The very rich hours of Jaques Maritain: A spiritual life.

The very rich hours of Jaques Maritain A spiritual life WRITTEN BY Ralph McInerny PUBLISHED BY University of Notre Dame Press, 2004, ISBN: 0268043590, Softcover, pp. 235, $36.64 CAN

The first half of this book deals chiefly with the story of Maritain's life, and the second half chiefly with his writings. McInerny is the director of the Maritain Centre at the University of Notre Dame, and writes here not only as well informed about his subject but also with a great respect for him. Maritain, along with Etienne Gilson, was the leading advocate of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Thomistic revival of the twentieth century.

The "hours" referred to in the title of the book are the hours of the Divine Office of the Church, which hours are here used as chapter headings. They also explain why the book has a most beautiful jacket with a picture of a fifteenth-century German psalter.

Maritain's life is full of interest. He was baptized a Lutheran; he grew up in atheism after his parents' divorce; with his wife he decided to commit suicide rather than live in the meaningless world of modern philosophy unless an alternative could be found; he became a Catholic, discovered the philosophy of Aquinas, and rejoiced to study it, and to spread it, during the rest of his life. After writing about fifty books, lecturing for a life-time, and, after his wife's death, entering a religious community, he died at age ninety. McInerny, referring to the day of Maritain's death, refers to Plato, who had said of Socrates: "Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, concerning whom I may truly say that, of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best."

McInerny, a well-known and respected Thomist in his own right, comments briefly on the most significant of Maritain's writings, keeping in mind that most of the readers of this book are not themselves philosophers. He stresses that philosophy, after the medievals, was turned by Descartes (1596-1650 A.D.) from philosophy to ideosophy; that is, from a study of reality outside the mind to a study of the reality within the thinker's mind; an ideosophy which, unfortunately, has been followed by so many thinkers down to our own century.

He stresses also that even the best philosophy is not the last word in our knowledge of ultimately reality; that there is a knowledge which surpasses by far even the best that philosophy can do. This knowledge is one that has been revealed to us by God. And it not only surpasses philosophy by giving us a higher knowledge of ultimate reality than philosophy can attain; it also improves philosophy itself by indirectly helping it to correct and refine its conclusions, by letting it see that there is a higher and a surer means to ultimate truth, by teaching philosophy that, though it is the love of wisdom, it is not the love of the highest wisdom but the handmaiden of this revealed wisdom, theology.

For Maritain, philosophy was involved with a way of life, but it was not true philosophy unless it led the way to a higher knowledge, theology, which gives us the knowledge of the existence and nature of God, and a knowledge of how to get to Him, and a knowledge of what is in store for us when we do get to him: the vision of God in himself, and eternal friendship with him.

For Maritain, the only purpose of life is to get to God, and the purpose of philosophy is for it to play its part in helping us to do that. And it does that by admitting that, though it learns important truths, it can discover that there are truths that are even more important. Philosophy must bow to theology because the philosopher's only purpose in life is to save his soul. As Maritain put it, "The only sadness is not to be a saint."

Fr. Leonard Kennedy C.S.B.