The dissertation entitled Jacques Maritain and the Centrality of Intuition is a study in the influence of Henri Bergson's notion of intuition in the thought of Jacques Maritain. It is argued that Maritain used tenets from Thomistic philosophy to transform Bergsonian intuition, first by putting intuition back into the intellect from which Bergson in fact severed it. It is also argued that, although Bergson in fact put a wedge between intellect and intuition, that was not his intention. Because Bergson in (...) fact separated intuition from the intellect, however, Maritain accused him of being anti-intellectual. Contrary to Maritain's criticism, it is argued that Bergson was anti-intellectual only in the sense of criticizing a bad use of intelligence, but not in the sense of criticizing intelligence as such. Maritain then interprets Bergson's intuition as an immediate knowledge of reality in two ways: first, as the intellectual metaphysical intuition of being yielding a concept of being as being in its analogical amplitude and as not intrinsically linked to matter; second, as various and analogous modes of intuition by way of affective connaturality, i.e., an obscure, but deep and penetrating knowledge of the very subsistence of a thing by bypassing the concept. Various modes of affective connaturality are described, namely, the connatural knowledge of the virtuous person, of the prudent person, of the natural law itself, of the mystic, the lover, and the poet. In connatural knowledge, intuition is seen to be both intellectual and emotion-laden. Given the various modes of intuition explored by Maritain, it is argued that intuition is central to Maritain's thought. It is further argued that the content of one's experience of the self and being known in the various modes of connatural knowledge is stored in the depths of the spiritual preconscious of the soul and acts as an indirect cause that disposes one to have an intuition of being should one be so gifted. In addition, connatural knowledge of being is also an indirect cause of creative insights in science, mathematics, and in all other kinds of knowledge. A kind of poetic intuition is at work everywhere, even when subordinated to the ends of some other kind of knowledge. Consequently, it is necessary to be a contemplative, especially for the philosopher who needs to be attuned and receptive to the mystery of being if he/she is to be gifted with the metaphysical intuition, without which one cannot be an authentic metaphysician of existence. The thought of Henri Bergson, Pierre Rousselot and the Maritain Thomist, Joseph Sikora, S. J. is heavily relied on in the exposition of the thesis. (shrink)

For Emmanuel Levinas the foundation of the moral “ought” is an important question. He is skeptical, however, about using human reason or any sort of metaphysics to ground ethics. Instead he resorts to the human face as to what motivates a person to act ethically toward another person. Levinas argues that it is the nature of the human face to oblige anyone to act in an ethical way. In short, the human face commands one to be ethical. I will argue (...) that the metaphysics of being according to W. Norris Clarke and Jacques Maritain provide a corrective to Levinas’s metaphysical skepticism. Using Clarke’s metaphysics of person as the fullest expression of what it means to be, I maintain that what shines forth in the human face is the very depths of the human person. What grounds the ethical “ought” is the person. The human face is only the surface through which a deeper reality resonates. In this way, I argue for a metaphysical foundation for ethics. (shrink)

This article argues that Maritain’s philosophy of human intellection was more indebted to Bergson’s views on the centrality of intuition, metaphysics, andthe instrumental character of scientific reason, than some of Maritain’s published criticisms of Bergson might lead one to believe. Toward the end of his life Maritain spoke of twentieth-century Thomism’s debt to Bergson.

This article argues that Maritain’s philosophy of human intellection was more indebted to Bergson’s views on the centrality of intuition, metaphysics, andthe instrumental character of scientific reason, than some of Maritain’s published criticisms of Bergson might lead one to believe. Toward the end of his life Maritain spoke of twentieth-century Thomism’s debt to Bergson.