Maritain's Integral Humanism' and CST

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Maritain's "Integral Humanism''


and Catholic Social Teaching

joseph M. de Torre

"Culture must cultivate man and each man along the extension of an integral andfull-fledged human-
ism, through which the whole man ,md all men are promoted in the fullness ofever_y human dimension.
Culture's essential purpose is that of promoting the being of man, and of providing him with the.
goods needed for the development of his individual and social being." John Paul II "In the Work of
Culture God has Made an Alliance with Man." Rio de Janeiro, 1 July 1980

F or a fair and faithful assessment of Maritain's ground-breaking socio-politi


cal thought in his two major works, viz. Integral Humanism (1936) and
Jvfan and the State (1951), it is indispensable to evaluate them in the full
context of his other related works, both before and after them. 1 The major criti-
cisms against Maritain related to Integral Humanism and Man and the State, such
as those ofJoseph Desdausais, Louis Salleron (both 1936), Julio Alleinvielle ( 1945-
48), and A. Massineo, S.J. (1956), were largely flawed by their failure to contextualize
Maritain, which was precisely done by the trenchant defenses ofMaritain by Etienne
Borne, M.D. Chenu, Etienne Gilson, Olivier Lacombe, Charles Journet, Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, Alcide De Gasperi, Cornelio Fabro, and Adriano Gallia, among
others. 2 However, it is the contention of this paper that the decisive key for the

1 Three Riformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, New York: Scribners, 1929; Freedom in the Modern World, trans.
Richard O'Sullivan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936); The Thing.r That Are Not Caesar's, trans. J. E Scanlan
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1939); Ramoming the Time (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941); The Rights of
l'vf,m and Ntttural Law, trans. Doris C. Anson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943); The Dream of Descartes,
trans. Mabelle L. Andison (London: Editions Poetry London, 1946); Christianity and Democracy, trans. Doris C.
Anson (New York: Scribner's, 1950); An Essay on Christian Philosophy, trans. Edward H. Fhumery (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1955); On the Philosophy ofHistory (New York: Scribners, I 957); Reflections on America (New
York: Scribner's, 1958); Scholasticism and Politics, trans. Mortimer]. Adler (New York: Image Books, 1960); TIJe
Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
1')66); The Peasant ofthe Garonne: An Old Lttyrmm Questions HimselfAbout the Present Time, trans. Michael Cuddihy
and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968).
2 For accounts of the criticisms and controversies see Joseph Amato, Mounier and Maritain (University, Alabama:

The University of Alabama Press, 1975); Brooke W. Smith, jacques 1Wmitain: Antimodern or Ultramoclem? (New
York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing, 1976); Bernard Doering, jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals,
(Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983); see also review of Doering by John P. Hittinger, in
This World, no. 5 (Summer/Spring 1983), pp. 164-68.

202
Maritain's "Integral Humanism" 203

interpretation of those two books is the development of the social doctrine of the
Chur~h, especially starting from John XXIII's Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem
in Terris (1963) and Vatican II's Gaudium etSpes (1965), going through Paul VI's
Ecclesiam Suam (1964), Populorum Progressio (1967), Humanae Vitae (1968), and
Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), and culminating in John Paul II's monumental out-
put, starting right from his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979). Maritain's
notion of"integral humanism" has played a pivotal role in the development of this
social teaching. It is the purpose of this paper to give a brief indication of the
connections between Maritain ground-breaking work in political philosophy and
the subsequent teachings of Catholic pontiffs, especially Pope John Paul II.
Ever since Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891), the social teaching of the Church
(sometimes called "doctrine" when focusing on principles, and "teaching" when
applying those principles to specific existential areas), has been gradually taking
more and more precise shape around the dignity of the human person (human
rights), the centrality of the traditional family, and the me:aning and purpose of
the civil community. It is through this teaching that the Church intends to act as
a leaven in secular society, inculturating herself in every national or regional cul-
ture without identifying herself with any of them in their temporality and plural-
ism, but remaining a transcendent and illuminating force, in order to build a
"civilization of love" (Paul VI) from within, or a consecratio mundi.Qohn XXIII).
In May 1981 John Paul II had prepared a speech to commemorate the 90th anni-
versary of Rerum Novarum, but he was unable to deliver it due to the attempt on
his life. It was nevertheless published, and in it he managed to put the social teach-
ing of the Church in a nutshell:
This social teaching is born in the light of the Word of God and of the authentic
Magisterium, from the presence of Christians within the changing situations ()f
the world, in contact with the challenges that come from them. 1ts object is and
always remains the sacred dignity of man, the image of God, and the protection
of his inalienable .rights; its purpose, the realization of its justice understood as
the advancement and complete liberation of the human person in his earthly and
transcendent dimension; its foundation, the truth about human nature itself, a
truth learned.from reason and illuminated by Revelation; its propelling power,.love
as the Gospel commandment and norm of action.
John Paul's description could well serve as precis 'of the animating vision of
Maritain's Man and the State. Maritain developed this vision for Catholic social
and political philosophy through the dark events of World War II. And indeed,
the present urgency of the task was stated by John Paul in his message commemo-
rating the 50th Anniversary of World War II in Europe (8 May 1995). After
emphasizing the obligation never to forget that tragedy, he describes what led to it
and what followed after it: "The world, and Europe in particular, headed towards
that enormous catastrophe because they had lost the moral strength needed to
oppose everything that was pushing them into the'maelstrom of war. For totali-
tarianism destroys fundamental human freedoms and tramples upon human
204 Joseph M. de Torre

