Word: maritain
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Maritain, "all this talk about American materialism is no more than a curtain of silly gossip and slander." He coolly measures U.S. attitudes by materialist standards and finds that the label simply will not fit: "America is not egoist; for the common consciousness of America, egoism is shameful . . . There is no avarice in the American cast of mind. The American people are neither squeamish nor hypocritical about the importance of money in the modern world . . . The average European cares about money as well as the average American, but he tries to conceal the fact, for he has been accustomed...
...basic aspirations, says Maritain, the U.S. is a deeply spiritual country. He points out that the American's very urge to create wealth is tied up with his vision of a better life for all (Maritain believes that the U.S. has gone beyond either capitalism or socialism to "economic humanism"). Says he: "Genuine spirituals love America. Her worst enemies are pseudo-spirituals." Tellingly, Maritain notes what too many U.S. literary critics have ignored: that "American literature, in its most objective scrutinies, has been preoccupied with the beyond and the nameless which haunt our blood...
...Maritain's love affair with the U.S. is not an uncritical passion. He concludes that Americans are most anxious to be loved abroad, that they feel their lack of "roots" too desperately ("The worst scoundrel in Europe has roots"), that if success does not come at once, discouragement sets in. He believes that, influenced by a "popularized, anonymous positivistic philosophy," too many Americans are afraid to hold strong opinions. Maritain makes a profound observation about tolerance: "The man who says 'What is truth?', as Pilate did, is not a tolerant man, but a betrayer of the human...
...Maritain adds: "Deep beneath the anonymous American smile there is a feeling that is evangelical in origin-compassion for man, a desire to make life tolerable...
...book has its faults, including occasional oversimplification. But Americans as well as Europeans who wish to understand America should consider it must reading. They will find an illuminating witness to the American promise as well as a heart-lifting prophecy. Says Maritain: "If a new Christian civilization, a new Christendom is ever to come about in human history, it is on American soil that it will find its starting point...