Posted December 7, 2011 Book: The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain: A Spiritual Life Author: Ralph McInerny Notre Dame Press, South Bend, IN. 2002. Pp. 235 An Excerpt from the Jacket: McInerny delivers a luminous biography of one of Thomas Aquinas’s most astute modern commentators. In narrating Maritain’s life, McInerny illustrates the transforming power of truth, pursued not merely to stimulate the intellect but to redeem the soul. This nuanced portrait ... is a major work and will help secure Maritain’s status as a modern Catholic icon. An Excerpt from the Book: Students of Thomas’s teaching on the transcendental properties of being often have trouble with beauty as a transcendental. In the early discussions of being and its transcendental properties, beauty is not mentioned. And indeed Thomas’s teaching on this subject has to be pieced together from discussions having quite different ends. The beautiful, Thomas quotably remarked — James Joyce embraced this account — is that which, when seen, pleases: id quod placet. Maritain takes this to mean that there is an intuitive knowledge bo beauty that gives joy. The beautiful is what distinguishes the fine arts from the products of the artisan. The latter is chiefly concerned to make something useful — shoes for walking, a house to live in — whereas the find artist ... Well, how does he differ from the mere artisan? Like the artisan, the artist makes something, and there may well be, as in the case of the sculptor, a good deal that is quite sweaty and servile in that making. Maritain suggests that the making component arises from man’s sensible nature, whereas the beautiful component answers to that which is spiritual in him. He then suggests the analogy between contemplation and art. The fine arts should turn our minds to the transcendent, should sublimate the material so that it signifies the immaterial. Table of Contents: Matins Before Raissa Russia Conversion Lauds Spiritual Directions Versailles The Villard bequest Action Francaise Prime Les Cercles d’etudes thomistes Vae mihi si non thomistizavero Tierce Maritain’s Kulturkampf Art and scholasticism Contesting the hegemony of Gide Sext Primacy of the spiritual Controversy over Christian philosophy Degrees of knowledge Gilson and Maritain Second thoughts on a first book Return to the left Dispute with Claudel Nones Exile in New York The heart of the matter Adventures in grace Ambassador to the Vatican Vespers Man and state Creative intuition Intuition of being Moral philosophy Liturgy and contemplation Compline The journals Peasant of the Garonne Little brother of Jesus Nunc dimitis