Building on last year’s landmark conference on the lives and legacy of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, this exciting collaborative day symposium draws together philosophers, theologians, musicians, poets, liturgists and other artists, to converse around the theme of human creativity. The Maritains remain at the heart of our dialogue, being uniquely well-situated to confront the problems, principles and complexities of artistry in the modern era – illuminated by the wisdom of St Thomas Aquinas. Jacques Maritain’s belief in the artist’s mission to ‘shelter the prayer, instruct the intelligence, and rejoice the eyes and the soul,’ provides an inspiring mandate to investigate art-making in the present age, in all its depth and variety.
The conference includes plenary talks, panel discussions, poetry reading, music and film, and gathers a rich and diverse range of presenters from across the UK and USA, with the final keynote talk given by Sir James MacMillan, renowned Scottish composer and conductor. Registration is open to scholars, students, lay and religious: in fact, anyone with an interest in the creative arts, and those whose scholarship or praxis lies at the convergence of aesthetics and faith. Attendees are warmly invited to join in the midday Office of Readings and Evening Mass and Vespers with sacred choral and organ music. Lunch is provided, and the day will end with a drinks reception for those attending in person.
Want to know more about Jacques and Raïssa Maritain?
Who was Jacques Maritain? As the Canadian philosopher William Sweet succinctly puts it: ‘Jacques was perhaps the best-known and most admired Catholic philosopher of the mid-twentieth century.’ A convert from agnosticism, Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) authored over seventy books, passionately advocating the perennial wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, and influencing philosophers, theologians, politicians, popes, painters, and poets. At the time, his sphere of influence was spectacularly wide, yet he remained somewhat under the radar – in old age describing himself as ‘a secret agent of the King of Kings.’ Maritain’s well-known masterworks include The Degrees of Knowledge, The Range of Reason, The Person and the Common Good, Integral Humanism, Art and Scholasticism, and Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry; but most corners of philosophy were subject to his Thomist interpretation – sometimes well-received, sometimes less so.
Who was Raïssa Maritain? Raïssa was a Russian-Jewish émigré who also converted to Catholicism following extreme disillusionment with the prevailing winds of logical positivism at the turn of the last century. She wrote of her Sorbonne professors: ‘they despaired of truth, whose very name was unlovely to them.’ Dramatically, she and Jacques agreed to throw themselves into the Seine unless their nihilism could be relieved – which, thankfully it was, at the hands of Leon Bloy and Aquinas. Although an academic, Raïssa’s true vocation was more intimate – as a poet and contemplative; and having married Jacques in 1904, she remained his ‘muse’ in the most elevated sense, until her death in 1960. As one contemporary noted: Jacques ‘attached a peerless value to her vigilant and penetrating judgement.’ Decades of illness and intense suffering marked her life.
The Maritain home was a place of prayer, hospitality, and intellectual discovery. The very idea of a Thomistic study circle was born in the Maritain’s living room in Paris, and their Sunday afternoon meetings in Meudon drew visitors from every walk of life. A cause for the canonization of both Maritains began in 2011, although this has not yet been advanced.
The Margaret Beaufort Institute is pleased to partner with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford; the Scala Foundation and the Catholic Sacred Music Project for this event.