The work of the lay Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) continues to provoke and inspire readers to engage in a Thomistic approach to many of the questions facing the world today. Maritain’s wide-ranging thought touched on many fields, including aesthetics, anthropology, educational theory, moral philosophy, and ethics, as well as Thomism and its relationship to other philosophical stances.
In
Being in the World: A Quotable Maritain Reader, Mario O. D’Souza, C.S.B., has selected seven hundred and fifty of the most salient quotations found in the English translations of fifty-four works by Jacques Maritain. Organized into forty thematic chapters, ordered alphabetically, the book serves as an overview of the areas that Maritain's writings addressed. By referring to entries in
Being in the World, readers can quickly locate key passages in Maritain’s writing on a given topic and then turn elsewhere to the full texts for more in-depth study. Complete with a detailed index of key terms, the
Reader will be an essential reference tool for the study of Maritain in English.
"Fr. Mario O. D'Souza's careful selection from the works of Jacques Maritain provides the reader with an invaluable sampling of Maritain's extensive philosophical work. In it, we find examples of Maritain's almost lyrical gift of expression as well as of his trenchant wit. More than a scholarly contribution, the volume also ably serves as an introduction and entrance into Maritain's corpus."
William Sweet, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada "Being in the World: A Quotable Maritain Reader makes an original contribution to the field of Maritain studies and to philosophy generally. Maritain is a thinker of great insight and a writer with a fine style. It is very useful to lay out these quotes containing many of his insights and showing his methods and lines of argument. The volume will be of interest not only to philosophers but also to scholars and readers from other fields such as politics, the arts, religion, and education." John Hittinger, University of St. Thomas