Responding to the Global Crisis: Jacques Maritain, World War II, and New York's École Libre

Authors

Jacob Saliba, Boston CollegeFollow

DOI

10.32436/2475-6423.1165

Abstract

This article offers an interdisciplinary study of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain during World War II in order to provide an historical resource for understanding the global dimensions and possibilities at work in modern Catholicism. In 1941, while living in New York City, Maritain helped to cofound and lead the École Libre des Hautes Études (the “Free French University”). An initiative primarily created by American and French intellectuals, the university became an important hub for rescuing and employing nearly two hundred individuals from across the world. Elected president in late-1942, Maritain worked closely with the New School for Social Research, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Rescue and Relief Committee, Free France (including agents in the Resistance), and foreign diplomats. The university provided a unique material context for animating a global pivot in Maritain’s intellectual project. While Maritain has been well-recognized as a key thinker of modernization in the Catholic Church, this article reconstructs an intellectual history of Maritain’s novel work as a global thinker on pressing war-time issues of transnational cooperation, the European colonies, and anti-Semitism. This article not only presents an empirically rich narrative of the global dimensions of Maritain’s intellectual project at a time of crisis but also furnishes an instructive example for thinking through ongoing discourses on global Catholicism.

Recommended Citation

Saliba, Jacob (2024) "Responding to the Global Crisis: Jacques Maritain, World War II, and New York's École Libre," Journal of Global Catholicism: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 5. p.82-113.
DOI: 10.32436/2475-6423.1165
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc/vol9/iss1/5