hudson and Dennis Wm. Moran (Indianapolis: American Maritain Association, 1992), 91-108.
143
Vincent M. Colapietro, "History, Tradition and Truth," in The Future of Thomism, eds. Deal W. Hudson
and Dennis Wm. Moran (Indianapolis: American Maritain Association, 1992), 131.
144
Knasas, Being and Some, 312.
 34

received it for future generations ,145

The name of Maritain has come to be closely associated with Thomism, Neo-

Thomism, the Catholic Church, the hierarchyand seen as a sign of contradiction.

Indeed, Maritain will remain in history to some as a Christian thinker who made

Thomism a living ferment in the modern world. To others, he will be a prophet of a New

Christendom. To still others, he will be seen as a champion of justice, and of human

liberty and equality. And some generations will take him as a spiritual leader, and a living

witness to the truths that he professed.146

C. American Educational Pragmatism

Since Maritain's philosophy of education was formulated mainly in the United

States between 1933 and 1960, the period when he lectured throughout the country, it is

important to observe that the most important American philosophy of the time was

pragmatism. It was the same period during which John Dewey, the most important

American philosopher, was applying pragmatism to his educational theory, and was

provoking Maritian's criticism of pragmatism. It is also important to say a few words on

pragmatism in order to understand Maritian's philosophy of education as discussed in

chapter three.

The terms "pragmatism" "pragmatic," and "pragmatist" (from the Greek

pragma "thing," "fact") are commonly used to denote a commitment to success in

145
Ralph Mclnerny, "Maritain's Intellectual and Spiritual Life: His Major Intuitions," in Jacques Maritain:
Philosophic dans la Cite IA Philosopher in the World, ed. Jean Louis Allard (Ottawa: University of Ottawa
Press, 1985), 12.
146
Donald and Idella Gallagher. The Achievement of Jacques and Raissa Maritain: A Bibliography
1906-1961 (New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1962), 6.
 35

practical affairs, to "getting things done." The philosophical movement of pragmatism

was also known as "instrumentalism" and "experimentalism," words intended to be an

expression of American culture. Some would argue that pragmatism is more than a

philosophy. After all, pragmatism emphasized the experience, the experimental activity,

the creative role of intelligence, and the values and procedures of democracy, that it was

bringing to the life of the American people, now that people grew toward a fuller

consciousness of public affairs, and toward greater influence on these affairs, including

the enterprise of education.147

Pragmatism148 was an American philosophical response to the conflicted twentieth

century, that continued to maintain the anti-metaphysical spirit of the nineteenth. It

emerged in the early 1870s, when a small group of young men from Cambridge,

Massachusetts, began to meet regularly to talk about philosophy. The group included,

among others, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and

Nicolas St. John Green. The practical approach of the pragmatists appealed (and

continues to appeal) to the American psyche.149 William James, F.C.S. Schiller and John

Dewey were the most significant American spokesmenespecially the last named, who

became the great American philosopher and educator, who taught at the University of

Chicago from 1894 to 1904. Here in Chicago, Dewey shaped his ideas on education,

147
John L. Childs, American Pragmatism and Education (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1956), iv.
148
Pragmatism, for Cornells De Waal, is first of all a method for doing philosophy, and not a collection of
set viewpoints on specific issues. "It is a method that strikes philosophy at its very core [...], and as a
doctrine of meaning, it forces us to rethink key philosophical notions such as... 'reality.'" Cornells De Waal,
On Pragmatism (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Philosophical Topics, 2005), 175.
149
Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, A Short History of Philosophy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 240.
 36

within the newly emerging pragmatic school of thought.

There are three cultural factors in the formative part of pragmatism. They are the

rise of experimental science, the theory of organic evolution, and the growth of

democracy. The reconstructions of philosophy undertaken by the pragmatists in response

to cultural developments have had a profound influence on educational thought and

practice, especially in America. Behold "the new education."150

The pragmatic movement also evoked general interest because it centered its

attention on problems of common concern. Its founders recognized, for example, that the

evolutionary account of the genesis of the human species undermined the traditional

interpretation of person and nature. In their perception, thought was linked with activity,

and that, in essence, significant ideas are a plan of action. Pragmatic concepts like these

spread from the Departments of Philosophy of American universities (especially at the

University of Chicago) to inform and guide thought in various realms of American life.

The pragmatists sought to define the implications of their philosophical views on

behalf of the young. In collaboration with parents, teachers, and school administrators,

they would develop a program of education resulting in what it is now widely known as

"the new education."151

William James (1842-1910) is the author of the influential Pragmatism, which

specifically defines that an experience is a condition of human life. In fact, he was one of

the first Americans to become interested in the new science of neurology, and his two-

150
Childs, American Pragmatism, 141.
151
Ibid., v.
 37

volume The Principles of Psychology, although dated, is still considered one of the

classics in the field. It was he who first popularized pragmatism. His favorite phrase,

"Good ideas are good for something," did not dismiss the importance of religion or moral

beliefs. "He considered religious experience an indispensable aspect of our experience.

Religious experience was more important than religious doctrine."152 James prescribed

religion as therapy, not as dogma, and instilled with it a message of pluralism. This

became a perfect philosophy for an increasingly multicultural society of new immigrants.

It is in the context of the emphasis on experience that we can understand the

enduring appeal of William James in American philosophy. Philosophy was the

"experience industry," and this emphasis on experience came down to common sense.

Nowhere is this emphasis on experience more pronounced and more appealing than in

religion, where the "varieties of religious experience" have come to define the spiritual

life.

But the central figure of twentieth-century pragmatism was the American

philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey built his philosophy on a

concept of dynamic unity, and was opposed to all of the exaggerated dualismsbetween

mind and body, between cause and effect, between secular and transcendentthat split

up rather than clarified experience, and in Dewey's view made philosophical progress

impossible.'53

Dewey looked for a functional understanding"How does this work?" "How

152
Solomon and Higgins, A Short History of Philosophy, 260.
153
Ibid., 262.
 38

does this fit in?rather than abstract analysis. He was called the philosopher of

democracy, because, for him, the aim of philosophy was to make democracy work. The

school is, first of all, a place where children learn to become citizens in a democracy.

School itself, therefore, should be a model of democracy.154 Dewey's engaged social

concerns marked the maturity of pragmatism. He not only preached but practiced social

engagement, creating American institutions.

Dewey's philosophy of education was relevant, in emphasizing that learning is

acquired not by listening or reading, but by doing. According to Dewey, education must

lead the human person from theory to praxisthat is, learning by doing. He placed

emphasis on the child viewed as a person, and not simply as a "learner," and the program

of education should be so conceived that it would take into account the unique

potentialities of each child. Human beings have endless potential, and our development

consists of deciding what is good for us in each situation. "Education is growth, and

growth has no end other than more growth. But the growth of human beings is

conditioned by the social environment in which they live."155

According to Larry A. Hickman, Dewey wanted to push education, including

religious education, in the direction of fostering and improving our knowledge of things

in their fullness, and of opening up new vistas of human communication.156

For John L. Childs, Dewey's concept of a "common faith" made his view more

humanistic than theistic, and God the maximum of all ideals and values for which the

154
Ibid., 263.
155
Ibid., 146.
156
Larry A. Hickman, Pragmatism as Post-Modernism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 202.
 39

human being strives.157

Dewey joined the newly founded University of Chicago from 1894-1904 where

he shaped his educational ideas. He perceived the new environment (industrialism), into

which the United States was going to enter, when he lectured in 1899 at Chicago

University. These lectures were compiled in his book School and Society and criticized

the traditional school as a "listening school." He stated that the sources of the "new

education"158 are not simply the "minds of pedagogues" equipped with a sincere ethical

regard for the individual child, and with a more adequate psychology of the learning

process. They are also found in the needs of a society in process of transformation, and

the result of this process is a cultivation of the ability to think, which is foundational in

education.159

Dewey left Chicago University in 1904, becoming a professor at Columbia

University. Nevertheless, all of his ideas still lived among the faculty members at

Chicago University, until they elected a new president, Robert Hutchins, in 1929, who

sought to change pragmatism into Thomistic and Aristotelian philosophies. The resulting

conflict, which became the reason why many faculty members left the university, is

known as the Chicago Fight.160 It was at that time that Jacques Maritain was invited by

Hutchins to give his first lecture in America, in 1933, which aroused in him great conflict.

But it was an opportunity to start organizing his educational ideas.

157
Childs, American Pragmatism, 328.
158
John Dewey, School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900), 4.
159
Childs, American Pragmatism,147.
160
Harry S. Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Boston: Little Brown
and Company, 1989), 76.
 40

During the decade that began with the Great Depression of 1929, and culminated

in the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the discussion of social and educational issues

was carried on with particular intensity. Social views made Dewey, as well as other

pragmatists, change conceptions of the rights, responsibilities, and functions of the

individual, as well as of the kind of education one should have if one were to be equipped

to bear his/her democratic responsibilities in a nation whose historic modes of life and

thought were undergoing transformation.

So, indeed, we have a long way to travel before Dewey's democratic vision is

realized. Edward J. Dodson argues that, in all likelihood, neither Dewey nor Hutchins

would be very pleased with where we have come. "The sad fact is that one of the most

striking weaknesses of our system of education is that too few people reach adulthood

with even a modicum of understanding of the key principles of what constitutes the just

society. And so we have a good deal of work to do."161

3. Conclusion

Maritain's philosophical approach was unique for his time, whether he criticized

rationalism or pragmatism, or defended Thomism. It is necessary to refer to some of his

more than seventy booksas well as those of Rai'ssa, his beloved companion and wife

if we are to discover his philosophical, and deeply humanistic and spiritual concern, and

how he brought Thomism to life and practicality through his educational ideas. This will

be done in chapter three.

161
Edward J. Dodson, "Hutchins, Dewey and Problems Left Unresolved," in The School of Cooperative
Individualism (April 2006) electronic source: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/dodson-
edward_dewey-hutchins-debate-on-education.html (Accessed October 2008).
 41

Granted, Maritain was and is among philosophers frequently referred to as

exponents of "Neo-Thomism." But Maritain was not a Neo-Thomist! Not according to

Maritain, he was not, at any rate! How could he be, since there was no such thing as

"Neo-Thomist philosophy"but only Thomist philosophy?162. Furthermore, he reveals

extraordinary insights into other philosophies. His restless work on defending human

rights, and social, educational, and religious values, evince his commitment to himself, to

others, to the world, to the Catholic Church, and to God.

What separated Maritain from the philosophers of his time was his strong

affirmation of the "primacy of the spiritual," and his view that reason is not contrary to

faith but a legitimate way to reach God. Given this conviction, Thomism was decisive for

Maritain's work. His philosophical effort was to re-establish the real hierarchy of being,

both human and divine, and give rightful priority to spiritual and metaphysical values.163

Maritain's philosophy built a bridge between reason and Christian mysticism. In other

words, Maritain's thought possesses a double frame, one theological, the other

philosophical. For Maritain, philosophy is no longer the "handmaiden" of theology, as it

was regarded in medieval times. Rather, theology is a useful tool for philosophy.164

Maritain's work in philosophy of education in the United States was appreciated, and

well recognized, by philosophers like Donald and Idella Gallagher, who wrote:

Maritain has much in common with the sages of the ancient and medieval
periodswith Platonic and Aristotelian views of rational human nature

162
Jacques Maritain, Le Docteur Angelique (Paris: Hartmann, 1929) (CEuvres Completes IV), 22.
163
Donald and Idella Gallagher, eds. "Introduction," in The Education of Man: The Educational Philosophy
of Jacques Maritain (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1963), 41.
164 "Philosophy is subject to theology, neither in its premises nor in its method, but in its conclusions."
Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1962), 87-88.
 42
and the dignity of contemplation, with Augustine and Aquinas on the final
end for humans and the primacy of love-in-contemplation. Still, his is a
twentieth-century philosophy of education and not a mere recapitulation of
classic ideas and ideals.165

Maritain's own words describe better what his ideals and aims were: "I am fully

convinced, that my way of justifying the belief in the rights of man and the ideal of

liberty, equality, fraternity, is the only one which is solidly based on truth."166

165
Ibid., 29.
166
Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons: 1952), 180-181.
 43

Chapter Two

The Life and Work of Maritain

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first section presents Maritain's

biography, together with his most important writings. Special attention will be given to

the time when he settled in the United States ("The American years": 1933-1945 and

1948-1960), since his lectures and books written during that time, specially Education at

the Crossroads, were influential in the field of education. Maritain's philosophy of

education became a prominent one, since he dared to philosophize about education

during a time of flux, crisis, and ambivalence. It was at that time that he was able to carry

the light of Thomism to the problems of our times. Special mention will be made of "the

Chicago fight" (a controversy that took place in the late 1930s, when Robert Hutchins,

Chicago University's new president, attempted to reform the curriculum), which

influenced and molded Maritain's philosophy of education, at that moment against its

American background.

1. His life

A. Early Years
Jacques Maritain was born on 18 November 1882, in Paris, France. His mother,

Genevieve Favre-Maritain, was the daughter of Jules Favre (1809-80), a liberal democrat,

an agnostic, a leader of the provisional government of the short-lived Second Republic, a

member of the opposition to Napoleon III and, later, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
 44

Third Republic. Jules Favre died two years before Jacques Maritain was born, but had

exerted a strong influence on the character of Jacques' mother.

Genevieve Favre had indeed a strong sense of justice and democracy, and reared

her children in a liberal Protestant environment in spite of having married a Catholic

lawyer: Paul Maritain. She divorced him in 1884, before Jacques' sister was about to be

born, and she acquired the right to rear Jacques and Jeanne by herself.1 Since Paul

Maritain was not obliged to furnish any child support, this young woman had to ensure

the future of her children by herself. Thanks to an inheritance from her father and the

income she earned as a translator, she succeeded in setting up all that was necessary to

assure Jeanne and Jacques a future worthy of descendants of Jules Favre.2

Jacques' father, Paul Maritain, was a non-practicing Catholic and a lawyer. He

was a member of the Paris bar from 1862 to 1889, and had been Jules Favre's secretary.

Young Jacques' family situation was difficult, and he was later reluctant to recall the days

visiting his father at the Chateau de Bussiere. But no doubt the education of the two

children was in the hands of Madame Genevieve Favre, who resumed her maiden name

as soon as the divorce was settled.

Jacques was in poor health, but his mind was ever an inquiring one. He was an

omnivorous reader, independent in character, and liked to speak with the chef of the

house and his wife and listen to their socialist ideas.3 In fact, he considered becoming a

1
Alain Mougniotte, Maritain et I'Education (Paris: Editions Don Bosco: 1997), 11.
2
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 14.
3
Julie Kernan, Our Friend Jacques Maritain (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975), 16.
 45

socialist himself.4 Interest in social issues never abandoned Maritain: converted to

Catholicism, he developed a political and social thinking within a Catholic view.

When Jacques was fifteen years old he entered the Lycee Henri IV and made

warm friends of his own. There he met Ernest Psichari, who would be his inseparable

companion. Psichari had been baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, and was the

grandson of Ernest Renan, an anticlerical historian and critic. Both friends lived in an

atmosphere of liberalism, and both families also became close friends. They studied

together and shared humanitarian interests at the Sorbonne, as well.

When Ernest Psichari enlisted as a soldier in the army, he and Jacques maintained

their affection for each other, keeping in touch by frequent letters. Over the years Psichari

was converted to Roman Catholicism. This was one of multiple conversions of friends

and acquaintances in the Maritains' life.

Maritain and Psichari both met Charles Peguy, editor of the Cahiers de la

Quinzaine? Peguy published his own articles denouncing corruption in politics, greed for

money, anti-semitism, and other issues. His writings were an inspiration and model for

French youth. He was socialist writer opposed to traditional philosophy, and a bookseller

who later had considerable influence on Maritain's thinking. Little by little, Jacques

started helping him with the details of the production of the Cahiers, and it was here that

his vocation of writer and his knowledge of how to publish were born. Maritain as a

young man made friends with everybody. He was an inclusive sort of person, who

4
Jacques Maritain, Carnet de Notes (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1965), 16.
5
Rai'ssa Maritain, Les Grandes Amities (First edition: 1948) (Saint-Maur, France: Parole et Silence, 2000),
46.
 46

respected others.

B. Marriage and Conversion

Maritain started his studies in natural science after receiving his diploma in

philosophy. In the same courses was Rai'ssa Oumansoff, a Jewish woman, born in 1883,

in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Two years before, in 1881, the assassination of Czar

Alexander was attributed to a Jewish plot. This provided an excuse for a bloody

campaign of reprisals, which sent several thousands of emigrants to Western Europe and

to the United States. Ra'issa's family emigrated to Paris in 1893 and adapted to their new

way of living. Vera was Ra'issa's younger sister, and she lived with Rai'ssa and Jacques

later, until she passed away.

Rai'ssa, who was a sensible and intelligent woman, met Jacques Maritain in the

halls at the School of Letters and Sciences while Jacques was seeking the signatures of

French intellectuals for a protest against the ill-treatment of Russian socialist students by

the czarist police of the time.6 Social injustices or political issues were important to

Jacques, and he always had to say something for or against. Rai'ssa helped him to call on

prospective signers, and from this moment the pair came to be inseparable companions.7

Rai'ssa vividly described her first encounter with Jacques: "I saw coming toward

6
Kernan, Our Friend, 23.
7
"I also want justice to be done to Rai'ssa. If there is anything good in my philosophical work, and in my
books, this has its deep source and light in her contemplative prayer and in the oblation of herself she made
to God... she preserved the peace in her soul, her full lucidity, her humor, her concern for her friends, the
fear of being a trouble to others, and her marvelous smile and the extraordinary light in her wonderful
eyes." Jacques Maritain, Ra'issa's Journal Presented by Jacques Maritain (New York: Magi Books, Inc.,
1974), 8-9.
 47

me a young man with a gentle face, a heavy shock of blond hair, a light beard. . . ."8 He

already had an interior life full of goodness and generosity."9 After two years of

companionship, and the pursuit of mutual interest, Jacques and Raissa were married on

November 26,1904, by civil rite. From that moment on she was going to be his spiritual

and intellectual collaborator in a number of books, and through all his of life.10 This was a

true marriage of minds.11

The presence of a woman in his life made Jacques's thinking balanced. All he

wrote enjoyed his wife's critique and supervision. They worked together. She was not

only an inspiration to him, but an intelligent helper, who provided him "feedback" when

he most needed it.

Both partners had the same questions and doubts about science, life, mysteries,

and God, but positivism at that time did not answer the larger existential issues of life for

the Maritains. Both became more and more desperate. The influence of professors at the

Sorbonne led to relativism, intellectual skepticism, and moral nihilismto an absurd and

intolerable human life. The pair were searching without hope, and they decided to end

their lives if within a year they could find no meaning for the word "truth," and an

explanation of the presence of evil and injustice in the world.12

They attended lectures of the French idealist philosopher Henri Bergson at the

8
Raissa Maritain, Les Grandes, 37.
9
Ibid., 38.
10
"She was one of those souls who provides us with the highest example, who come and go freely"
Maritain, Raissa's Journal, 11.
11
Kernan, Our Friend, 29.
12
Raissa Maritain, Les Grandes, 59.
 48

invitation of Charles Peguy (editor of the Cahiers) at the College de France, across the

street from the Sorbonne. Finding Bergson's lectures in aesthetics, philosophy of religion,

and ethics to be a series of revelations exposing the many mistakes in the new scientism,

the Maritains stopped thinking about suicide.13 Bergson's lectures were open to the public

without charge, and large audiences were flocking to listen to him. He was a magnetic

thinker with a new orientation, a different one from the positivism and pessimism of the

Sorbonne. Bergson saw the world with a life force (elan vital) and saw the human being

capable of perceiving reality through intuition. Through Bergson's teaching, the

Maritains found enough truth to make life worth living. Rai'ssa found herself kneeling and

her heart burning.14 It took Jacques another year to pray, "God, if you exist, and if you are

the truth, make me know it."15

Jacques received his agregation in philosophy in 1905, and registered in advanced

courses in biology. But now Ra'issa's precarious health prevented her from taking more

courses at the Sorbonne. In the same year, Jacques and Rai'ssa started a conversation

about Catholicism with Leon Bloy, a writer who represented a version of French anti-

bourgeois Catholicism, and who was known for his anti-Semitic polemic. The

conversation began because of a novel by Bloy entitled La Femme Pauvre16 ("The Poor

Woman").The interchange was not an easy one. Jacques liked socialist ideas, and

13
Piero Viotto, Introduzione a Maritain (Roma-Bari, Italia: Editori Laterza, 2000), 127.
14
Rai'ssa, Les Grandes, 109.
15
Maritain, Carnet, 34.
16
Leon Bloy, La Femme Pauvre: Episode Contemporain (Paris: Mercure de France, 1943).
 49

regularly criticized the Catholic Church.17 Rai'ssa, as has been mentioned, was of Jewish

background. Both were very interested in philosophy and science, not religion.

Leon Bloy had a deep Catholic faith with a mystical direction. He was able to

show that the center of Christian life was the contemplation of supernatural truth in the

love of Christ. Through Bloy's influence, both Maritains18 and Vera (Rai'ssa's sister) were

baptized in the Roman Catholic Church on 11 June 1906, at the Church of Saint John the

Evangelist on Montmartre. Leon Bloy was their godfather. Once baptized, both assumed

their natural vocation, that of "philosophical intelligences." They believed that only God

could heal the spiritual aridity of their intellectual lives and fill their lives with a larger

meaning.19

It is important to realize that the two Maritains came from different backgrounds,

and that, after their conversion, their lives took different directions. Their conversion was

not only one of ideas. It was also about life. They practiced their Catholicism to the end

of their lives, loving and sharing their faith with everyone they encounterednot as

indoctrination, but as example.

On 25 August 1906, after completing his course in biology at the Sorbonne,

Jacques obtained a scholarship to study biology with biologist Hans Driesch, at

Heidelberg. This offered him an opportunity to abandon philosophy. The Maritains'

sojourn in Germany offered the new converts the solitude necessary for a careful

17
He criticized the Catholic Church mainly for not paying attention to the proletariat and to prepare a
revolution. See Maritain, Carnet, 16-17.
18
Jacques' baptism was conditional, because he had received baptism from a Protestant pastor before.
19
Viotto, Introduzione a Maritain, 127.
 50

examination of their new life. When Rai'ssa became very ill, her sister Vera came to live

with the Maritains permanently.

The conversion to Catholicism brought anger from Jacques and Rai'ssa's families.

Many friends also rejected them, although some stayed at their side. For Rai'ssa, it was

not a conversion: she now believed that God had fulfilled the promises made to Israel.

They accepted being criticized, and had to suffer the opposition of their own families

who themselves were converted a few years later.

After two years in Germany, Rai'ssa and Jacques returned to France, and installed

themselves in Paris at the end of 1908. They hastened to find the man who might possibly

take charge of their souls.20 He was Humbert Clerissac, a Dominican priest, who

introduced Jacques, as well as Rai'ssa, to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas. In

the philosophy of St. Thomas, the couple found clarity and order, depth and moderation,

not to mention a sense of mystery. They also found in Aquinas an uncanny predisposition

to get to the essence of matters. Their foray into the Summa freed their spirits. This

marked a milestone in Jacques Maritain's life, and he discovered that he had already been

a Thomist, without knowing it.21

C. Thomistic Philosopher
The intellectual encounter of the pair with Thomas Aquinas was decisive for

Jacques. It impelled him to be a Christian philosopher for the Church. His preferred

phrase, following his encounter with Thomas Aquinas was: "Distinguish in order to

20
Barre, Jacques and Rai'ssa, 93.
21
Kernan, Our Friend, 4 1 .
 51

unite."22 With this idea in mind, Maritain began a dialogue that embraced different

modern ways of thinking, and which initiated his revival of interest in the Angelic Doctor.

Problems that had long puzzled Jacques were now solved. The relationships

between nature and grace, faith and reason, science and wisdom, all came clear. He was

confirmed in his belief that reason could be trusted, that it could be reconciled with

religion and expanded toward experimental science, that the mind was lighted by the five

windows of the senses, and that the intellect had the right to feed on facts.23 In Jacques

Maritain's eyes, the vitality of Thomism is due precisely to this capacity for perpetual

renewal, to a constant and unforeseeable mobility in the search for concordances and

integration.24

In the opinion of Gerald McCool, Maritain was a modern man well acquainted

with the literature, music, art, and science of his own age. Thomism did not appeal to him

because it was medieval. He was drawn to it in the belief that "intelligently extended and

applied, it could become, in capable hands, the philosophy which the modern world

needed to integrate twentieth century experience. In his own effort to do so, Maritain

made a good case for his claim."25

In Rai'ssa's words, "for the first time Thomistic thought was claiming its rights in

profane life and culture, entering the lists with contemporary philosophies, entering into

22
Maritain wrote in 1932 his metaphysical work: Distinguer pour Unir: ou les Degres du Savoir, Paris:
Desclee de Brouwer, 1932; published in English under the title: Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of
Knowledge, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1959.
23
Kernan, Our Friend, 4 1 .
24
Barre, Jacques and Rai'ssa, 102.
25
Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994), 92.
 52

competition with them on their own grounds, as young and even more alive than the

doctrines of the day."26

Jacques' encounter with Thomas Aquinas was an encounter of using reason to

share their faith. It was an opportunity to understand theology and philosophy at the same

time, and to approach the mysteries of God. Maritain found out that before knowing St.

Thomas, he himself had been doing a philosophy based on Thomistic principles by

intuition.

With his new Thomistic perspective, he wrote his first article, "Modern Science

and Reason," which appeared in the Revue de Philosophic .Shortly thereafter (1913), he

published his first book, La Philosophic Bergsonniene, dealing with Bergson's idea of

intuition and applying Thomist principles to discover a deeper sense in Bergson and a

new way to do philosophy.27 For Bergson, the elan vital, or "vital impulse," is

complementary to the "impetus of love" in the human person who "is" not, but

"becomes," due to those two forces or impetuses. Bergson attacked materialism,

positivism, and determinism, and defended the spirituality of the human soul. Following

Bergson's example, Maritain will criticize some modern philosophies, especially

pragmatism, when dealing with education.

Maritain wanted to be a philosopher, and one day he had the opportunity to teach

philosophy according to his new Thomistic views. In 1912, he became a professor at the

College Stanislas in Paris, causing much controversy because of his use of Thomistic

26
Rai'ssa Maritain, Adventures in Grace (New York: The Catholic Book Club, 1945), 203.
27
This work gathers all the lessons from the Catholic Institute of Paris of 1913. Jacques Maritain, La
Philosophic Bergsonienne: Etudes Critiques (Paris: Marcel Riviere, 1913) (CEuvres Completes I, 5-612).
 53

methodology. "He had decided to make the philosophy of Aristotle and of Saint Thomas

the centre of his teaching."28

During the same year, Jacques, Rai'ssa, and Vera pronounced vows as Oblates of

St. Benedict, retaining their lay status, and committed themselves to following the rule of

life and the devotions of the Benedictine monastic order.29 We do not know the reasons

why, but it appears that it was because they wanted Catholic principles to be embodied in

their lives.

A year later, in 1917, Jacques Maritain gave a series of lectures at the Institut

Catholique on "The Philosophy of Bergson and Christian Philosophy." It is often said that

these lectures marked the emergence of what is known as "Neo-Thomism."30 During this

period of time, young people in colleges and universities were reading authors like

Claudel, Bloy, or Peguy, and many had become practicing Catholics. Among those who

attended Maritain's lectures were many students of science. Maritain had rejected an offer

from the Sorbonne to teach there, because he considered that the approach of that

university, at that time, was against his beliefs. He was bold and made a clear decision

about what he wanted to be: a coherent Catholic at work.

With the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, some of the Maritains' friends

were killed (Peguy, Psichari), and Jacques had to present himself to a draft board, where

he was rejected due to a severe attack of pleurisy he had suffered in childhood. Jacques

redoubled his efforts as a teacher at the Institut Catholique, in 1915-1916, at the College

28
Rai'ssa Maritain, Adventures, 199.
29
Keman, Our Friend, 46.
30
Ibid., 44.
 54

Stanislas, and in 1916-1917, at the preparatory seminary in Versailles. Now the Maritains

encountered Father Dehau, who helped them with their spirituality for twenty-five years,

as Maritain would write: "to cope with the great problems of our lives [...] with the light

of his wisdom."31

While at the Institut Catholique, Jacques Maritain began preparing a manual of

philosophy for seminaries. The Congregation of Seminaries and Universities in Rome

had already requested the same manual. He presented his new book under the name An

Introduction to Philosophy, where he brought a general outline of problems and solutions

into contact with the Thomistic points of view. The work was written in order to initiate

students into the history of philosophy. It was illustrated with graphics, showing how

Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy strikes a balance between extreme positions. In May

1917, he received an honorary doctorate of philosophy from the Congregation of

Seminaries and Universities of Rome for his An Introduction to Philosophy, which

became a standard textbook in Catholic seminaries.

In the spring of 1918, Jacques and Rai'ssa were received in private audience by

Pope Benedict XV. Then Jacques availed himself of the opportunity to discuss Thomistic

questions, especially with Father Garrigou-Lagrange, a noted theologian, who was at the

Dominican college of the Angelicum, and who was to prove his friendship for this young

couple over the years.

In the midst of the war, Jacques received a letter from Pierre Villard, a student

attending some of Jacques' lectures. He was in a hospital, wounded. Jacques saw Villard

31
Maritain, Carnet, 111.
 55

three or four times at the hospital as the soldier passed through Paris on leave. Pierre

Villard was killed on 28 June 1918, and divided his fortune equally between Charles

Maurras and Jacques Maritain. Villard's last will specified that his fortune ought to

contribute to the safeguard of what remained of the moral and intellectual patrimony of

France.

In 1919, Maritain was installed in the chair of "History of Modern Philosophy" at

the Institut Catholique de Paris, and in 1921, he became a full professor of history of

modern philosophy, logic and cosmology at the same institute.32 At last he accepted the

his portion of Villard's bequest, which helped him and Rai'ssa to live in reasonable

comfort and have time for writing and lecturing, as well as to establish a center for the

spread of the philosophical and spiritual thought of Thomas Aquinas. This was the

beginning of the "Thomist Centers" at Meudon, close to Versailles, not far from Paris. In

the beginning, only some of Jacques' personal friends, together with some students from

the Institut Catholique, used to gather in these centers. But the meetings were to grow in

size each month and year.33 The Maritains proposed the study of the theology as well as

the philosophy of Aquinas, as well as a commitment to prayer and meditation on the part

of the members of the centers. Each center had an appointed director, and yearly reports

were to be made to him. An annual spiritual retreat was offered, for those members who

wished to attend.34

Leading intellectuals and artists of Paris attended the Thomist Centers, including

32
Viotto, Introduzione a Maritain, 128.
33
"In 1937 there were 250 to 300 persons in the annual retreat." Maritain, Carnet, 233.
34
Kernan, Our Friend, 48.
 56

P. Claudel, J. Cocteau, M. de Falla, and E. Gilson.35 The famous painters Marc Chagall

and Jean Hugo came; musicians Georges Auric, Nicolas Nabokoff and Igor Stravinsky;

philosophers Olivier Lacombe and Gabriel Marcel.36 Among the others was the young

American businessman Willard Hill, who became a Catholic.37

It was not surprising that the study of St. Thomas and the spiritual lives of the

Maritains led to the conversion of many to Catholicism, returns to the practice of the

Catholic religion, and priestly and religious vocations. There were about fifteen retreats

from 1921 to 1937,38 which demonstrates that Meudon, where the Thomistic centers were

located, was not only a center of cultural debate, but a school of spirituality for lay

people. Philosophy and faith could be related in one term: Christian philosophy.

According to Viotto, it was at Meudon that Maritain defined his philosophical and

political position.39

Rai'ssa and Jacques were very committed to these Thomistic centers, as an

apostolic sort of work and a spiritual mission. This may stand as an example of how

Catholicism was not an idea, but ideas put into practice. It was in Meudon that Maritain

produced an impressive philosophical work, retrieving a great variety of ideas from the

writings of Thomas Aquinas, such as religion and culture, political and social thought,

and Christian philosophy. With all of these ideas, he published a number of books

35
Viotto, Introduzione a Maritain, 128.
36
Kernan, Our Friend, 62.
37
Ibid., 66.
38
In the fall of 1937 nearly three hundred persons arrived for the three-day session of the annual spiritual
retreat of the Thomist Center held at Meudon, France. It was the last retreat before going to America.
Maritain's influence at that time was important.
39
Piero Viotto, Per una Filosofia dell'a Educazione Secondo J. Maritain (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1985),
16.
 57

between 1920 and 1930. The two most important were: Art et Scholastique and

Antimoderne.

