In recognition of Jacques Maritain’s contributions to The Review of Politics, the journal and Cambridge University Press have arranged for his articles to be open-access through December 31, 2025. Find links to these articles below.
Notre Dame’s The Review of Politics was founded in 1939 by Waldemar Gurian, then professor of political science at Notre Dame. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and educated in Germany, Gurian was one of many intellectuals who emigrated from Europe and arrived in the United States on the eve of the Second World War. Upon joining Notre Dame’s faculty, he was tasked with founding The Review of Politics by the university’s president, John Francis O’Hara, CSC.
The journal was to be in the style of a German academic publication, taking a very broad perspective, drawing on the entirety of humanistic learning and the social sciences. Early collaborators included professors associated with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, a similarly interdisciplinary endeavor, such as the committee’s co-founder John U. Nef. Other contributors included American public officials George F. Kennan and John Kenneth Galbraith as well as European intellectuals who had similarly emigrated to the United States: Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, Yves Simon, and Jacques Maritain.
Maritain was a close friend and patron of Gurian and frequent contributor to The Review of Politics. Already in the very first issue Maritain published the lead article, “Integral Humanism and the Crisis of Modern Times”. The premise of this article was to apply his concept of integral humanism, detailed in his 1936 book of the same title, to the political movements of the time. He singles out Marxism, Fascism, and National Socialism as all fundamentally denying human nature as coming from God and carrying with it an inherent dignity. The alternative for Maritain is an embrace of a Christian conception of human nature and a political order which recognizes the value of the individual human being.
Maritain would contribute seven articles in total to the journal. These articles continued to emphasize the theme of the first, arguing for the importance of an integral, Christian conception of human nature in the political realm. Maritain used the journal as a forum in which he could expand his intellectual efforts beyond the theoretical or abstract realm and apply them to the considerations of his day. This was one of the great tasks of The Review of Politics at its founding, to subject contemporary politics to intellectual scrutiny by the leading theorists of the time.
Read Jacques Maritain’s articles in The Review of Politics.
1939, Integral Humanism and the Crisis of Modern Times
1941, The Immortality of Man
1942, The End of Machiavellianism
1944, Poetic Experience
1946, The Person and the Common Good co-author John J. FitzGerald
1949, On the Meaning of Contemporary Atheism
1955, A Faithful Friend
Originally published by at maritain.nd.edu on March 07, 2025.