Hittinger on Maritain
February 28, 2012
The Liberty Fund has recently republished Jacques Maritain’s classic work of political philosophy, Scholasticism and Politics. To mark the occasion, the Fund’s Library of Law and Liberty website has conducted an extended interview with Professor Russell Hittinger, an expert in twentieth-century Catholic thought on society, law, and politics. For the benefit of those listeners unfamiliar with the political thought of Maritain, Professor Hittinger situates Scholasticism and Politics within its historical context and carefully outlines its key concepts and doctrines. Commenting on the work’s continued relevance, Hittinger recalls an admonition Maritain gives to free societies with regard to the modern, liberal ideologies they tend to adopt. The individualist anthropologies of the Enlightenment do not secure the civil liberties of citizens, Maritain warns. Such conceptions of the human person instead supply intellectual fuel to the Leviathan state. Click here or on the audio below to listen to the full interview. Professor Hittinger holds the Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa. Just last month, he was the invited guest of the Thomistic Institute in Washington, D.C., where he delivered a paper entitled, “Can You Be the Imago Dei on Your Own?” In 2008, he delivered the first annual St. Thomas Day Lecture at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City.