Art et Scholastique was the first work on the philosophy of art based on the

principles of St. Thomas Aquinas in which the issues raised by contemporary art were

faced. It was destined to exert an immense influence upon writers, literary critics, and

artists, as well as philosophers. Jacques Maritain wrote the book with his wife's

collaboration, arguing that poetry is the secret life of all the arts. Poetry is to art what

grace is to the moral life. Maritain's fame spread beyond the boundaries of his own

country, and he became known to a larger world than that of philosophy.40

Maritain was admired for his open-minded approach to modern art. In writing

Antimoderne, however, he disconcerted many people. The question was, "Could the man

who was so well-known for his liberal views on art and social-political questions be the

one who defended an uncompromising narrow Neo-Thomism?"41 Maritain did not fear to

become a sign of contradiction in expressing his ideas. Indeed, Yves R. Simon, one of his

disciples, once wrote: "His faith was deep, burning and uncompromising, with a

definitely mystical direction [...] He had the soul of a contemplative and that of an artist

[...] His writings would remain those of a philosopher whose effort always is, in some

way or other, centered on problems natural, human, and temporal."42

As he was writing La Primaute du Spirituel (published in English as The Things

40
Gallagher, The Achievement, 10-11.
41
Ibid., 11.
42
Yves R. Simon and John H. Griffin, Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures (New York: Magi
Books, Inc., 1974), 4-7.
that Are Not Caesar's), in 1927, he attempted to discern in broad outline the general

directions that he thought integral Christian politics should follow. "Man is born to live

in society. What is true of man, considered as an individual, is also true of society."43

According to Yves R. Simon, "his book contained both theological studies on the

relations of Church and State, and a timely, practical, apostolic, and fraternal message to

beloved souls in the darkness of their ordeal."44 Maritain's aspiration was to work on the

true meaning of democratic inspiration in society. He sought to apply, to the field of

social and political action, the teachings of Thomas Aquinasnot to do politics or engag

in political action himself.

The appearance of the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI, in 1931,

confirmed Maritain in his pursuit of social issues, leading him to develop principles of a

liberal Christian humanism. He did not hesitate to enter into dialogue with people who,

although of various philosophical backgrounds, agreed upon the dignity of the person,

and opposed totalitarianism, both that of the left and that of the right. He forced the

Christian conscience to come face to face with the realities of political and social life.45

Distinguer pour Unir: ou les Degres de Savoir {The Degrees of Knowledge) was

published in 1932, examining in nine hundred pages the entire universe of knowledge

seen through the eyes of Thomas Aquinas, in which philosophy works for itself, and

treats theology as equal. Maritain sought to enrich the teaching of St. Thomas.46 This

43
Jacques Maritain, The Things That Are Not Caesar's (New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931), 138.
44
Simon and Griffin, Jacques Maritain: Homage, 10.
45
Gallagher, The Achievement, 18-19.
46
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 302.
 59

book discourses upon the majesty and poverty of metaphysics, upon philosophy and

experimental science, upon mystical experience and contemplation. Every attempt at

metaphysical synthesis, Maritain argues, must distinguish in order to unite. After thirty

years, say Donald and Idella Gallagher, The Degrees of Knowledge stands out not only as

one of Maritain's most significant works, but as one of the great achievements of

twentieth-century Thomism.47 The book was one of the first of Thomistic books published

in English and known by American public. In 1932, Maritain was only fifty years old.

Shortly thereafter, Hitler came to power, and international tensions became aggravated

until the outbreak of war in 1939.

In May 1931, a letter from Etienne Gilson, a renowned Thomistic philosopher,

called his attention to the existence of "a small group " in Chicago who had become

disciples of Maritain without ever having seen him.48 Gilson was referring to Robert

Hutchins, Mortimer Adler, and John Nef. Three months later, Gilson proposed to

Maritain that they meet with Gerald Bernard Phelan, one of the founders, along with the

Basilian Fathers of the Institute for Medieval Studies in Toronto. Dr. Phelan was to

become one of the ablest American exponents of Jacques Maritain's thought and wrote

the first book about Maritain in English.49 Shortly after their first meeting, Maritain was

invited to Canada to teach whatever he wanted to teach: "It is your actual personal

presence that we want above all for these young people,"50 said Gilson, in one of his

47
Gallagher, The Achievement, 17.
48
Letter of Etienne Gilson to Jacques Maritain, 5 May 1931, in Deux Approches de I'Etre: Correspondance
Etienne Gilson-Jacques Maritain, 1923-1971 (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1991).
49
See Phelan, Jacques Maritain.
50
Letter of Gilson to Jacques Maritain, 16 July 1931, in Deux Approches de L'Etre.
 60

letters to Maritain.

Maritain met Emmanuel Mounier in 1932, and the two became friends, working

together for the journal Esprit. During this period, Maritain wrote several articles against

the Civil War in Spain and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, about the common good, and

on the defense of civil and religious peace. He did not become part of a political party.

Instead, he wanted to keep his philosophical identity, and would remain faithful to his

convictions all his life. Now he developed a communitarian personalism, influenced by

Mounier, a doctrine for a democratic state in the position of educator.51

D. The American Years

The 1930s were the time for Maritain to discover a new continent, learn to speak a

new language, face his first opposition and combats and foster early friendships

intellectual and religious.52This group of challenges in fact adds up to a particularly

useful concept for an understanding of the sequence of the development of his thought

during his stay of almost twenty-five years in the United States of America. In Reflections

on America53, which has been described as a "love letter to America," Maritain sees hope

for the world in American social freedom, hope for philosophy in the widespread interest

in Thomism, hope for a renewal of religious vitality.

Two American individuals who met Maritain at a Thomistic center in Meudon

supplied him with the motivation to leave France. They were Emmanuel Chapman, a

converted Jew from Chicago, who promoted his philosophical work in the United States,

51
Viotto, Per una Filosofia Secondo, 16-17.
52
Michel Florian, "Jacques Maritain en Amerique du Nord." In Cahiers Jacques Maritain 45 (2002), 28.
53
Jacques Maritain, Reflections of America. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1958.
 61

and Julie Keman, who organized Maritain's first travel to the United States, along with

other encounters. Maritain wrote an enthusiastic letter to Mortimer Adler about his first

trip to the United States: "It is December 1932, when I first crossed the ocean to America.

I spent all the time thinking of America as a supreme resource of civilization upon which

God has bestowed great plans."54

Maritain had accepted an invitation from Robert Maynard Hutchins (1889-1977),

President of Chicago University, and Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), a Thomist Jew from

Columbia University, to meet with them and discuss the matters that held the most

importance. Maritain's dream of spreading Thomism abroad would resonate with another

dream, Robert Hutchins's dream of changing education through Thomism as fostered in

the Great Books.

It is important to comment briefly on the educational situation of the University

of Chicago, the Chicago group and the well-known Chicago fight, since Maritain would

return and lecture there over the years, and because he would develop his educational

theory combining his French background with his new American experience.

The University of Chicago emerged in 1892, and by the time it celebrated its

decennial year, it had won widespread recognition as one of the leading research

institutions of the world. Within its walls were being developed theories whose impact

was already being felt, in both the academic and the outside worlds. James R. Angell,

John Dewey, George H. Mead, Addison W. Moore, Edward Scribner Ames, and James H.

Tufts formed the nucleus of the Chicago School in the decade from 1894-1904, when the

54
Letter from Jacques Maritain to Mortimer Adler, December 1940, Archives of the University of Chicago.
 62

foundations of the new philosophy of pragmatism were being laid. The University of

Chicago provided a unique environment for the growth of such a view, a thoroughly

American philosophy. All of the elements of activity that any pragmatist could ever wish

for were much in evidence in this developing university.55 Among the faculty in the

philosophy department, Dewey established the widest reputation and exercised the

greatest influence, but his direct personal leadership ended when he moved to Columbia

University in 1905.56

The Chicago group represented an important shift in thinking away from belief in

a world as a given external reality, and mind as a different, internal reality. What had long

been viewed as disparate ultimate entities, mind and world, became two factors in the

same process. The very process which gives rise to human beings' existence is a social

one.57 The concepts of pragmatism will create controversy.

In 1929, Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977), who came from Yale University,

became President of the University of Chicago in the face of the Great Depression.58

Hutchins was drawn to the idea of shaping a distinctive and significant role for the

55
Darnell Rucker, The Chicago Pragmatists (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), 3-6.
56
Ibid, 18.
57
Ibid, 29.
58
The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn starting in most places in 1929, and ending at
different times in the 1930s or early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest and most important
economic depression in modern history, and is used in the twenty-first century as an example of how far the
world's economy can fall. See, Charles Duhigg, "Depression, you say? Check those safety nets, " in New
York Times, 23 March 2008. The Great Depression originated in the United States; historians most often use
as a starting date the stock market crash on 29 October 1929, known as Black Tuesday. The end of the
depression in the U.S is associated with the onset of the war economy of World War II, beginning around
1939. See: Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, The Cambridge Economic History of the United
States, vol. 1: The Colonial Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
 63

University of Chicago under his presidency.59 Particularly through contact with Mortimer

Adler, he became convinced that the solution to the problems facing the university lay in

Aristotelianism and Thomism. Although some considered Robert Hutchins and Mortimer

Adler to be Neo-Thomists, Donohue states that "they would themselves have very likely

disclaimed this attribution."60

In the late 1930s, Hutchins attempted to reform the curriculum of the University

of Chicago along Aristotelian-Thomistic lines, but his faculty repeatedly rejected the

proposed reforms. Hutchins had to face a large faculty, whose interests were diverse as

well as vested, and which were defended in the name of academic freedom. But he made

his proposals emphatically, and, when he did, promptly precipitated what came to be

known as the Great Chicago Fight.61

The program that Hutchins foresaw would recognize that graduate study must be

concerned with the education of teachers as well as with the production of researchers.62

He considered an overall view to be lacking, and insisted that some measure of unity

should be sought. His plan for undergraduates encouraged liberal education at earlier ages

and measured achievement by comprehensive examinations. Therefore he introduced the

study of the Great Books of the Western World, abandoned nonacademic pursuits and

offered criticisms of the tendency of specialization.

To accomplish his program, Hutchins brought to Chicago, along with Mortimer

59
Mary Ann Dzuback, Robert M. Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press,1991), 96.
60
John Donohue, St. Thomas Aquinas and Education (New York: Random House, 1968), 16.
61
Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths, 76.
62
Ibid., 80.
 64

Adler, Richard McKeon of the Columbia faculty, and Scott Buchanan of the University of

Virginia. This was intended to change the direction of the department of philosophy,

which Adler regarded as hopelessly mired in pragmatism.63 Adler started to organize a

new department of philosophical studies, based on Aristotle and Thomism. By January

1931, the matter had reached proportions of a scandal, with some members of the

philosophy departmentE. A. Burt, George H. Mead, Arthur E. Murphy, and James H.

Tufts, announcing their resignations in a lengthy statement circulated to the faculty.64

Thus the Chicago School came to a definitive end in 1931. It seems typical of the

University of Chicago that the close of that important era did not take place with the quiet

retirement of the remaining patriarch of the department, but instead was marked by

resignations and considerable uproar.

Although Hutchins had hardly won a famous victory, he had to confront the

faculty on a broader and far more crucial issue: the evolution and adoption of a plan for a

new undergraduate college committed exclusively to general education.65 He had good

relations with leading theologians like President Cavanaugh of Notre Dame, Rabbi

Robert Godis, Jacques Maritain, John Courtney Murray, and Reinhold Niebuhr;66 and

Hutchins wanted their influence to further his plan. The presence of Maritain was crucial

at this very moment, because Hutchins was seeking to introduce metaphysics into the

curriculum. His argument was: "Metaphysics, then, as the highest science, ordered the

63
Ibid., 85-86.
64
Ibid., 86.
65
Ibid., 87.
66
Ibid., 89
 65

thought of the Greek world as theology ordered that of the Middle Ages. One or the other

must be called upon to order the thought of modern times ,"67

Hutchins was not alone in desiring to change education or in citing the

deficiencies of the current educational system. Many of the country's leading educators

agreed that the general education presumed essential was being undermined by excessive

specialization, vocationalism, and the commercialization of college football. He wanted

to employ the liberal arts as the basis for general education. No more football games,

more reading of the Great Books, and changes in the curriculum, combining the last two

years of high school with the first two years of college.68

The position promoting the humanities and a liberal education for all was

considered quite radical at the timeand in many places it still is, says Charles A. Fecher.

But, as its proponents pointed out, it was actually a return to tradition; specifically it was

an edifice built upon a study of the cultural and intellectual heritage of Western

civilization as embodied in the Great Books.69

Even John Dewey, although he was in Columbia University at that time, still

fought in the Chicago Fight, writing an article about Hutchins condemning the latter's

movement:

The constant appeal of President Hutchins to Plato, Aristotle, and St.

Thomas urgently calls for a very different interpretation from that which is
given it. . . . We live in a different social medium. It is astounding that
anyone should suppose that a return to the conceptions and methods of
these writers would do for the present situation what they did for the Greek

67
Quoted in J.P. McEnvoy, "Young Man Looking Backward," American Mercury, December 1938.
68
Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths, 147.
69
Fecher, The Philosophy, 277.
 66
and Medieval eras. The cure for surrender of higher learning to immediate
and transitory pressures is not monastic seclusion. Higher learning can
become intellectually vital only by coming to that close grip with our
contemporary science and contemporary social affairs which Plato,
Aristotle, and St. Thomas exemplify in their respective ways.70

In the next issue of The Social Frontier, Hutchins was able to respond:

Mr. John Dewey has devoted much of two recent articles in The Social
Frontier to my book, The Higher Learning in America. The editors of The
Social Frontier have asked me to reply to Mr. Dewey. This I am unable to
do, in any real sense, for Mr. Dewey has stated my position in such a way
as to lead me to think that I cannot write, and has stated his own in such a
way to make me suspect that I cannot read. . . . Mr. Dewey has suggested
that only a defective education can account for some of my views. I am
moved to inquire whether the explanation of some of this may not be that
he thinks he is still fighting nineteenth-century German philosophy.71

In imposing upon undergraduates a required curriculum instead of the elective system

as the one established by Harvard where President Eliot's elective system provided

scholars with the academic freedom to pursue their own areas of interest72, the College

at Chicago University was accused of being undemocratic, and the program itself was

cited as an example of Hutchins' purported efforts to impose scholasticism upon the

university.73

F. Champion Ward testified that, on the contrary, Hutchins encouraged

experimentation and never interfered with the design of the curriculum or the choice of

70
John Dewey, "President Hutchins' Proposals to Re-make Higher Education," in The Social Frontier 3, 22
(January 1937), 104.
71
Robert Hutchins, "Grammar, Rethoric and Mr. Dewey," in The Social Frontier 3, 23 (February 1937),
137-139.
72
Manju Jain, T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992,16.
73
Ashmore, Unreasonable Truths, 187.
 67

faculty:

This Aristotelianism was not doctrinal (The College was never able to
digest a Thomist) [...] The aim was not to equip the student with a single
synthesis of human knowledge or to assign a single meaning to human
history. Rather it was to enable him to use the disciplines of history and
philosophy (particularity and generality in their most inclusive
embodiments) in the search for the knowledge and wisdom which every
civilized man [and woman] should carry on throughout his [or her] life.74

Of course, Hutchins always defended himself very well.

Academic freedom means that the professor must be protected in his

teaching and research from the president, the board, and the public; and
here that protection is complete. Academic freedom does not give the
professor, or the whole body of professors, control over the destiny of the
university.75

Although Hutchins' ideas met with opposition on the part of several faculty

members, he found support in John U. Nef, director of the Committee of Social Thought,

who had met the Maritains in Paris several years before and motivated them to accept the

invitation to America. Hutchins saw in Maritain a leading exponent of Thomist

philosophy and a doorway to making his dream come true. He even proposed that

Maritain become a professor for the philosophy department, but the proposition was

several times rejected.76 What has described above helps to understand the rejection.

It was the Chicago fight, and the new changes brought by Hutchins and Adler, that

occasioned the maturation of Maritain's philosophy of education. Main themes were

about to be developed in his thought, such as: the value of the human person, the

74
F. Champion Ward, "Requiem for the Hutchins College: Recollections and Reflections," unpublished
memoir made available in draft form from the author.
75
Robert Hutchins, "The Organization and Purpose of the University," in Address to the Students and
Faculty,. Archives of the Chicago University, 20 July 1944.
76
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 342.

v J
 68

importance of liberal education and humanities, the democratic chart based on natural

law, the conquest of freedom, the rejection of specialization, his criticism of pragmatism

and intellectualism, the fostering of spiritual life, etc.77

Maritain wrote in the journal La Croix: "I admire deeply President Hutchins'

endeavor [...] This metaphysical renaissance, particularly Thomism, is due to the

Chicago School, President Hutchins, and the brilliant and eloquent Mortimer Adler."78

Maritain was pleased with the Chicago answer to his commitment to Thomism. It was in

Chicago that Maritain first gained notoriety as a philosopher in the United States by

giving lectures on some reflections on culture and liberty, and where he made friends

who endured until the 60s .79 Although being rejected as a full-time professor at Chicago

University,80 he lectured there over many years.

Maritain's work in the United States was interrupted in the years 1934-1938 since

he returned to Europe in the midst of a turmoil of political events in the Old Continent.

Although he realized what was happening, he remained independent of any political

group. His works, however, did not pass unnoticed in the United States. Important

translations of his works in English were made in 1929, The Three Reformers: Luther,

11
See: Maritain, Education at the Crossroads.
78
Jacques Maritain, "Entretien de J. Maritain avec Bibollet," in La Croix (1-2 January, 1939): 10.
79
In a letter to Maritain in 1966, Robert Hutchins wrote: "It's been almost thirty years when we first met,
and I still think this has been one of the most important events of my life" {Letter ofR. Hutchins to
Maritain, 21 March 1966, Kolbsheim Archives).
80
President Hutchins wrote to R. Mc Keon: "I cannot imagine or explain to myself why Maritain was
rejected by the philosophy department, some one of high-level status like him" {Letter of Robert Hutchins
to Richard McKeon, 24 June 1940, Archives of the Chicago University).
 69

Descartes, Rousseau?1 Prayer and Intelligence;*2 in 1930, Antimodern?3 An Introduction

to Philosophy ;84 in 1931, The Angelic Doctor: The Life and Thought of Saint Thomas?5

Religion and Culture;*6 in 1933, Theonas: Conversations of a Sage?1 Some Reflections on

Culture and Liberty;88 in 1936, Freedom in the Modern World?9

In 1938 Maritain wrote Humanisme Integral {True Humanism)90 based on his

lectures given in Poznan, Poland, and Santander, Spain. It was his major work in social

philosophy where he proposed a radical and "vitally Christian" transformation of the

temporal order through a profound renewal of religious consciousness. It was not the

most important of his works but it was the most widely read all over the world.91 The

theme was to establish a theocentric humanism to replace the various forms of

anthropocentric humanism everywhere rampant. Maritain calls upon all people of good

81
This work is a historical study and the influence of the three protagonists, Luther in religion, Descartes in
philosophy, and Rousseau in education. The first French edition was published in 1925. The most recent
publication in English is: The Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons 1955), 284 pages.
82
It was written by Maritain and his wife in 1925. It is a little volume written as a guideline for the Thomist
Centers. Translated by Algar Thorold (London: Sheed and Ward, 1929), 56 pages.
83
Translated by Franz Damaris (Ausburg: Benno Filser Verlag, 1930), 200 pages.
84
Translated by E. I. Watkin (Westminster, Maryland: 1930), 272 pages.
85
This work is not an exposition of Thomistic doctrine; it is about some fundamental aspects of St. Thomas'
actions advocating his present action being as effective as in medieval times. Translated by J. F. Scanlan
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1931), 300 pages.
86
Translated by J. F. Scanlan with an introduction to the series by Christopher Dawson (London: Sheed and
Ward, 1931), 66 pages.
87
Translated by F. J. Sheed with a preface by the author (London and New York, 1933), 220 pages.
88
This work is based on some letters from 1919 on the nature of art. Translated by J. F. Scanlan (London:
Sheed and Ward, 1933).
89
Translated by Richard O' Sullivan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936). The work is dedicated to
Charles Journet on freedom. The book gathers different articles published from 1933 to 1934 in "Nova et
Vetera" and "Esprit" journals.
90
Translated in 1938 to English by Bernard Wall (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938).
91
Viotto, Per una Filosofia Secondo, 17.
 70

will to aid in the building of this theocentric and humanist order.92 It was not about

worshipping human beings but it has a true respect for human dignity and the rights of

every human person. Of course, these ideas were criticized in many Americans circles

and universities, but Maritain insisted that "towards a social-temporal realization of that

evangelical concern for humanity which ought to exist not only in the spiritual order, but

to become incarnate, and towards the ideal of a true brotherhood among men."93

The same year he gave an important lecture in Chicago entitled Socialist

Humanism and Integral Humanism and founded The French Commission for Civil and

Religious Peace in Spain and wrote his point of view on the Guernica bombardment in

1937. This event provoked several polemics and attacks. In the United States many

people saw his position smacked of heresy,94 criticizing that he refused to see the Spanish

Civil War as a holy war.95 Also his lectures in Paris on anti-semitism in 1938 provoked

new polemic.

Shortly after, he returned to the United States in 1938, and delivered a series of

lectures at the University of Chicago with the title: Scholasticism and Politics. The

lectures became a book in 1940 and the major themes developed were: integral

humanism and the crisis of modern times, the science and philosophy, the human person

and society, democracy and authority, the idea of freedom, Freudianism and

psychoanalysis, action and contemplation, Catholic action and political action,

92
Gallagher, The Achievement, 19.
93
Maritain. True Humanism, xvi-cvii.
94
Kernan, Our Friend, 93.
95
Gallagher, The Achievement, 39.
 71

Christianity and earthly civilizations.96

Because of the Chicago conferences, he was also invited to preside at a

symposium on social and political philosophy at Notre Dame University in Indiana, after

he had finished his lectures that year at the University of Chicago. For a long time,

Maritain lectured at Notre Dame once and sometimes twice a year, and for a while he was

visiting professor.

Maritain got very engaged in addressing social and political issues as part of his

Christian commitment. He manifested his own commitment through several examples:

meeting some young professors, including Emmanuel Chapman, Harry McNeil, and Dan

Walsh,97 at Fordham University, or simply talking with some students and becoming a

friend as he did with Thomas Merton98 while he was still a student at Columbia University

who attended Maritain's lectures.

On 8 February 1939, he gave for the second and last time a remarkable public

address in Paris, called Le Crepuscule de la Civilization (The Twilight of Civilization), in

which "he described in thoughtful terms the false philosophies that had brought Western

civilization to its present pass, he reiterated his faith in the new humanism on which he

had long pondered, one based on Christian principles of justice and brotherly love."99

On 3 September 1939, the Second World War began. Maritain had been urged by

96
Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics. Trans, and ed. Mortimer J. Adler (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1940), 248.
97
Florian/'Jacques Maritain en Amerique du Nord," 43.
98
Thomas Merton became a famous writer, being a Cistercian monk at the monastery of Gethsemane in
Kentucky. He helped Maritain to publish Rai'ssa's poems in 1961.
99
Jacques Maritain. Le Crepuscule de la Civilisation (Paris: Les Nouvelles Lettres, 1939).
 72

the Ministry of Cultural Relations for Foreign Affairs100 to carry out a special schedule of

lectures in Canada and the United States promoting the profession of faith on the French

Spirit and intelligence.101 He prepared this long trip to the United States with Rai'ssa and

her sister Vera. On 4 January 1940, they sailed to North America without knowing that

five long years would pass before they would see France again. The fall of France in 1940

took the Maritains by surprise on that lecture tour to the United States.

The three Maritains arrived in Toronto on 15 January 1940. Maritain gave five

lectures in Montreal and two interviews on the radio. Afterwards, in the United States he

gave a series of conferences: ten lectures at the University of Chicago, some more in New

York and in Princeton University, and six more lectures in Washington, Annapolis,

Charloteville, and Philadelphia.102 There were thirty lectures in total.103

He also delivered four conferences for the Catholic Worker Association of New

York in different years: one in 1934, one in 1936, another in 1938, and the last one in

1940. This Catholic Worker association was founded by Dorothy Day104 and Peter

100
Le Service des Relations Culturelles au Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres.
101
Rene Mougel, "Les Annes de New York, 1940-1945," in Cahiers Jacques Maritain 16-17 (April 1988),
9.
102
In Philadelphia he lectured on "Contemporary Renewals in Religious Thought" at the bicentennial
celebration of the University of Pennsylvania.
103
Mougel, "Les Annes," 9.
104
Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York, 8 November 1897. Her family moved to Chicago where
she began to form positive impressions of Catholicism. She won a scholarship that brought her to the
University of Illinois but dropped out two years later. She moved to New York and found a job as a reporter
for The Call. She wrote for the Masses magazine. In November 1917, Day went to prison for being one of
the forty women in front of the White House protesting women's exclusion for the electorate. On 28
December 1927, Day was received into the Catholic Church. In the winter of 1932, after witnessing the
Hunger march in Washington D.C., she decided to stand for the poor. She met Peter Maurin and started the
Catholic Worker. All her life she was an example as a committed woman to love others as her own
neighbors.
 73

Maurin105 who was responsible for the movement's visionary qualities. Both started

working on Day's idea to publicize Catholic social teaching and promote steps to bring

about the peaceful transformation of society. The Catholic Worker became a national

movement creating rural houses of hospitality where everybody would feel loved and

there was always plenty of room for the needy. Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and their co-

workers lived in voluntary poverty and gave what they had to those who came to them for

shelter, food, and hope. They advocated social justice and pacifism and Maritain

resonated with their convictions. He even gave free seats for Day's co-workers in every

lecture they attended. He once said about them: "social action is where the Spirit of

Christ touches the deepest of the temporal structures in order to give them life. The effort

of Dorothy Day and her co-workers at the Catholic Worker Association seems to me a

very important issue to be addressed."106

By that time, Maritain was very worried about the situation in France. The

Germans occupied France and some of Maritain's friends fled to North America receiving

help from him. The Gestapo had gone looking for Maritain at the Institut Catholique, as

one of the known leaders of anti-fascist ideology,107 and also because of the fact that he

105
Peter Maurin was born in France, in May 1877. At sixteen he entered the Christian brothers, but he was
interrupted by obligatory military service, in the course of which Maurin perceived a tension between
religious and political duties. In 1909, he emigrated to Canada, living in poverty, and never married. In
December 1932, thanks to George Shuster, editor of Commonwealth magazine, he introduced himself to
Dorothy Day. From the founding of the Catholic Worker, 1933 until 1944, Peter often worked for the social
ideals of the foundation. He lost his memory in 1945, and died in 1949, an example for the world of a man
who had slept in no bed of his own. See Dorothy Day, "Peter Maurin," in Catholic Worker (May 1977),
1-9.
106
Jacques Maritain, "An Interview with Jacques Maritain." In The Commonwealth, O.C., 7 (1938), 1096.
107
Kernan, Our Friend, 120.
 74

had a Jewish wife. He then began writing a short book, A Travers le Desastre10* when he

opposed armistice and appealed for resistance to the people of France to the government

of Vichy. For Maritain, Charles de Gaulle was the incarnation of France in his own eyes

from the very first day109 and the only hope in those difficult times. At the time, the

United States still recognized Vichy as the legitimate government of France so De Gaulle

sought to influence American public opinion through establishing French institutions like

the French School of Liberal Studies.110 Details will be given about this shortly.

Maritain then decided not to return to Paris due to the Nazi occupation of France

and settled in New York.111 In September of 1940, the three Maritains112 moved to an

apartment at 30 Fifth Avenue having again the usual hospitality not only for their

compatriots but also for their new American friends.113

In 1941, Maritain began to teach courses at Princeton and Columbia Universities,

and continued his engagements in Canada. He then published four more books but the

most important being Ransoming the Time where he addresses important issues, such as,

human equality, the political ideas of Pascal, the metaphysics of Bergson, the Bergsonian

morality and religion, who is my neighbor?,114 the mystery of Israel, the Catholic church

and social progress, and the natural mystical experience.

108
English title: France, my Country.
109
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 373.
110
Aristide R. Zolberg, "The Ecole Libre at the New School 1941-1946" in Social Research 65, 4 (Winter
1998), 1.
111
Mougel, "Les Annes," 9.
112
When refering to the three Maritains I include Rai'ssa's sister, Vera. See Nora Possenti, / Tre Maritain:
La Presenza di Vera nel Mondo di Jacques e Raissa (Milano: Ancora, 2000)
113
Mougel, "Les Annes", 17.
114
Jacques Maritain, "Who is My Neighbor?," in A Maritain Reader, ed. Donald and Idella Gallagher (City
Garden: Image Books, 1966), 284-306.
 75

During the war, Maritain had been addressing his compatriots since March 1941

over the air waves of the "Voice of America" and those of the Office of War

Information.115 He delivered a long series of radio talks over short wave. These series of

programs were continued during the World War II (1941-1945) when he addressed

difficult political, social and religious issues. Some of his major themes were: Anti-

semitism, unity, Christian responsibility, freedom, hope, the future of a liberated France,

in defense of France, socialists and Christians, religion and politics, Catholic action and

Christian philosophy, Christianity and war, the crisis of our civilization, our American

friends, world trial: its meaning for the future, Christianity and democracy, religion and

peace, and the unity of the free men (women), among others.116

His testimony in America was not only at the teaching or cultural level, but also at

the level of the political participation, without identifying himself in a political party. In

his radio programs, he defended democracy against the German occupancy,117 and

proposed that institutions might function not merely as a temporary university, but also

provide political forum. They might also serve as experiments in a more democratic form

of higher education, where people of good would overcome the profound cleavage that

separated Catholic and anticlerical intellectuals.118

Maritain suggested Gustave Cohen, a French Jew exiled in New York, to create a

French University under the name "Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes" (Free School of

115
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 31 A.
116
Jacques Maritain, Messages, 1941-1945 (New York: Editions de la Maison Francaise, 1945), 221 pages.
117
Ibid., 51.
118
Zolberg, "The Ecole Libre," 1-3.
 76

Liberal Studies). The aim was to build up a bridge between the American culture and the

French culture and provide education to Latin Americans, Spaniards, Portuguese, and

Italians, as well as many who would normally study in France but could not do so

because of the war.119 In 8 October 1941, The French Free School of Liberal Studies was

created thanks to the support of the Rockefeller foundation and the Belgian government

in exile in London.

In 1942, Maritain was the second person to receive the annual Christian Culture

Award which was created by Father Stanley Murphy in 1941. This award was to be

bestowed annually to some outstanding lay exponent of Christian ideals. The same year

Maritain published The Rights of Man and Natural Lawi2 which later would serve as a

draft for the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.121 Among

the human rights proclaimed by Maritain, the most important of all was:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are
endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood, no distinction of any kind, race, color, sex,
religion, language, political opinion, social origin and birth [...] and
therefore all have the right to education.122

Maritain's declaration of human rights was a very important starting point for addressing

one of the basic rights: education is for all. He addressed the issue for seventeen more

years in the United States.

In 1943, while lecturing at Yale University on education, he confronted American

119
Ibid., 9.
120
Translated by Doris C. Anson (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1943).
121
Viotto, Introduzione a Maritain, 136.
122
Web page of the United Nations and the universal declaration of human rights: http://www.unhchr.ch/
udhr/lang/eng.htm (accessed May, 2008).
 77

pragmatism with the lectures published under the title Education at the Crossroads,

which was a publishing success. The book was translated into French, Italian, Spanish

and Japanese. The lectures were sponsored by the Terry Foundation whose founder,

Dwight H. Terry of Bridgeport, stipulated that they had to be on religion in the light of

science and philosophy according to the principles of the foundation, which are loyalty to

the truth, lead where it will, and devotion to human welfare.123

The Terry lectures dealt with educational problems he had already discussed with

Mortimer J. Adler, Robert Hutchins, and John Nef at Chicago University, and attracted

considerable attention in university and other intellectual circles.124 These lectures became

a successful book titled Education at the Crossroads, and the important issues addressed

here were: the nature of humans and education, the aims and paradoxes of education, the

pupil's mind and the art of the teacher, the fundamental dispositions to be fostered and

the norms for education, including the inner structure of the curriculum, the spheres of

knowledge, the humanities and the university, the concept of liberal education for all and

a new humanism to hope for, and the educational problems raised by the present world

crisis of civilization.

Finally, France was liberated on 25 August 1944, when the American troops

landed in Normandy. The Second World War ended in Europe in 7 May 1945, and on the

night of November 10, Maritain left for Paris on an American military plane to attend

family affairs. He returned to the United States of America after seven weeks on January

123
Preface in Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1943).
124
Kernan, Our Friend, 131.
 78

1, 1945, but he was much depressed as he found so much poverty and despair.

General de Gaulle asked Maritain to accept the post of French Ambassador to the

Holy See. Maritain delivered his farewell address at the French-American Club in New

York on March 15.125 On 20 April 1945, Maritain, as the new French ambassador, arrived

at his post and on May 10, he presented his credentials to Pius XII.

