The founding of the Jacques Maritain Center in 1957 consolidated the great French Catholic philosopher's association with the University of Notre Dame. For some years previously, Maritain had been coming to Notre Dame to lecture and stay for short periods of time. Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, the president of the University, friend and admirer of Maritain, wanted to make the relationship permanent. The Center was founded to ensure that the thought and spirit of Jacques Maritain would remain at Notre Dame long after those present on the happy occasion of its founding were gone.
Jacques Maritain was born in 1882 to a French Protestant family. A year later, Raïssa Oumansouff was born into a Jewish family in Russia. The two met in Paris as university students where both were chiefly interested in science and philosophy. Raïssa and Jacques married in 1904. Their love for each other did not prevent them from making a pact to commit suicide if they had not, within a year, discovered the meaning of life and existence. The lectures of Henri Bergson, but more importantly the influence of Léon Bloy, helped them find the answers they sought. They were converted to Roman Catholicism, entering the Church with Raïssa's sister Vera, in 1906.
It is impossible to think of Jacques without thinking of Raïssa, whom he called dimidium animae meae: half my soul. Her recollections, We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in Grace, have made millions familiar with the intense cultural, intellectual and spiritual life of the Maritains. They jointly authored Prayer and Intelligence, Jacques published The Journal of Raïssa after her death, and in his own Carnet de Notes both recalls and documents their early life together.
Jacques Maritain is a paradigmatic Catholic philosopher, providing a model of the way in which religious belief and various cultural, intellectual and political concerns can be interwoven. Maritain responded with enthusiasm to the Church's recommendation of St. Thomas Aquinas to the faithful as their master in theology and philosophy. His writings exhibit how his mind was permeated by the thought of the Angelic Doctor.
The Center exists to contribute to the continuing influence of the spirit of Jacques Maritain at Notre Dame.
Father Leo R. Ward and Professor Frank Keegan were associated with the founding of the Center along with Professor Joseph Evans, director of the Center from 1957 until his death in 1979. Originally located in the library which has since become the Architecture Building, the Center moved to its quarters on the seventh floor of the Hesburgh Library in 1963.
The Center houses a special collection featuring the works of Jacques and Raissa Maritain in their original editions; a fair collection of translations which includes all English translations of works that originally appeared in French; books to which Maritain contributed a chapter or a preface; and a backup collection, consisting of the works of people associated with the Maritains, as well as books devoted to the thought of Maritain.
We have some memorabilia (e.g., pocket diaries of Maritain dating from the 1920s); manuscripts (e.g., the manuscript of the Walgreen Lectures published as Man and the State); some original letters, as well as photocopies of others obtained through exchanges with Madame Antoinette Grunelius of Kolbsheim.
Thanks to the generosity of Madame Paule Simon, the Center has a vast amount of papers from the late Professor Yves Simon, one-time member of the faculty of Notre Dame and an early associate of the Maritains. The published writings of Simon form part of the Center's special collection.
Professor Joseph Evans spent his long tenure a director of the Maritain Center in the twin occupations of translating works of Maritain into English and teaching thousands of students. The indelible personal impression he made on them was a living tribute to the impact that the thought and life of Maritain had on him. It was his passion to convey to others the teaching of Jacques Maritain and he did this in a manner that was completely sui generis.
When Evans died in 1979, Ralph McInerny was asked to take over. He faced an impossible task. There was simply no way anyone could succeed Joe Evans, if this meant carrying on what he had done. It was necessary to find a new path for the Center. To this end, a good deal of effort has been put into the preservation of archival materials to facilitate the research of those who come to the Center. The Center has sponsored a number of meetings devoted to the thought of Maritain, one in conjunction with the Institut International Jacques Maritain, another as host to the American Maritain Society.
The Jacques Maritain Center of Notre Dame is associated nationally with the American Maritain Society and internationally with the Canadian Maritain Association, the Institut International Jacques Maritain (Rome) of whose Conseil Scientifique Ralph McInerny is a member, and the Cercle D'Etudes Jacques et Raïssa Maritain of Toulouse and Kolbsheim.
Mrs. Alice Osberger is the Administrative Assistant of the Director. William Kevin Cawley is the librarian of the Maritain Center. Visits and inquiries are welcomed.
The Maritain papers and letters in the Center have been catalogued, and computerized access to them developed. This has also been done with the Yves Simon papers. Laval University and Thomas DeKoninck permitted the Center to photocopy the Charles DeKoninck archives at Laval. These papers, too, have been added to our computer data base. Negotiations are under way to add the papers of other eminent figures in the Thomistic Revival.
The Center's collection of dissertations devoted to the thought of Jacques Maritain has been brought up to date. A wider net has been cast and we have added 100 dissertations written at Laval during the Thomistic golden years of the Faculté de Philosophie, as well as hundreds of other dissertations written in the United States on the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
In short, the Center hopes to provide an ideal place for scholars working on the North American response to Aeterni Patris as well as to the later papal encyclicals encouraging the study of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Given the role Maritain played in the Thomistic revival, in the United States and indeed throughout the world, the fittingness of this activity of the Center is obvious.
Participants are lodged in a campus residence, there is daily Mass and the common recitation of morning and evening prayer. The aim of the Institute is to give impetus to the next phase of the Thomistic revival.
Each semester the Center publishes a brochure listing the courses in philosophy devoted to Thomism broadly considered. This is meant to facilitate the identification of courses which convey the Catholic intellectual tradition. It is not often realized that a good formation in Catholic philosophy is still possible at Notre Dame. This brochure shows this to be the case.
Informal seminars of graduate students are carried on in the Maritain Center. Some thirty graduate students met for close study of Veritatis Splendor, shortly after the appearance of the magnificent encyclical of John Paul II.
On Sunday evenings, a program for undergraduates is provided, featuring speakers from Notre Dame and occasionally from elsewhere.
Occasional public lectures are sponsored by the Jacques Maritain Center.
All of the activities of the Jacques Maritain Center are designed to carry on in new and old ways the kind of Catholic philosophizing represented by the eminent Thomist after whom the Center is named.
HOMELAND FOUNDATION: Summer Institute in Basic Catholicism.
STRAKE FOUNDATION: Veritatis Splendor lecture and campus advertisments.
SAINT GERARD FOUNDATION: Saint Gerard Summer Institute on Thomas Aquinas; Summer Institute in Basic Catholicism; 1993 Fellow - Dr. Leo Elders; 1993 Dissertation Scholarships; Center for Thomistic Studies; Archives - Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, Charles de Koninck.
MR. AND MRS. JAMES WALSH, Dayton, Ohio.
JOHN M. OLIN FOUNDATION: December 1992 Conference Papers - Gerard V. Bradley, James Hitchcock, Russell Hittinger, Paul Mankowski, SJ, Michael Novak, Robert Royal.
2. David Horowitz, author of Deconstructing the Left.
3. John Haldane, St. Andrew's.
4. Alejandro Llano, Rector, University of Navarra, Spain.
5. Ronald P. McArthur, President, Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA.
6. George Weigel, President, The James Madison Foundation, Washington, DC.
7. Richard John Neuhaus, Director, The Center on Religion and Society, New York.
8. Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
9. Rev. Stanley L. Jaki, Professor, Seton Hall University.
10. Timothy Fuller, Professor, Colorado College.
11. Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education.
12. Charles S. Sykes, Author.
13. Gregoriana Schola, in performance of Ordo Virtutem.
phone = (574) 631-5825
fax = (574) 631-8211
email = Maritain.1@nd.edu
url = http://www.nd.edu/~maritain