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| Maritain, Jacques |
According to the "notes found in the desk of a New York advertising executive," a potential sign in Times Square could read, "Jacques Maritain says 'Try Pepsi-Cola, the drink that is.'" [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 27].
A French neo-Thomist philosopher (1882–1973) who opposed what he regarded as the modern tendency to disown the proper function of reason; he valued philosophy highly and posed the “metaphysics of existence,” the study of being, as the highest type of human intellectual activity. He urged Christian involvement in secular affairs, a view that greatly influenced members of the Second Vatican Council.
"Maritain's works were much read at Notre Dame in the 50s," Bowen says (also see Claudel, Paul). "The approach to philosophy in South Bend was very Catholic; there were courses in other philosophical traditions for students who wanted to pursue them, but in required courses a liberal arts major's experience was pretty much limited to Aristotle, Thomas Acquinas his own self, and, to represent everything that had happened since the 13th century, the neo-Thomistic revivalists of the 20th century. That's why Maritain is imagined endorsing Pepsi in such an ontological fashion. Poor Maritain lived just a little too long. He was upset by the innovations of the Vatican Council and published an angry-old-man book denouncing it. I suspect that this may have damaged his reputation on Catholic college campuses, though I was no longer hanging out in that neighborhood."
Maritain later taught at Notre Dame and was honored in South Bend at the opening of the Jacques Maritain Center.
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| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Maritain |
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