Although being involved as ambassador, Maritain continued his academic work in

publishing.126 In the autumn of 1946, Maritain returned briefly to the United States and he

discovered a country prey to a "panic fear of communism."127 Maritain's ideas were

especially influential in Latin America, as well as in Europe and the United States. In

November 1947, Maritain was France's representative to the second general conference

of the UNESCO held in Mexico City and he gave the opening speech. There was a

heterogeneous delegation of thirty-seven members; among them were Catholics,

communists, and militant socialists. He spoke of cooperation among men and women, of

practical tasks to be carried out, and finally, "it was the personality of Jacques Maritain

that made success possible."128

The United States meant so much to him that he went back again and stayed for

twelve more years lecturing and developing his ideas. On his decision to return to the

United States, Maritain would write later: "I am confident that there are true insights at

125
Maritain always expressed the generosity of Americans and the good disposition they had in listening to
him; he was always grateful to this country to which he owned so much.
126
A Travers la Victoire (Paris: Hartmann, 1945); Messages, 1941-1944 (New York: Editions de la Maison
Francaise, 1945) and Pour la Justice: Articles et Discours 1940-1945 (New York: Editions de la Maison
Francaise, 1945).
127
Barre, Jacques and Raissa, 392.
128
Ibidem.
 79

the core of my random reflections. Furthermore, the truths they contain are most valuable

for me, for they are in essence a statement of why I love America, that America which I

have known for almost a quarter of a century."129

In 1948, Maritain resigned from his diplomatic position because of an invitation

by President Harold Dodds of Princeton, a secular university of Presbyterian origin, to

teach moral philosophy as an Emeritus professor, based on the spirit and principles of

Thomas Aquinas. It was not without hesitation that he committed himself, at the age of

sixty-five, to return to the United States, for it meant still another separation from his

beloved France, but he had come to love America and believed that it was an unparalleled

opportunity to serve the cause of Christian philosophy.

The moral philosophy taught at Princeton was one of the most significant tasks to

which he had ever addressed himself as a philosopher. Maritain labored without rest for

several years to bring it to completion.130 His moral classes were compiled in his book:

Moral Philosophy: An Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems.m The book

appeared later in 1960 as a moral summa to which he had consecrated the last years of his

work at Princeton. He examined there all the great systems of thought, from Socrates,

Plato, and Aristotle to Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard, in a passionate trip through the

ethical universe. Maritain put more of himself into this work than in all the rest of his

philosophical writings. Through his Moral Philosophy, says Jean-Luc Barre, Maritain

129
Maritain, Reflections on America , 17.
130
Gallagher, The Achievement, 23-24.
131
The French version appeared first: La Philosophic Morale, Examen Historique et Critique des Grands
Systemes (Paris: Librarie Gallimard, 1960), 588 pages. The English version in 1964: Moral Philosophy: An
Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964), 408 pages.
 80

took leave of the philosophers about whom he spent his life reflecting and debating, his

companions along the road through the century.132 Maritain addresses in that book the

moral educational problem as a way to carry out the liberation of the person.133

During the same year, Maritain received the Leo XIII award for outstanding work

in Christian social education from the Sheil School of Social Studies in Chicago. This

award confirms the recognition of American people to Maritain's work on Christian

social education and also confirms his influence on American education.

In addition to his course on ethics at Princeton, Maritain taught at Hunter College

in New York and at the University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis. In 1950, he delivered

the Charles B. Walgreen Foundation Lectures at the University of Chicago, later

published under the title, Man and the State. Some of the lectures were: 'People and the

state,' 'The concept of sovereignty,' 'The problem of the means,' 'The human rights,'

'The democratic charter,' 'The Church and the state,' and 'The problem of the political

unification of the world,' among others.

In 1951, at Princeton he gave six conferences sponsored by the Humanities

Council on Art which were published later in the book The Responsibility of the Artist }M

Among the conferences were: 'Art and morality,' 'Art for art itself,' 'The art for the

people,' 'Poetry and perfection of human life.'

The same year, Maritain was awarded the first Cardinal Spellman Aquinas Medal

by the American Catholic Philosophical Association, presided over by Gerald B. Phelan

132
Barre, Jacques and Rai'ssa, 414.
133
Viotto, Per una Filosofia Secondo, 26.
134
Jacques Maritain, The Responsibility of the Artist (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), 120 pages.
 81

who expressed:

The success of our association has been due to the inspiration we have all
received from the brilliant and penetrating vision of philosophical truth
which your writings, your lectures, and your illuminating conversations
have communicated to so many minds that are eager to understand and are
unfailingly grateful for the enlightenment which you have brought to
them.135

These words are a testimony of gratitude, not only for a man, but for the all American

people who were inspired by the rich legacy Maritain left for them.

Jacques Maritain's appointment to the Princeton philosophy department ended in

1952 when reaching the age of seventy. However, he lectured at the university

occasionally after his retirement and delivered the Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the

National Gallery of Washington, published the following year as Creative Intuition in Art

and Poetry}36 He addressed some important issues: the poetry, man and thing, art as a

virtue, the intuitive poetry, the poetic experience, poetic sense, and poetry and beauty,

among others.

In his retirement, he suddenly faced from then on something he had always

lacked, free time to read, to write, and to answer letters. Maritain's influence in the

United States was profound, leaving his mark on philosophers, writers, journalists, social

workers, priests, religious, in many universities as well as associations.

In 1954, Maritain suffered a heart attack, and was immobilized for two months

which prevented him from spending the summer in France. His writing continued apace,

135
Gerald B. Phelan, "Preface" in Proceedings of the American Catholic Association, 25 (27-28 March
1951), 3.
136
Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: Pantheon, 1953), pp. 423.
 82

however. Suffering from tachycardia and careful to conserve his strength for the immense

work that still lay before him, he was forced to isolate himself and to cut back as much as

possible. Nevertheless, in 1955, he was requested by the National Society of Study of

Education to write an essay on education among important American educators and

philosophers like John S. Brubacker, Robert Cohen, George R. Geiger, Theodore M.

Greene, Ralph Harper, John Wild, and others. All the essays were published in the 54

yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education under the title Modern

Philosophies and Education P1

Maritain wrote for the association The Thomist Views on Education,ni where he

drew a clear distinction between the basic philosophical issues on which theories of

education depend and the questions of a more practical nature. He had a Thomist outlook

opposite to pragmatism, but he agreed about methods of progressive education and

favored their concern with the inner resources and vital spontaneity of the pupil. He

underlined at the end of the essay the importance of the direction of the process of

education as well as the implied hierarchy of values.

In 1957, the "Jacques Maritain Center" was opened at the University of Notre

Dame. This center was founded to ensure that the spirit of Maritain would remain at

Notre Dame University. Father Leo R. Ward, Professor Frank Keegan, and Professor

Joseph Evans, were associated with the founding of the center. Professor Evans was

director of the center from 1957 to 1979. This center is still working on Maritain's works,

137
Henry Nelson B. ed. Modern Philosophies and Education (Chicago: Chicago Press, 1955).
138
Maritain, "Thomist Views on Education: Modern Philosophies and Education," in National Society for
the Study of Education, Yearbook. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1955): 57-90.

\..y
 83

compiling anthologies and publishing his essays.139

In 1959, Maritain published his valuable work on philosophy of education titled,

Pour une Philosophic de I'Education.140 The work collected three essays, written first in

English and later translated into French, in this book. The first essay, "Education at the

Crossroads," was developed from a series of conferences (the Terry Lectures) given at

Yale University in 1943, and was published as a book. The second essay, "The Thomist

Views on Education: Modern Philosophies and Education," was a study written at the

request of the National Society for the Study of Education in 1955. The third essay, "On

Some Typical Aspects of Christian Education," was derived from a paper given at a

seminar on the Christian Idea of Education at the Episcopalian Kent School, in

Connecticut, in 1955. The original English language version is found in Fuller.141 A

revised edition of this work appeared in 1969. Last, the book Pour une Philosophic de

VEducation constitutes an organized statement of Maritain's coherent philosophy of

education.

It is important to mention that in 1963, an important educational work was

published by Donald and Idella Gallagher under Maritain authorization: The Education of

Man: The Educational Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, edited with an introduction by

Donald and Idella Gallagher.142 All the volume, together with Education at the

Crossroads, comprise the principal writings of Jacques Maritain on the subject of

139
Jacques Maritain Center directed by John P. O'Callaghan: http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/
ndjmc.htm (accessed May 2008).
140
Jacques Maritain, Pour une Philosophic de I'Education (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1959): 10.
141
Edmund Fuller ed. The Christian Idea of Education. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957.
142
Gallagher eds. The Education of Man, 191.
 84

education. The volume contained two of the aforementioned essays: "The Thomist Views

on Education" and "On Some Typical Aspects of Christian Education," and others such

as "Moral Education," "Education and Humanities," "Moral and Spiritual Values in

Education," "The Education of Women," the "Conquest of Freedom," and two

appendices entitled "Education for the Good Life" and "The Crucial Problem of the

Education of the Human Being." Thanks to the American interest, all Maritain's works on

education were produced and published. Had he not been invited to give the Terry

Lectures, for example, we might never have had this important statement of his

philosophy of education.143

Maritain always looked upon himself as one whose vocation was to prepare the

way Some of the studies which he considers the "sketches" of grander works he hoped to

write, are the very ones for which we are most grateful.

A study of Maritain's pedagogical thoughts on education has to be made through a

critical examination of all his educational writings, and also include his aesthetic, moral

and political works, where he makes references to the problems of education.144

Maritain was not only a teacher and a lecturer, but a very good learner. He wrote

in Reflections on America in the year 1958, a deep thank-you to America for what he and

his wife had learned:

There is one thing that America knows well, and that she teaches as a great
and precious lesson to those who come in contact with her astounding
adventure: it is the value and dignity of the common man has a right to the
'pursuit of happiness;' the pursuit of the elementary conditions and

143
Gallagher, The Achievement, 25.
144
Viotto, Per Una Filosofia Secondo, 23.
 85
possessions which are the prerequisites of a free life; the pursuit of the
higher possessions of culture and the spirit145

Maritain thanked Americans for all he learned from them:

I have loved your country so deeply, since the first time I landed on its
shores, and even before, and so deeply trusted the spiritual resources of its
people, that the happy development of American Thomism, to which you
are witnesses, does not surprise me but is one of the greatest joys and
comforts of my life as a philosopher."146

But American people recognized Maritain's work as well: "from the thirteenth

century to our day, no thinker has succeeded in making the thought of St. Thomas live in

the world of his day as has our guest of honor this evening, M. Jacques Maritain."147

Jacques and Ra'issa Maritain stand for many things in the minds of their

contemporaries. To some they are the Christian thinkers who have made Thomism a

living ferment in the modern world. To others they are the prophets of a New

Christendom. To still others they are the champions of justice, and of human liberty and

equality. To several generations of Christian students both in France and America they

have been inspiring spiritual leaders and living witnesses of the truths they profess.148

One of the most beautiful tributes ever paid to the Maritains was given to them in

the country they had come to look upon as their second home. In June 1958, they were

granted honorary doctorates at Boston College. The citation reads in part: "Their voices,

always united in one musical utterance, have led the Catholic Revival in France, and

more effectively than all others, have expounded for our perplexed times the rich wisdom

145
Maritain, Reflections on America, 195.
146
Maritain, "Angelic doctor," 10-11.
147
Phelan, "Preface", 4.
H8
Gallagher, The Achievement, 7.
 86

and the universal charity of St. Thomas patron of the school."149 His influence in North

America had a huge impact: "The content and the spirit of Thomism in our country

cannot be understood apart from the fructifying influence of Jacques Maritain."150

E. The Later Years

In 1960, Maritain and his wife returned to France, but arriving in Paris, on 7 July

1960, Ra'issa fell stricken by a cerebral thrombosis and was not to recover. Assistance

came from the Little Brothers of Jesus and Antoinette Grunelius, a good friend of the

Maritains. Ra'issa died on November 4. Jacques Maritain took a few days to decide how

he would spend the rest of his life but the death of Ra'issa left Jacques broken and

physically exhausted, and he never recovered from Raissa's loss. Nevertheless, that year,

1960, he published several more works.151 The most important one was Moral Philosophy

which we mentioned before.

In the meantime, he continued his relation with his beloved America. In fact,

Thomas Merton, an American monk, was handling the publication of Raissa's poems in

the United States. Maritain thought the public would misunderstand Raissa's spirituality

and wrote to Merton: "We must accept being thrown to the beast. After all, this is the kind

of madness we have practiced all our life, and if we hadn't, we wouldn't have

accomplished anything. So the publication of this edition will be our final battle."152

149
Ibid., 26.
150
James Collins, "Maritain's Impact on Thomism in America," in Jacques Maritain: The Man and His
Achievement, ed. J. Evans (New York : Sheed and Ward, 1963), 43.
151
Liturgie et Contemplation, La Philosophie dans la Cite, The Responsibility of the Artist and La
Philosophic Moral, Examen Historique et Critique des Grands Systeme.
152
Jacques Maritain, Letter to Thomas Merton, in Maritain Archives (26 December 1963).
 87

The "Grand Prix de Litterature" was bestowed on him by the French Academy in

1961, the "Grand Prix de Lettres." He was named a commander of the Legion of Honor

and a knight commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. He was also given the

medal of the French Resistance and the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius XI. He received

the French National Grand Prize for letters in 1963, and the "The Sixth Annual Edith

Stein Guild Award" in New York City in 1965. However his heart was not driven by his

academic success but was rather desirous of being close to God. In fact, in March 1961,

Maritain joined "The Little Brothers of Jesus" in Toulouse as a lay adviser on the

philosophical studies of the study center of the community.153 He was not to shut himself

up in a cloister, but to retire from the world. "Jacques' monastic home" was a bedroom

and a desk, with two simple shelves of books, a little stove, and a wash basin. "On the

desk a photo of Rai'ssa."154 In July 1970, Jacques Maritain addressed a letter to the Little

Brothers of Jesus to announce that he would become one of them and he was accepted in

spite of his bad health condition. His novitiate began in October, and two years later he

made his final vows.

At the closing of the Second Vatican Council, December 1965, he was consulted

privately on certain decisions on religious liberty, as well as for the following documents:

Dignitatis humanae155, Apostolicam Actuositatem,1S6 Gaudium et SpesP1 He was invited

153
All the lectures he delivered were published shortly after his death in 1973, under the title, Approches
Sans Entraves. Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1973.
154
Barre, Jacques and Rai'ssa, 416.
155
Dignitatis Humanae (Of the Dignity of the Human Person). Second Vatican Council's Declaration on
Religious Freedom, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 7 December 1965.
156
Apostolicam Actuositatem (Apostolic Activity). Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Apostolate of
the Laity, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 18 November 1965.
 88

to the closing days of the Council and witnessed the annulling of excommunication of the

orthodox church which he and Nicolas Berdiaeff had promoted in the early 1930s. The

day of the closing in a solemn ceremony, Maritain received a tribute ,for he had been one

of the strongest influences in decades in the religious revival among intellectuals. In fact,

Pope Paul VI considered himself 'a disciple of Maritain' and later on he cited him in his

encyclical Populorum Progressio (March 1967).158

In 1966 and after the closing session of the Second Vatican Council, Maritain

wrote his famous polemic The Peasant of the Garonne. This work was a critical reply to

the Second Vatican Council and a critique on the works of Teilhard de Chardin. He

clearly was attached to the hope for a new Christianity, to the promotion of peace in the

world against ideological blocs, and to the defense of universalism. In his opinion, our

civilization has the chance to rise beyond capitalism and communist totalitarianism to

work for changes both in the structural and moral orders of the Christian laypeople, in

cooperation with their friends of other spiritual families and endeavor to bring this

about.159 He said that The Peasant of the Garonne was his last testament somehow: "For

the moment, I would like to continue my thanksgiving in peace."160

In January 1973, as remarkable as it may seem, Jacques made one more trip to

157
Gaudium et Spes (Joy and Hope). Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the
Modern World, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 7 December 1965. Electronic resource: http://
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-
spes_en.html (Accessed May 2008)
158
Populorum Progressio (The development of peoples). Encyclical released by Pope Paul VI on 26 March
1967, no. 20 and no. 42. Electronic resource: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/
documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_sp.html (Accessed May 2008)
159
Kernan, Our Friend, 184.
160
Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne, 2.
 89

Paris and to Kolbsheim, only three months before he died on April 28. Tributes were paid

to Maritain in the press and radio of many countries. After his death, he was hailed as one

of the century's most influential philosophers and intellectuals, "a man whose writings

and teaching had made almost as much impact on the secular as on the religious

world."161

He left behind different institutes that preserve the intellectual patrimony of his

works: The Jacques Maritain Center founded in 1958 at Notre Dame University; L'

Institute International Jacques Maritain founded in 1964 in Rome, with a second branch

called Centre International d'Etudes et de Recherch.es in Treviso, Italy; the Cercle d'

Etudes Jacques et Raissa Maritain founded at Kolbsheim, France, in 1962, to whom the

philosopher gave all rights to his works and which published, The Complete Works of

Jacques Maritain (CEuvres Completes).

Maritain wrote not only on education but lived as an educator whose contribution

to Catholic thought was important. In the United States many disciples were influenced,

including George Klubertanz, Joseph Owens, Anton Pegis and Gerard Smith. Foremost

among contemporary disciples of Maritain is Ralph Mclnerny, director of the Jacques

Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. His presence as teacher will go on for

future generations to come.

In recent years, there is evidence of a renewal of interest in Maritain and his

writings, even if "one has the impression that he is no longer considered relevant to the

present situation in America. However, there is no doubt his presence continues to be a

161
Kernan, Our Friend, 188.
 90

shaping and fermenting one.162That is why I claim to make the case that Maritain left a

rich legacy to be considered as valuable as he intended to, be for years to come.

2. Maritain's Works Related to Education

Maritain's writings on philosophy of education are regarded as possessing

enduring value,163 his educational works bear fruit mainly in the United States of America

with whom Maritain fell in love at first sight.164 It is important to mention this fact

because the United States of America gave him so many opportunities to develop his

thinking, to reflect upon political, moral, ontological, educational, and social issues, to

write and to live as a free spirit, and to give in return a legacy that bears witness of his

grateful spirit. The most important of all is that he developed a philosophy of education

which directs, and gives foundation and new perspectives to the field of religious

education.

Maritain wrote forty-one educational works,165 but among them there are some

significant ones written in English, which deserve special mention.

a) 1943: Education at the Crossroads, 122 pages.

This is Maritain's major work on education. It is based on the Terry Lectures

delivered at Yale University. There are four lectures on philosophy of education where

Maritain presents the essentials of his educational thought in four chapters: a) The aims

162
Deal W. Hudson and Matthew J. Mancini, Understanding Maritain, Philosopher and Friend (Macon,
GA: Mercer University Press, 1987): 28.
163
Elias, "Whatever Happened," 93.
164
Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America, 20-21.
165
Mougniotte, Maritain et ['Education, 143-146.
 91

of education, b) The dynamics of education, c) The humanities and liberal education, d)

the trials of present-day education.

b) 1944: Education for the Good Life (CEuvres Completes T. VIII) pages

1014-1050.

This brief work is about the need for modern education to free itself from the

background of positivism and pragmatism. Focusing on the fact democracies had lost

intellectual faith in the truths, Maritain calls attention to the renewal of both metaphysics

and morality, backed up by faith in the Gospel. This article is also included in the book

Education of Man published in 1963.

c) 1945: "Moral Education," in A College Goes to School: Centennial Lectures

(New Jersey, St. Anthony Guild Press) pages 1-15.

In this lecture Maritain deals with the role of the school in regard to moral

education, the bonds between ethics and religion, and the role of the family in moral

education.

d) 1955: "Thomist Views on Education: Modern Philosophies and Education," in

National Society for the Study of Education, Yearbook (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press) pages 57-90.

This article is also a Maritain's statement on education: his position about man/

woman, goals, values, school/society, and school/religion. This article is also included in

the book Education of Man published in 1963.

e) 1957: "On Some Typical Aspects of Christian Education," in The Christian

 92

Idea of Education (New Haven: Yale University Press) pages 137-198.

Here Maritain defines the Christian idea of man/woman and its implications for

Christian education, as well as the formation of the Christian intellect through

philosophy, theology and Sacred Scripture.

f) 1958: "Moral and Spiritual Values on Education,"Proceedings of the Eighty

Ninth Convocation of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York

(April 25) pages 14-21.

This article is about Maritain's main ideas on moral education and the role of the

school in regard to it.

g) 1963: The Education of Man: The Educational Philosophy of Jacques

Maritain, edited with an introduction by Donald and Idella Gallagher (Notre Dame

University Press) 191 pages.

This book has been published by the direction of Donald and Idella Gallagher

and it is intended to be the English complement of Education at the Crossroads. This

volume contained two of the aforementioned essays, "The Thomist Views on Education"

and "Some Typical Aspects of Christian Education" and others such as "Moral

Education," "Education and the Humanities," "Moral and Spiritual Values on Education,"

"The Education of Women," the "Conquest of Freedom," and two appendixes entitled

"Education for the Good Life" and "The Crucial Problem of the Education of the Human

Being."
 93

Chapter Three

The Philosophy of Education of Maritain

This chapter is divided into six sections, describing Maritan's philosophy of

education as presented in his principal writings on education. The first section will be an

introduction to the whole chapter, and contains some ideas on Maritain's Christian

philosophy of education, the better to situate the ideas that he entertains on education

itself. The other five sections cover various important themes of his philosophy of

education: the human person, the concept of education, the aims of education, the

fundamental dispositions of the student and the role of the teacher. Conclusions will be

drawn in chapter five.

1. Maritain's Christian Philosophy of Education

Maritain's philosophical reflections on education proceed along the two paths of

theology and philosophy. The connection between philosophy and theology should lead

us to the conclusion that there is an important relationship between Christian philosophy

of education and Christian religious education. Maritain's approaches point to new paths

for the future of religious education. For Mario O. D'Souza, a Christian philosophy of

education has much to say about the place and influence of Christian religious education,

"both as an individual subject as well as its relationship to the rest of the curriculum."1

McGucken adds that, in Maritain's formulations, the terms "Catholic" or "Christian"

1
D'Souza, "The Christian Philosophy of Education," 28.
 94

philosophy are used for convenience, to designate all of the philosophico-theological

bases of the Catholic outlook on life.2 With either term, we observe an element of

distinctiveness when we analyze Maritain. First of all, he is a Christian philosopher.

Secondly, he cannot expound his philosophy of education without including his Christian

background. Thus, we can regard his thought as theocentric because he proclaims God as

First Cause of creatures and author of the natural order.3

Where what is under consideration is the specific field of Christian philosophy of

education, Carr, Haldane, and McLaughlin4 argue that no effort has been made to identify

a distinctively Catholic philosophy of education since Maritain published Education at

the Crossroads in 1943. This may be due to the fact that, in developing a Catholic

philosophy of education, one invariably thinks of Thomism, and thus a Catholic

philosophy of education always comports a relation to theology. Maritain is very clear on

this point, affirming that "the premises of philosophy are independent of theology, being

those primary truths which are self-evident to the understanding, whereas the premises of

theology are the truths revealed by God." 5

John Dewey regarded the arguments of Maritain, Robert Hutchins, and Mortimer

Adler as representing a retreat into the medieval scholasticism that substituted alleged

metaphysical and theological "truth" for scientific thinking. But in Gerald L. Gutek's

2
W. McGucken. Catholic Education: Its Philosophy, Its Fundamentals, Its Objectives (New York: The
America Press, n.d.), 1.
3
Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 82.
4
David Carr, John Haldane, Terence McLaughlin and Richard Pring, "Return to the Crossroads: Maritain
Fifty Years On," in British Journal of Educational Studies 43, 2 (1995), 162.
5
Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy, 84.
 95

opinion, neither truth nor education is relative to time, place or circumstance. Nor do

they emerge from opinions, surveys or focus groups. Gutek argues that Maritain placed a

renewed emphasis on the universal dignity of human beings that makes "possible to value

humanness regardless of time, place and circumstance."6

Maritain's Christian reflection on education transcends the limits of Christian

society. It proposes an answer to the crisis of modern society coherent with Christian

pedagogy. In addition, while Maritain embraces the Christian belief of sin in human

nature, by no manner of means does he incline toward a repressive pedagogy.7 On the

contrary, he sees education as a liberating process, and this in a twofold sense. For one

thing, education is liberation from the background of the philosophies of positivism,

empiricism, agnosticism, or pragmatism. For another, education is the spiritual liberation

provided by the intellect when it finds the truth.

Pedagogy cannot be neutral, an independent system of values, engaged only in

carrying out various educational activities, which therefore influence or are influenced by

them. In this sense, Maritain comments that every teacher loves a god by whom they are

influenced: "Spencer nature, Comte humanity, Rousseau freedom, Freud sex, Emerson

individuals, Dewey society, Wundt culture."8 Pedagogy is anything but neutral. If it

reduces everything to "what the child can take," and leaves everything else to nature,

pedagogy is thereby actually renounced. In this context, Maritain's work is outstanding.

6
Gerald L. Gutek, "Jacques Maritain and John Dewey on Education: A Reconsideration," in Educational
Horizons 83, 4 (Summer 2005), 262.
7
Mougniotte, Maritain, 115.
8
Jacques Maritain, "Preface" to Franz de Hovre, Essai de Philosophic Pedagogique (Bruxelles: A. Devit,
1927), 2-3.
 96

Christian convictions are always at hand, never hidden, and they lead us to interact in a

pluralistic, multi-faith, and multicultural world.

In a pluralist world, Christian pedagogy has been characterized as being

"discreet," or "silent." Guy Avanzini analyzes the phenomenon of Christian education by

describing two types of Christian educators. One practices what it teaches, embodying

virtues like commitment, competence, readiness, respect for others, and equity, all of

which can be made to resonate with Gospel teaching. The other group claims simply that

Catholic doctrine is the unifying principle of its teaching. Of these two groups, it is the

first that has taken a dominant role in our society. The reasons for this are many: the

prohibition of religious proselytism in society, the pervasive spirit of secularism, respect

for other faiths, and so on. Consequently, the second group has been excluded. Thus,

Christian pedagogy has been a silent presence.9 Perhaps this is due to a contemporary

misunderstanding of Christian pedagogy, in spite of the fact that, as a Christian

philosopher, Maritain has a very important voice in the field of religious education. He

offers foundation and direction. His voice goes all the way to social and ethical problems

concerning, and attuned to, practical reality, especially in the field of religious education.

It is because of his voice that Daniel Sargent could say, "Maritain, Maritain, we are

beginning to be beset by his name."10

Education has a double meaning. Throughout Maritain's writings, education is

both philosophical and spiritual. Even in addressing secular civilization, Maritain's

9
Guy Avanzini, "Unite et Diversite de la Pedagogie Chretienne," in Pedagogies Chretiennes, Pedagogues
Chretiens. Actes du Colloque d'Angers -Septembre 1995 (Paris: Ed. Don Bosco, 1996), 555.
1(1
Daniel Sarget, "A Word about Maritain," in Commonwealth 19 (1934), 567.
 97

philosophical and religious ideas are always present. According to Filliot, it is possible to

say that Maritain has a "spiritualist pedagogy,"" because of the particular questions he

raises about education. "What is education?" he asks, and "What is man?" He answers

with a consideration of education as a human awakening, and of men and women as

animals endowed with reason and spirit. In his answers to his own questions, as we shall

briefly see, he regards education as a dynamic process, where the student is primary and

teachers play a vital but secondary role. Maritain asks if it is possible to be wise, and if an

education for wisdom is possible. However, Maritain's philosophy of education depends

on a philosophy of the human person, and then on the principle that education is a

liberating process. People are free, and make free choices, and develop in freedom.

Therefore, holds Maritain, the good of a liberal education is everyone's right.12 For

Maritain, education for freedom is the same as liberal education. It Is an education that

aims to develop in people the capacity to think correctly and "enjoy truth and beauty."13

Another point that is noteworthy in Maritain's view of education and philosophy

of education is the importance of an integration of culture in education according to a

healthy hierarchy of values and knowledge. Christian pedagogy is based on intelligence

seeking truth {fides quaerens intellectum), and finding through the light of faith the real

meaning of human knowledge. By the action of God's grace, education helps us to find

11
Philippe Filliot, "Jacques Maritain: L'Education a la Croisee des Chemins." In Le Journal des Chercheurs
(http:www.barbier-rd.nom.fr/journal/article.php3?id_article=559) (24.05.2007), 2. (Accessed March 2008).
12
Leo R. Ward, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," in Jacques Maritain: The Man and His
Achievement, Joseph W. Evans ed. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 209.
13
Maritain, Education of Man, 69.
 98

that "supreme perfection which consists in love."14 A Christian pedagogy is not the sole

treasure of the learner. Ideally, a teacher possessing deep personal convictions, and

especially intellectual openness and generosity, accompanies the learner in fellowship.

This implies an environmental context where school, common life, and fraternal charity

are all involved.

If Maritain contributes to an enrichment of contemporary pedagogical thought and

education, as J. L. Allard once wrote,15 then it is evident that his educational ideas will

contribute also to Christian religious education, the education that strives not to make a

person naturally perfect, but only to develop natural energies along with virtues both

intellectual and moral. This is the reason why Mougniotte finds Maritain's Christian

pedagogy coherent, and faithful to its Christian sources. But that educator also finds that

this kind of pedagogy "offers the best warranties of respecting faith."16 This coherency is

evident. Maritain does not separate divine love from the love of siblinghood. He urges

Christians to take risks, and to be prepared to fight to the end for their souls and lives in

God. Maritain includes and emphasizes the element of faith and spiritual life that is

fundamental for Christian religious education.

As Maritain wrote in The Education of Man, if we wish to perceive what a

Christian philosophy of education consists of, it is clear that the first thing to do is to try

to bring out what the Christian idea of man [woman] is.17 Maritain's objective in

14
Ibid., 156.
15
Allard, Education for Freedom, 115.
16
Mougniotte, Maritain et L 'Education, 118.
17
Maritain, The Education of Man, 129.
 99

education must be related to the nature of the human person, and to the formation of a

whole person. It is true, we have to recognize his Christian philosophy of education as

being inspired by theology. Therefore, all of his proposals about education will be based

on religious-philosophical fundamental principles. Christian education cannot proceed

without a basic philosophical anthropology in which a student is considered as a human

person. Nor can it proceed without a consideration of the human person as being the

image of God, eager to gain freedom, and seeking a supernatural end to fulfill while on

earth.

The basis of Maritain's philosophy of education can be found in the answers to

five questions he raises regarding education. These are: "What is the human person?"

"What is education?" "What are the aims of education?" "What are the fundamental

dispositions of the student?" and "What is the role of the teacher?" Maritain's answer to

these questions are presented below.

2. The Human Person

The ancient Greeks recognized the human capacity for rational thought as the

distinctive characteristic of a human being. The classical philosophical tradition thus

speaks of the human person as a rational animal, emphasizing the rational aspect.18 It was

the Christian philosopher Boethius, in the sixth century, who described the human person

as an individual substance of a rational nature.19 New definitions today like Anne Hunt's

18
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica l , q . 29, a. 1, reply obj. 4.
19
Boethius, "ATreatise against Eutyches and Nestorius," The Theological Tractates, trans. H. F. Stewart
(London: Heinemann, 1918), 85.
still echo classical definitions, as she says that a definition of the human person might

well express the "uniqueness of human personhood."20

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the human soul constitutes, along with the

matter it informs, a unique substance,21 both spiritual and fleshly. The truth is not what

Descartes held: that the soul is not one thingthoughtexisting as a complete being;

and the body another thingextensionexisting in its own way as a complete being.22

But soul and matter are two substantial co-principles of one and the same beingof a

single and unique reality whose name is human being.23

Maritain's definition of the person's absolute, ultimate end, and of theological

education, is to be applauded, says D'Souza.24 However, modern philosophical

approaches to a definition of the human person have focused only on the human capacity

to know and to reason, says Anne Hunt.25 Therefore there is an urgent need to move

beyond those modern philosophical approaches focused on the capacity for rationality

move to an appreciation of the relational nature of authentic human existence. We believe

that Maritain's idea of the human person can be extended into the relational context of

today's approaches because it is based in fundamental principles and solid roots.

20
Anne Hunt, "The Essence of Education is Religious," in The International Handbook of the Religious,
Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education, ed. M. de Souza et al. (The Netherlands: Springer, 2006),
637.
21
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics 7.3 1029 a 5-30 Trans, fathers of the English Dominican
Providence (Texas: Christian Classics, 1948).
22
Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, 76.
23
Joseph W. Evans and Leo R. Ward, Jacques Maritain, Challenges and Renewals (Notre Dame, Ind.:
Notre Dame Press, 1966), 286.
24
D'Souza, "Jacques Maritain's Seven Misconceptions of Education: Implications for the Preparation of
Catholic School Teachers," in Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice 5, 4 (2002), 440.
25
Hunt, "The Essence of Education is Religious," 639.
 101

A. A Philosophical-Religious Idea of the Human Person

Maritain's philosophy of education, based on Thomism, recognizes the integral

role of the spiritual and metaphysical dimensions of the human person. Each human

being is a person, "he [she] is not a subject to the stars and atoms." Rather, they subsist

entirely with the very subsistence of their spiritual souls, which is a principle of "creative

unity, of independence, and freedom."26 Consequently, education needs primarily to know

what the person is, what the nature of the person is, and the scale of values it essentially

involves.27

That is why the question, "What is a man [woman],"28 constitutes the basis for

Maritain's philosophy of education. The answer implies not only the conception of the

person, but also of human life, cultural life, and human destiny. His answer comes from

the Greek, Jewish, and Christian concept of a human being as:

an animal endowed with reason, whose supreme dignity is in the intellect;

and man as a free individual in personal relation with God, whose supreme
righteousness consists in voluntarily obeying the law of God; and man as a
sinful and wounded creature called to divine life and to the freedom of
grace, whose supreme perfection consists of love.29

D'Souza comments that this Greek, Jewish, and Christian idea of the human person

supplies Christian education with strong philosophical, religious, and ontological roots.