rights." Further he said that the policies and ideologies that led to the war, pre-
mised upon the failure to understand "that a society worthy of the person is not
built by destroying the person, by repression and discrimination'' have not at all
disappeared. Thus he urges that "This lesson of the Second World War has not yet
been learned completely and in all quarters. And yet it remains and must stand as
a warning for the next millennium."
John Paul II serves as a sentinel in the tradition of Maritain; he continues
Maritain's efforts to build the intellectual basis for a personalist theory of democ-
racy; or an "integral humanism." Maritain was developing his thought in the his-
torical context of the rise of the totalitarian ideologies of Fascism, Nazism and
Communism, destructive of human rights and of the family, as well as of a democ-
racy of freedom. and responsibility toward the common good. When he published ·
Integral Humanism, those ideologies were already at work politically, and about to
unleash the Second World War with the fanaticism of a racial and nationalistic
imperialism. The "integral humanism" proposed by Maritain in 1936 aspired to
lead the human person towards a full development under the "primacy of the
spiritual" that would eventually be fulfilled in Christ, as he himself, together with
his beloved wife Raissa and her sister Vera, and in interaction with Fr. Clerissac,
Peguy, Leon Bloy and others had personally experienced, particularly after his bap-
tism in 1906 and the beginning of his Thomistic studies in 1910. Through the
latter he discovered a Christian anthropology which could become a cultural bridge
for all persons in a free society. His book Christianity and Democracy was published
in 1943 "in homage to. the French people" during their suffering. At the end of the
war, the "cold war" broke out due to the fact that only. the first two of those
ideologies had been defeated, but not the third one: Marxist-Leninist Commu-
nism grew in its.imperialistic designs and its suppression of human rights, in spite
of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Maritain's
involvemept in this historic Document is also well known. In Man and the State he
made a bold attempt to formulate a "secular democratic faith" accepted by all in a
free society as a: body of self-evident or at least certainly demonstrable truths prior
and transcendent to, and assumed by any legal constitution: "For a society of free
men implies basic tenets which are at the core of its very existence. A genuine
democracy implies a fundamental agreement between minds and wills on the bases
of life in common; it is aware of itself and of its principles, and it must be capable
of de(ending and promoting its own conception of social and political life: it must
bear within itselfa common human creed, the creed offreedom." Indeed Maritain
sought to articulate the moral strength of a democratic creed precisely to counter
the very premises that weakened the west in its encounter with totalitarianism.
Bourgeois liberalism is unable to defend freedom in a coherent philosophy of gov-
ernment and public life; thus "Just as it had no real common good, it had no real
common thought- no brains of its own, but a neutral, empty skull f=lad with mir-
rors: no wonder that before the second world war, in countries that Fascist, racist,
Marttatns ·. ntegral H um.arusm
. . ' "I . " 205

