2. General Background
Maritain saw himself as working in continuity with the thought of Thomas Aquinas, and his writings frequently contain quotations from and references to Thomas' texts. While his turn to Catholicism and his intellectual itinerary were largely due to personal reasons and to the influence of friends, his defense of Catholic thought and Thomistic philosophy were undoubtedly affected by events involving his adopted church.
One such event was the attack on (principally Catholic) religious organisations by secular and humanist forces within the French state, culminating in a number of laws affecting the taxation and ownership of church property and the place of religion in public affairs. At about the same time, there were tensions within Catholicism — particularly in France — in reaction to theological modernism. The writings of George Tyrell in England and Ernest Renan and Alfred Loisy in France were condemned for such ‘errors’ as claiming that conscience is the primary source of religious truth and that all knowledge — including dogma — has a historical and contingent character, and challenging the authoritative character of magisterial pronouncements. French philosophy itself was seen as incompatible with Catholic theology. The dominant views were the spiritualism or intuitionism of Bergson (which held that the emphasis in metaphysics on ‘being’ should be replaced by one on durée or pure change), the idealism of Léon Brunschvicg, the spiritualism of André Lalande, and the materialism of Edmond Goblot — and each challenged claims that were seen as essential to Catholicism. The Catholic Church in France was, not surprisingly, in some turmoil, and a defense of religious orthodoxy was called for from several quarters.
Maritain's early writings, then, sought to address some of the concerns arising out of these events. Having been attracted initially to Spinoza's idealism and, later, to Bergson's vitalist intuitionism, he was able to come to the defense of Catholic thought with a knowledge of its critics that surpassed many of his contemporaries. Maritain rejected ‘modernity’ — Cartesian and post-Cartesian thought — for what he saw as its emphasis on epistemology over metaphysics, and sought to return to the ‘pre-modern’ views of Aquinas. Nevertheless, he saw that philosophy had to do more than merely repeat Thomas' views, and he took it upon himself to develop some aspects of Thomistic philosophy to address the problems of the contemporary world. Thus, though the most profound inspiration of many of Maritain's ideas was the work of St Thomas Aquinas, his epistemology and aesthetics show the influence of Christian mysticism, particularly that of St John of the Cross, and his social and political philosophy clearly reflects many of the ideals of European liberalism