Untrammeled Approaches (Collected Works of Jacques Maritain)

With this volume of the Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, the University of Notre Dame Press published the first English edition of a remarkable group of essays that Maritain had prepared for publication in the year before his death. He brought together various writings that had not appeared in print or had circulated privately. The heart of the book is to be found in two groups of articles.

The first consists of philosophical essays. Several deal with truth, with philosophy at the time of Vatican II, and with the divine aseity; two are on philosophy of nature, dealing with evolution and with animal instinct; and three are on moral philosophy.

A second group consists of primarily theological essays. Four are contributions to what Maritain calls an existential epistemology. They are followed by a moving meditation on the Mass and essays on the Church triumphant, resurrection, and the priesthood.

When he lay dying at Fossanova, Thomas Aquinas, in deference to the wishes of the Cistercians, with whom he had found refuge, wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs. How better could a lifelong Thomist round off his lifetime of writing than with his own essay on the Song of Songs? This is what Maritian does in the serenely profound meditation that closes the volume.

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).

Bernard E. Doering is professor emeritus of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame. His translation of Jean-Luc Barré's Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005) won two national awards.