France: My Country Through the Disaster
New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1941. First edition. Octavo, original blue cloth, gilt spine, original dust jacket. Modest edge-wear to bright, unclipped jacket. A near-fine copy. Item #1742
"MORE THAN EVER, FRANCE SEEMS LIKE A LIVING PERSON, PRECIOUS IN BODY AND SOUL, PRECIOUS TO THE WORLD"
First edition of Jacques Maritain's portrait of France humiliated under Nazi occupation after the fall of the Third Republic. This copy was inscribed by Maritain for the founder of the New School—the man who provided critical refuge for the greatest lay Catholic intellectual of the last century: "To Dr. Alvin Johnson, with friendly regards, Jacques Maritain." A fine association copy.
"As totalitarian clouds began to gather in the 1930's," Jacques Maritain "turned more directly to social questions and political philosophy." Maritain left France in January 1940 to fulfil his academic obligations in America, lecturing at colleges and universities and teaching at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Germany's swift springtime victory on the Western Front led to the surrender and occupation of France in June. For Maritain and his wife, Raissa (a Russian Jewish convert to Catholicism), returning to their homeland was no longer possible and this essay was written in exile. The text includes a brief Preface (dated, "New York, November 21, 1940") and seven sections: I. France in Humiliation, II. Politics, III. The People, IV. The Military Knockout, V. The Armistice, VI. The French in Defeat. VII. Through the Disaster. The inaugural title in the Golden Measure Books series (edited by Maritain and Julie Kernan), intended to foster "a common respect for the image of God in man and in a common feeling for liberty."
Alvin Johnson was founder of the New School in New York City, where he provided sanctuary from Nazi persecution for Jacques and Raissa Martain, just as he did for so many of the other great scholars and intellectuals throughout the 1930's and 40's. Johnson created a special division for them within The New School, unofficially called the "University in Exile," where Maritain continued to write and teach. "Maritain also gave a series of radio broadcasts to the French people from New York as part of the war effort of the Free French. This melding of philosophical and political interests will probably remain Maritain's most lasting influence" (Robert Royal).
"It was only natural...that Jacques Maritain would try to address the crisis in political philosophy posed by the two world wars and the intellectual fault lines—primarily mistaken notions of the human person and society—that enabled the rise of the totalitarian movements such as Fascism, Naziism, and Communism. In the process, he virtually invented the mature form of the social philosophy that lies behind all the modern Christian democrat parties, the very parties that reconstructed Europe after the world wars. Maritain was also the principal drafter of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He and the philosophy he developed have...had immense influence on the whole modern world order" (Robert Royal).
In the concluding chapter, Maritain recalls France's close ties to the Blessed Mother ("The Virgin has appeared on French soil more than in any other country") and summons the Church Militant in the memory of Joan of Arc: "when the heinous threats of our age closed up on France, the Church militant canonized her." A Post-Scriptum (dated, "April 7, 1941") updates the military situation and offers a renewed sense of hope and resolve: "The French people are in a state of silent concentration on all of their energies, physical and moral. They are enduring many things which they know are not eternal. Immobile and voiceless in the dark night, they remain awake—and wait for the day of resurgence and liberty." Robert Royal. A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Movement in the Twentieth Century.
Price: $1,200.00