Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain

3. The Foundation of Maritain’s Epistemological Uniqueness

40 Three The Foundation of Maritain’s Epistemological Uniqueness \ Before sewing one must cut. A philosopher who is in search of the nature of things is obliged to begin with sharp distinctions. —Jacques Maritain Maritain and Intuition Maritain’s published writings on art span some forty years, from the original publication of Art and Scholasticism in 1920 to The Responsibility of the Artist1 in 1960. Although the expectation of Yves Simon—that Maritain would continue “to write papers on art and beauty until his last day”2—was not fulfilled, his writings on epistemology , many of which contain specific references to the knowledge of the artist, do extend beyond the more than half century that makes up his philosophical life.3 While there is surely a good deal of change and growth in his ideas over the years, developments that include both the manner of expression and the terms used, there is nonetheless a certain traceable continuity and consistency. To those otherwise 1. Jacques Maritain, The Responsibility of the Artist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960). 2. Griffin and Simon, Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures, 7. 3. See his first book, Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, 162–68. For examples in his later writings, see Jacques Maritain, The Peasant of the Garonne (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968; original French edition, 1966), 11, 85, 110, 125– 26, and 220–21; see also Jacques Maritain, Untrammeled Approaches, (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997; original French edition, Approaches sans entraves [Paris: Librairie Arthem Fayard, 1973]), 310–49. The pertinent essay, “No Knowledge without Intuitivity,” originally appeared as an article in Revue Thomiste 70, no. 1 (1970): 30–71. Epistemological Uniqueness \ 41 unfamiliar with the historical range of Maritain’s writings on art, the initial encounter may be somewhat puzzling. Not only is his writing frequently graced with poetic flashes (necessary, one might say, in speaking about Poetry), but in addition, sometimes Maritain can be inconsistent in his terminology, while on other occasions he will take great pains to systematically explore and explain essential terms. An early and important example of the latter concerns his use of the term “intuition.” Initially inherited from Bergson, Maritain subsequently used this notion in a radically different way on account of his study of St.Thomas Aquinas. In his critical study of Bergsonism, Maritain explains what he calls the “Thomist doctrine,” and points out the philosophical and nonphilosophical uses of this term. This preliminary distinction lays an extremely important foundation for Maritain ’s aesthetics.4 For Maritain, there are three general kinds of philosophical “intuition ” that all concern an “immediate or direct perception.” (1) The first sense is that upon which the whole of human knowledge depends: it is “the intuition of the external world, sense perception.”5 (2) The second sense of intuition is “that of the active self, which intellectual consciousness does not know through the self’s essence, but which it perceives in the self’s operations.”6 (3) The third sense, “intellectual perception,”7 Maritain says, is of particular importance. After assuming that all will agree that the words “immediate, without intermediary, direct” are precisely the general characteristics which distinguish philosophical intuition, Maritain goes on, in a lengthy but important footnote, to give a more detailed elucidation of the technical characteristics of philosophical intuition. First, there is the absolutely restricted sense. Maritain refers to it as “that kind of knowledge in which the intellect is informed immediately by the essence or the substance of the thing known, without the means of a subjective similitude of the thing.” In this sense, he says, we 4. See figure 3.1 toward the end of the chapter for a systematic view of all of Maritain ’s various uses of the term “intuition.” 5. Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, 149. 6. Ibid., 150. 7. Ibid. 42 [ Epistemological Uniqueness “reserve the word ‘intuition’ in this very special sense to . . . a) the knowledge that God has of Himself; b) the knowledge that the angel has of himself; c) the beatific vision.”8 Secondly, there is the less restricted but still strict sense (the “proper sense” for the ancients). Maritain refers to this as that kind of knowledge which, “procured by means of a psychic similitude (species impressa, received from things in the case of the senses, infused by God in the case of the angels), attains . . . things . . . as...