MARITAIN,JACQUES - A GREAT PHILOSOPHER AN D HUMANIST

The article marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Jacques Ma ritain, one of the most significant of the neo-thomist thinkers, a sym bol of the relationship of faith and god. As a philosopher, he concent rated on deepening his understanding of the teachings of Thomas Aquina s, rather than on producing any new philosophical concepts, and he spe nt his life studying and disseminating these teachings. Maritain succe ssfully adapted the thomist philosophical system to the problems of th e modern day, with the aim of reviving the traditional christian value s in the first half of the 20th century. The stimuli for Maritain's qu estions about god, the world and man are shown against the backdrop of his life and times (Bergson's intuitivism, his friends, E. Psichari, Ch. P. Peguy and L. Blois - subsequently noted figures of French cultu re, Driesche's neovitalism, conversion to catholicism, study of the te achings of Aquinas). Maritain's direct experience of the first world w ar influenced his critique of European culture in the 1920s and in the 1930s he set out his liberal programme of ''healing'' for society thr ough a path of ''christian humanism''. His teaching in Canada and the USA dates back to this period. During the second world war he was one of the noted figures of France in the USA, primarily thanks to his rej ection of fascism and nazism, which he saw as trampling on human digni ty. In the 1940s he devoted himself to the questions of man, human rig hts, christianity and democracy and the principle of humanist politics and morals. His second sojourn in the new world produced noted philos ophical studies and meditations which were, to some extent, a return t o his experiences and acquaintances in the USA. In the 1960s Maritain' s ideas on artistic responsibility, the autonomy of culture and art an d the significance of man's earthly actions were influential in the Va tican II council and in the ''Aggiornamento'' programme. It was almost at the end of the 1980s that ''christian humanism'' became a part of the official policy of the Vatican, long after the death of the neo-th omist thinker. The article also includes a list of Maritain's principa l philosophical writings.