Społeczny personalizm Maritaine’a

Abstrakt

The article discusses a conception of Jacques Maritain’s personalism. The author shows that his socio-political philosophy was stimulated by the philosophy of man. Maritain describes a man as an animal endowed with reason, A human being is a substance, composed of two co-principles, namely: material body and spiritual soul. Soul and matter are the two ontological parts of one and the same reality, called man. A Christian conception of man is entirely different from materialistic and platonic anthropology. Maritain accepted the biporality of the human being, which is composed of individuality and personality. Individuality constitutes the material pole of the man, personality its spiritual pole. An individual is a part of the universe and of the society, a person is independent toward both. The human being is something more than an individual, he is a person. The human person, that is in so far as he is spirit, is capable of communicating with others in order of intellectual knowledge and of love. Against empiricism and Idealism, Maritain maintains that human intellect is capable of knowing of the truth. A man is also endowed with a free will, than ne is capable of self-possession and self -perfecting. At the core of Maritain’s personalism is a distinction between the freedom of choice /or free will/ and the freedom of internal autonomy /freedom of perfection/, The virtue of his ontological dynamism, the human person is a social being and he yearns to live in society. Maritain rejects the individualism which subordinate the common good to individual freedom. He rejects also any form of collectivism which would sacrifice the human person to social imperatives. Maritain’s personalism is connected with a humanism which is directed toward God. His personalism is also an apology of plurality and of community of human life.