The Achievement of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain: A Bibliography 1906–1961 by Donald, Idella Gallagher (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 387 The Achievement of Jacques and Ra'issa Maritain: A Bibliography 19061961 . By DoNALD and !DELLA GALLAGHER. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 196~. Like other collectors, bibliographers know the scents of the hunt and the delights of a good find. Donald and !della Gallagher have known many such scents and delights in the ten years spent compiling The Achievement of Jacques and Ra'issa Maritain. Sensibly arranged with an excellent number system, it is copiously crossreferenced with significant annotations. Books and parts of books, prefaces and articles by Maritain comprise the major, and most valuable portion, Parts I-IV. Books and articles about Maritain make up Part V and VI with Raissa 1.\'Iaritain's writings concluding the volume. The Gallaghers wisely cross-referenced Maritain's books and articles. Without it, the bibliography would have been only half as valuable. Maritain's well-known practice of writing and rewriting original essayssometimes to the point of transmutation-make it mandatory for the bibliographer and scholar to follow the persistent themes of his writing from article to book, from edition to edition. Of course there are omissions, but of course there had to be. Here or there one may note the absence of an article (" L'Allemagne et Ia philosophie moderne," La Foi Catholique, XVI (1915), Pp. 5-30), a manifesto ("Pour un parti de !'intelligence," Le Figaro, 19 juillet, 1919), a series (Peguy's Cahiers de la Quinzaine or Lefevre's Une Heure avec ...) , a doctoral dissertation. (Marshall Suther's now published application of Maritain's aesthetics, The Dark Night of Samuel Taylor Coleridge). But the losses are slight. A learned guess is that nine of every ten pieces the Maritains wrote for publication are contained here. If one is indebted to a bibliographer, bibliographers are indebted to one another. Unfortunately there is no acknowledgment of the earlier bibliographers of Maritain. To Wladimir Ghika in 19~3, to Charles O'Donnell in 1940, to Ruth Byrns in 1943, to Abbe Charles Journet in 1948, and especially to Sister Carmelita in 1955, the Gallaghers are extremely indebted . Perhaps a half or two-thirds of the Gallaghers' bibliography of Maritain's works could be assembled by a mere collation of the earlier bibliographies. Some acknowledgement would have been appropriate. And some criticism must be registered against the division of Maritain's career in the introductory essay. That career does not fall so neatly into 1906-1918, 1919-1939, 1940-1961. These chronological divisions correspond to the great wars of our time and to the residences of the Maritains. They do not correspond to the development of Jacques Maritain's thought. In other ways, this bibliography presents itself as a philosophical appreciation of Maritain's vast corpus. Much strength would have been added to that 388 BOOK REVIEWS appreciation if the divisions were more responsive to the internal necessities of ~Iaritain's thought and the genealogy of his ideas. One important division is the year 19~6, the date of the condemnation of Action Francaise by Pope Pius XI. Maritain's political and social philosophy did not exist before 19~6 nor did it reach the maturity of his earlier metaphysical writing until the 1930's. But these are small caveats which do not affect the bibliography itself. The achievement of Donald and !della Gallagher ranks immediately as a handbook and indispensable tool for Maritain scholarship in the French and English-speaking worlds. Georgetown University Washington, D. C. FRANK .J. KEEGAN ...