or communist propaganda was to disturb or to corrupt, it had become a society


without any idea of itself and without faith in itself, without any common faith
which could enable it to resist disintegration." The practical faith articulated by
Maritain was first of all "a merely practical one, not a theoretical or dogmatic one."
People of a democratic society with different "even opposite metaphysical or reli-
gious outlooks, can converge, not by virtue of any identity of doctrine, but by
virtue of an analogical similitude in practical principles, toward the same practical
conclusions, and can share in the same practical secular faith, provided that they
similarly revere, perhaps for quite diverse reasons, truth and intelligence, human
dignity, freedom, brotherly love, and the absolute value of moral good." And yet it
is of vital importance that a theoretical account be given and that it be true, for the
temptation to skepticism is one of the "most alarming symptoms of the crisis of
our civilization. "3 Thus he says that education is "the primary means to foster
common secular faith in the democratic charter." And he insists that such educa-
. tion cannot be neutral or cut off from the "philosophical or religious traditions
and schools of thought" which have contributed to the formation of the nation. 4
Maritain was painstakingly trying to advocate what the present Pope has called
a "public philosophy" for a converging dialogue with the world as proposed by the
social teaching of the Church, chiefly presented in the above cited documents of
the magisteritim. The accusations of pragmatism, secularism, naturalism, liberal-
ism, idealism, nihilism, ultraspiritualism, Marxism and other niceties were first
vigorously refuted by those who knew him better, as mentioned earlier. And his
· ideas.gradually became part of the nucleus of the social teaching of the Church in
the specific framework of the reality of culture, a world culture, a "public philoso-
phy'' enlivened by a Christian anthropology answering the ultimate questions about
the human person and the human community.
The two Popes of Vatican II, and the latter's Gaudium et Spes took up this
question of culture and the social Gospel. Pope John XXIII, showing his openness
to the world, not to "conform" to it (cf. Rom 12:2) but to evangelize it by
inculturating the Gospel, significantly addressed his encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963)
not just to Catholics but "to all men of good will." Then Paul VI, after issuing his
first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (1964) on the dialogue of the Church with the
world, addressed the United Nations in October 1965 as from a contemporary
Areopagus, with the language of a "publi-c philosophy" committed to universal
truth. That very same year, the. closest spiritual and intellectual friend ofMaritain's,
Fr. Charles Journet, was made a Cardinal in January, and in September, just before
Paul VI's trip to New York to address the UN, the Pope received Maritain in Castel
Gandolfo. And on December 8, at the close ofVatican II with the full:-blooded
Christocentric humanism expounded in Gaudium et Spes, the Pope addressed the

3 Man and the State, p. 84.


4 Man and the State, pp. 119-21.
206 Joseph M. de Torre

Council's "Message to Seekers ofTruth" to Jacques Maritait;~. 5 But the decistve


moment came with the publication of the encyclical Populorum Progressio in 1967
in which Paul VI makes two explicit references tp Maritain, one of them to Integral
Humanism, both in its French and English versions. The same Pope went back to :
the idea of an inculturated Gospel tQ.rough an integral humanism in his Apostolic •
Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi of 1975.
And then came John Paul II, who placed the whole question of cultu~e at the
center of his Pontitlcate, tlrst in his tlrst encyclical Redemptor Hominis of 1979;
then in his address to the UN in October that year; and then in his programm~tic
Address of 2 June 1980 to the United Nations Educational, Scientitlc and Cul-
tural Organization (UNESCO), counter-pointing it with his insistence on the
centrality of the Church's social teaching as the heart of evangelization. This entire
"public philosophy'' and "integral humanism'' was particularly hammered out in
the series of addresses to "people of culture" or "builders of society" and of a "civi-
.lization of love," that is to stientists, philosophers, artists, diplomats, public offi-
cials, industrialists and so forth.
In Rio de Janeiro on 1 July 1980, just a month after his UNESCO Address:
"In the Work of Culture God has Made an Alliance with Man" John Paul II uses
the term "integralhumanism" to explain that it is through culture that the work of
Christian in democratic society best takes shape. "Culture must cultivate man and
each man along the extension of an integral and foil-fledged humanism, through
which the whole man and all men are promoted in the follness ofevery human di-
mension." Freedom must be understood in a more substantive sense than mere ·
freedom of choice. The freedom which Christian democracy seeks to promote
above all is what "St. Augustine called liber:tas maior, namely freedom in its full
development, freedom in a morally adult state, capable of autonomous choices in
regard to the temptations coming from every form of disorderly love of sel£ The
integra/culture includes the moral formation, the education in vi~es of indi-
vidual, social and religious life."
According to John Paul II education has a decisive role to play in this effort,
especially higher education. In addressing Professors and Students at the Cathe--
dral of Cologne, on 18 November 1980 and addressing university teachers at
Bologna 18 April1982 John Paul II warned against the dehumanizing effects of
reductionistic schemes extrapolating from science. Preserving and developing a
wholistic account of human beings pertains to "the university community [which
must] convincingly demonstrate this necessity by presenting the fascination of
that integral humanism which has always inspired the ideals and which, for sure
responds at all times to so many secret expectations of our contemporaries." In
that same year, in his November visit to Spain, he gave two Addresses along this line,

5 SeePope Paul VI, Closing Speeches, l&tican Council II (Boston: Daughters of St Paul, 1965); see new translation
in rhe appendix, p. 245.
Maritain's "Integral Humanism" 207

