Maritain's Reply

Until recently, I regarded Gilson’s rejection of critical realism as an unfortunate Thomistic fundamentalism. Maritain’s defense of epistemological critique seemed the only philosophically respectable approach. For one thing, it struck me as more in accord with Leo XIII’s encyclical for the restoration of Christian philosophy and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council; by engaging in the method of the "critique of knowledge," Thomism could trade in the coin of the realm and thus establish itself as open to dialogue with modern philosophy. For another thing, I agreed with Maritain that it belongs to wisdom, and philosophy is preeminently a wisdom, to offer a rational defense of its principles. The threefold method of such a defense (see below) that he set forth struck me as an excellent illustration of wisdom at work defending epistemological principles, not to mention the method’s freedom from the Cartesian pitfalls that Gilson fingered as characteristic of "Cartesio-Thomism."1

But a recent rereading of Gilson’s appraisal of critical realism has motivated me to revisit Maritain’s position with the hope of resolving the following concern: like Gilson, Maritain holds that our knowledge of the external world is direct, spontaneously certain, and precedes any critique of knowledge;2 yet he insists that a critique of knowledge is (1) required by philosophy’s own need to validate its own principles and operations and (2) importantly differs from the reflection on our experiences, including our noetic experiences, that characterizes normal philosophical activity and distinguishes

1 Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, Tr. by Mark A. Wauk (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 190

2 Jacques Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, tr. by Gerad B. Phelan [presented by Ralp McInerny] (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 79

Department of Philosophy