Abstract

This is a newly-revised edition of a French work, which originally appeared in 1930 as “a kind of Thomist manifesto, especially directed to the French Catholic public”. Apart from those who do not share M. Maritain’s religious faith, some may reject the confessedly “youthful emphasis and rhetoric” with which this very personal introduction to the basic verities of his intellectual life is warmly presented. Yet M. Maritain can claim truly to be a pioneer in the “great historic novelty” of making the rediscovered basic insights of Thomas Aquinas “emerge, from a school tradition restricted to the intellectual preparation of clerics, into the open and global compass of contemporary thought”.