J. Elias, however, argues that Maritain recognizes no essential changes in the nature,

26
Evans, Jacques Maritain, 287.
27
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 5.
28
Ibid., 1.
29
Ibid., 7.
30
Mario O. D'Souza, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education and Christian Religious Education," in Catholic
Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice 4, 3 (2001), 378.
 102

value, dignity, rights, and destiny of the person; what may change is our knowledge of

what humans are.31 From what these two authors say, we can conclude that the

consideration of Maritain's educational theory in the field of religious education,

especially for religious educators, provides new insights, as well as light for a

consideration of the human person as a whole.

Maritain's definition shows that the point of departure of his philosophy of

education remains central, and rooted in the philosophical and religious idea of the

human person.

I say philosophical because it pertains to the nature or essence of the

human being and religious because of the existential status of this human
nature in relation to God and the special gifts and trials and vocation
involved.32

Therefore human persons are made for truthcapable of knowing God as the Cause of

Being, by reason, and of knowing God in His intimate life by the gift of faith. Maritain's

vision is balanced and complete. His definition provides a multidimensional perspective

wherever God is involved.

Maritain's philosophical-religious definition goes beyond the definition itself, says

Viotto, when considering human beings as creatures of God.33 This very factour status

as creatures of God constitutes the mystery of our own nature,34a nature not merely

existing as a physical being,35 but having a spiritual super-existence capable of knowledge

31
John L. Elias, Moral Education: Secular and Religious (Malabar, Flo.: Robert E. Krieger Publishing
Company, 1989), 36.
32
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 6.
33
Viotto, Per una Filosofia dell'Educazione Secondo , 68.
34
Ibid.
35
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8.
 103

and love. Unfortunately, human nature is wounded by original sin, but, fortunately, it is

redeemed by the grace of God. The human person is God's creation, a unity of physical,

mental, spiritual, social, and religious elements. Thus, in a way, she is, a universe in

herself.36 On this, Anne Hunt wrote her article, "The Essence of Education is Religious,"

in order to defend a consideration of the education of the human person as religious.37

Therefore we see that Maritain is not alone in proposing his view. God is undoubtedly an

important value for the person to be educated.

On the other hand, the philosophical-religious idea of the person does not

minimize that person's human dimension. On the contrary, it brings unity and harmony

to all dimensions of the person. In fact, Piero Viotto says that the integral humanism in

Maritain sees human beings in all of their different aspects: physical, mental, spiritual,

social, and religious, which constitute the dynamic unity of the human person, who daily,

through education, becomes a person attaining his/her social role and religious vocation.38

Viotto's statement evinces the fact that Maritain sees the person in a dynamic unity, and

that the value of persons, their dignity and rights, belong to the order of things naturally

sacred, "which bear the imprint of the Father of Being, and which have in Him the end of

their movement."39

The attempt to relate the human person with God constitutes the heart of religious

education. The basic point here is that there is an internal desire in everyone of us to

36
Maritain, The Education of Man, 163.
37
Anne Hunt, "The Essence of Education," 645.
38
Viotto, Per una Filosofia dell'Educazione Secondo, 63.
39
Maritain, The Education of Man, 164.
discover who we really are and are meant to be, to discover the real image we all have

inside, the image of God.Maritain's attention to the human person within the context of

education is particularly important today, an age often mesmerized with method over

content and process over being. D'Souza says that Maritain reminds us that the problem

today in education is "that educators have lost sight of the end of education and

subsequently, the human person."40

B. Person-Centered Philosophy
Maritain has been considered a "personalist humanist," by Piero Viotto,41 since

his philosophy is human person-centered. This is the reason why Maritain's theory has

been considered a personalist pedagogy.42 In D'Souza's opinion, his philosophy of

education is based upon a single conviction: the importance of an integrated education of

the person.43 Both authors recognize in Maritain the transcendent value of the human

person, as a being of communion open to others and to God, a person who, according to

Maritain, has a greater value than the whole physical universe.44 A person-centered

philosophy makes Maritain a pedagogue of and for our time, providing new reflections

for religious education.

As a Thomist, Maritain is concerned about the human person and the mysterious

identity this brings. He is certain that this mysterious identity can only be reached by

40
D'Souza, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 391.
41
Piero Viotto, "L'Humanisme dans la Reflexion Philosophique Contemporaine," in Notes et Documents 25
(1991), 17.
42
Piero Viotto, "Le Personnalisme Pedagogique," in Jacques Maritain: A Philosopher in the World, ed.
Jean-Louis Allard (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1985), 209.
43
D'Souza, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 375.
44
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8.
 105

education.45 Gabriel Marcel would say that "a mystery is something in which I myself am

involved."46 Therefore, if God is a mystery there is a need for the human person to be

related to Him. John Dewey would reject the concepts of a fallen human nature and

redemption by grace, as unverifiable residues of the medieval world-view.47 But for

Maritain the emphasis on a wounded nature implies the need for a redemption present in

every human being. This makes Maritain's philosophy of education more suitable for the

specific field of religious education. It takes a humble approach in its quest for God.

When Maritain says that a human being is a person, he does not mean that he/she

is merely an individual, in the sense that an atom, a fly, or an elephant is an individual. A

human being is an individual who holds himself in hand by their intelligence and their

will, and who is capable of "subsisting spiritually48which means that a person can

choose his own ends, and decide on the means to attain them, because of being free. That

is why a person is a "microcosm in which the whole great universe can be encompassed

through knowledge."49

To say that a human being is a person, is to say that, in the depths of his/her being,

a person is more a whole than a part of anything, and more independent than servile,

Maritain declares.50Therefore their nature as such, place and value in the cosmos, dignity,

rights, and aspiration as a person, and destiny, do not change. This is why Maritain sees

45
Ibid., 9.
46
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: Reflection and Mystery (Chicago: Gateway, 1960), 260.
47
Gutek, "Jacques Maritain and John Dewey," 253.
48
Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, trans, ed. Mortimer Adler (New York: Doubleday and
Company, 1960), 63.
49
Maritain, The Education of Man, 163.
50
Ibid., 164.
 106

Deweyanism as insufficiently providing for the richness of the individual person, and in

danger of reducing education to the training of an animal for the utility of the state.

Maritain's ideas on the person were so important that he was invited to help in the

development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the United Nations in

1948, an invitation he accepted. The expression, "the dignity of the human person," for

Maritain, means nothing, unless it signifies that, by virtue of natural law, the human

person has the right to be respected, and is the subject and possessor of rights. The true

philosophy of the human person's rights is therefore based on the idea of natural law.51

For Maritain, the person's right to existence, to personal freedom, to education and to the

pursuit of the perfection of moral life, belongs to natural law. When a philosophy of

education takes into account natural law, a deep respect emerges for the fundamental

rights of the human person, which in religious education becomes an important

foundation.

According to Maritain, the unity found in the human person, that of the material

aspect and the spiritual aspect,52 tends to be expressed in the work of education and

teaching, by way of a unification and integration. Therefore for Maritain, the human

person is more important than society. Opposed to Maritain stands Dewey who argues the

opposite. Dewey maintains the primacy of society over the person,53 and this has

51
Jacques Maritain, "The Human Rights," in The Social and Political Philosophy of Jacques Maritain:
Selected Reading, eds. Joseph W. Evans and Leo R. Ward (New York: Scribner's Sons: 1955), 37.
52
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 45.
53
"Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. Everyone of the constituent
elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without
language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-
experience of his group, in time passes way. Yet the life of the group goes on." John Dewey, Democracy
 107

different implications from those of Maritain's view. However, Maritain considers the

person, because of his/her unity, to be the basis of society, thus elaborating a philosophy

of education according to the human person's principles.

3. The Concept of Education

Education, for Maritain, is dependent upon philosophy. But education is also

subordinate to the science of theology.54 Authors like Maria Harris, who sees teaching as a

fundamentally religious activity,55 or D'Souza, who emphasizes that from the Christian

perspective, education is ultimately a theological activity,56 lead us to the conclusion that

a broad panorama opens up when education somehow has to deal with God. This

includes not only the concept of person, but of human life, culture, and human destiny as

the basis of education. Perhaps this is why D'Souza might conclude that there is no

independent science of education.57

If an author considers education as an ongoing process, or a cultural process, or

simply, like Eric Jensen, that "learning 'how to learn' may now be our most critical

survival skill"58these positions, even Maritain's, all convey the notion that education is

and Education, 6. However, some scholars like John L. Elias contend that the affirmation of Dewey's
primacy of society over the person is more complex than this. After knowing the overemphasizing of the
individual in Rousseau's philosophy and the overemphasizing of society in Plato's philosophy, Dewey
concluded that the mind and its formation is a communal process. Therefore, the individual becomes a
meaningful concept when regarded as an inseparable part of his or her society, and the society has no
meaning apart from its realization in the lives of its individual members.
54
Viotto, "Jacques Maritain's Evangelical Idea of Democracy," in Zenit, The World Seen from Rome
(March, 2004) http://www.zenit.org/article-9715?l=english 1 (Accessed June 2008).
55
Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People: Curriculum in the Church (London: Westminter Knox Press, 1989),
116-117.
56
D'Souza, "The Christian Philosophy," 13.
57
D'Souza, "Jacques Maritain's Seven Misconceptions," 435.
58
Eric Jensen, Superteaching (San Diego, Cal.: The Brain Store, Inc., 1995), 312.
 108

a vital and fundamental part of every human being.

A. A Human Awakening and an Ethical Art

For Maritain, education is a human awakening.59 It is a human and personal

awakening because it makes "a perpetual appeal to the intelligence and free will."60 The

acquisition of knowledge, which involves the process of learning, and the imparting of

knowledge, which involves the process of teaching, are both continuous processes, says

Maritain. In this regard, the task of education is "to guide the evolving dynamism through

which man forms himself precisely to be a a man."61 This is the reason why education, in

the broad sense of the word, will continue through all our life in every one of us.62

In other words, education helps us to become who we really are, helps us "to

become a man [woman]."63 And the task of teaching is nothing else but the promotion of

such awareness.64 According to Maritain, this "becoming who we are" is the broader

purpose of education, which involves any process whatever by means of which man/

woman is shaped and led toward fulfillment.65

Madonna Murphy argues that Maritain's definition of education as a process of

shaping a man/woman may appear similar to Dewey's definition of education as growth.

But they are different. In fact, according to Murphy, Maritain has a determinate "end in

mind," while Dewey has no such "product in mind," being interested only in the

59
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 9.
60
Ibid., 9-10.
61
Ibid., 1.
62
Maritain, Pour une Philosophie, 155.
63
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 1.
64
Piero Viotto, Per una Filosofia dell'Educazione (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1981), 159.
65
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 2.
 109

process.66 We may conclude that, without the end in mind, education runs the risk of

becoming an economic product, indeed a common occurrence in schools and universities

today.

If a person becomes really a person, he enters into a dynamic process of creativity.

This is why Maritain asserts that "education is an art,"67 and that therefore everyone could

become a piece of art. Furthermore, education is an "ethical art"or rather, a practical

wisdom in which a determinate art is embodied. Maritain also argues that "there is no art

without ends," because the very vitality of art consists in the energy with "which it tends

toward its end."68 This ethical art is characterized by four fundamental characteristics:

intelligence and will, knowledge and love. Growth in these four characteristics, says

D'Souza, requires that education move toward a particular end: the integral growth of the

student as a person.69

There is a similarity between Dewey and Maritain, since both see education as an

art, but there are also differences. In arguing for education as the "supreme art," Dewey

exhibits his belief that the potential of societal reconstruction makes the teacher the

"prophet of the true God."70But Dewey also describes education as "the art of giving

shape to human powers and adapting them to social service."71 Thus Dewey accords

66
Madonna Murphy, "Maritain Explains the Moral Principles of Education to Dewey," in Educational
Horizons 83, 4 (Summer 2005), 287.
67
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 3.
68
Ibid., 2-3.
69
D'Souza, "Jacques Maritain's Seven Misconceptions," 436.
70
Martin S. Dworkin, ed., Dewey on Education, Classics in Education 3 (New York: Teachers College
Press, 1959), 32.
71
Alan Ryan, "Deweyan Pragmatism and American Education," in Philosophers on Education, ed. Amelie
Rorty (London: Routledge, 1998): 397.
 110

primacy to the social in education, contrariwise to Maritain, who sees more of an ethical

implication. For Maritain, the person is above society, and has an ethical responsibility to

society when engaging in the educational process.

B. Democratic Education and Liberal Education

It is important to emphasize that the type of education of which Maritain is

speaking is a democratic education, which:

"helps human persons to shape themselves, judge by themselves,

discipline themselves,[...] to respect in themselves and in others human
nature and conscience, and to conquer themselves in order to win their
liberty."72

For Maritain, the object of the democratic way of life is the shaping of the human person

and demands a liberal education for all primarily because every human being is entitled

to receive a "human and humanistic education."73 Conceived in this way, Maritain's view

of democracy is inclusive, and because his ideal of democracy requires faith and the

development of spiritual energies,74 it becomes very appropriate to apply his principles to

the field of religious education.

According to Piero Viotto, Maritain's reflections on democracy have ethical value

in themselves, and are based on the dignity of the human person and his freedom of

conscience.75 According to James V. Schall, Maritain's reflections seek to give "more

72
Maritain, The Education of Man, 158.
73
Ibid., 69.
74
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 19.
75
Viotto, "Jacques Maritain's Evangelical," 1.
 Ill

independence to political life," and at the same time "more force to spiritual life."76 The

common element throughout Maritain's reflections is the concept of Christianity, which

pays respect to the principles of democracy: "government of the people, by the people

and for the people."77

Liberal education is a liberating education. It is not the education of men/women

who are free, but the education that sets them free. A sound liberal and humanistic

education, says D'Souza, must always aim at unifying the experience of the student, and

it does so by recognizing the stages of mental and moral growth, along with the gradual

ascendancy of the educational process.78 In this process of liberation, education frees

people from their own ignorance, prejudices, and narrowness, by making them aware of

them.79 This liberation, of which Maritain speaks, is also the liberation of the intellect that

results from the internalization of its object. But it is not won through "the gymnastics of

[the mind's] faculties."80

The great predicament of democracies, says Maritain, is the fact that they have

lost intellectual faith in the truths that constitute their very soul and their very principles,

and his "ignorance could be ascribed to their general skepticism" about the moral and

spiritual realities without which democracy is nothing but nonsense.81 Instead, all

76
James V. Schall, Jacques Maritain: The Philosopher in Society (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, 1998), 100-101.
77
Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of the New Christendom
(Indianapolis, Ind.: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 6.
78
D'Souza, "The Christian Philosophy of Education," 20.
79
C. J. Ducasse. "What Can Philosophy Contribute to Educational Theory?," in Harvard Educational
Review 2% A (195%), 291.
80
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 52.
81
Maritain, The Education of Man, 181.
 112

democratic inspiration comes from the Gospel inspiration that makes possible the defense

of freedom and the rights of the human person."82

In a real democracy, education must be guided by the standard of a liberal

education for all.83 It must be addressed to the natural intelligence of youth,84 so that they

may be able to see many aspects of things, and have a choice in the direction they take.

Hence, the task of liberal education must tend to unify, not to spread out, "it must strive

to foster internal unity in man [woman]"85 That task means unifying the student's

experiencesintellectual, moral, religious, social, political, aestheticand thus leading

the student to a deeper awareness of self, of others, and, ultimately, of God.86That is why

this unifying experience builds a solid bridge between Maritain's philosophy of

education, and religious education, where the goal is unity, and not disintegration and

fragmentation.

Maritain also makes a distinction between basic liberal education and graduate

studies. Basic liberal education is concerned with the knowledge appropriate to natural

intelligence, and graduate studies is concerned with the knowledge appropriate to the

intellectual virtues. What gives practical and existential value to the concept of liberal

education is the consideration of liberal arts and the method of teaching humanities.87

Special emphasis is laid upon the humanities, which develop in people the capacity to

82
Jacques Maritain, A Travers le Desastre (New York: Editions de la Maison Francais, 1945), 9.
83
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 93.
84
Ibid., 96.
85
Ibid., 45.
86
D'Souza, "Christian Philosophy of Education," 21.
87
Maritain, The Education of Man, 99.
 113

think correctly, and to enjoy truth and beauty. This, in Maritain's favorite words, "is

education for freedom."88

For Maritain, any educational task has to be regulated by a clear definition of the

human being, as has been observed above, and, through liberal education, youth should

become future citizens capable of making independent judgments. Liberal education

ought to convey to them "the spiritual heritage of their nation and civilization," thus to

preserve for the future the great achievements of the human intellect, and the joy of the

"common heritage of knowledge and beauty"89 that they find present in their own culture.

4. The Aims of Education

In Maritain, whose educational view has an anthropological foundation, the

essence and the aim of education are the formation and inner liberation of the human

person. The primary aim of education is determined by human nature, in other words, the

aim of education is the human person who faces himself, others, and God by truth and

love.90 The nature and content of education will depend upon this question of human

nature; and the aims, goals, and ends of education will depend upon education as seen in

regard to human nature, says D'Souza.91

In so doing, one must consider the human person and his/her deep natural

aspirations.But what are those aspirations? For Maritain, the chief aspiration is that of

freedom: not freedom in the sense of free will, but the freedom that is spontaneity,

88
Ibid., 69.
89
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 96-97'.
90
Viotto "Le Personnalisme Pedagogique," 214-215.
91
D'Souza "Maritan's Philosophy of Education," 379.
 114

expansion, or autonomy, and which we have to win through constant effort and struggle.92

The common element here is the element of values, especially the value of freedom. The

very fact of knowing and acknowledging the aims of education builds a strong bridge to

the field of religious education, where the religious educator is called to consider these

aims, as they can undergird thought and practice.

A. The Conquest of Freedom and Truth

The prime goal of education is "the conquest of [the] internal and spiritual

freedom"93 that is to be achieved by the individual person. In other words, the prime goal

of education is liberation "through knowledge and wisdom, good will, and love."94 The

person who is free in the literal sense of the word is a free master of his/her own life.

Therefore Maritain underscores the term inner and spiritual freedom, and because this

freedom is spiritual, it does not come from exercising one's free will. It is freedom of

independence.

Maritain cites a difference between Greek philosophy and Christianity with

respect to guiding the desire for inner and spiritual freedom. For Aristotle, freedom was

granted to men/women by intellect and wisdom, as the perfection of the human being.

But the Gospel was to lift up human perfection to a higher level, a divine one, teaching

that this perfection consists of the perfection of love, and the freedom of those moved by

the divine Spirit.95

92
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 11.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid.
 115

This liberation is not to be understood as a mere unfolding of potentialities,

without any object to be grasped, or without a goal to reach. Rather, no one is freer, or

more independent, says Maritain, than those who give themselves to a cause, or a real

being, worthy of the gift.96 Since God is the pinnacle of personality, and the human being

is a person as well, the mystery of the conquest of freedom consists "in the relationship

between these two persons,"97 God and the human being. In religious education, this idea

is central. Religious education is not "about" teaching religion, or teaching on religion; it

is about a relationship between two persons, where the religious educator is only an

instrument of encounter. This is so clear, that even Didier Piveteau dares to conclude that

religious education is the projection of all problems and questions arising in Christianity

today.98

The challenge of education for Maritain is to free itself from the philosophies like

pragmatism that overlook what man/woman is, and deny the dignity and primacy of truth,

the truth that sets us free. After all, without trust in truth, there is no human

effectiveness.99 Truth does not depend on us, but on what it is; it is not a set of ready-

made formulas to be recorded passively. Truth is an infinite realm whose wholeness

infinitely transcends our powers of perception, and whose every fragment must be

grasped through vital and purified internal activity. If we have to define truth in the light

96
Ibid., 12.
97
Maritain, Some Reflections, 23.
98
Didier Piveteau, "School, Society and Catechetics," in Religious Education and the Future, ed. Dermont
A. Lane (New York: Paulist, 1986), 20.
99
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 13.
 116

of Thomist philosophy, then truth consists in the conformity of the mind with reality,100

with what is or exists independently of the mind.101 Whether we believe this statement or

not, it is surely worthy of being considered, because it is not subjective; it is about

evidence, and truth transcends our powers of perception and makes us live in autonomy.

B. The Virtue of Wisdom

According to Maritain, wisdom is that superior kind of knowledge that enjoys the

spiritual delight of truth and the savor of being, the knowledge that fulfills the supreme

aspiration of intellectual nature and its thirst for liberation.102

Wisdom appears as the supreme knowledge that embraces all realities of the

person, as well as his or her aspirations, including the aspiration to freedom, says

Maritain. Such knowledge, which lives not only by supreme science, but also by human

and spiritual experience, wafts over and above any field of specialization.103 In this

regard, Maritain opposes specialization, because, when making decisions, the

specializing human person loses that overall vision of the problem that is needed for a

solution. Religious education is not a curriculum of courses on wisdom.104 And yet

wisdom becomes the supreme goal, because it has a unifying power that cannot be

obtained directly through education. For Maritain, a specific aim in education is to

100
'Adaequatio rei et intellectus,' this means the intellect (of the knower) must be adequate to the thing
(known).
101
Maritain, The Education of Man, 47.
102
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 47.
103
Ibid., 48.
104
Maritain, The Education of Man, 23.
 117

provide the student with the "foundations of real wisdom"105 "and with a universal

comprehension of human achievements in science and culture."106

The purpose of both elementary and higher education is to equip the student's

mind with an ordered knowledge that will enable [them] to advance "toward wisdom in

[their adulthood]."107 Maritain's conviction that education is oriented to wisdom has

necessarily to be centered on the humanities, as it is these that develop the capacity to

think correctly and to enjoy truth and beauty. If this thinking and this enjoyment are

possible, then freedom is also possible: now teaching in a religious-educational field will

be real teaching and not instruction or indoctrination. The goal of religious education is

the pursuit of wisdom. Its aim is not to please students with special courses, but to equip

them with what they need, using an overall approach to all the values that Christianity has

lived and fostered. If we speak of Christian religious education, we must speak of an

overall approach, and one that welcomes interaction within a multicultural religious faith

environment.

C. Religious Education and Moral Life

For Maritain, human beings have a natural and supernatural calling, and spiritual

growth is vital in the quest for freedom. But it is striking that Maritain says so little about

religious education, and little has been written about the implications of his theory of

religious education. We maintain, however, that Maritain's philosophy of education is

105
Ibid., 139.
106
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 49.
107
Ibid., 48.
 118

well suited for the study and consideration of religious education. Indeed, in a reading of

Maritain's works on education one finds the necessary elements for such study.

So, for example, according to D'Souza, for Maritain an integrated education is

religious. It would have to be, if it is to foster a growth toward personhood, and the

attainment of a sense of moving toward perfection. D'Souza concludes that this

consideration renders all education religious, as it deals with freedom.108 An appreciation

of education as essentially religious also implies an understanding and appreciation of

ourselves and our role as educators. Here Marcel Dumestre argues that religious

education gives coherence to a spirituality of education,109 which leads us conclude that

religious education is not a discipline, but a form of expression of a personal spirituality.

More specifically, in Maritain, this personal spirituality is a Christian spirituality, a

Christian faith. A bit of genuine spiritual experience, Maritain says, matters more for the

education of a young person than "committing to memory the entire Encyclopedia

Britanmca"m

Maritain seriously believes that religious education ought to be received not only

at the hands of the family and the church community, but also from the school. "I do not

see how we can assume that God is less entitled to have His place in the school than the

electron or Professor Bertrand Russell."111 It is an obligation for the school and the

college not only to enlighten students on moral matters, but also to allow them to enjoy a

108
D'Souza, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 376.
109
Marcel J. Dumestre, "Liberal Arts Education as an Expression of Religious Education: Higher Education
for a Pluralistic Society," in Religious Education 86, 2 (1991), 304.
110
Maritain, Education of Man, 107.
'" Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 48.
 119

full religious education.112 This should be made available to the student population on a

voluntary basis, "in accordance with the wishes of the students and their parents, and

given by the representatives of the various faiths."113

But Maritain makes an important distinction between the direct formation of the

will, which is the task of the family and the church, and the indirect moral formation

which is the task of the school. Parents are the primary educators of their children

because the seeds of religious inspiration and moral life are sown at home. Maritain states

that the responsibility for moral education rests directly and primarily on the family, but

he also hold that, indirectly and secondarily it rests with the religious community as

well.114 The primary responsibility of the school is not moral but intellectual in nature.

The school has responsibility for the growth of the intellect of the students, their

acquisition of universal knowledge and the development of their own inner intellectual

capacities. In other words, "the school has primarily to teach them how to think."115

Maritain gives more of his attention to the role of the school in moral education

than to that of the family because the former performs a role of indirect action on the will,

while the role of the school is direct and intellectual in nature. It is the school that is to

teach a supernatural morality, one based on the life of faith and religion. Schools

compensate for what is too often lacking in families with respect to moral formation,

according to Maritain. And then again, the school is not only a place of teaching, it is a

112
Maritain, The Education of Man, 76.
113
Ibid., 77.
114
Ibid., 104.
115
Ibid.
kind of social community. Maritain goes on to outline the educational sphere as including

the school, the state, the church, and the extra-educational area.

Moral teaching ought to be accompanied by the instilling of religious inspiration.

Maritain proposes to offer children genuine images of grandeur and heroism; this for him

is one of the greatest tasks of education in the moral field.116 Students would become

acquainted not only with examples of heroism, but also with the immense effort of good

will and generosity through which humankind and civilization have managed to

develop.117

A liberal education cannot complete its task without knowledge of the specific

realm and concerns of theological wisdom. Therefore a religious-moral education

presents no difficulty for denominational colleges. Now, in the case of

nondenominational institutions, Maritain calls for a practical solution that would depend

on the recognition of a pluralistic principle. Religious education would be given

according to the diversity of creeds at hand, by professors belonging to the main religious

denominations represented in those creeds, each instructor addressing the students of his

or her particular denomination. Students who disapproved of theological instruction

could be excused from attending courses offering it, and "allowed to remain incomplete

in wisdom at their own pleasure."118

In this relationship between religion and the moral life, Maritain is not contending

116
Ibid., 107.
117
Maritain, Education of Man, 108
118
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 75.
 121

that a person who believes only in reason cannot have a genuine ethics of his own, and a

high standard of moral life. Nor is he assuming that a religious person cannot be morally

perverted, or that religious people always maintain a standard of moral conduct worthy of

their faith. Maritain insists that "religious men [women] know they are sinners; but they

also know that while staggering along we may climb the road to renascence and

spiritualization.""9 In this regard, Maritain says that morality without religion actually

undermines morality, and that such a combination can sustain human life for but a few

generations.120

What is most distinctive about Maritain's view, says J. Elias, is his assertion that

the moral life is necessarily linked with religious belief and experience. For Elias,

Maritain presents a rationale for his view of the morally educated person by drawing

primarily on the perennial principles of theology and philosophy.121 Elias is persuaded

that what Maritain offers us is not so much an accurate description of a morally educated

person, and recommendations for forming this person, but a mode of utilizing philosophy

and theology in developing a religious approach to moral education.122 Jude Dougherty, in

his recent Jacques Maritain: An Intellectual Profile, denies that Maritain confuses

morality and religion. Maritain knows that morality does not depend on religion: moral

norms have a life of their own, a life independent of religion. John Dewey, on the other

hand, "has no use" for religion, as we might put it. He sees religion as socially

119
Ibid., 117.
120
Ibid.
121
Elias, Moral Education, 37.
122
Ibid., 40.
 122

dangerous, inasmuch as it attempts to mold personal conduct.123

In our examination of these thoughts and notions of Maritain, we may conclude

that there is an important relationship between morality and religion, and that this is why

religious education has a moral implication. Morality and religion are neither inseparable

nor totally separable, but are relational, where the word "relational" suggests interaction

and reciprocity. Religious ethicians and ethicists have often seen morality as derived from

and dependent on religion, whereas some philosophers have frequently preferred to see

religion as derived from and dependent on morality. But in Maritain's philosophy of

education, religion and morality can be relational, and this opens up a new horizon of

integration, especially in the field of religious education.124

But religious education is far from being "about" introducing persons to a certain

way of thinking and doing. Religious education is "about" promoting a way of

expressing ourselves in life by living in accordance with certain values and fundamental

principles. In the case of its Christian presentation, religious education is "about" learning

how to be Christian and to live accordingly.

5. The Fundamental Dispositions of the Student

The learner, with her intellectual power, is the primary agent125 of the educational

123
Jude Dougherty, Jacques Maritain: An Intellectual Profile (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press
of America, 2003), 1.
124
Paul W. Diener, Religion and Morality: An Introduction (Louisville Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press,
1997); Peter Byrne, The Moral Interpretation of Religion (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reason and Religion,
1998); William W. Bartley, Morality and Religion (Great Britain: The University Press, Glasgow, 1971).
125
Maritain, Pour une Philosophic, 165. Thomas Aquinas developed this in: Summa Theologica, lq.l 17, a.
1; Summa Contra Gentiles 75; Of the Teacher: De Veritate, q. II, a. 1.
 123

act, according to Maritain. But the formation of the learner depends on guidance-

direction with regard to the "primary dynamic factor or propelling force which is the

internal vital principle in the one to be educated."126 This is why Maritain enumerates five

natural dispositions to be nurtured in the student.

A. The Five Dispositions

The first disposition to be fostered in the student, in the learner, is love of truth,

the primary tendency of any intellectual nature. The second disposition will be simplicity

and openness with regard to existence. With these first two dispositions, we have an

entire program of religious education. Love and openness are of paramount urgency if

we are to begin to advance a coherent religious education. For Maritain, "love does not

regard ideas, or abstractions, or possibilities; love regards existing persons."127 This

proposition ascribes special value to religious education and religious educators.

Religious education is "about" a relationship between God and the human person, and the

essence of this relation is love. It is the religious educator who is to foster and facilitate

this relation. Then it will bloom and grow.

Maritain describes the third disposition as the attitude of the being who exists

gladly, standing upright in existence. The fourth concerns the sense of a job well done.

These two dispositions relate with each other. Whenever there is gladness, each time it

becomes easier to perform a task well and to be proud of it, in all consciousness of the

responsibility that was undertaken with regard to it. The last disposition is the sense of

126
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 31.
127
Ibid., 96.
 124

cooperation, which is natural in us, for example in our inclination toward social and

political life.

In order to foster these five dispositions in learners, we need educational norms.

Thus, these norms comprise the attitudes the teacher must take toward learners. The

teacher must encourage individualsmust be concerned above all with their inwardness,

must nourish internal unity of the person, and must liberate learners' minds by leading

them to mastery of the things learned.128

In sum, the vital spontaneity of the one to be educated, says Maritain, plays a

major part in progress toward its final end, as well as in the steady widening of the pupil's

experience. "The need for constantly renewed adaptation of methods, means, and

approaches is much greater in educational art than in any art dealing only with some

material achievement."129 Gutek, however, thinks that Maritain's emphasis on content

rather than on method of instruction reflects his commitment to metaphysics as the

highest kind of knowledge. In the opinion of Gutek, Dewey, in sharp contrast,

emphasizes method over content, rejecting metaphysics but stressing epistemology.130

But we can say that Maritain's philosophywhich emphasizes the eliciting of the

student's fundamental dispositions, upon which education buildsevinces greater respect

for the practical level of a spiritual education. Maritain points out that the students must

be attentive, so that the path of education may always lead in the direction of true

knowledge and so that, in the process of education, the self will be engaged in

128
Ibid., 36-39.
129
Ibid., 18.
130
Gutek, "Maritain and Dewey," 255.
 125

contemplation rather than in blind acceptance. In this sense, Romina Aina concludes that

Maritain's theory of education emphasizes the need to stimulate students' minds and

hearts, helping them to develop in every intellectual and spiritual way, spurring critical

mental and psychological activity, and arousing "a passion that will be satisfied only by

the perception of truth." In this regard, Paul Freire would say that "students must not only

adapt to a given situation, but be able to transform that situation."131 Freire's position,

then, is similar to Maritain's: we ought to learn in order to transform, since education

invites us all, especially in religious education, to become more human in the world, to

use all of our dispositions and talents. If we are educators, Maritain urges us to facilitate

and enrich the educational process. If we are students, he urgently advises us to develop

our talents. This will all presuppose, of course, in both circumstances, that our actions are

directed at transforming and re-creating the world we live in.