one at Salamanca and the other at Madrid. Then, at the University of Fribourg, 13
June 1984, "Science is free if it allows itself to be determined by truth." A crisis arises
in scientific cultures by virtue of the fact that "science is not in a position to respond to
the questions of its own meaning. And today's crisis is to a great extent a crisis of the
ideology of scientism, which persists in affirming the self-sufficiency of the scientific
project as if by itself it could satisfy all the essential questions which man asks himself."
A great task for culture and the defense of freedom is occasioned by a sense of the very
limits and partiality of science. The positive task is that of "the integration of knowl-
edge, in the sense of a synthesis in which the imposing accumulation of scientific
findings would discover its meaning in the framework of an integral vision ofman and
the universe, of the ordo rerum." This dialogue, indeed confrontation of science and
culture, is "indispensable for laying the foundations of an integral humanism." Again,
to Men of Culture, on 15 May 1988 in Lima ("Cultural development both in
inculturating the faith and in the world of work and enterprise") John Paul said that
the Church seeks to support "a true integral humanism which elevates man's dignity to
his true and unrenounceable dimension of son of God."
Finally, To Men of Culture, Mexico City, 12 May 1990 John Paul harkens
back to Paul VI closing remarks of the council: "This unrenounceable vocation of
service to man - to the whole man and to all men - is that which moves the Church
to address her call to the Mexican intellectuals- beginning with the Catholic intel-
lectuals - that opening new spaces to participation and creativity they may not ·
spare any effort to reach the completion of the work of integration - proper to true
science - which will lay the foundations ofan authentic integral humanism which
incarnates the higher values of culture and of Mexican history." 6 It is the great task .
of culture to secure and elaborate on the basic notion of human dignity. John Paul
himself elaborates upon the Vatican Council in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes,
regarding the mystery of Christ in relation to man which sought to unfold and
specify the meaning of human dignity in three respects: the notion of the person,
the human capacity to love, and the human capacity for work. Indeed these may
serve as the three great themes of John Paul's prodigious output of writings and
speeches on social and political doctrine. John Paul looks to the teaching ofVatican
II as the basis for his teaching.
The fathers of Vatican II root the dignity of the person in Christ as he who
"fully reveals man to himself and manifests to him his most exalted vocation"
because he has "in a certain sense united himselfto eve~J' man. He has worked with
human hands, has thought with a human mind, has acted with a human will, has
loved with a human heart" (GS, 22). The person must attempt to integrate "all
realities which make up his existence in a harmonious synthesis of life, oriented
towards an ultimate meaning, which is the most sublime expression oflove' (ibid).
The notion of"integral humanism" designates the goal of such a synthesis or per-
sonal and cultural integration.

6 This reference to integral humanism echoes "integrum human urn," appendix, p. 250.
208 Joseph M. de Tor:re

The second aspect of human dignity pertains to the capacity to love. "By
loving, one discovers that the profound capacity to give oneself elevates the person
and enlightens him interiorly. In fact, love is a dazzling appeal to go out of oneself ·
and to transcend onesel£" Thus Pope John Paul speaks of developing "the civiliza-
tion oflove," which is a "very attractive goal and, at the same time, demanding." As
mentioned above, John Paul adopted the term "the civilization oflove" from Pope
Paul VI, who in turn derived it from Maritain's notion of integral humanism.
As for the third aspect, work, it is "one of the great themes of culture,
particularly in our time." John Paul seeks to overcome the ancient separation
between work and culture. "Looking at the past, it is interesting to recall the
scarce value tha.t in classical antiquity was given to labor as part of culture. In
fact, lei~ure and work were often regarded as antitheticaL In the cultural pan- .
orama, even in our days human labor does not always appear as a rpeans of
personal fulfillment. But from the angle of faith, the perspective becomes larger·
to the extent that it renders human activity a means of sanctification and an .
experience of union with God." The problem of human labor and work oc-
cupied a central portion of Maritain's work; he briefly mentions in Man and
the State the issues of labor and work as the most urgent problem of the day. 7
But again it is in his great work Integral Humanism that Maritain most fully
developed the idea of work and the transformation of the modern regime
through a new approach to work and labor. This in part has served as the basis
for the later developments of John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul 11. 8
Maritain served as an innovator who sometimes incurred the hostility and
criticism of many of his fellow Catholics. But now in the light of subsequent
developments in Catholic social teaching following Vatican II and the great tor-
rent of writings and travels by John Paul II we can truly say that Maritain's notion
of "integral humanism'' has served to open a great stream of social po,litical doc-
trine. Indeed many years ago Maritain, in a moment of self reflection called him-
self above all a "spring finder":
What am I, I asked myself then. A professor? I think not; ltaught by necessity. A
writer? Perhaps. A philosopher? I hope so. But also a kind o{ romantic of justice
roo prompt.to imagine to himself, at each combat entered into, that justice and
truth will have their day among men. And also perhaps a kind of spring-finder
who presses his ear to the ground in order to hear the sound of hidden springs,
and of invisible germinations. 9
We may well say that Maritain's great works Integral Humanism and Man and the
State did indeed discover the "sound of hidden springs ~nd of invisible germina-
tions" whose fruits are only now being seen.

7 Man and the State, p. 104.


8Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism, trans. Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notte Dame Press,
19.73), pp. 184-91, 228-40.
9Jacques Maritain, Notebooks (Albany, New York: Magi Books, 1964), p. 3.

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