Maritain, Jacques 1882-1973
French philosopher

Born in Paris and brought up a Protestant, he was educated in Paris and Heidelberg, and converted to Catholicism (1906). He was professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris (1914-40) and then taught mainly in North America, at Toronto, Columbia, Chicago and Princeton (1948-60). He was also French ambassador to the Vatican (1945-48) and later a strong opponent of the Vatican Council and the neo-Modernist movement. His best-known works are Les Degr�s du savoir (1932, Eng trans The Degrees of Knowledge, 1937), in which he applied Thomas Aquinas's thought to contemporary philosophical canons in the theory of knowledge, and various writings on art and politics including Art et scolastique (1920, Eng trans Art and Scholasticism, 1930) and Humanisme int�gral (1936), which were better known abroad than in France.