B. Imagination, Intuition, and Natural Reason

The word "imagination" has been used with very diverse connotations. When

regarded as a "faculty," it has been considered, in general, to be "the creative power of

the mind and the power of forming new mental combinations." According to Maritain,

the universe of a child is the universe of imaginationan imagination which evolves

little by little into reason.'"Imagination is the faculty of the soul that "depend[s] on the

senses," says Maritain. Nevertheless, since the data of the senses are elaborated by the

131
Romina Aina, "Maritain on Education and Freire on Liberation: Towards an Authentic Transformation,"
in Logos 1,1 (2007), 102.
132
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 60.
powers of the soul and expressed through the imagination, the knowledge housed in the

imagination cannot be reduced to sensory knowledge. The preconscious life of the

intellect is where the intellect, the imagination, and the "powers of desire, love, and

emotion are engaged in common."133 The task of education is one of civilizing the child's

mind, progressively subjecting the imagination to the rule of reason. Not that Maritain

denies the presence, role, or value of imagination in adulthood. On the very contrary:

imagination and intuition constitute precisely that vitality of the spirit to be awakened by

education. It is imagination, says Maxine Greene, that enables us to make new

connections from our own experiences.134 Perhaps Maxine Greene would agree with

Maritain that imagination is what draws us on, what enables us to make new connections

among parts of our experience.135

Childhood is characterized by imagination, which is particularly impressionable

during the early years, Maritain observes. The images of "violence and brutality" that

appeal to the child's most "feral instincts" must be put aside in favor of images of

grandeur and heroism.136 The child's mentality may be compared to that of a primitive

person attracted at first to magic, but, little by little, taming their imagination, subjecting

it by the rule of reason.137 Hence, both faculties of a person, sense and imagination, must

be directed in their own specific operation by the intrinsic finality of the human

133
Maritain, Creative Intuition, 117.
134
Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination (California: Jossey-Bass, 1995), 30.
135
Ibid.
136
Maritain, The Education of Man, 107.
137
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 60.
intellect.138

In Gutek's opinion, Maritain argues that early education is the process of

civilizing the child's mind by initiating a transition from the imagined to the reasoned, as

he works to formulate ideas about the external world.139 The teacher's role will be that of

awakening the child's creative imagination, and of conducting the child into a system of

rational knowledge. Here, D'Souza concludes that the power of unification residing in the

imagination comports important implications for religious education. He thinks that a

substantial aspect of the spiritual life depends upon the powers and the influence of the

imagination, and that the education of this faculty is a crucial part of Christian religious

education.140

For Maritain, the vitality and intuitiveness of spirit are quick in the young child,

as they have not yet been underpinned and organized by the exercise of reason. They

enjoy a kind of lucid freedom. But the immature workings of instinct and the violence of

nature make them capable of intense resentment, wickedness, and manifold perversion.

Leo W. Ward claims that the child's own intuitions, their personal grasping of ideas and

problems, and their "mysterious identity," are prime considerations if we are to

understand Maritain141 in his contention that that the use of reason is needed here.

For Maritain, what matters most is a support of the child's development in the

mind's "intuition," and in its discriminating and creative spiritual energies.142 Special

138
Maritain, Creative Intuition, 75-80.
139
Gutek, "Jacques Maritain and John Dewey," 25.
140
D'Souza, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 389.
141
Ward, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 213.
142
Maritain, Creative Intuition, 75-80.
emphasis should be laid on the fact that the teacher has a duty to be involved in the

awakening of the child's conscience and in a solid formation of the spirit by liberating the

intuitive power of the pupil."143 The freeing of the intuitive power is achieved in the soul

through the object grasped, says Maritain, then the germ of insights arises from

experience, imagination, a kind of spiritual feeling.144

How to free intuitive power? It is brought about by the active role of the teacher

by moving forward along the paths of spontaneous interest and natural curiosity, by

grounding the exercise of memory in intelligence, and primarily by giving courage, by

listening a great deal, and by causing the youth to trust and give expression to those

spontaneous poetic or noetic impulses of their own which seem to them fragile and

bizarre.145

Maritain certainly agreed with Dewey on the idea of 'learning by doing;' but for

Maritain, the child also learns 'by not doing,' by seeing and by what he often calls

insights. Leo R. Ward, paraphrasing Maritain, says that genuine human knowledge begins

with insights and intuitions.146 What a precious gift a child is!

For Maritain, it is mainly in this second stage of adolescence that the natural

impulse is to be taken into account by education, both by "stimulation and by disciplining

reason."147 The state of the adolescent is a transition state on the way of man/woman to

the universe. In the adolescent, the potential for intellectual judgment is present, still

143
Maritain, Pour une Philosophic 139.
144
Maritain, The Education of Man, 61.
145
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 43.
146
Ward, "Maritain's Philosophy of Education," 203-204.
147
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 63.
 129

developing, but not yet acquired. The knowledge which has to be developed in the

adolescent is knowledge appealing to the natural powers and gift of the mind; it is natural

reason. Maritain affirms that there is a natural and instinctive impulse toward truth, which

must be shaped little by little to critical reflection.148

Natural intelligence, as Maritain defines it, is a "real, integrated, and articulate,

though imperfect, understanding of the nature and meaning of that knowledge which is

proper to men in possession of the intellectual virtues."149 The significance of this is the

empowerment of students to act and not merely receive instructions. Hence, Maritain

emphasizes that "in dealing with the universal knowledge, liberal education must be at

the level of natural intelligence; it must use the natural intelligence's own approach,"

rather than encyclopedic inculcation.150

It is this abiding internal disposition that enables us to grasp the meaning of

science or art in the specific truth or beauty it offers us. "I should say that the youth is to

learn and know music in order to understand the meaning of music rather than to become

a composer."151 This is possible if youth grasp this truth or beauty by the natural power

and gifts of their mindincluding their intuitive capacityrather than tending toward

mere material erudition and atomized memorization. Therefore, truth is the inspiring

force needed in the education of youth.152

148
Ibid., 62
149
Maritain, The Education of Man, 49.
150
Ibid., 50.
151
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 63.
152
Ibid., 62.
 C. The Education of Women
In his famous essay on The Education of Women, Maritain implies the duality of

feminine and masculine qualities in a complete human being, saying, "In the order of the

spirit, these qualities are complementary.'"53 Here he cites a few examples, such as: man

is gifted in the function of judgment; or a woman is gifted in those of intuition, and in

having a deeper sense of her own mission with respect to culture. Besides, women are

usually less gifted than men for constructive syntheses and the inventive work of reason,

but they possess over them the advantage of a more vital and organic feeling for

knowledge. Women have a greater need of unity; they are gentler and more

compassionate than are men.154

For Gloria Durka, feminism is undoubtedly the most sweeping revolution of our

times. An acknowledgement of the value of women as persons is restricted by sexist

language, and "sexist religious language distorts women's images of God."155 But since

Maritain's conception of woman is that of being an image of God, made of flesh and

spirit and having supernatural ends, then the risk of women's exclusion from society

through sexist language disappears, since, in this comparison, God is neuter, without sex.

When we begin to recognize the real value of women in a religious educational setting,

we open up many possibilities and horizons. We are giving women not only a place, but

the dignity they deserve for simply being what they are, and then, through education,

153
Maritain, The Education of Man, 157.
154
Ibid., 157.
155
Gloria Durka, "The Religious Journey of Women: The Educational Task," in Religious Education 11', 2
(1982), 163-166.
 131

shape them to become what they really are.

Maritain had a deep respect for women, and recognized that, when young women

enter the realm of knowledge, they have an intellectual passion, and are "more ardent and

have a love of truth"more disinterested than are young men. When women love truth,

they love it in order to bring it down into life itself, says Maritain. When they love

philosophy, it is because it helps them discover themselves and the meaning of existence.

Maritain admits that perhaps the young women of this time do not appreciate the long

endeavors and sufferings that have been necessary in order to bring the human person, in

woman as in man, to a consciousness of its dignity.156

According to Maritain, Christianity has played a great part in this story. The

emancipation of women began when the Gospel was preached to all, male and female, as

to beings called to the same divine life and the same liberty of the children of God ( Gal

3:28). There are several different positions in this respect. For instance, Catherine M.

LaCugna, argues that feminism derives from an authentic "religious insight," inasmuch at

it manifests the desire for genuine communion between "women and men in Jesus

Christ."157 For Mary Boys, feminist thinking in education and theology helps us "reshape

our understanding of religious education."158 It is crucial to include women, and hear their

voices, if what we seek is a balanced and coherent understanding of religious education.

It is eminent women who have a voice, as Dorothy Sayers once said apropos of this

156
Maritain, The Education of Man, 157.
157
Catherine M. LaCugna, Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective (San
Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 2-3.
158
Mary C. Boys, Educating in Faith (Ohio: Academic Renewal Press, 1989), 159.
Christian perspective.

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the cradle and last at
the cross. They had never known a man like this Man there never has
been such another. . . . Nobody could possibly guess from the words and
deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature.159

In some of Maritain's reflections about North America, he sees it as a country appearing

as the privileged land of youth, and the privileged land of womanhood, where

womanhood is honored, and its liberty and dignity are respected in a more ample and

uncompromising way than in many other countries.160 Maritain also points out that

women in North America have a deep sense of their own mission with respect to culture,

and the teaching of young women appears significant in the American way of life.

Maritain underlines equality of rights for women as a great human conquest, and

proclaims that "the same instruction and like opportunities of access to the highest fields

of knowledge should be given to young ladies and young men."161

The relationship between man and woman, because of the complementarities of

the sexes, is not just a biological fact for procreation. Also, and above all, it is a

psychological and spiritual fact that humanity is complete in either one of them. The

difference between the male and female contribution to culture and civilization is

necessary for the progress of society, but it is likewise necessary in the field of religious

education.

159
Minear, Images of the Church, 262.
16,1
Maritain, Reflections on America, 83-95.
161
Maritain. The Education of Man, 156.
 6. The Role of the Teacher
For Maritain, education, like medicine, is "ars cooperativa naturae,"162 where the

teacher plays a secondary role in learning, encouraging learners' intellectual dispositions

in the same way that physicians help the body heal itself. Therefore, teachers in the

process of being educated must be committed to offering the mind either examples from

experience, or else particular statements which the student is "able to judge by virtue" of

what he already knows, and from which he will go on to "discover broader horizons."163

In this same process, teachers must attempt to see that students' power of intuition be

awakened164 through the acquisition of knowledge, and solid formation of the mind, by

their moving forward along "the paths of spontaneous interest and natural curiosity," by

grounding the exercise of memory in intelligence and, primarily, by inspiring courage, by

listening a great deal and by "causing the youth to trust."165

Robert Hutchins noted: "Educators cannot permit the students to dictate the

course of study unless they are prepared to confess that they are nothing but chaperons,

supervising an aimless trial and error process which is chiefly valuable."166 Teachers are

facilitators. They have intellectual and moral authority, and must act as guides who

recognize and nurture what Maritain termed students' fundamental dispositions. In the

learning process, the child is not a passive receptacle for, if we may be permitted the

expression, testable trivia. On the contrary, nothing should be required of a child

162
Maritain, Pour une Philosophic 165.
163
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 31.
164
Ibid., 45.
,65
Ibid., 43.
166
Robert Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), 70-71.
 134

"without an explanation and without making sure that the child has understood." The so-

called teaching process is more about "finding the truth than searching for it."167 When it

is religious educators who are involved in this process, the ability to learn from others is

of paramount urgency for a religious-educational setting. It is extremely important to

foster a respectful environment rather than merely aiming at forms of indoctrination.

Most scholars see Maritain as radically opposed to Dewey, but Wade A. Carpenter

believes that there is little in common between them. Dewey and Maritain agree that

teachers must be intelligent and informed: in other words, not just trained, not just

"prepared, but in the process of being educated."168 But Clarence J. Karier says: both may

well agree on a specific educational practice, but never on the nature of man (woman), or

on the nature of the good society.169 A fundamental principle in religious education is that

of unity, not division, and this can be applied when analyzing different perspectives. In

this sense of the true role of the teacher, says Viotto, only God is the authentic educator,

and the Gospel is our reminder of this (Matt. 23:6-10).17

A. Teachers are Artists

The art of education consists "in inspiring, schooling and pruning, teaching and

enlightening."171 Teachers, then, are artists. The old analogy of education that presents the

teacher as a sculptor imposing form on the formless marble of the student, is rejected by
167
Ibid., 157.
168
Wade A. Carpenter, "Christian Suggestions for the Education of Teachers: Maritain and Dewey," in
Educational Horizons 83,4 (Summer 2005), 292.
169
Clarence J. Karier, The Individual, Society and Education (Illinois: Board of Trustees of the University
of Illinois, 1986), 185.
170
Piero Viotto, "Le Personnalisme Pedagogique", 214.
171
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 35.
Maritain. He prefers the analogy of the physician, who exerts real causality in healing a

sick person "by imitating the ways of nature herself in her operations, and by helping

nature, by providing appropriate diet and remedies that nature herself uses, according to

her own dynamism, toward a biological equilibrium."172 According to Maritain's

metaphor, a teacher is comparable to a physician and to an artist. To be precise, the

teacher practices science and art.

Hunter McEwan analyzes Dewey's opinion about teaching as an art that

culminates in a kind of therapeutic package,173 and points out that this is very different

from Maritain's point of view. Dewey and Maritain would agree that teaching is an art

that requires the harmonizing of aims and means, but would disagree inasmuch as

Dewey's conception of art refers to a process of doing or making.174

Within this art, says Maritain, teachers facilitate the process of education by

seeking to create the conditions for the students to find truth and wisdom, as well as by

awakening and heeding the inner resources of the learner.175 Now intuitive power is

liberated and strengthened in the student.176 D'Souza thinks that "every art has an object

to be achieved," and that, in the case of teaching, it is the education of the child (or adult)

which has its own end. Thus, he argues, "teaching is a practical activity" which seeks

practical results.177 We might conclude that this art is an ongoing process even today,

172
Ibid., 30.
173
Hunter McEwan, "Dewey's Idea of the Teacher as Artist," in Conference Presentation 2007 (Australia:
Philosophy of Education Society, 2007), 1.
174
Ibid., 1-2.
175
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 35.
176
Ibid., 44.
177
D'Souza, "Philosophy, Philosophy of Education," 260.
 136

when educators, and especially religious educators, are artists, in that they contribute to

the shaping of the conditions of the educational environment, and facilitate a personal

encounter between the learner and God in a multicultural setting.

For Maritain, teachers cooperate with students in their learning inasmuch as they

act as instrumental causes, although not as efficient causes, of learning. A teacher's duty

is not to mold the child's mind arbitrarily, as potters mold lifeless clay. Teachers assist

the mind, and the living spiritual beings which they are endeavoring to develop in that

process of development must be the principal agents. "In like manner, the teacher's task

is to co-operate with God."178

Maritain speaks of imagination when referring to child learning. But Maxime

Greene insists that any encounter with actual human beings who are attempting to learn

how to learn requires imagination on the part of the teachers;179 and that, if one is to be an

artist, imagination is a useful tool to have. This is why Greene invites the teacher to set it

free. For Greene, it is imagination that is important.180 For Maritain, it is love that makes a

teacher.

B. Teaching's Domain of Truth

Maritain's definition of truth is that of St. Thomas Aquinas: "Truth is the

conformity of the mind with being, according as it says that what is, is, and that what is

not, is not."181 Thomas is speaking of a conformity established between the being

178
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 43.
179
Greene, Releasing the Imagination, 14.
180
Ibid., 31.
181
Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, 88.
 137

possessed by the thing and the being affirmed by the mind. Dewey disagrees with

Maritain, writing: "Truth means that the consistent idea of judgment states something

existing outside its own existence."182 In Maritain, the worth of evidence exists before that

of judgment. In Dewey, truth exists primarily in the agreement of statement with existing

thing. The meaning of truth that Maritain stands for is not about consensus; it is about

evidence. The consequence is, as Madonna Murphy states, that, in Dewey, truth is

relative, and that this is why Maritain fails to see how Dewey could ever really teach or

prepare the human mind to think for itself.183

Maritain maintains that the primary goal of teaching is to develop in the learner a

grasp of meaning and truth, rather than the acquisition of science or art itself . m Modern

educators like Shulman argue only that "to teach is first to understand."185 Maritain can

agree with Shulman, but takes a new approach. The domain of teaching is the domain of

truth. Teachers who are not fostering this finding of truth, and the process of liberation,

may well produce sophists, says Maritaindisarmed, talkative minds who are well

informed by words and opinions, but afraid to face reality.186

It is clear, then, that teachers must prepare the human mind to think for itself, by

appealing to the child's/adult's power of understanding. This principle is fundamental in

religious education, and a religious educator has a special mission here: the mission of

182
John Dewey, "Truth and Consequences" in Pragmatism Old and New: Selected Writings, ed. Susan
Haack (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2006), 342.
183
Murphy, "Maritain Explains," 286.
184
Gutek, "Maritain and John Dewey," 254.
185
Lee S. Shulman, "Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform," Harvard Educational
Review 57,1 (1987), 14.
186
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 53.
 138

respecting the soul as well as the body of the child, of maintaining a sense of his/her

innermost essence and internal resource, and of entertaining a sort of sacred and loving

attention to his/her mysterious identity.187That is why Maritain advises teachers to

channel and guide children's interest to truth, because it is truth that sets minds free, as

has been said above, and this provides unity and integration for any philosophy of

education that is developed.

In the conclusion of his Education at the Crossroads, Maritain wrote that

American education, precisely, finds itself at the crossroads. It must liberate itself from

instrumentalism, and from the philosophy of pragmatism, which is "but a hindrance to its

inspiration," and which dulls "the sense of truth in our minds."188 This statement of

Maritain's led Gutek to see Martain's liberation from pragmatist philosophy as the

substitution of a profoundly personalist integral humanism.189 But Maritain speaks not of

a replacement, but of a "profoundly personalist and humanist educational venture,"the

adventure of pushing forward with renewed power to a "new work of pioneering."190

C. The Christian Teacher

For Maritain, the task of the Christian teacher is above all one of liberation,

whether he/she acts as a physician cooperating with nature, or whether he/she becomes an

artist in the educational process. A Christian teacher allows the student to conquer his/her

own internal and spiritual freedom, by developing his/her intelligence and forming his/

187
Ibid., 9.
188
Ibid., 118.
189
Gutek, "Maritain and Dewey," 251.
190
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 118.
her will. A Christian teacher teaches, inspires, disciplines, instructs, clarifies and

especially, fosters in the child the natural virtues (intellectual and moral), as well as the

supernatural virtues, so that the child may act freely and responsibly. In other words, a

Christian teacher, for Maritain, helps the child attain perfection as a man/woman by

appreciating in his/her, whoever he/she is, the great value of the supernatural life. In his

own words:

Christian education does not only lay stress on the natural spirituality of
which man [woman] is capable; it does not only found its entire work on
the inner vitality of human nature; it makes its entire work rest also on the
vital energies of grace and on the three theological virtues, faith, hope and
charity.191

According to Piero Viotto, the Christian teacher that Maritain presents has two different

vocations: a spiritual vocation as a member of the Catholic Church, and a temporal

vocation as a worker in the world. For Viotto, being a Christian teacher means respecting

work, and combining "work... with our own spirituality." Now being in a school

becomes a "kind of ministry." The Christian teacher's personality is more important than

the educational methods she uses.192 Maritain's description of the teacher's role and

importance agrees with the descriptions given by other eminent voices.

The Christian teacher, in the words of Pope Paul VI, must work to "[imbue] the

students with the spirit of Christ, and to [...] strive to excel in pedagogy."193 For Gloria

Durka, because teaching is a form of public service to others, and because it provides a

191
Maritain, Education of Man, 131.
192
Viotto, Per una Filosofia dell'Educazione Secondo, 228-230.
193
Paul VI, "Declaration on Christian Education," in Gravissimun Educationis (October 28,1965).
 140

person with a "sense of identity and fulfillment," it is to be considered a vocation.194

Furthermore, according to John Elias, the deepest level of a vocation as a teacher is that

of "love and friendship," which that author has emphasized over the years, meaning "the

nobility and beauty of genuine love and friendship" between teacher and disciple.195

Therefore, in La Verne's summary, the mission of a Christian teacher is embodied in the

acrostic "TEACH:" Training leaders, Equip parents, Assess and evaluate existing

ministries, Challenge excellence, And meet needs holistically.196

Maritain emphasizes that the teacher of religion should believe and live what he/

she teaches. Indeed, the Christian teacher is such because he/she has a definite identity. In

this sense, Paul J. Sachs states that the teacher's identity stands at the core of the teaching

profession, also providing a framework in which teachers can construct their own ideas of

"how to be," "how to act," and "how to understand" their work and their place in

society.197 For Maritain, this identity of the Christian teacher is the living of a life

according to Christian principles when teaching. This mission is well summarized by J.

Elias, who describes it as that of being an "instructor and spiritual guide." One

understands, then, why Maritain considers God to be the supreme teacher. In fact, states

194
Gloria Durka, The Teacher's Calling: A Spirituality for Those Who Teach (New York: Paulist Press,
2002), 6-7.
195
Elias, "Reflections on the Vocation of a Religious Educator," in Religious Education 98, 3 (2003), 309.
196
Tolbert La Verne, Teaching Like Jesus: A Practical Guide to Christian Education in Your Church
(Michigan: Zondervan, 2000), 22.
197
Paul J. Sachs, "Teacher Education and the Development of Professional Identity: Learning to Be a
Teacher," in Connecting Policy and Practice: Challenges for Teaching and Learning in Schools and
Universities, eds. P. Denicolo and M. Kompf (Oxford: Routledge, 2005), 5.
 141

La Verne, teaching becomes a ministry, and "Jesus becomes the model."198 Yes, for La

Verne, Jesus is the most effective teacher who ever lived and taught.

For Douglas Wilson, a Christian teacher is the one who facilitates maturation in

the image of God, and thus growth into true manhood and womanhood, thoroughly

grounded in the Christian worldview.199Maritain also emphasizes the fact that a person

cannot be isolated from society, and that this applies also to the teacher. The same idea is

developed and commented on by Gabriel Moran, who says that, in their mission, teachers

are not aloneany human individual called "teacher" relies on the authority of some

community, and the bond of teaching-learning is a bond between community and

learner.200

Maritain concludes that teachers must guide children in becoming truly human,

and must do so with Christian values such as love, generosity, service, and hope. The true

educator has the important task of centering attention on the inner depths of the human

person and his/her spiritual dynamism.201 It is this dynamism that makes students develop

their own personal convictions. Maritain's desire for a Christian teacher is that he/she

becomes more like Christ. He urges teachers to follow Christ in such a way as to enable

the learner to "see" Him in their daily teaching, as they have the right attitudes, that are

the mark of a "disciple." Christian teachers teach children/adults because they believe

and love Christ and therefore give others access to Christ, the supreme Teacher.

198
La Verne, Teaching Like Jesus, 22.
199
Douglas Wilson, The Case of Classical Christian Education (Illinois: Good News Publishers, 2001), 68.
200
Gabriel Moran, "Revelation as Teaching-Learning," in Religious Education 95, 3 (2000), 269.
201
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 39.
 142

Chapter Four

Philosophy of Education and Religious Education

In the foregoing chapters, I have presented the background and the work of

Jacques Maritain in the area of education. In the present chapter, I shall show how his

philosophy of education can be put into practice in the field of religious education1, and

how religious education has need of the theoretical foundation of this particular

philosophy of education. This application is the contribution of this dissertation virtually

alone, since no major scholarly work has so far been done that would aim to connect

Maritain's philosophy of education with the specific field of religious education2, and

thereby make the case for Maritain's position as still relevant and most useful for

religious education today.

An application of Maritain's philosophy of education to religious education will

have important consequences. It will integrate all the dimensions of the human person,

and will raise our consciousness of the natural and supernatural ends of the human

person, guiding that person through the educational process. It will also imply a spiritual

liberation, as Maritain urges, fostering the spiritual life, and including theology as part of

a curriculum, because a religious educator is also a spiritual teacher. Finally, the

teaching-learning process will be opened to new horizons, such as a sponsorship of

people toward a maturity of faith, their reinforcement in giving expression to a

1
In regard to religious education, I shall be referring specifically to Christian religious education in its
Catholic expression.
2
I have found only one article on this: Mario O. D'Souza, "The Christian Philosophy of Education and
Christian Religious Education."
transcendent dimension of life, their empowerment in their quest for God, their education

for a life according to religious and moral values, encouragement in their faith tradition,

and finally, their common bond with other religious views, regardless of the identity of

the particular religious community with which a bond has been, or is to be, struck.

Maritain's philosophy of education as applied to the field of religious education

provides a suitable foundation for such education, giving it direction and unity, taking as

its point of departure the philosophical and religious idea of the human being, which

encompasses the affirmation of God as Creator and the human being as image and

creature of God, in order to re-establish the relationship broken by sin but made possible

by grace.

1. The Importance of a Philosophy of Education in Religious Education

Religious education needs a unifying philosophy of education that helps to

understand the nature, aims, and values of religious education, the role and mission of

religious educators, the religious nature of the students, the adequate methods for a

discovery of the religious meaning of life and of acceptable practices for finding God in

the community, and a suitable and integral curriculum for a multicultural, pluralistic,

global, and postmodern world. Maritain's philosophy of education is well suited to this

particular need of religious education, as a useful tool for the bestowal of integration,

direction, and foundation of Christian religious education in particular. A philosophy of

education implies a serious critical thinking about the nature and possibilities of

education in view of the known nature of the human being, of nature, and of God.
 144

Without such critical and methodological reflection, religious education will be unable to

stand as a real science that will help humanity understand the world better and live in a

better way.

The importance of a philosophy of education cannot be overestimated. Although

authors like Allen J. Moore may think that religious education should be considered as

part of the social sciences,3 it is clear that philosophy of education is not part of a social

science, although it does deal with social issues. Neither can we consider philosophy of

education a mere reflection on the work and writings of "the great educators," as Kevin

Nichols" contends.4 Such a view is contrary to Maritain's consideration of the nature of

philosophy of education. Only saying that it is a "reflection" is not saying enough to

characterize Maritain's philosophy of education. In fact, the presentation of Maritain's

work in the preceding chapter of this dissertation aims to correct this false view of

philosophy of education as being a mere reflection of 'great educators' writings. It is not a

mere "history of educators," but a systematic reflection and analysis of the essence,

content, aims, and principal agents of philosophy of education and its social implications.

The relevance of Maritain's work lies in the development of a philosophy of

education that consists in focusing on the most important issues in religious education:

the nature of the student as a person, aims of education as the conquest of internal

spiritual freedom, the liberal and humanistic education, and the unity of the curriculum

fostering theology and spiritual life among other things.

3
Allen J. Moore, "Religious Education as a Discipline," in Changing Patterns of Religious Education, ed.
Marvin J. Taylor (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 102.
4
Kevin Nichols, "Roots in Religious Education," in Priorities in Religious Education, ed. Brenda Watson
(Bristol: The Falmer Press, 1992), 113.
 145

A. Religious Education and Culture

Philosophy of education, as defined in chapter one, is the disciplined reflection on

the questions of life that human persons might pose to themselves. Religion has always

been an essential part of the human being's life and therefore of culture. That has been the

view of Maritain. In fact, Joel A. Carpenter, referring to Maritain, says: "in Maritain,

Catholicism is not merely a religion, it is a culture."5 Therefore, philosophy of education

demonstrates the importance of religious education within a culture, so that religious

education cannot be considered as something secondary or unnecessary in the whole field

of education.

If we consider the definition of "religion," we find that authors differ on their

views. Thus, by way of example, Thomas Groome calls religion "a human quest for the

transcendent dimension of life;"6 Paul Tillich relates religion to "an ultimate ground of

being;"7 Monica McGoldrick says that "people use religion as a means of coping with

stress or powerlessness."8 A different view is taken by James Michael Lee, who defines

religion as "the way persons live their life unto God." 9 Lee's view seems to be more

adequate, as it takes into account not only the human element, but God, as well. Religion

is "about" re-uniting humankind with God. This is the point of view on religion that

Maritain considers in his study on education. For Maritain, the notion of God is
5
Joel A. Carpenter, "Review Essay: Religion in American Academic Life," in Religion and American
Culture?,,! (1998), 274.
6
Thomas Groome, Christian Religious Education: Sharing our Story and Vision (San Francisco: Harper
and Row Publishers, 1980), 22.
7
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 5-6.
8
Monica McGoldrick, Ethnicity and Family Therapy (New York: The Guilford Press, 2005), 22.
9
James Michael Lee, Forging a Better Religious Education in the Third Millennium (Birmingham, Ala:
Religious Education Press, 2000), 256.
connected with human kind and with culture10 and affirms that "If God exists, He is the

center, not I."11 If God is not the center for us, we run the risk of considering "religious

education a mere political activity,"12 as Thomas Groome concludes.

If we analyze the word "religion" in its etymological sense: re-ligare (Latin), "to

bind again," we come up with the idea of re-uniting human persons with their Creator. In

fact, the human person and God become important elements in Maritain's philosophy of

education because they provide a framework for religious educators. Maritain is aware

that the crisis of our civilization has to do with the split of religion and life, for this

division causes a spiritual disorder from which we all suffer today.13

Now, if we consider the term of "education" as coming from ducare (Latin) "to

lead," and the prefix e (Latin) "out of," "from;" we come up with the concept that

"education" means a process by which a person is "brought up" or "enlightened" or

"instructed." Thus, "religious education" appears as the process by which we attempt to

re-unite human persons with their true identity and mission. This task is essential to our

culture. Indeed, "Nothing is more important for each of us, or more difficult, than to

become a man,"14 as Maritain stated in his first pages of his work, Education at the

Crossroads, when elaborating his philosophy of education.

This idea, of becoming who we are, is akin to the major purpose of religious

education and the unification of religion and life. Any attempt to respond to the question
10
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 96.
11
Maritain, Court Traite de ['Existence et de I'Existant (Paris: Hartmann, 1947), 77.
12
Thomas H. Groome, Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral
Ministry (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 12.
13
Maritain, The Education of Man, 11.
14
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 1.
of who we are requires some deep reflection, and cannot be long suppressed. Religious

education attempts to nurture awareness, and lived expression, the human capacity for the

transcendent, so that persons may come to realize their "being," in relation with God,

self, others, and the world.

But philosophy of education points out not only the importance of religious

education as an essential part of our culture; it also calls our attention to the fact that

religious education needs to be related and understood in connection with culture. In fact,

religious education develops within a culture, a culture that interweaves diversity, which

through that same religious education can be honored and respected. It is important that

religious education see how it is related to the cultural situation, to the Church's life and

to the educational process.15

B. Theory and Praxis

Philosophy of education, as a disciplined reflection on religious education, makes

us aware of the interplay that must prevail between theory and praxis. In fact, theory of

education, like philosophy of education, is indispensable for the practice of religious

education. This interface, between theoretical knowledge and practical actions, is

emphasized by Maritain. He affirms that theory must lead to praxis:

Philosophy, taken in itself, is above utility. And for this reason philosophy
is of the utmost necessity for men. It reminds them of the supreme utility
of those things which do not deal with means, but with ends.16

And praxis must be guided by theory:

15
D. Campell Wyckoff, The Gospel and Christian Education (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959), 7.
16
Maritain, On the Use of Philosophy, 6.
 148
We think before acting and nothing can limit the range of thought: our
practical decisions depend on the stand we take on the ultimate questions
that human thought is able to ask.17

For Maritain, any philosopher in society, including a philosopher of education, directs our

attention to what is eternal in the human person, and stimulates our thirst for pure

knowledge about the nature of things, nature of the mind, of the human person, and of

God. Maritain presents a clear distinction between theory (philosophy of education) and

practice (religious education), and posits the possibility of relating the one to the other:

for him, this connection between theory and practice is not an "either/or," but a "both/

and." Maritain's interplay between theory and practice in this area contrasts with other

positions, which tend to exalt either practice over theory or vice versa. But Maritain's

interplay enables religious education to earn the academic standing it deserves. In fact,

according to James Michael Lee, theory provides an explanation of the principles

underlying a particular practice.18 Theory and practice are not opposite but

complementary. It would be a great mistake to fail to relate a philosophy of education

such as proposed by Maritain to the religious life of humankind and to the process of

education.

Burgess recognizes that the establishment of an appropriate relationship between

theory and practice is a perennial problem in religious education.19 But that difficulty does

not mean that we have to divorce theory from praxis. Maritain succeeded in combining

theory and praxis in his work on education. In Maritain's philosophy of education there is
17
Ibid., 7.
18
James Michael Lee, The Flow of Religious Instruction: A Social Science Approach (Birmingham Ala.:
Religious Education Press, 1973), 39-43.
19
Harold W. Burgess, Invitation to Religious Education (Mishawaka, Ind.: Religious Education Press,
1975), 5.
a meaningful theoretical discourse, and at the same time the application of practical

principles. As an example, his Education at the Crossroads is divided into two theoretical

sections, "The Aims of Education" and "The Dynamics of Education;" and three practical

sections, "The Humanities," "Liberal Education," and "The Trials of Present-Day

Education." And on the first page of the book he states: "The job of education is not to

shape the Platonist man-in himself, but to shape a particular child belonging to a given

nation, a given social environment, a given historical age."20

Some religious educators have deepened the study of the relationship between

theory and practice in the broad field of religious education, such as Harold W. Burgess,

who wrote his entire doctoral dissertation on the interplay of theory and praxis.21 We can

mention other authors: Mary C. Boys,22 Thomas H. Groome,23Timothy Lines,24 and

Richard Robert Osmer,25 and . In particular, John Wilson claims a philosophy of

Christian religious education as the application of a philosophical method to interesting

problems in the practice of Christian religious education.26 These authors point out an

important idea: theory and praxis have to be related. Even when these authors do not

label theory as philosophy of education, the interplay between theory and praxis is still

affirmed. More specifically, John L. Elias, in "The Foundations and Practice of Adult

20
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 1.
21
See Burgess, Invitation to Religious Education.
22
See Boys, Educating in Faith.
23
See Groome, Sharing Faith.
24
See Timothy Lines, Systemic Religious Education (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1987).
25
See Richard Robert Osmer, A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office in the Church
(Westminster: John Knox Press, 1990).
26
John Wilson, Preface to the Philosophy of Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 6.
 150

Religious Education,"21 presents theoretical approaches that attempt to connect

foundations with practice in adult religious education.

