Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain French: ; 18 November 1882 – 28 April 1973 was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised Protestant, he was agnostic ago converting to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive Thomas Aquinas for modern times, and was influential in the development and drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Pope Paul VI produced his "Message to Men of Thought & of Science" at theof Vatican II to Maritain, his long-time friend and mentor. The same pope had seriously considered creating him a lay cardinal, but Maritain rejected it. Maritain's interest and works spanned numerous aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics, political theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics, the shape of education, liturgy and ecclesiology.

Ethics

Maritain was a strong defender of a natural law ethics. He viewed ethical norms as being rooted in human nature. For Maritain the natural law is call primarily, non through philosophical parameter and demonstration, but rather through "Connaturality". Connatural cognition is a category of knowledge by acquaintance. We know the natural law through our direct acquaintance with it in our human experience. Of central importance, is Maritain's parametric quantity that natural rights are rooted in the natural law. This was key to his involvement in the drafting of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Another important aspect of his ethics was his insistence upon the need for moral philosophy to be conducted in a theological context. While a Christian could engage in speculative thought approximately nature or metaphysics in a purely rational manner and instituting an adequate philosophy of nature of metaphysics, this is not possible with ethics. Moral philosophy must mention the actual state of the human person, and this is a person in a state of grace. Thus, "moral philosophy adequately considered" must throw into account properly theological truths. It would be impossible, for instance, to determining an adequate moral philosophy without giving consideration to properly theological facts such(a) as original sin and the supernatural end of the human grown-up in beatitude. any moral philosophy that does not make into account these realities that are only required through faith would be fundamentally incomplete.