Abstract

This slender volume presents a lucid English translation of a short but dense treatise, published in Paris in 1947 by the French ambassador to the Vatican, in which M. Maritain drew upon the capital of his metaphysical works to analyse the intellectual problems posed by fashionable Existentialism. While admitting that certain forgotten truths have been illuminated since Kierkegaard, he claims the existence of authentic Existentialism by prior right in the Thomist synthesis and exemplifies its wisdom in his acute evaluation of some modern themes. Denying that this is a rejuvenation by verbal artifice of a staid tradition, he states his pure allegiance with blunt intransigence: “I should be ashamed to… trick out Thomas Aquinas in a costume fashionable to our day…. I am not a neo-Thomist. All in all, I would rather be a paleo-Thomist than a neo-Thomist. I am, or at least I hope I am, a Thomist”.