Thinking about religious education without a philosophy of education seeks to

avoid the simple, basic question: how can we teach people to be religious in a particular

way? The action of reflection on that question may result in a theory that will guide the

task of religious education. Whether religious education addresses a particular

community of religious faith or is merely academic instruction, whether we have an inter-

faith dialogue or a celebration, we need a theory for guidance.

Theory is present as a foundation of practice. Maritain's philosophy of education

not only gives a foundation to religious education, but also direction and awareness of the

natural and supernatural ends of the human person, in how to reach those ends and how

to establish a hierarchy of values to be fostered through education.

2. Religious Education as an Integrative Education

The philosophical reflection of Maritain on education as presented in chapter

three showed that the starting point is his philosophical-religious idea of the human

person. Applied to the field of religious education, this idea can yield the formulation of

an educational model that integrates all the dimensions of the human person, having as an

ultimate goal the religious fulfillment of the person. Using Maritain's approach renders

religious education a process that seeks to foster the integrity of the student at different

levels: it educates the human person as a whole, considering the human and religious

27
John L. Elias, The Foundations and Practice of Adult Religious Education (Malabar, Fla.: Robert E.
Krieger Publishing Co., 1982), Chapter 6.
 151

dimension; it seeks to re-integrate the person with the Creator; and it seeks to integrate all

people in a community or society, sharing a common faith in God and a common interest

in the welfare of humankind.

That Maritain's approach can indeed foster an integrative educative theory is

recognized by scholars: Mario O. D' Souza claims that the reason why Maritain's

philosophy of education can make an important contribution to Christian religious

education is that "both are concerned with the dimensions of an integral education."28 In

fact, an integral education, as conceived by Maritain, takes into account all of the aspects

of the person: the human, the religious, and the social.

In Maritain's philosophy of education, not only is the human person considered as

a point of departure, but includes that philosophy's end or goal, because the human

person is considered as an image of God. In this regard, the idea of integral education is

completed: "A person possesses absolute dignity because he is in direct relationship with

the realm of being, truth, goodness, and beauty, and with God, and it is only with these

that he can arrive at this complete fulfillment."29 The Christian image of the human

person as a creature of God made of matter and spirit, capable of knowing God through

faith and love, "wounded by sin but capable by grace to love God in each person,"30

inspires philosophy of education in Maritain and becomes extremely important in the

practice of religious education, since, by definition, religious education focuses on the

relationship between the human and the divine.

28
D' Souza, "The Christian Philosophy of Education", 11.
29
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 8.
30
Ibid., 7.
 Maritain's theory does not reduce religious education to a sectarian or limited

view that rejects other possible approaches. The truth is that Maritain's philosophy of

education can integrate humanistic and religious models of religious education: "the most

orthodox religious forms of thought [added] to the mere humanistic ones, makes it

possible for a Christian philosophy of education, if it is well founded and rationally

developed, to play an inspiriting part in the concert."31 The misfortune of some

educational theories, according to Charles A. Fecher, is that "it has concentrated almost

exclusively on the training of the former [the human aspect] and virtually ignores the

awakening of the latter [the religious aspect] ,"32 When the educator sees the human

person only as an individual, he "reduces the education and progress of man to the mere

freeing of the material ego."33 Thus, the "human awakening" to God frees the personality,

and enables it to express those aspirations that are most profoundly human.

A. Theocentric Humanism in Religious Education

A theocentric humanism is a humanism that acknowledges the human person's

origin and last end. Maritain also calls a theocentric humanism an "integral humanism,"

which:

would consider man in all his natural grandeur and weakness, in the entirety
of his wounded being inhabited by God, in the full reality of nature, sin, and
sanctity. Such humanism would recognize all that is irrational in man, in
order to tame it to reason, and all that is supra-rational, in order to have
reason vivified by it and to open man to the descent of the divine into him.34

31
Ibid.
32
Fecher, The Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, 278.
33
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 35.
34
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 194.
 153

Maritain's familiar phrase, "an integral education for an integral humanism,"35 situates his

philosophy of education firmly in the humanist tradition. It is because Maritain saw the

split between religion and life in his contemporary era, that he urged a reorientation of the

modern mind toward fundamental truths. The reorientation of "theocentric humanism"

proposed by Maritain can be useful in religious education because religious education is a

discipline that leads the person into the dimension of faith, and encourages people to live

out their vocation of reaching God as the ultimate end.

The search for the religious fulfillment of the person is not alien to the reality of

the social factor. In fact, for Maritain, the end of temporal society is to foster the growth

of each person "to a level of material, intellectual, and moral life," and to enhance "the

progressive conquest of his full life as a person and of his spiritual freedom."36 Hence, the

spiritual or religious task is not contrary to the task of developing human society; rather,

the former is achieved through the latter. Maritain's model of theocentric humanism

supposes a civilization that is human and of evangelical inspiration integrally, as well as

having its ultimate end in the possession of God. Contrary to a theocentric humanism, a

rational humanism or a materialistic humanism or a political humanism would be, based

on certain assumptions, by definition, a contradiction in terms, since it would deny the

basic and essential religious dimension of the human person.

Religious education must foster and develop models37 for helping persons to make

sense of the multiplicity of religious presences surrounding them without giving up their
35
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 88.
36
Maritain, True Humanism, 134.
37
See Harold W. Burguess, Models of Religious Education: Theory and Practice in Historical and
Contemporary Perspective (Nappanee, Ind.: Evangel Publishing House, 2001).
 154

own personal faith. The theocentric humanism proposed by Maritain seeks to transform

the world, or, as Maritain says, "to transform it interiorly by the sense of communion and

fraternal friendship."38 Actually, this theocentric humanism addresses any religious faith,

because religion39 by definition believes in the existence of God, and Maritain makes

this common understanding evident.

By recognizing that "the center for man is God,"40Maritain envisions his new

Christendom as being pluralist: "A Christian body politic in the conditions of modern

times can only be a Christian body politic within whose walls unbelievers and believers

live together and share in the same temporal common good."41 This principle is crucial to

religious education: to create bonds with other faiths and to share a common goal as well.

The goal of pluralism in Maritain is to maintain a vitally Christian orientation in the new

political order while assuring justice and freedom for non-Christian groups. Maritain was

speaking fifty years ago, and for his own time he was offering quite an original idea, and

it proved prophetic. Part of his originality is a recognition that the new Christendom

demands "a radical change not only in the material but also in the moral structure and in

the spiritual principles of the economy."42 Therefore Maritain is addressing not only

spiritual issues, but a practical application of them.

Karl Barth (1886-1968), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) and Francis Schaeffer

(1912-84) are representatives of a Christ-centered humanism different from the

38
Maritain, True Humanism, 187.
39
Buddhism and Taoism are exceptions.
40
Ibid., 19.
41
Ibid., 166.
42
Ibid., 190-91.
 155

theocentric humanism of Maritain. These three authors advocate Christ as the supreme

center, and their humanism regards the human being as unique in all of creation because

they put their attention on the redemptive work of Christ in history.43 As a Christian, one

might agree with that view; but Maritain's theocentric humanism is more suitable for the

context of religious education, since it becomes inclusive of all possible religions, united

in the conception of God, and not only that of Christ.

On the mere anthropological level, the theocentric humanism of Maritain is also

useful for creating an educational theory because it promotes a true and sincere dialogue

and fraternity among persons. As Maritain was aware that the modern age was divorced

from God, from the Gospel, and from the whole vivifying influence of Christianity, he

urged a new social order, a radical transformation of the world's schemes of values

saying: "there is no more revolutionary idea than to propose to men . . . that they must

love one another."44 Humanism in its simplest terms is the idea that a man or woman is

neither an angel nor a beast, but a human person. Maritain's "theocentric humanism"

constitutes a bridge to a deeper understanding of the relationship with God as well as

with our neighbors, where the important basis is love.

For Maritain, "Christian education does not separate divine love from fraternal

love, nor does it separate the effort toward self-perfection and personal salvation of others

[...] Religious knowledge and spiritual life are to be fostered."45 Consequently, the

Christian religious educator must lead the student not only to an intellectual knowledge,
43
Charles M. Home, "Christian Humanism," in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 14, 3
(1971), 185.
44
Jacques Maritain. Theonas (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1921), 139.
45
Maritain, The Education of Man, 132-133.
but also to a "practical knowledge," in the sense that the student must learn to live what is

taught.

The implications for religious education of having a theocentric humanism are

important. First, says Maritain, there is a movement of descent, for God infuses in every

creature goodness and lovability together with being, and has the first initiative in every

good activity. Second, Maritain indicates that there is the movement of ascent, which is

the answer of human persons to God by which they take the second initiative.46 Both

movements, descent and ascent, are needed. However, I should add a third movement:

that of fostering a community of faith where God is present and where we manifest God's

presence through loving our neighbors as we love ourselves and God. With this

theocentric humanism, religious education helps us to become who we really are, as we

discover our true image in and through the community of which we are part, being

witnesses of our own faith in a multicultural, multi-faith global and postmodern world.

In sum, for the sake of the new civilization for which Maritain is fighting, it is

more necessary than ever that education be "the education of man, and education for

freedom, and the formation of freemen for a free commonwealth."47

B. Social Aspect and Context

"Theocentric humanism" also has social and political implications, since this

humanism does not look for a mere industrial civilization, but, as Maritain says, "for a

civilization integrally human and of evangelical inspiration."48 Maritain's ideas focus on

46
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 197.
47
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 102.
48
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 197'.
the reconstruction of our society in rehabilitating the human person in and through God.

In this rehabilitation, religious education takes the core role because it becomes the

vehicle of basic conditions like justice, freedom, respect, peace, and love for our fellow

men and women, as well as for living our faith with and within a community that lives a

theocentric humanism. It was Reinhold Niebuhr himself, in his review of Maritain's True

Humanism, who declared that Maritain is "a profound Catholic philosopher with a

genuine appreciation of the social problem."49

Maritain's philosophy of education connects different elements into a unity:

nature and grace, intellect and will, natural and supernatural destiny, and the human

person and society. The social aspect is so important in Maritain as to occasion his

affirmation that the human person is not only an animal of nature, but one of culture, as

well, "whose race can subsist only within the development of society and civilization."50

This social aspect of the person leads Maritain to the conclusion that education is

to guide man in the evolving dynamism through which he shapes himself

as a human being armed with knowledge, strength of judgment, and
moral virtues while at the same time conveying to him the spiritual
heritage of the nation and the civilization in which he is involved, and
preserving in this way the century-old-achievements of generations.51

Maritain's philosophy of education is designed to free the human person from tendencies

of a philosophy enslaved by science, sociologism, intellectualism, voluntarism, and

pragmatism. These are regarded by Maritain as misconceptions of education.52 His own

49
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Review of True Humanism by Jacques Maritain." In Radical Religion 4 (1939), 45.
5(1
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 2.
51
Ibid., 10.
52
Ibid., 2-24.
philosophy of education, therefore, takes cognizance of the fact that "the most crucial

problem with which our educational system is confronted is not a problem of education,

but of civilization."53

For Maritain the human person is a naturally political animal, in the sense that

society, which is required by nature, is achieved through free consent, and because "the

human person demands the communications of social life through the openness and

generosity proper to intelligence and love as well as through the needs of a human

individual born naked and destitute."54 The social life, for Maritain, tends to emancipate

the human person from the bondage of material nature, by subordinating the individual to

the common good but always in order that the common good flow back upon the

individuals.55 And this superiority of the common good is understood in its true sense

only in the measure that the common good itself implies a reference to the human

person.56 Moreover, this common good in Maritain is not seen as a mere collection of

private goods, but as a "communion in good living."57 With these ideas, religious

education is enriched, and becomes capable of opening up a variety of possibilities in

addressing religious issues in a society that expects clear, coherent and founded answers

to its quests.

Our world is in a process of reshaping politics, cultures and economies,

experiencing globalization and constant change, and this has affected the context in

53
Maritain, The Education of Man, 82.
54
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 14.
55
Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), 60.
56
Ibid., 19-20.
57
Ibid., 41.
which religious education has been developed. This social context has marked new paths,

questions, and a direction for religious education. For instance, population has become

more heterogeneous, being increasingly urbanized and geographically mobile; persons

are judged more in terms of economics than for their own value; women have won a

voice in the professional and intellectual field; but then too, families that have had the

function of religious formation are now in crisis, since they so often change contexts.58

Besides, one may cite the entire issue of peace and justice, which includes problems of

social classes, discrimination, racism, and the absence of solidarity among countries. In

the specific case of adult religious education, the process of socialization59 and the work

dimension of life60 have to be taken into account.

The social context helps determine the forms of religious education within new

forms of learning theories and methodologies without losing sight of the transmission of

tradition. It is clear that religious education always occurs within a social and personal

context; therefore it is possible to share values, beliefs, images, rituals, and even symbols

within a community, addressing the needs of every person, and encouraging that person

to a sharing within the context of other communities and even of the world. For Maritain

this is simple: "Man finds himself by subordinating himself to the group, and the group

attains its goal only by serving man and by realizing that man has secrets which escape

the group and a vocation which is not included in the group."61 Thus, the person as such

58
See Herbert Anderson, The Family Handbook (Louisville: Westminster Knox Press, 1998) and Leif
Kehrwarld, Families and Faith (New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 1989).
59
Elias, The Foundations, 122.
60
Ibid., 42.
61
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 15.
 160

aspires naturally to the social life,62 and education must be concerned with the social

group, in order to shape human persons for leading a useful and cooperative life in the

community, or to guide their development in the social sphere, awakening in them a sense

of obligation and responsibility.

Maritain's philosophy of education is designed to find some sort of integration,

which in the religious educational field becomes an important task. The social aspect and

the individual aspect of the person can be studied separately, but education is the bridge

between these two aspects. In Maritain's words, "education must remove the rift between

the social claim and the individual claim within man himself."63 His argument imputes a

full importance to the human person within society, but also within the so-called

"common work and common good"64 that Maritain stands for.

3. Aims of Religious Education

A philosophical reflection on religious education must deal with a most important

issue: that of defining the aims of this education. Whenever the verb "to aim" is used, the

implicit meaning is that of arriving at an achievement, and this is why, in the specific field

of religious education, authors have developed different theories. For example, Raymond

Holley posits the aim of religious education in the promotion of understanding; he also

suggests that it is that aim that determines the kind of religious education the students

might receive.65 Leon McKenzie, however, argues that the purpose of religious education

62
Maritain, Freedom in the Modern World, 49.
63
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 89.
64
Ibid.
65
Raymond Holley, Religious Education and Religious Understanding (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1978), 3-10.
is that of enabling persons to assimilate meaning, to explore and expand meaning, and to

express meaning in a productive manner.66 But while Holley and McKenzie affirm

understanding and acquiring meaning as an essential aim of religious education, then,

authors like Jean Marie Hiesberger hold that its most important purpose is to raise a child

religiously.67 Tom Nabeeta claims that the aim of religious education is moral teaching.68

Gabriel Moran, however, asserts that the aim of religious education is to teach persons

how to practice a religious way of life, along with an understanding of religion.69 But

Kieran Scott declares that the aim of religious education is to show persons how to live,

and to teach religion as the way to a grasp of one's own tradition in relation to the

religious life of others.70

As for Maritain, as we stated in chapter three, the essence and aim of education is

the formation and inner liberation of the human person. This aim is dependent upon

human nature, which Maritain describes in terms of his theocentric humanism. Now, I

contend that Maritain's proposal fits religious education best. After all, Maritain regards

the human person as the image of God, who finds full realization in union with God.

Religious education is precisely the specific education that focuses on the relationship of

66
Leon McKenzie, "The Purposes and Scopes of Adult Religious Education," in Handbook of Adult
Religious Education, ed. Nancy T. Foltz (Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1986), 10. See
McKenzie, Adult Education and Worldview Construction (Malabar, Fla: Krieger Publishing Company,
1991).
67
Jean Marie Hiesberger, "The Ultimate Religious Education Challenge," in Religious Education 76, 4
(1981), 355.
68
Tom Nabeeta, "The Aims of Religious Education," in Afer 14,4 (1972), 297.
69
Maria Harris and Gabriel Moran, Reshaping Religious Education (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John
Knox Press, 1998), 4 1 .
70
Kieran Scott, "To Teach Religion or Not to Teach Religion: Is That the Dilemma?," in Religious
Education as Practical Theology, ed. Bert Roebben and Michael Warren (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 161.
 162

the human with the divine. Thus, Maritain states that the mystery of the conquest of

freedom consists "in the relationship between these two persons, God and the human

being."71 Following in the footsteps of Maritain, Carl Rogers states that the goal of

education is also inner freedom,72 and Graham Rossiter states that the aims for religious

education include, as well, the development of religious identity.73

Whatever be the case here, Maritain stresses that the "chief task of education is

above all to shape man"74 which means that human nature is never "given" as a finished

product, and that the person has enormous capacities for becoming fully human. Maritain

insists that

the final end of educationfulfillment of man as a human personis

infinitely higher and broader than the aim of architectural art or even the
aim of medical art, for it deals with our very freedom and spirit, whose
boundless potentialities can be led to full human stature only by means of
constant creative renewal.75

A. Spiritual Liberation
For Maritain, the prime goal of education is "the conquest of internal and spiritual

freedom."76 Because it is a spiritual freedom, this particular freedom cannot be

understood as residing simply in the exercise of one's free will; this is freedom moved by

the divine Spirit.77 Hence Maritain's is a freedom of independence; it is freedom to relate

71
Maritain, Some Reflections on Culture and Liberty, 23.
72
See Carl Rogers, Freedom to Learn (Columbus, Ohio: Charles Merrill Publishing Co., 1994).
73
Graham Rossiter, "Reasons for Living Religious Education and Young People's Search for Spirituality
and Identity," in Religious Education as Practical Theology, ed. Bert Roebben and Michael Warren
(Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 61.
74
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 1.
75
Ibid., 18.
76
Ibid., 11.
77
Ibid.
to God. Such a view fits religious education perfectly, inasmuch as religious education is

concerned with a relationship between God and the human person.

Maritain's conception of freedom is inspired by Thomas Aquinas, in a connection

that we have studied in chapters one and three. But in Jude Dougherty's opinion,

Maritain, being faithful to the text, "employs those notions in a way which Thomas

himself never envisaged."78 Maritain's contribution is the notion that freedom has to be

conquered and acquired.

The "conquest of internal freedom" was Maritain's favorite phrase, and he

repeated it several times with reference to education.79 His reference is not simply to the

freedom of the will, however, but to the freedom that is spontaneity, expansion, or

autonomy, and "which we have to gain through constant effort and struggle,"80 as

pinpointed previously in chapter three. The reason for Maritain's use of the word

"conquest" here is his preoccupation with the essential aim of education, the liberation of

the human person.81 This liberation is the result of a development both of the sense of

freedom and of the sense of responsibility, human rights, and human obligations.82

Maritain's consideration of freedom and liberation operates at the spiritual level, then.

Brazilian philosopher Paolo Freire is important here, as it is he who, in his

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970),83 introduced the notion of education for liberation.

The purpose of his approach is to bring about in oppressed people an awareness of the
78
Dougherty, Jacques Maritain, 58.
79
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 10.
80
Ibid., 11.
81
Ibid., 100.
82
Ibid., 89.
83
Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 2000).
causes of their oppression. According to John Ehas, Freire contends that traditional

education through didactic methods merely reinforces the structures and values of the

dominant classes in society.84 Freire's position is based on phenomenology and Marxism,

whereas Maritain's is based on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas; but these positions

are similar in that they bring out the notion of liberation, Freire from the dominant

classes, Maritain a liberation in the spirit, and both authors are concerned about and

aware of the social and political situation of their times. For Maritain, "education is

education for freedom."85

There are other similarities between Freire and Maritain in regard to the point of

departure of their thinking. In Freire it is the person's vocation to be fully human,

focusing on making a commitment to overcoming oppressive forces by helping persons

to come to a critical awareness of their reasons for their thoughts and actions, and, in

turn, to struggle for a transformation of the existing situation.86 On the other hand,

Maritain's point of departure is that of becoming a person, and he insists on the

commitment to transform the situation through integral humanism.

But there are also differences between Freire and Maritain. While Freire's

liberation applies mainly to the oppressed classes of humankind, Maritain's liberation

concerns all of humankind. For Maritain, the highest realization of this liberation is the

thrust toward God;87 here there is indeed the danger of forgetting natural limitations and

thinking of God alone, but for Maritain the road is arduous, and it is the road of
84
Elias, Philosophy of Education, 149.
85
Maritain, The Education of Man, 100.
86
Boys, Educating in Faith, 125.
87
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 98.
education, so that it allows the human person to become perfect; it becomes the passage

from an initial freedom to a freedom of expansion and independency. But in the spiritual

order this perfection is never gained, and can be directed only by wisdom and by

adhering to the truth,88 and this is why "from the beginning to the end it is truth that

liberates him."89

This concept of liberation in Maritain is that of spiritual liberation, which is akin

to accomplishing the aims of religious education. For Maritain, however, this conquest of

freedom is not an easy task: "Man must win his personality, as well as, his freedom, and

he pays dearly for it, and runs many risks."90Human persons must progressively conquer

their personal being under the double aspect of their inner life and of their communal life,

within the paradox described by Paul in his letter to the Galatians: "For you were called

to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-

indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another" (Gal. 5:13). Maritain will

conclude that "Christian freedom is moved by love."91

Maritain's remarks ascribe an importance to the religious educational task in this

postmodern and multicultural context of ours. The vital factor in religious education is

the energy with which it tends towards its end: education will be liberating to the extent

to which the inner life of the person will grow with others and with God. For Maritain,

"God is free from all eternity; more exactly, He is subsistent Freedom."92 Therefore

88
Maritain, Approches Sans Entraves, 59.
89
Maritain, The Education of Man, 168.
90
Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, 131-132.
91
Maritain, The Education of Man, 163.
92
Ibid.
 166

human persons become free by the struggle of the spirit and virtue, and by exercising

their freedom they win their freedom.

B. Wisdom and Moral Education

Maritain considers also the acquisition of wisdom as related to the aims of

education, as we have described in chapter three. For Maritain, education seeks to

provide the student with the "foundations of real wisdom."93 Yet wisdom is the supreme

knowledge that cannot be obtained directly through education, because it comes from

God. Maritain's wisdom is therefore far from the idea of considering only "knowledge"

or "intelligence" as the aims of education. On the other hand, Maritain's wisdom fits very

well with the aim of religious education, since true wisdom is basically the human

person's recognition of God as God. Paraphrasing an Old Testament saying of the wisdom

tradition in Israel,94 we can say that, for Maritain, the recognition and supreme knowledge

of God is the beginning of wisdom.

Since religious education is closely related to the acquisition of wisdom, it also

appears as an essential component of all education. In fact, while the learning of

mathematics, physics, biology, economics, or politics leads to the acquisition of

knowledge, religious education helps the student to obtain what is most important of all:

wisdom. The importance of this fact is well stated by Maritain:

If a man does not overcome the inner multiplicity of his drives and
especially of the diverse currents of knowledge and belief and the diverse
vital energies at play in his mind, he will always remain more a slave than

93
Ibid., 139.
94
Prov. 9:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
 a free man.95

Therefore the acquisition of wisdom promoted by religious education is necessary for the

integral education of the human person. None of the other sciences, whether singly or in

consort, can provide what religious education seeks:

[Wisdom] is over and above any field of specialization, for it has to do

with realities which permeate each and every being and with aspirations
which call to the very nature and freedom of man.96

This is why Maritain does not hesitate to posit wisdom as a supreme goal in education:

"Education and teaching can only achieve their internal unity if the manifold parts of

their whole work are organized and quickened by a vision of wisdom as the supreme

goal,"97 and to be precise: as a supreme goal in religious education.

Now, the person who obtains wisdom necessarily comes to know how to behave

in the world vis-a-vis the Creator; in other words, this is how to behave in a moral way.

Therefore wisdom and moral education go hand in hand.

The primary aim of education for Maritain is the formation of a whole person; in

other words, this aim is related to the nature of the human person. For Maritain, a

formation in moral life and virtues is the most important part or primary aim of

education. Because he emphasizes the spiritual dimension, moral virtues will never be

separated from religion: "with regard to the average behavior of mankind, morality

without religion undermines morality, and is able to sustain human life for but a few

generations."98 Religious educators like Gabriel Moran relate moral education and

95
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, Al.
96
Ibid., 48.
97
Ibid.
98
Maritain, Education of Man, 117.
 168

religious education in a lifelong process that involves the whole person," and Edwin Cox

states that it is difficult to separate moral education and religious education.100 Both

authors would agree with Maritain in relating religious education with moral education,

distinguished from but related to each another.

As already stated in chapter three, the relationship between morality and religion

leads to further moral implications, not only by introducing people to a certain way of

thinking and doing, but also by promoting a way to express ourselves in life according to

certain values and fundamental principles. Adding to this, Maritain places additional

emphasis on the teaching of natural morality, urging "not a revival of religious faith but a

revival of the moral power of reason."101

Maritain offers religious educators a motivation, insisting that "to judge what to

do in a particular case, our reason itself depends on the uprightness of our will, and on the

decisive movement of our very freedom."102 And the measure of doing this is nothing but

love, a love being the gift of oneself, love that regards existing persons. Again, to know

how to behave in a moral way depends in the last instance on God: "human love as well

as divine love, is not a matter of training or learning, for it is a gift."103

It is important to notice that, in order to live in a moral way, it is necessary to have

a clear hierarchy of values, as Maritain proposes: "knowledge and love of what is above

time are superior to, and embrace and quicken knowledge and love of what is within
99
Gabriel Moran, Religious Education as a Second Language (Alabama: Religious Education Press, 1989),
169.
100
Edwin Cox, Changing Aims in Religious Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 59.
101
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 94.
102
Ibid., 95.
103
Ibid., 96.
time." 1 0 4

Maritain emphasizes moral education as an essential task in the school: "school

education must perform this moral task, that is to say, not by exercising and giving

rectitude to the will, but by illuminating and giving rectitude to practical reason."105 For

Maritain, "morality is steeped in intelligence; the goal is to awaken moral intelligence in

the pupil."106Rooted in moral teaching, Maritain's philosophy of education becomes a

model for religious educators who deal daily in a multicultural world, engaged in

pluralistic issues and yet seeking to be faithful both to religious tradition and to the

contemporary world.

4. Theology and Religious Education

Theology, as any science, calls for rigorous intellectual analysis, exact definitions,

and accurate reasoning processes, in order to arrive at the ultimate causes guided by the

light of faith. Theology, in the strict use of the word, derives from revelation and makes

use of reason. Maritain says,

theology is the communication of the knowledge which God has of

Himself, which is made to us by revelation, and which offers to unfold its
content to the effort of our intellect [...] This is the wisdom of faith and
reason, of faith making use of reason.107

What a philosopher knows is "by reason, by what is called the natural light of the human

intellect."108 Therefore, theology "exercises in respect [of philosophy] a function of

104
Maritain, Education of Man, 62.
105
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 26-27.
106
Maritain, Education of Man, 124.
107
Maritain, Science and Wisdom, 23.
108
Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy, 103.
guidance or government, which consists in rejecting as false any philosophic affirmation

which contradicts a theological truth."109All of the reasoning in the world, for example,

could never arrive at the conceptualization of one God in three Persons. Had it not been

revealed, we could never even have guessed it. "But once it is revealed, it can be

buttressed by numerous natural and realistic arguments, as the Treatise on the Trinity in

St. Thomas' Summa Theologica amply shows; and the adducing of these arguments is the

service that philosophy renders to the articles of faith."110

According to John W. Cooper, Maritain's theology is classified as a theology of

freedom, or "political theology." In dialogue between Jacques Maritain and Reinhold

Niebuhr, the term designates the intersection of politics and religion. Both theologians

frequently crossed paths, and "the basis of their agreement was a common biblical view

of human nature and destiny [...] and appreciation for the institutions of a free society."111

The philosophy of education in Maritain fosters a theology rooted in today's problems as

appropriate for religious education, in particular the theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Opposite to Maritain, Jeff Astley avers that the job of the Church and its lay

people as well as its ministers "is to do theology [...] and not just to read the theology of

other people."112 Maritain's pedagogical thought is open to other philosophies, and the

reason for his encouragement of the study of theology is his awareness that St. Thomas'

first quality of any teaching of religion is that it be systematic, and second, that it be
109
Ibid., 126.
110
Fecher, The Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, 76.
111
John W. Cooper, The Theology of Freedom, The Legacy of Jacques Maritain and Reinhold Niebuhr
(Macon Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985), 19.
112
Jeff Astley, The Philosophy of Christian Religious Education (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education
Press, 1994), 184.
 171

theocentric.113 These are important aspects in religious education, where God is treated as

the ultimate purpose of human activity. Independently of one's philosophical or

theological position, Maritain maintains that "nobody can do without theology [...] A

liberal education cannot complete its task without the knowledge of the specific realm

and the concerns of theological wisdom."114

A. Theology as Part of the Curriculum

Maritain's philosophy of education insists on the teaching of theology as an

urgent need especially in a religious educational setting, since good will is not enough for

teaching religious education. But if Maritain insists on the need for teaching theology, at

the same time he rejects the imposition or coercion of such teaching: "Courses of

theology, however important in themselves, would be a matter of free choice."115 This is

crucial not only for students, but for all religious educators. Theology should be engaged

especially in universities where people profess that God exists. Here there is no

justification for an exclusion of theology from the curriculum. Maritain in fact affirms, "I

do not see how we can pretend that God has less right to have his/her place in the school

than Euclid or Professor John Dewey."116

Although some authors, such as Randolph C. Miller,'17 acknowledge theology as a

crucial factor in determining the nature of religious education when proposing theology

113
Mark Heath, "Thomistic Theology and Religious Education," in Theologies of Religious Education ed.
Randolph Crump Miller (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1995), 41.
114
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 74.
115
Ibid., 82.
1,6
Maritain, The Education of Man, 125.
117
Randolph C. Miller, "Continuity and Contrast in the Future of Religious Education," in The Religious
Education We Need, ed. James M. Lee (Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1977), 38.
as a basic tool for bringing learners into the right relationship with God, others, like Sara

Little, affirm, "theology has become one influence among many [...] theology is

imperative for the educator, influencing how one selects content and chooses an

appropriate and consistent process for education."118 There are opposing views, like that

of James M. Lee, who claims that it is social science and not theology that provides a

better theoretical framework for religious education,119 or Nicola Slee, who likewise sees

no need for theology here.120Maritain's position, however, is unambiguous: there is an

urgent need for theology as part of the curriculum, not in order to form priests, ministers,

or rabbis, but "to enlighten students of secular matters about the great doctrines and

perspectives of theological wisdom."121

Maritain proposes to have theological teaching divided among "institutes," of

diverse religious affiliation conformably with the student population of the university.

Thus, students in philosophy and theology might meet representatives of the most varied

schools of thought: scientists, artists, missionaries, labor leaders, and so on, because

it is not with books, it is with men that students must be made able to
discuss and take their own stand. An inviolable rule would be that, after
such meetings, the discussion should continue in further seminars between
students and the teachers of the college, until they have completely
mastered the problem and brought out the truth of the matter.'22

For Maritain, it is important to have contact with real people, who are able to transmit
118
Sara Little, "Theology and Education," in Encyclopedia of Religious Education, ed. Iris and Kendig
Cully (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), 652-53.
119
See James Michael Lee, The Shape of Religious Instruction (Birmingham: Religious Education Press,
1971).
12(1
Nicola Slee, "Heaven in Ordinarie: The Imagination, Spirituality and the Arts in Religious Education," in
Priorities in Religious Education, ed. Brenda Waston (Bristol: The Falmer Press, 1992), 45.
121
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 83.
122
Ibid., 140.
 173

their experience and their knowledge of the matter and open a dialogue that will highlight

critical reflection. These encounters would broaden and deepen the concept of God in

every day life.

