LIVING IN A MULTITUDE: THE RECEPTION OF THOMIST POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IN JACQUES MARITAIN

Abstract

The political philosophy of Jacques Maritain was characterized by a distinctive reception among Catholic groups interested in political life during the last century. His ideas, however, were not a merely contingent answer to historic contingencies, but were rooted in robust conceptions from the political philosophy of Saint Tomas Aquinas. This essay explores with a diachronic focus the way in which Maritain, over the course of his thought, gets close or distances himself from the political philosophy of Tomas Aquinas, in particular as found in his work De Regno.