The Person and the Common Good

The Person and the Common Good, originally published in 1947, presents Jacques Maritain's clearest and most sustained treatment of the person. He asks whether the person is simply the self and nothing more. After more than half a century, Maritain's question still has great validity, given the current inordinate preoccupation with individualism.

Presenting with moving insight the relations between man, as a person and as an individual, and the society of which he is a part, Maritain's treatment of a lasting topic speaks to this generation as well as those to come.

He makes clear the personalism rooted in the doctrine of St. Thomas and separates the social philosophy centered in the dignity of the human person from every social philosophy centered in the primacy of the individual and the private good.

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) was one of the twentieth century's greatest Christian philosophers. He is the author of, among other books, The Degrees of Knowledge (Notre Dame Press, 1995), Untrammeled Approaches (Notre Dame Press, 1996), and Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on Independence (Notre Dame Press, 1996).

John J. Fitzgerald translated Jacques Maritain's The Person and the Common Good from French to English for Charles Scribner's Sons in 1947.