The teaching of theology cannot be imposed, Maritain argues; it has to be taught

on a voluntary basis. If religious education educates people to become free, it would be

contradictory to impose the teaching of religious education. This would become

indoctrination.123 Students of an atheistic persuasion would be allowed to study

comparative religion; but the full growth of the intellect is incomplete without theology,

for knowledge includes theology. Maritain concludes that "philosophy and theology

should be the keystone of the edifice of learning in a Christian college."124 According to

Maritain, religious education

remains too much of a separate, isolated compartment, and is not

sufficiently integrated either with the intellectual interests nor with the
personal life of the students. As a result, it is received by many in the most
superficial stratum of the soul and forgotten almost as soon as it has been
shallowly memorized.125

On the contrary, Maritain sees religious education as having a vital connection with

philosophy and theology that can be really integrated with the general activity and the

intellectual interests of the student. Furthermore, Maritain contends that "theological

teaching would be given, according to the diversity of creeds, by professors belonging to

the main religious denominations, each one addressing the students of his own
123
1 disagree therefore with Ben Spiecker who distinguishes between "initiation into forms of life,"
"training," "socialization," and "indoctrination," but considers that all those educative actions necessarily
imply some kind of indoctrination or "openness to indoctrination." (Ben Spiecker, Freedom and
Indoctrination in Education: International Perspectives (London: Cassell, 1991), 22.
124
Maritain, The Education of Man, 139.
125
Ibid., 142.
denomination."126 On the other hand, students who wish, should be released from

attending those courses and allowed "to remain incomplete in wisdom at their own

pleasure."127 Maritain also encourages the history of religions as an important part of the

curriculum.128

Some authors have insisted on the practical application of theology. For example,

Richard Osmer compares pastoral theology and religious education,129 thereby

establishing a bridge between theological knowledge and social reality or spiritual life.

The theology needed for students and teachers of religious education must be not a

theoretical knowledge only, but a knowledge that can and does lead to practice as well,

either in the community or in personal experience. Programs of peace and justice have to

be added to the study of theology, as a complementary basis upon which the present

pluralistic nature of religious education can offer, to a variety of approaches to religious

education, a common goal, for the sake of society, without being offensive to other faiths.

Religious education can become a coordination of efforts, says Norma H. Thompson,

whereby people could start from their own respective theological stances and develop an

approach to other religious traditions.130

Maritain also suggests courses in Sacred Scripture as a way of developing

Christian intelligence. "Christian youth should be given serious knowledge of the

meaning of exegesis, and of the distinction to be made between what is a valid result and
126
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 75.
127
Ibid.
128
Ibid., 83.
129
Richard R. Osmer and Friedich Schweitzer, Religious Education Between Modernization and
Globalization (Cambridge: Eedermans Publishing Co., 2003), 294.
130 N o r m a Thompson, "Current Issues in Religious Education," in Religious Education 73, 6 (1978), 613.
 175

discovery, and what is arbitrary construction in the exegetical comments of our

contemporary scholars."131 And because Maritain considers the reading of Holy Scripture

as a personal affair, the teaching offered must constitute an "elective," and thus be offered

to students eager to be given it.132 But even if it is offered as elective, it is to be

considered to be as important in the development of faith as are other sciences.

B. Theologies in Religious Education

Maritain had in mind theology as presented by St. Thomas Aquinas. Authors like

Harold W. Burgess point out that there are many other theological models besides

"Thomist" theology. Among the theologies in religious education considered by

Burgess,133 we may cite the following:

The "liberal theological model" was the most influential model of religious

education during the first four decades of the twentieth century. This model was based on

the tenet that individual human beings need some kind of spiritual redemption and that

the Christian Church is the place for an adequate religious education.134

The "theologically dynamic model" of a theology of religious education, at its

zenith from the 1950s into the 1970s, aimed at fostering a right relationship with God

through a communal relationship in the Church. A dynamic and revelatory activity

accompanies the teaching process, as learners are guided in their growth toward God,

131
Maritain, The Education of Man, 140-141.
132
Ibid., 141.
133
Burgess, Models of, 79-236.
134
Representatives of this approach are: Walter Scott Athearn, George Herbert Betts, William Clayton
Bower, Ernest John Chave, George Albert Coe, Sophia Lyon Fahs, and Adelaide Teague Case.
 176

toward others, and within themselves.135 The "evangelical/kerygmatic" model is also a

twentieth century one. It represents an effort to maintain the spiritual dynamic of the early

Church. In this model,an authoritative revelation is normative for both theory and

practice.136

In his Theologies of Religious Education, Randolph C. Miller tenders an overview

of modern theological tendencies, classifying them in three major groups: Church

theologies, philosophical theologies, and special theologies. For Miller, Maritain's

theological approach is classified as a "Church theology," because it comes from Thomas

Aquinas, because it combines philosophy and theology, because it relates biblical

common law, because it draws on both Greek and Christian traditions and because it

embraces all aspects of life in a theocentric view.137

When Maritain proposed his philosophy of education, many of the current

theological approaches had not yet been developed. At the time of the Second Vatican

Council and afterwards, new approaches, like black theology, the theology of liberation,

feminist theology, and process theology were developed, and it would be unfair to judge

Maritain's work in terms of present theological models. Besides, Maritain was a

philosopher, not a theologian. Having said that, we can underscore certain significant

elements of Maritain's emphasis on theology. Maritain emphasized the importance of a

135
Representatives of this approach are: J. Gordon Chamberlin, Iris V. Cully, Howard Grimes, Maria Harris,
Rachel Henderlite, Sara Little, Randolph Crump Miller, Gabriel Moran, Ellis Nelson, Lewis Joseph
Sherill, James D. Smart, John H. Westerhoff III, and D. Campbell Wychoff.
136
Evangelical representatives of this approach are: Frank E. Gaebelein, Lois E. LeBar, Clarence H.
Benson, Charles Burton Eavey, Harold Carlton Mason, Herbert W. Byrne, and from the Roman Catholic
wing: Josef Andreas Jungmann (1889-1975), Johannes Hofmger, Alfred McBride and Michael Warren.
137
See Randolph Crump Miller, Theologies in Religious Education (Birmingham, Ala: Religious Education
Press, 1995), 35-58.
theology that would be presented in a logical and systematic way something he found

in so-called Thomismand a theology that "should be specially connected with the

problems raised by contemporary science, by the great social movements and conflicts of

our age, and by anthropology, comparative religion, and the philosophy of culture."138

In the light of Maritain's requirements here presented, as well as of the new

developments of theology, a suitable theological model for religious education could be

one developed and presented mainly in a framework of salvation history. An example of

this approach can be found in the monumental work, Mysterium Salutis,139 a collective

work of many prominent German theologians of the sixties, including Ur von Balthasar,

Hans Johannes Feiner, Magnus Lohrer, Karl Rahner, and many others. This effort at the

generation of a theological synthesis as was the Summa Theologica of Aquinas

offers an organic exposition of theology supported by three main pillars, God, Christ and

the human person. What we have here is not a mere rational exposition of dogmatic

beliefs, but a dialogue between God and human kind in the course of history of a

"history of salvation" as this history appears in Scripture.

Indeed, this theological model includes many of the characteristics of the new

theologies of religious education described by Miller140 in his book. Kerygmatic theology

is a theology of salvation history, since the Bible contains so many prophetic oracles and

kerygmatic speeches by the apostles. Narrative theology is likewise included, since the

138
Maritain, The Education of Man, 140. See also: Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 140.
139
Johannes Feiner and Magnus Lohrer eds. Mysterium Salutis. Grundriss Heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik
(Germany: Einsiedeln, 1963-1969). This monumental work in five volumes has been translated into several
languages, including French, Italian, and Spanish.
140
Miller, Education for Christian Living.
Scriptures proffer the frequent locus of biblical narratives. The theology of liberation is

considered because the story of the chosen people is a history of liberation141 e.g., the

Exodus, or the return from the Babylonian Captivity. Ecological theology is considered

in response to the frequent biblical allusions to the wonders of creation that proclaim the

glory of God e.g., the Psalms. Black theology is included and transcended through the

universalist message of salvation, as proclaimed by the prophets, the Gospels and Paul.

Existentialist theology is also included, because the theology that appears in the Bible is

always related to the current situation in which readers of the Bible find themselves

e.g., the Letters of Paul. Process theology is included by reason of the fact that the

history of salvation appears as an educative process of God vis-a-vis the people of Israel.

Church theologies are included since they all focus on Scripture and emphasize the role

of the community.

It is time, in religious education, to invite greater diversity, by encouraging

dialogue among theological perspectives that are genuinely different. By listening to the

distinctive Catholic, Jewish, Liberal Protestant, and Evangelical educational voices in our

midst, we can enhance our communities of faith, and learn to enrich the spiritual lives of

teachers and learners. As Virgilio Elizondo says, using a bicultural approach to religious

education: "new models of living and perceiving the world are necessary for humanity to

141
For example, for liberation theologians, who recognize that the voices of the poor and disenfranchised
are often neglected in the retelling of redemptive history, God relies upon the poor as a privileged locus so
that God may be expressed as "the life, strength, hope, gladness, and Utopia of the very poorest and most
oppressed." See Pablo Richard, "Theology in the Theology of Liberation," in Mysterium Liberationis:
Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology, eds. Ignacio Ellacurfa and Jon Sobrino (Maryknoll, Ny:
Orbis Books, 1993), 150-151. Liberation theologians encourage people to recognize God in the lives and
experiences of the poor. For them, it is especially among the poor that God makes Godself known.
 179

survive,"142 and of this we all are the witnesses. It is a fundamental challenge for a

contemporary theology to take into account education as a liberating and humanizing

process, as Maritain does.

C. Fostering the Spiritual Life

Theological instruction must lead necessarily to a living expression of theological

or religious faith. Faith or religion cannot be dissociated from personal experience and

life.143 Spirituality means living according to the faith that one has accepted; it denotes the

forms of expression of one's faith. The great importance of the spiritual aspect of the

human being is well stated by Maritain: a human being: "is a person by reason of spiritual

subsistence."144

Other thinkers, again, tend to consider religion and spirituality as, respectively,

the external and internal dimensions or expressions of faith. This distinction leads to a

misunderstanding of religion as consisting altogether of ritual. While some authors, like

Rossiter, treat spirituality as independent of religion, and by no means based on it,145

others, such as Thomas Groome, profess that a spirituality always has deep roots in a

religious tradition.146 But in the one case as in the other, spirituality evinces a relationship

142 virgilio Elizondo, "A Bicultural Approach to Religious Education," in Religious Education 76 (1981),
258.
143
It's popular, especially in the United States, to distinguish between spirituality and religion. The
distinctions proposed, however, are generally misleading and mask the nature of religion and spirituality
respectively.
144
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 34.
145
Graham Rossiter, "From St. Ignatius to Obi-wan Kenobi: An Evaluative Perspective on Spirituality for
School Education," in International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in
Education, ed. M. de Souza et al. (The Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 187.
146
Thomas Groome, What Makes us Catholic? (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2002), 273.
 180

between the deepest self of the person and God,147 so that it becomes perfectly reasonable

that religion constitute the expression of one's spiritual nature.

It is clear that spirituality relates primarily to the personal living of faith, while

religion relates more to the systematic and objective presentation of that faith. Religion

must lead logically to a spiritual life, and a spiritual existence is based on a religious

belief.

Maritain starts not by defining spirituality, but by defining the human person as

having a spiritual subsistence, in her/his soul. And he thereupon proceeds to argue:

Christian education does not only lay stress on the natural spirituality of
which man is capable; it does not only find its entire work on the inner
vitality of human nature; it makes its entire work rest also on the vital
energies of grace and on the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and
Charity; and if it is true to its highest aim, it turns man toward grace-given
spirituality, toward a participation in the freedom, wisdom , and love of the
saints.148

Karl Rahner describes spirituality as "a mysterious and tender thing about which we can

speak only with great difficulty."149 Aware of the delicacy of the task, Maritain

nevertheless dares to regard the human person as not only a natural being, but a

supernatural one as well; and consistently with his Catholic tradition, he sees the task of

religious education as one of entering upon the work of Christ, the task of, in some sense,

redeeming one's fellow human beings, spiritually and temporally. Arguing that religious

educationand more precisely, Christian religious educationhas to prepare the young

person for adult life as a Christian, Maritain therefore proclaims the importance of

147
John Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 26.
148
Maritain, The Education of Man, 131.
149
Karl Rahner, Concern for the Church (Fort Collins, Colo: Crossroad, 1981), 143.
 181

attending to the ways in which religious knowledge and spiritual life are to be fostered.150

For the realization of this endeavor of the fostering of spirituality, Maritain

introduces the notion of creating schools of the spiritual life, centers for spiritual

enlightenment, or schools of wisdom, in which those interested in the spiritual life would

enjoy the opportunity of spending a certain number of weeks leading a common life, and

of being trained in the ways of spiritual life and contemplation.151 He suggests the

creation of these schools as a second complement of university life, and a response to the

present crisis of civilization marked by "the complete absence, among free peoples, of a

philosophy of life and of the society which would be proper to it."152 Similarly, John

Sullivan proposes the creation of "faith schools," by way of an alternative to schools

dominated by secular principles.153 These alternative schools of spirituality are both

motivated not only by a desire to help those who are beginning their spiritual or religious

journey and who are therefore in need of some guidance, but also by the desire to enrich

one another with the different spiritualities that surround us and that have been developed

through centuries.'54

Maritain affirms that, by nature, education belongs to the sphere of ethics and

150
Maritain, The Education of Man, 133.
151
Maritain recommended to make available to them the writings and doctrines of the great spiritual authors
and the saints, which compose the mystical tradition of Christianity; from the desert Fathers to St. John
of the Cross and the mystics of modern times (Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 85).
152
Maritain, Philosophic de UEducation, 113.
153
John Sullivan, "Faith Schools: A Culture Within a Culture in a Changing World," in the International
Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education, ed. M. de Souza et al. (The
Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 937.
154
The list of different form of spiritualities is long: Benedictine, Carmelite, Charismatic, Dominican,
Focolare, Franciscan, Ignatian spirituality, etc.
practical wisdom,155 the sphere where "wisdom is gained through spiritual experience. 156

The point is that education must engage its own primary dynamic factor, which is "the

internal vital principle in the one to be educated."157 The importance ascribed spirituality

by Maritain is supported by Thomas Merton,158 one of the great spiritual writers of the

last century, who believed that all education was in some sense religious. For Maritain,

the human person is not alone in his/her spiritual journey. "These depths of the human

being are moreover in vital connection with one another and may interfere or intermingle

in many ways."159 Education guides human persons toward their fullest and truest

achievements. In this perspective, in which the aim of education is the shaping of human

beings, education cannot escape spirituality, because education "awakens and frees the

aspirations of the spiritual nature in us."160 Therefore religious education should foster

spirituality as a personal journey of self-discovery, moving us in the direction of seeking

meaning for our own life. In developing spiritual life, we can give a sense of purpose to

our life along with our religious beliefs. In fact, Merton wrote the following about

spirituality saying, "our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening,

and of an even greater surrender to the action of love and grace in our hearts."161

155
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 2.
156
Ibid., 23.
157
Ibid., 31.
158
Merton and Maritain had some encounters together, exchanging letters and similar thoughts. For Ronald
J. Nuzzi, "Merton was one of the first religious educators to speak of a holistic approach to
education." (Ronald J. Nuzzi, "Spirituality and Religious Education," in The Handbook of Research on
Catholic Education (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001), 68-70.
159
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 41.
160
Ibid., 42.
161
Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. N.M. Stone, P. Hart and J. Laughlin (New
York, New Directions, 1973), 296.
 183

Religious education is a lifelong process because as we cannot assume learning is over,

we go on to grow in knowledge and understanding of God's will over our lives finding

insights along the way.

D. Religious Educators as Spiritual Teachers

Maritain's spirituality is not idealistic; on the contrary, he encourages spirituality

and education of tomorrow by bringing to an end the "cleavage between work or useful

activity and the blossoming of spiritual life."162 He took up various battles for social

justice and peace; and his books, letters, and articles displayed his willingness to share his

Christian philosophy, his personal and social concerns about today's problems in the

world and his personal commitment to the Church.

Maria Harris argues that the action of teaching spirituality should be regarded as a

religiousa sacramental, and a sacred and holyact.163The task of religious teachers as

teachers of spirituality, then, is a religious and holy action. The role of the religious

teachers is important because that teacher is a teacher of spirituality. Gloria Durka adds

that "the extensiveness of our caring for the well-being of our students is a measure of the

richness of our own spirituality."164 To teach religious education is to put spirituality to

work among human persons, and Ronald J. Nuzzi concludes that our personal

experiences enrich this understanding, "as we come to see our lives and our world more

and more through the eyes of faith."165

'62 Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 89.

163
Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People, 117.
164
Durka, The Teacher's Calling, 51.
165
Nuzzi, "Spirituality and Religious Education," 79.
 184

Religious educators provide the student with more than mere intellectual

information. They also provide them with their spirituality, their particular way of living

their faith. In fact, John L. Elias reminds us that, in "the context of teaching religion in

classroom settings, teachers need to be open to those moments when the text beckons to

go beyond the level of instruction"166 According to Elias, then, there has to be an intimate

connection between beliefs and life. In this regard, Paulo Freire notes that in the learning

process the only person who really learns is she/he who appropriates what is learned, who

apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning."167

The following spirituality is recommended to religious educators: an immersion in

the daily routine of the school and life, an engagement in showing care and concern for

the growth of each student. Spirituality within the teaching-learning process can and must

foster dialogue, and consist in reflective, creative, exploratory, and interactive

participation, while at the same time addressing themes concerned with the flourishing of

the spiritual dimension of human life, helping the students to connect themselves to their

own lives and ensuring their critical involvement both in those lives and in the lives of

others. In so doing, religious educators allow students to experience not only a

connection with God, but a "connection" with themselves, as well, and a connection with

the community. In a school that fosters spiritual life, students will have the opportunity to

live and experience spirituality not only by knowing about it, but also by living according

166
John L. Elias ."Ancient Philosophy and Religious Education: Education as Initiation into a Way of Life,"
in The International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Education, ed. M. de
Souza et al. The Netherlands: Springer (2006), 19.
167
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: The Seabury Press, 1973), 101.
 185

to a spiritual model.

Last, the fostering of spiritual life at the hands of religious educators should

enable students to encounter not only God in their lives, and to encounter themselves, but

also to encounter others in the realities of daily life. Indeed, Maritain always emphasized

the social implications of faith, and urged the teacher to respect the dignity of the mind,

and to prepare the human mind to think for itself.168 Religious educators as spiritual

teachers could transmit important social implications that can reach a huge variety of

realities, such as the relation between poor and rich, between majority and minority

groups, between different sexes and faiths, between social and democratic states or

groups, and so on.

That these realities are linked to the Christian faith was not denied, but

acknowledged by the very early Christians. From the Book of the Acts of the Apostles,

we learn that early Christians came together to listen to the proclamation of the Gospel

(kerygma, Acts 9:20) and the teaching (didache, Acts 2:42) of the apostles, forming a

community (koinonia, Acts 2:42) in fraternal service (diakonia, Acts 6:1) and in worship

of the Lord (leitourgia, Acts 13:2).

For Maria Harris, only when an interplay prevails among these five elements is a

spirituality manifested. She argues that spirituality must grow in a faith community, and

in "whatever form of educational ministry we engage."169 Her point of view complements

Maritain's ideas: religious education has social implications that we have to point out and

foster for the common good of a larger community.

168
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 26.
169
Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People, 102.
 186

5. The Teaching-Learning Process

One more aspect to be considered by a philosophical reflection on religious

education is the issue of the educational process, which includes: the role of the teacher,

the dispositions of the student, and the setting of the school and the family, among other

things. Here again, Maritain's philosophy of education fits very well the needs of the

specific field of religious education.

Gabriel Moran denies any causal connection between teaching and learning.170

For our own part, we can add that the teaching-learning process is largely determined by

the aims which are formulated for that process, inasmuch as such aims will also

determine the specific outcome of the process, the content of it, the methodology and

materials to be used for such a task, and the kind of relationships to be experienced

during the process. In fact, according to Richard McMillan, "the degree to which such

education is effective will be directly related to the quality of the goals set for the

process."171

According to Maritain, we have to take into account both "that approach to God

which depends on the natural forces of the human mind and that approach to God which

depends on the supernatural gift of faith."172 If religious education is to facilitate this

theological goal, then it must itself be viewed as a process that will provide occasions for

meaningful interaction and learning between the teacher and the student, an interaction

that ultimately leads to a full and mature relationship with God.

170
Gabriel Moran, "Revelation," 274.
171
Richard McMillan, "A Theological Goal for Christian Education," in Religious Studies 5, 2 (1978), 79.
172
Jacques Maritain, "The Approach to God."
 187

A. The Process of Learning

For Maritain, there is an internal dynamism of human life that tends toward self-

perfection because the human person has an ultimate end: God, to be seen and

possessed.173 The process of education, and specifically of religious education, will help to

achieve this goal in a twofold movement, according to Maritain: a vertical movement

toward divine union and self-perfection, and the horizontal movement involving

civilization and the community. Maritain clearly defines the result of respecting and

considering both movements, and if his thinking is transferred into a religious educational

setting, the desired success and results should be

the inauguration of a common life which responds to the truth of our

nature, freedom to be achieved, and friendship to be set up at the core of a
civilization vitalized by virtues higher than civic virtues, all these define
the historical ideal for which men can be asked to work, fight and die. . . .
It shall revive, a new civilization shall come to life, on condition that it
hope for, and will, and love truly and heroically truth, freedom, and
fraternity.174

As for the dispositions of the student, Maritain first discusses the Platonic conception that

all learning is in the learner and not in the teacher. "The student in this way, does not

acquire knowledge from the teacher. . . . He only awakens the attention of the student to

those things which he already knows, so that to learn is nothing else than to remember."175

Although this view has been followed by many modern educators, Maritain prefers to

follow the Aristotelian affirmation that the teacher does possess a knowledge which the

student does not have, as her or his "intellect, before being fecundated by sense-

173
Maritain, The Range of Reason, 197.
174
Ibid., 198-99.
175
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 29.
perception and sense-experience, is but a tabula rasa."176 Maritain prefers the Aristotelian

position for using the intellect, through the senses, in order to judge and reason; at the

same time, there are also some Platonic ideas in Maritain, especially when he speaks of

the vital and active principle of knowledge and the inner seeing power of intelligence,

"which naturally and from the very start perceives through sense-experience."177

One finds in Maritain an equilibrium in his description of the student. Students

cannot learn everything by themselves. They need a teacher, and yet they possess

capabilities that make the learning process possible. This conception of the student fits

very well with the nature and purpose of religious education: religious education seeks

the formation and liberation of the human being in order to know and love God. The

educational process involves two elements, God and the human person, as we

acknowledge, on the one hand, the free will and aspiration of the person, and on the

other, the supreme value and wisdom of God given as a gift to the person. The knowledge

to be given to youth is not the same knowledge as adults have. Consequently, Maritain

emphasizes that

at each stage the knowledge must be of a sort fitted to the learners and
conceived as reaching its perfection within their universe of thought
during a distinct period of their development, instead of laying the
foundations of a single sphere of knowledge.178

Without the inherent dispositions of the student,179 which are the love of truth, openness

to existence, the sense of righteousness, the sense of a job well done, and the sense of

176
Ibid., 30.
177
Ibid., 31.
178
Ibid., 60.
179
Ibid., 36-38.
 189

cooperation, the learning process could not proceed, and more specifically, the task of

religious education would be impossible to perform. Religious education has to take

seriously into account these dispositions of the student if it truly wishes to achieve its

goals.

B. The Process of Teaching

As for the teacher, Maritain speaks of an art, identifying the teacher as the artist,

but with restrictions: the student becomes the first agent in education:

The teacher is an artist. Is the teacher, then, like a sculptor, a powerful

Michelangelo who belabors the marble or despotically imposes the form
he has conceived on the passive clay? Such a conception was not
infrequent in the education of old. It is a coarse and disastrous conception,
contrary to the nature of things. For if the one who is being taught is not an
angel, neither is he inanimate clay.180

What Maritain seeks to convey through the use of this image is that the teacher has to pay

attention to the inner resources and personal dispositions of the student. Therefore the

work of the teacher must be performed with a serious consideration of the particular

situation of each student. The teacher has to adapt and accommodate his/her teaching to

the needs and abilities of those who receive education. Maritain would have the teacher

comfort students' minds, by setting before their eyes the logical connections among

ideas.181 Here he argues:

What is learned should never be passively or mechanically received, as

dead information [...] It must rather be actively transformed by
understanding into the very life of the mind. It is that reason really masters
the things learned.182

180
Ibid., 30.
181
Ibid., 31.
182
Ibid., 50-51.
 190

Another image: the process of teaching, for Maritain, becomes also a relationship similar

to that of a physician,183 who deals with living beings who already possess inner vitality;

an internal principle of health. Thus also, the teacher communicates knowledge and

values to the students, assisting them to come to know and to interact with the various

levels of knowledge: physical, mathematical, metaphysical, and of course religious. In

the case of religious education, it is important that students grow and progress in

accordance with the demands of their natural end and their supernatural end. In other

words, religious education is not so much the transmission of knowledge as the pursuit of

ways to discover and liv out one's vocation, as John L. Elias states: "The call to teach is a

call to love and friendship. There is love between teacher and disciple."184 In other words,

the teaching is centered upon the return of love for love.

In the teaching-learning process, Maritain posits a certain spontaneous adaptation

between the one who gives and the one who receives. Specifically, it is the teacher who

gives, putting "all his philosophical or religious convictions, his personal faith, and his

soul into the effort."185

C. The Family and the Grasping of Faith

The family is itself a sacred institution, and as such it is a natural resource for the

transmission of religion. It teaches by being what it is, that is to say, family teaches about

life by the way it lives. In the educational process, the family intervenes as the foundation

of society, where the child does not appear as an object of proprietorship, but: "for what

183
St. Thomas Aquinas used this anthology. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Of the Teacher.
184
Elias, "Reflections on the Vocation," 309.
185
Maritain, Man and State, 121-22.
concerns the fate of the soul, the child belongs only to God." The family, therefore, has

no right against the conscience of the child, but does have

a right in virtue of which [it] can teach the child beliefs that [it] deems
related to its heritage and its social identity. It has a duty to beget the child
to God and to the truth as [it] knows it, and in this way, by the natural law,
the right to educate the child in the family's religious beliefs.186

That is why Joyce Bellous advocates that every human being has the capacity for doing

spiritual work, because everyone exercises faith and everyone requires an education in

faith.187

From the point of view of Maritain, it is the family and the Church that perform

the first steps in religious education in a direct way, whereas the school and other

institutions do so in an indirect way. If children and youth are educated in school, it is

only by consent of the parents. The parents are in the foreground as representatives of

God, but God is the background and the foundation. Even more, it is the parents who

select an adequate school for their child to attend, and send that child there for receiving

education.

The educational activity of the family is developed mainly in the direction of

emotional and moral training:

The society made up by his parents, his brothers, and sisters, is the primary
human society and human environment in which, consciously and
subconsciously, he becomes acquainted with love and from which he
receives his ethical nourishment. Here, both, the harmony and conflicts,
have an educational value.188
186
Maritain, Pour une Philosophic, 138-39.
187
Joyce Bellous, "The Educational Significances of Spirituality in the Formation of Faith," in The
International Handbook of the Religious, Moral and Spiritual Dimensions in Eduction, ed. M. de Souza et
al. (The Netherlands: Springer, 2006), 171-2.
188
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 97.
 192

The family is the primary natural environment in which love takes shape, expresses itself

and grows within the child. Love, says Maritain, does not regard ideas or abstractions;

love regards existing persons.189 Maritain relates this idea with the person of God, saying,

"God is the only Person whom human love can fly to and settle in, so as to embrace also

all other persons and be freed from egotistic self-love."190 If parents are not confident

about teaching religion, Maritain encourages them to teach kindness by being kind, teach

love by having it; "love is not a matter of training or learning, for it is a gift."191

D. The Role of the School

As for the school, says Maritain, it intervenes in an indirect way in the moral

formation of the person,192 but for Jean-Louis Allard, because school is a living

environment, a medium of interpersonal relationships, it has a direct influence on the

moral and social life of children.193 At all events, it has a powerful influence, since its

responsibility consists in "inspiring, schooling and pruning, teaching and enlightening,"194

and it deals essentially with that which can be taught.195

Religious education takes place in a school setting, where the system is only a

partial agency with respect to the task of education. After all, education, in the broad

sense of the word, "continues during the entire lifetime of every one of us,"196 leaving the

189
Maritain, Education of Man, 115.
190
Ibid.
191
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 96.
192
Maritain, Education of Man, 104.
193
Allard, Education for Freedom, 80.
194
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 35
195
Maritain, Education of Man, 51.
196
Ibid.
school with just a preparatory role. However, those who have no interest in the teaching

or learning of religion, nevertheless must not interfere with others' enjoying their own

natural right, during the hours of religious education, and can engage in other cultural

activities instead.197

Religious education in schools can be just one aspect of catechesis, which occurs

primarily in the ecclesial community, where the switch takes place from faith that you

know (school) to the faith that believes and lives it (the Church). Maritain attributes a

great deal of importance not only to the school itself, but to the educational activity of

religious institutions, of parochial groups, of the activity of Catholic Action, and

whatever else is embraced and promoted by schools of spirituality and of ministry. In this

way, religious education makes accessible not only the traditions of religious

communities but also the possibility of creating a special spirituality for each person.

Introducing theology in the ambience of religious education is crucial, although

James Michael Lee and Gabriel Moran agree that theology may be overemphasized

there,198 and Mary C. Boys emphasizes that the traditions of the community transcend

theological discourse.199 On the one hand, Maritain wants theology to be part of a

formation in religious education precisely in a school setting; but he also urges the actual

practice of theology, as we reach out to others as siblings, through love as taught in the

Gospel. Maritain's philosophy of education no longer focuses exclusively on the

197
Ibid., 78.
198
James M. Lee, "The Authentic Source of Religious Instruction," in Religious Education and Theology,
ed. Norma H. Thompson (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1982), 100-197. Gabriel Moran,
"From Obstacle to Modest Contributor," in Religious Education and Theology, ed. Norma H. Thompson
(Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1982), 42-70.
199
Boys, Educating in Faith, 200.
intellectual life, but shifts to the practical life, as well, to the life of human experience and

sharing, and pinpoints a school of life. A definition of religious education within this

perspective, then, might be broad enough to encompass more than just an understanding

of the field.

The teaching-learning process of religious education is enriched by the notion of

the shaping of the human being who becomes a human person, in the conquest of their

own freedom, finding truth, awakening their inner resources, taking charge of their own

destinies, and directing these to an attitude of openness to existence and a spirit of

communion with other human persons. For Maritain, the perfection that human beings

seek is nothing but love, which consists in "[allowing yourself] to be led by Another

where you did not want to go, and to let Divine Love Who calls each being by his own

name mold you and make of you a person, a true original, not a copy."200

Maritain defines the heart of religion with an appeal to two key constituents: "the

core of religion is divine love, that is, indivisibly, love of God and brotherly love."201

Then the process of teaching-learning turns out to be even more enriched where this idea

is put into practice: "religious men know they are sinners; but they also know that while

staggering along we may climb the road to renascence and spiritualization."202 It is the

work of religious education to lead people outside the confines of the school, and their

narrow experiences, to broaden their horizons, motivating them to act in more inclusive

cross-cultural perspectives, where the issues of peace and justice are at stake. To

200
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 36.
201
Maritain, Education of Man, 116.
202
Ibid., 117.
 195

complete such a task, Maritain insists on an extra-educational sphere. His solution is not

to get rid of the family or the school, but to endeavor to make them more aware and more

worthy of their call, and to acknowledge the necessity of mutual help,203 being, after all,

part of the community, and standing in need of ever closer absorption into this

community.. Religious education binds us together as a fellowship, attending not to

differences of particular traditions or religions, but to the similarities of shared goals in

encountering God and our brothers and sisters.

6. Conclusion
The philosophy of education of Jacques Maritain appears on the scene as an

adequate proposal to be put into practice in religious education. Its principles and

foundations give cohesion and direction to religious education, as it considers the life of

the human person in their relation with God and other men and women. Maritain's work

takes the human person in their philosophic and religious dimension as the starting point,

and thereupon gives space to the life of faith, in the context of the home, Church and

community, as well as in that of the school. Religious education implies an experience of

faith, and not simply of religious culture. The difference is in the faith that is known and

the faith that one believes. What will determine the role of religious Christian educators is

not the fact that they teach religion. What will determine the role of Christian educators

is that which they themselves are: Christian believers who teach like Christians, that is to

say, loving God and loving their neighbors. In fact, Maritain defines the mission of the

religious educator: "The goal of the apostolate is to bring to men the good news of the

203
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 24.
 196

Gospel and to lead the souls to the faith of the truth revealed."204 Those ways and means

are religious education's ways and means.

Schall, Jacques Maritain, 81-82.

 Chapter Five

Personal Reflections and Conclusions

This chapter, finally, will register my personal insights, both in my

understanding of Maritain's philosophy of education, and in my own experience in

the field of religious education. The philosophy of education of Jacques Maritain, as a

philosophy of life, can be put into practice in the field of religious education, and

there provide direction, foundation, and integration, as shown in chapter four. This

application is in and of itself the intended contribution of this dissertation, as it seeks

to make the case for Maritain's position as still relevant and most useful for religious

education today.

1. Philosophy of education is necessary in religious education.

Maritain's philosophy of education can make an important and rich

contribution to the field of religious education, and more specifically to Christian

religious education. Maritain moves us to reflect on the essence, aims, and means of

religious education, in an objective and methodological way that has its roots in the

philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, illuminated by Christian faith.

Applied to religious education, Maritain's philosophy of education makes us

aware, first of all of the bitter consequences of secularization. At the same time, it

provides an answer to that problem, by proposing a concept of the human person that

emphasizes the religious dimension. This religious-philosophical idea of the human

person, that can be associated with a theocentric humanism, comes to be adequate to, and
coherent with the purpose of, religious education, positing as the object of education the

human person, and seeking to enhance the relationship between that person and God.

I believe that the thought of Maritain on education, then, is even more pertinent

than elsewhere in the specific field of religious education, where the word "religion"

enunciates the very goal of this particular education: a profound grasp that the human

person is created as an image of God, and that his/her destiny is to be re-united (the word

"religion" comes from the Latin re-ligare)) to God. The content and goal of religious

education constitute a mystery, then. They cannot be approached just with the forces of

the intellect and will. We have to allow intuition and imagination to be at work, as well,

since we are dealing with realities difficult to grasp with our human knowledge.

Christian religious education is a discipline that takes the students to the life

of faith, where they discover their vocation to be open to religious mystery. To be able

to accomplish this difficult and fine deed, it is necessary to have clarity about the ends

and the means to perform it. It is precisely Maritain's philosophy of education that

can lead to a proper philosophical reflection concerning the ultimate goal of the

human person, which is God. The response to this questionwhat is the goal of

religious education?~helps to provide identity, sense, and purpose to that very

education.

Some years ago, the goal of religious education was thought to be the faithful

transmission of the truths of the faith. The reality is that religious education has taken

on new approaches, due in part to a consideration of social sciences, as well as to

psychological and pedagogical methods. In this context, Maritam's philosophy of

education appears as capable of embracing all of these new human issues and

considerations: the human person, the aims of education, the means to reach those

aims and goals, the conquest of spiritual freedom, moral education, the dispositions of

the student, and the role of the teacher, and so on. The issues just named are the seven

columns that Maritain considers, and they constitute a possible bridge between

philosophy of education and the philosophy of religious education. Maritain's

philosophical reflection on education is not content with simply abstract speculation,

but gives very valuable and practical advice on education, applying the principles of

the philosophy of St. Thomas to the work of education.1 In developing its themes,

religious education acquires the possibility of gaining value, coherence, and unity.

Besides, Maritain's philosophy of education is not a closed theory that rejects

any further development. Rather, it calls our attention to the most important elements

in the process of education, rendering its own appraisal, while remaining flexible and

open to new approaches and new insights for the future. Evidence of this was

provided when a renewed interest in the intersection of philosophy and religious

education came under consideration at the 1994 meeting of the International Network

for Philosophy of Education (INPE) in Louvain.2 According to Alexander Hanan, by

the mid-twentieth century the philosophy of education had begun to take root in
1
In this regard, Piero Viotto points out that it is better to define Maritain's philosophy of education as a
pedagogy.
2
See: Hanan A. Alexander (ed.)"Philosophy and Religious Education: Papers presented at Conference of
International Network for Philosophy of Education," Louvain, Belgium, 1994," in Religious Education 90,
3-4 (1995), 318-462.
schools of education as a sub-field in the curricula. It was Jacques Maritain (1943)

and Philip Phenix (1964) who contributed most when it came to the intersection of

philosophy and religious education. True, the rise of analytical philosophy, and its

influence on education in the 1960s and 70s, tended to deprive the philosophy of

education of religious concerns.3The selection of papers presented at the 1994 INPE

meeting chaired by Paul Standish,4 may be considered as a vehicle of continued

interchange between philosophy of education and religious education. It is my hope

that the dialogue could be enhanced between educational philosophers and religious

educators, as well. Maritain could be an inspiring philosopher in such a challenging

task.

2. The philosophical-religious idea of the human person

proposed by Maritain serves as a foundation for religious education.

What characterizes religious education as such, is the fact of that education

being precisely "religious." This means that, directly or indirectly, such education

fosters the relation with God; otherwise, it would not be religious education.5 Now, in

order to be able to foster such a relation, one must keep in account that the human

person has not only a biological and a rational dimension, but a spiritual one as well-

a religious dimension. Such is precisely the conception that Maritain offers of the

human person, the object of education.

3
Ibid., 318-19.
4
See Paul Standish, "Moral and Religious," 1-2.
5
We do not consider here the case of non-theistic religions, as for example, Buddhism and Taoism.
 201

The philosophical-religious idea of the human person according to Maritain is

based in the deep aspiration of every human being to be related with God. With this

idea in mind, Maritain concludes that the human person is a value in her/himself,

because everyone has the potential to be related with God as Supreme Value. This

theocentric humanism keeps the individual person at the center of focus, along with

God in intimate relation with this human personwhich relation encourages a sense

of integration. Maritain's proposal of a theocentric humanism fits well within the task

of religious education, where what is central is the re-uniting (re-ligare) of the person

with God.

Maritain argues that the problem is a problem not of education but of civilization.6

I believe, however, that the reason for such problematic resides in the basic concept of the

human person. Maritain argued that education suffers from a false definition of the

human person, and as a consequence, a false definition of the ends of education. Some

modern philosophical approaches have created a concept of the person that becomes

incompatible with religious education, considering a human being as everything else but

a human person. Thus, our lives have been separated from faith and religion. Nowadays

there is a call to return to God, to discover the religious meaning of life, to find the sense

of our eternal destination, to recover the deep meaning of the human person as being the

image of God belonging to a community. A fundamental piece of this process of change

resides in education, and more specifically, in religious education.

6
Maritain, Vues Thomistes, 187.
 202

In order to speak of education as religious, therefore, it is necessary to

emphasize that human persons are matter and spirit, and that there is a religious

dimension in every one of them, ever driving their deepest self to seek God as their

ultimate end. Likewise crucial is the implication that all persons are created in the

imago Dei^ the image and likeness of God. The philosophical-religious idea proposed

by Maritain reinforces precisely the purpose of religious education. That education

consists in cultivating a relation with God, but it would not be well to forget that the

individual human person is a member of a large group seeking this relation with God.

Everyone else is seeking it, as well.

3. The theocentric humanism of Maritain stresses not only the

relation between God and humanity, but that between humanity and

the world.

The theocentric approach proposed by Maritain is a model open to being shared

by any religious faith, and thus suitable to be applied in religious education in a

multicultural and a multi-faith world. I contend that a religious education lacking a

theocentric humanism after all, a theocentric humanism supposes a civilization

integrally human, and of evangelical inspiration, because its ultimate end is God to be

seen and possessed is built without a solid foundation. Such a model or theory of

religious education would contradict the essence of religious education.

This "theocentric humanism" has social and political implications, especially for a

reconstruction of our society by way of a rehabilitation of the human person in and

 203

through God. In this rehabilitation, religious education takes the core role. It becomes the

vehicle of basic conditions such as justice, freedom, respect, peace, and love for our

fellow men and women, and living our faith with and within a community. The

implications for religious education of having a theocentric humanism are important.

First, there is a movement of descent, for God infuses in every creature goodness and

lovability together with being, and has the first initiative in every good activity. A

religious educator calls on the intuitive powers of the students to be aware of such a

divine presence in one's life. Second, there is the movement of ascent, which is the

response of the human person to God by which he/she takes the second initiative.

With this theocentric humanism, religious education helps us to become who we

really are, as we discover our true Christian image in and through the community of

which we are part. We find ourselves having a true identity. The theocentric humanism

proposed by Maritain also provides a strong foundation for taking into account the

society or community in the task of religious education. In fact, to acknowledge that each

and every human person is the image of God, forces us to adopt not a mere individualistic

approach in religious education, but a personalized approach that includes other persons

and therefore the community. Hence the individual human person becomes the subject of

education, yes, but as inserted into or forming part of a whole community. The more faith

is rooted in the community, the more successful will be our educating for lived faith.
 204

4. The philosophy of education of Maritain considers the human

person as a unity, and hence fosters unity in religious education.

Maritain's point of departure-thinking about who we are, who we might become,

and what our purpose of existing is, how we find the eternal sense of our destination, how

to discover the religious meaning of life and how to find God in the community to which

we belongis suited very well to the field of religious education. After all, together, all

of these ideas constitute the main questions to be addressed in religious education. For

Maritain, if it is to be well grounded, the true education of the human person must be

based on the Christian idea of that person, and this idea incorporates and assumes the

divine destiny of both man and woman.

I am convinced that the true Christian image of the human person is one of a

creature of God, made of matter and spirit, capable of knowing God through faith and

love, wounded by sin but capable, by grace, of loving God in everyone. His/her

rationality, freedom, and dignity come from being an image of God. This dignity of the

human person as a gift from God is the occasion of a realization in us that every human

being, whether beautiful to behold or physically impaired, whether brilliant or ordinary in

intellect, whether living in poverty or wealth, whether Christian, Moslem, or atheist, is

made in the image and likeness of God. The truth is that any person or culture can find

God as long as he/she/it remains open to and inquisitive about truth, beauty, and

goodness, because God is present in everyone.

 Maritain considers the human being from all possible perspectives: physical,

psychic, rational, spiritual, social, and supernatural, uniting these aspects in the

concept of the human person. The human being has to be considered in an integral

way, and the religious dimension makes that unity, a unity that transcends the

temporal level to reach a supernatural level. It is because of this that Maritain's

philosophy of education becomes so important for religious education: it considers

the student as a unity. Indeed, in order to teach the students in a better way, educators

need a complete and comprehensive definition or understanding of the human person;

otherwise, their teaching will be incomplete, and will be unable to facilitate the full

realization of the human being. Without a vision of the unity of the human person,

one would run the risk of educating the person only in some aspects, while not

considering others, and therefore of disintegrating the person.

With all of this in mind, it is extremely important to consider the religious-

philosophical idea of the human person in a religious-educational setting. This is the

notion that sustains Maritain's philosophy of education, and I contend that it can be used

as a foundation for religious education, especially for Christian religious educators. This

religious-philosophical idea of the human person is rooted in an integral humanism that

we can label as "theocentric anthropology," or "theocentric humanism," for it considers

the human person a being dependent on God, and constitutes, as well, the link necessary

for the creation of a philosophy of education within religious education. I believe that

Maritain's philosophy of education brings a reliable foundation and consistency to

religious education, and that it expands our insights, thanks to the fact that we are relying

on a religious-philosophical definition of the human person.

5. Maritain's philosophy of education is based in the interaction of

persons, and this agrees with the goal of religious education, which

seeks to unite the human person with the Person of God.

Education in Maritain is established in a twofold pole-relation, in a dialogue

between the student and the teacher. In this relation, there is great respect for

freedom, and the teacher creatively sets the conditions needed for students to reach

their ultimate goal: God. It is not a question of self-education, as liberalism proposes,

nor is it a one of "heteroeducation," as socialism would have it. (One cannot educate

oneself; one can only be educated by society.) It is a question of collaboration

between two persons, in terms of the willingness of those who receive the education

and the intention of the educator. But between the educator and the student, there is a

third reality that motivates the educational relation. Liberalists call it rationality.

Socialists call it solidarity. Christians call it religiosity.

I advocate in this dissertation that, if religious education takes its premise in the

principle that the subject (the learner) of religious education is a religious being, and that

consequently the aim of religious education is to help a person to become who he or she

ought to bean image of Godthen we are doing nothing other than practicing the

philosophy of religious education according to the insights of Jacques Maritain. The

encounter of the human person with God is somehow possible thanks to religious
education, hence the importance of the reliability and trustworthiness of that education.

In religious education, the educator enters into a personal relationship with the

student, establishing conditions to facilitate her or his accomplishment of personal

union with God. In this fashion, students are also enabled to find their own vocation,

their vocation as persons, not in some isolated way, but within a concrete community

of other persons, who will likewise retain their own identity and security. Here the

educational process begins with the family and continues with the teacher; and later it

develops through the representatives of the different fields of art, culture, religion,

economy, and politics, as through those who cultivate a particular aspect of humanity.

It is mainly human persons who provide the student with motivation. This is why

Maritain emphasizes the importance of inviting to an educational institution school,

men and women of different schools of thoughtwise people, artists, missionaries,

workers, business people, and so onbecause, with them, the students can talk and

make their own judgment on the topics at issue. In the field of religious education, it

is important to receive this experience directly at the hands of the people who form

the community, and who share their experiences of their relation with God in daily

life.

For Maritain, education does not depend so much on structures or didactic

methods, but on the personality of the educator, and above all, on the truth of which

the educator bears testimony. If we accept this view of religious education, then, it is

clear that the intellectual and spiritual formation of the educator is a priority. For
Maritain, the religious educator becomes an instrument for enabling people to find

God. The task of religious education is to afford an understanding of the process of

God's self-revelation to all human persons, and this is a mystery that religious

educators must make clear to the students to whom they impart their teaching.

6. Maritain regards education as a liberating process with social

implications, and one which agrees with the goal of religious

education: to deliver persons from all that can present an

obstacle to their being united to God.

The liberation under consideration by Maritain is the liberation that educators

exercise as their priority task, as they help students discover a criterion of selection

through which they will be able to exercise their freedom in the way that is right for

themselves. Freedom and truth are related; then: the educator needs, first, to know the

truth, and then, to teach that truth to the student, so that the latter may come to know

it as well, and be free to choose it. The process of liberation according to the

educational philosophy of Maritain is therefore to be understood as the process

permitting the display of all of the energies and capabilities of persons, such as

imagination, intuition, and natural reason, so that these persons may come to know

the truth, choose it, and love it, thus accomplishing their ultimate goal. Liberation can

be understood as the process of eliminating all that might prevent these persons from

knowing the truth and loving it.

This liberating process could be an essential of religious education. The

awakening from a natural life to a supernatural life implies acquiring the capacity to

defeat all obstacles, and to dissolve all bonds, that might hinder our access to the One

who is able to satisfy our inner desires. The task of seeking and finding truth sets us

free. We have therefore to look into the field of religious education for programs that

awaken the creativity, the reasoning, the personal interests, and whatever provides the

basic element of faith, in order to facilitate a full and authentic relationship with God.

Maritain's approach to religious education was holistic. He acknowledges the

need for a pastoral and community focus in educational efforts. In fact, his idea of the

person implies taking into account the important element of the social dimension.

Human persons do not grow alone, but within a community, where they develop their

civic intelligence and social virtue. In the religious context, when people

acknowledge their own dignity as children of God, they acknowledge as well the

value of every person around them. Thus, religious education seeks to foster

community life and active participation within it.

Religious education aims to educate people to be really free, and this implies

solidarity with society. We are free to choose, but I am more free if I choose the good, the

valuable, the worthy. I choose God and my neighbor instead of my egoism; then I

become really free. Christian freedom is not a goal in itself but a means: the ultimate goal

in Christianity is love. Of course, love would be impossible without freedom.

Paradoxically, then, it is in terms of this goal of education for freedom that the social

aspect of spirituality must be understood and fosteredas a liberating process from our
egoism, from our arrogance, from all that prevents us from becoming what we really are.

The liberating process endorsed by Maritain can stand as a reminder to us that

genuine freedom involves responsibility for others, and that personal and communal

freedom are intimately related. Such a process can be put into practice through religious-

education programs by the addressing and promoting of social justice, in a multicultural

framework where race, class, and gender work in harmony, and foster a social

reconstruction.7

In fact, the human person should appreciate that it is thanks to the community

that education is received, and that it is within the community that one is called to live

a worthy life, contributing to that community from the gifts received. Human beings

have a responsibility to and for other persons. This mutual dependence between the

individual and society is part and parcel of Christianity's first beginnings. According

to the New Testament, believers, from the time of Jesus and the first disciples,

prioritized the sharing of their faith and goods. It is precisely because of this social

sensibility that religious education fosters programs of pastoral ministry, works of

peace and justice, and works of compassion and mercy. Further, social orientation

allows persons to manifest their inner being, and empowers them to become living

signs of the love of God by serving and sharing in a particular community. Working

together with God, human beings can discover that peace is possible, and

7
See Christine E. Sleeter and Carl A. Grant, Making Choices for Multicultural Education (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994).
 211

transformation as well, in the light of a regard for every human being as one's

neighbor.

7. Maritain's proposal of including theology is essential for religious

education, since theology helps people to know their faith better in

order to live it, and consequently helps them to achieve their own

religious identity.

The teaching of theology in religious education not only helps persons to

know their faith better, but at the same time affirms their particular identity as

believers belonging to a specific tradition of faith. This fact, far from promoting

alienation and conflict among religious groups, will promote a greater maturity in the

inter-religious dialogue. Indeed, as Maritain says, we must "distinguish to unite."8 It

is only through and in their proper identity that people are able to establish a true

dialogue, one carried on among equal participants in an interchange, persons who

maintain their belief in God as the common element of the dialogue.

Maritain's philosophy of education insists on the teaching of theology as an

urgent need in a religious-educational setting. Theology is necessary for an understanding

of religious education. Good will is not enough to teach religious education, and therefore

theology becomes essential for religious educators. Maritain insists on teaching the

philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. I hold that there are other possibilities at hand, as John

8
Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, ix.
 212

M. Hull argues: religious education demands "new theological reflection."9 However, if

Christian religious education is to preserve its Christian distinctiveness, then it can indeed

be related to Thomas' theology, not as a closed system, which Thomas does not propound

in any case, but as an open methodology, and the future will always be open if we keep

an attitude of openness, inquiry, questioning, and good will. Authors like D' Souza agree

that Catholic education has increasingly defined its distinctiveness through theology, as

well as, particularly, through religious education.10

It is not a matter of making religious education an enterprise of acquiring the

knowledge of all religions, or all kinds of wisdom. Rather, it is about helping people

to get a well-defined religious identity. Otherwise we should be talking about

"religious studies," where students only get knowledge or information about other

religions. But in religious education, knowledge is obtained in such a way that

everyone also acquires the possibility and opportunity of manifesting his or her faith

and of living it. In religious education, therefore, we must employ a twofold means:

information, that involves new knowledge (theology), and formation, that calls the

believer to appropriate this new knowledge in the service of a life of faith manifested

in the life of a particular community.

I think that religious education has remained separated and isolated from the

intellectual and personal interests of students who have received instruction in their faith
9
John M. Hull, Studies in Religion and Education (London: Falmer Press, 1984), 208.
10
Mario O. D'Souza, "Experience, Subjectivity, and Christian Religious Education: Canadian Catholic
Education in the 21st Century." In Journal of Educational Administration and Foundation, 15, 2 (2001),
12.
 213

as part of an obligatory structure. There are so many who have witnessed that religious

education is received by many in the most superficial stratum of the soul, and forgotten

almost as soon as it has been shallowly "memorized!" The problem with this situation is

that religious education has not made an appeal to the freedom of the individual, while in

fact that education cannot be imposed, as Maritain has claimed repeatedly. Certainly, if

we maintain that religious education has to educate people in order for them to become

free, then it would be contradictory to impose the teaching of religious education: it

would become indoctrination." Serious theological reflection, therefore, could represent a

basis for the new pluralistic religious education, an education that will allow the school

system to carry out its educational function in a better way, responding to the aspirations

of everyone. I hold that a multi-confessional system is better than a neutral one. I agree

with John Elias that it is easier to approach religion as a way of life in the context of

home, Church, and community, than it is in the context of the school.12

When I say that theology is needed for religious educators, I do not mean that

religious educators have to become priests or ministers. Neither am I saying that religious

education has to become a sort of seminary course. To say that theology is needed for

religious educators is to support equipping them in such a way that they can grasp the

content of their own faith in a deeper and more articulate manner, and use the light and

11
1 therefore disagree with Ben Spiecker, who distinguishes between "initiation into forms of life,"
"training," "socialization," and "indoctrination," but considers that all of these educative actions necessarily
imply some kind of indoctrination or "openness to indoctrination." Spiecker, Freedom, 22.
12
Elias. "Ancient Philosophy," 19.
 214

wisdom of this "sacred discipline" to solve problems with which Christians13 are

confronted in the accomplishment of their mission in temporal society.

This theological training should be especially connected with the problems raised

by contemporary science, by the great social movements and conflicts of our age, and by

anthropology, comparative religions, and philosophy of culture. I contend that the

inclusion of theology is urgent in religious education, and I also agree with Maritain that

it should be a matter of self-determination, and thus considered as comporting an

invitation to choose it only on a voluntary basis, in a religious-educational setting.

Because Catholic theology teaches that charity presupposes faith, and that this faith,

together with grace, is offered to all, then all should be invited to make the choice of

which we speak.

One could think that, when Maritain suggests the teaching of theology, he is

recommending a partition of persons according to their particular faith. In reality,

however, Maritain is seeking to foster a true dialogue among beliefs or "faiths" and

cultural groups, as embracing another in a warm and sincere dialogue. But this is

possible only when people know who they are, sure of their identity.

Now that I have been studying and dealing with Maritain and his contributions for

some years, I perceive with satisfaction how he set forward, and put to work, philosophy

and religion together, which allowed him to create a comprehensive view of the totality

13
The term "Christian" is used here as synonymous with "Roman Catholic." Maritain's philosophy of
education will here be related to Catholic religious education, and so we have chosen the term Christian
religious education for a precise term.
 215

of human personhood, including, of course, its religious component, within the art of

education. I believe that both, philosophy and religion, share a duty: to foster an

understanding of a way of life, and thereby endow that way of life with meaning.

Specifically, then: religion must include theology.

I do not argue that the inclusion of theology will solve problems in religious

education all by itself, but it will lay the groundwork for a vital understanding which will

surely illuminate our minds, as we learn, as we teach, and in all our daily activities. This

is a way to transform our world.

8. The fostering of the spiritual life as proposed by Maritain

constitutes an essential aspect of religious education.

I have pressed for the need of theology in religious education, as a way to put into

practice Maritain's philosophy of education in a religious-educational setting. But this is

not enough. Theology has to be connected with our life, else it would be only speculative

theoretical knowledge without praxis (practice). The way we express our religious nature,

is by developing a personal and unique spirituality. Religion has an expression, and this

expression is called spirituality.

Religious education cannot just be one more subject in the curriculum,

because religious knowledge cannot be limited to an intellectual knowledge.

Religious knowledge must lead to practice in daily life. While fostering the spiritual

dimension in the person, as Maritain suggests, religious education transforms

theological knowledge into a personal life experience, into an encounter of the

created person with God. Religious education is closely related to spirituality; after

all, it seeks to awaken the human person to a becoming of who she or he really is: a

being created as an image of God. Religious education helps us to discover our deep

purpose in this world. The religious nature thus residing in every human being finds

its awakening in our deepest self, within our inner energies. So the religious educator

becomes the second agent in fostering these inner energies, and helps others to

discover their own end, their own purpose in relation to God in this world.

I contend, then, that intellectual work is not enough for developing religious

education. We have to engage the students and the teacher in a spiritual work, in a

process of letting the presence of God grow in what we learn, what we hear, what we

experience, and what we can imagine about religion. We have to "experience" or "live'

religious education, if we truly wish to achieve the purpose of religious education.

Therefore it is extremely important to foster spirituality in religious education, as

Maritain advises.

For Maritain, there is no separation between educational work and the

fostering of spiritual life, between action and contemplation, because "the life of

prayer does not close the eyes, but opens them."14 Religious educators should

manifest their contemplative spirit, and ought to witness with their lives, with the

truth in which they believe. To live as a Christian in a school means to accomplish

14
Maritain, "On Teaching," in The Pamphlet (Toronto: The Institute of Medieval Studies, University of
Toronto, 1933), 9.
one's own ordinary work with a particular spirituality, and to give witness to that

attitude before one's students. Religious education becomes, then, in a certain sense,

the apostleship of the laity in their own daily work.

If we recognize the human person as a whole, we shall be considering such a

person as a bio-psycho-social and spiritual being, as does Maritain. In religious

education, the spiritual dimension of the person becomes central, because religious

education is all about "connecting us back," connecting us once again with God.

Religious education is an encounter between "persons," that touches our deepest inner

being, and that awakens a spirituality in us. A spiritual person is one who is deeply aware

of the powerful presence of God, someone who seeks both the knowledge and the love of

God, and who experiences within his/her heart a profound personal encounter with God,

perceiving the divine presence in human beings, in nature, in everyday life.

Spirituality is the manner in which we put into practice our religious belief.

Spirituality therefore emerges as a personal journey. Christian religious education fosters

spirituality as a personal journey of self-discovery, moving us in the direction of seeking

meaning for our own lives. In developing the spiritual life, we can give our life, along

with our religious beliefs, a sense of purpose. A religious educator must understand that,

at its deepest levels of understanding, spirituality is an intimate experience of oneness,

wholeness, union, and communion with the Divine, Who always remains the Other.

When all is said and done, spirituality is a unique and personal journey. There are no

"courses on spirituality." As Maritain says, in the sense that it touches the deepest part of
a person, spirituality is the way we live our religious dimension, and not a simple

knowledge to be transmitted, like mathematics or physics. But we can create the

conditions for spirituality to be able to grow. For instance, the extensiveness of our carin

for the well-being of our students is a measure of the richness of our own spirituality, as

says Gloria Durka.15

The importance of fostering spirituality has been emphasized by many, among

whom we can mention Maria Harris, who invites educators to be contemplatives, in

their classrooms and in their experiences with their students.16 Religious educators

who bring a spirit of contemplation to the classroom, and beyond, will make a great

difference in the educational process. For they will be giving testimony to their faith,

and consequently giving good example to the students. They will be teaching by

example. Indeed, religious education implies an experience of faith, and not only of

religious knowledge. It is, as John Elias says, a way of life.

9. Spirituality of the Religious Educator

Maritain presents Jesus as the example of teacher.17 Jesus is even more the

teacher in religious education, where the task of the teacher is to help the students to

know God better, and to foster their relation with God. Indeed, the life of Jesus, with

his/her deep and rich spirituality, sets the model to imitate. His concern for the

community, his/her consideration for the individual person, and for loving all, his/her

15
Durka, The Teacher's Calling, 51.
16
Maria Harris, Fashion Me a People, 172-175.
17
Maritain, "On Teaching," 9.
 219

readiness to listen, to heal, to advise, to speak, to forgive, to console, to accompany,

to give his/her life for the others, and to be ready to sacrifice his/her life, reveals in an

excellent way God, as Someone ready to come close to the human person, so that the

person may know and love God, following God's way.

What I propose would be to create an environment of faith in the school, not as a

policy of the school, which would perhaps intrude on the freedom of the students, but as a

milieu place in which the students would have "opportunities" to "see" what it means to

live according to a belief, within daily life. This kind of environment does not necessarily

have to be dependent on the religious denomination represented by the school. A teacher,

convinced of the value of "honesty" or "integrity," would teach, by actions, a "spirituality

of integrity" to the students.

It is all about a "spirituality of religious educators," a spirituality immersed in the

daily routine of the school and of life, and consequently, more adapted to the ordinary life

of the people, and a spirituality that shows care and concern for the growth of each

student. Here spirituality would be experienced within the teaching-learning process,

through the fostering of dialogical, reflective, creative, exploratory, and interactive

participation, yes, but also addressing themes concerned with the flourishing of the

spiritual dimension of human life-and with helping students "connect themselves to their

own lives"-with ensuring them all feasible opportunities for their critical involvement.

In a school that fosters spiritual life, students will have the opportunity to live and

experience what it means not only to "know about," but to "live according to a spiritual
 220

model. The writer shares Maritain's dream of waking up the whole human race to a

spiritual dimension, in its twofold movementa vertical one that is the approach to God,

and a horizontal one directed toward our brothers and sisters. But in order to accomplish

all of this, we stand in need of guidelines for nurturing the spiritual dimension through

religious education.

The philosophy of education of Jacques Maritain awakens religious education to

the great responsibility and richness of fostering spirituality in daily life, and, of course,

this inevitably has social implications. This is an unavoidable issue, and we have to

acknowledge it. Religious educators who promote spirituality cannot ignore their

responsibilities for the world. Indeed, we are not alone: we have social roots, and we are

meant to live in a society.

With the foundation provided by Maritain's philosophy of education, it is easy for

religious education to open up new horizons, such as the sponsorship of persons toward a

maturity of faith, assistance to them in giving expression to a transcendent dimension of

life, their empowerment in their quest for God, a life according to religious values, and

faith tradition, and finally, a common bond with other religious views, regardless of their

particular provenance. Religious educators do not own the enterprise; but they do bear

witness to their faith in a multicultural, multi-faith, global and postmodern world.

10. Role of Religious Education in Society

Maritain's philosophy of education as applied to religious education has proved to

be a solid foundation for such education. Maritain considers the person as a unity of

intellectual, moral, social and religious dimensions, so that religious education not only

helps the students to achieve their final goal of becoming true images of God, but also

enables them to build a better world. This social contribution of Maritain's work is well

stated by Mario O. D'Souza, who writes regarding Maritain's contribution:

By appealing to this human nature and to the dignity of the intellect,

Catholic education can become a primary force in unifying a diverse
nation. In its quest for knowledge and truth, such an education rises above
religious, political, and ideological divisions to demonstrate the
importance of humanizing its students, whatever their religious
affiliation.18

Religious education, envisioned through Maritain's philosophical lens, becomes a

powerful means for building a healthy society, a society guided by values and built upon

a true humanism. Such education can indeed contribute highly to the building of a united

society and nation in a pluralistic world. Religious educators can find, in Maritain's

philosophy of education, a tool to reconnect faith, culture, and learning, both in students

and in teachers, by including theology and spirituality in the curriculum. Maritain's

legacy cannot be more useful to our present world.

The major themes of Maritain's pedagogical thought include his metaphysics of

the person as a being of knowledge and love, the person as a whole and also as part of

society, liberation as a process of encountering spiritual freedom, the dynamics of the

18
Mario D' Souza, "The Preparation of Teachers for Roman Catholic Schools: Some Philosophical First
Principles." In Paideusis: Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, 9, 2 (1996), 8.
 222

human awakening, the art of the teacher, the authentic values to be lived truth, wisdom,

and loveso that Robert Hutchins concludes that

Education provides the great peaceful means of improving society; and

yet, as we have seen, the character of education is determined by the
character of society. Still we must not assume a defeatist attitude. The
alternative to a spiritual revolution is a political revolution; I rather prefer
the former. The only way to secure a spiritual revolution is through
education.19

The spiritual revolution proposed by Hutchins is the one to which Maritain invites us, all

through his philosophy of education in interplay with religious education. It is indeed

education whose primary end is "liberation through knowledge and wisdom, good will,

and love."20 Maritain never ignored the natural and supernatural destiny of the human

person, and for him the crisis in education was nothing other than a crisis of civilization.21

And Maritain, as we have learned through this dissertation, is still relevant. Why?

Because his contribution could be beautifully implemented if we, as religious educators,

wished his pedagogical thought to bear fruit in our world.

19
Robert Hutchins, Education for Freedom (Baton Rouge, La.: State University Press, 1943), 58-9.
20
Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 11.
21
Maritain, Vues Thomistes, 187.
 223
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 Abstract

This dissertation proposes Maritain's philosophy of education as a crucial tool for

any attempt by us to recover certain valuable truths and fundamental principles for the

solution of the educational dilemmas of the present day, especially those of religious

education. This dissertation seeks to make the case for Maritain's thought as a source of

light, direction, foundation, and integration in the field of religious education. Maritain's

thoughts offer a model for the specific field of religious education, in both theory and

practice.

This dissertation is an accurate study of the Catholic philosophy of education of

Maritain as set forth in his published writings. We attempt to demonstrate that this

philosophy of his is still relevant, and that a consideration of the philosophical-religious

idea of the human person is an indispensable point of departure for any educational

theory.

This dissertation proposes the philosophy of education as necessary in religious

education. It fosters unity by considering the human person as unity. Maritain's

theocentric humanism stresses not only the relation between God and humanity, but that

between humanity and the world. His thinking fosters unity in a religious education that

becomes a liberating process, and a process that conforms with the goal of religious

education: to deliver persons from all that can present an obstacle to their being united to

God by fostering the spiritual life of religious educators and society alike. This liberating

process helps human beings to become who they really are and can be put into practice

through religious educational programs including theology and spirituality in the

curriculum. Maritain's philosophy of education applied to religious education fosters

community life and active participation within it.

 LUZ M. IBARRA

Date of Birth December 25,1956

Place of Birth Mexico City, Mexico

High School Instituto Pedagogico

Anglo Espafiol
June 1974

Licentiate in Philosophy La Salle University

University Award Nomination Mexico City
1976-1980

Diploma in Social and Political Panamerican University

Philosophy 1983

Diploma in Human Development Panamerican University

and Communication 1989

Master Practitioner in University of Santa Cruz

Neuro-Linguistic Programming Santa Cruz, California
1992

Master in Creativity University of

Compostela Compostela, Spain
1996

Doctor of Philosophy Fordham University

Religious Education New York, New York
February 2010