Jacques Maritain, Anti-Semitism and the Jews

As I have already covered in my previous article on the personal interest of the famous and influential Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain in the jewish question is rather strong in spite of the fact that he wrote comparatively little on the subject. (1) I have there pointed out that Maritain had a jewish wife Raïssa Oumansoff - who was a convert to Catholicism - plus many jewish friends who he seems to have;at least in part idolized. Further Maritain as I implied was originally an anti-Semite and a follower of the ideas of the anti-Semitic nationalist philosopher Charles Maurras. (2)

Indeed Maritain had written in regards to the situation in Poland as late as 1919 that:

'One of the most evil and strongest influences that is felt here, perhaps the strongest and most evil, is that of the Jews.' (3)

Clearly then Maritain still clung to Catholic - and indeed Christian - orthodoxy at the time on the subject of the jews in 1919 (i.e., anti-Judaism not - as Wasserstein would have it - anti-Semitism), but yet by 1939 he could write that all Christians are spiritually Semites. (4) However - as I outlined in my previous article - I would date Maritain's own Judeophilia to some years earlier in 1904 when he met his jewish wife and then converted to Catholicism with her in 1906.

I cannot agree with either Kertzer or Wasserstein in relation to their dating of Maritain's tout face on the subject of the jews to the advent of the Third Reich in 1933. I would argue that the roots of so superficially radical a change are much deeper. In particular I would point out the need for clarity of terminology to understanding what made Maritain so violently oppose the rise of anti-Semitism but yet so accepting of anti-jewish Christian orthodoxy before this.

The point is simple enough: if we are to understand Maritain's seeming double standards then we need to comprehend that Christianity as a whole - although there have been historical aberrations which defined jewishness biologically or wanted Christians to become jews - has long had a streak of anti-Judaism within it.

Now what do I mean by that?

Well very simply anti-Judaism is the opposition to Judaism not jews per se. Christian anti-Judaism has tended to focus less on the conduct of individual jews and much more on criticizing and commenting on both Judaism itself as well as Judaism's own criticisms of Christianity. The key thing to understand with traditional Christian anti-Judaism is that it allowed the possibility that individual jews could come good and convert to Christianity, which would then in turn mean that they lost the stigma of jewishness in the eyes of most of the Christian church.

However anti-Semitism was a whole other intellectual world: to the anti-Semite by contrast whether a jew confessed to a belief in Judaism or whether they had converted to Christianity didn't matter, because jews were a biological group and thus the problem was not their rejection of Jesus, but rather their actions as a biologically-based minority in competition with a biologically-based majority represented by their host countries.

In essence in Christian anti-Judaism: Maritain's jewish wife was acceptable, because she had figuratively seen the light and converted to Christianity from Judaism. To anti-Semitism however this was irrelevant because jewishness was not a religious label, but in fact a biological one.

Once we understand this we can very quickly see why Maritain seemed to switch overnight from tacitly accepting anti-Judaism to becoming a vocal critic of anti-Semitism. This is very simply because anti-Judaism was the orthodoxy of Christianity - especially that of the Catholic Church at this time - and to oppose it as a prominent Catholic philosopher Maritain would have probably caused himself to be formally censored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (aka the Inquisition) and as well damaged his own future influence given that senior Catholics at this time were strident in their anti-jewish views. (5)

Further anti-Judaism was no threat to Maritain's personal situation precisely because according to Christian norms: his wife was now a Christian like any other and the stigma of her jewishness did not for many come into the matter.

However with the rise of anti-Semitism in the late 1920s and then the advent of the Third Reich in 1933: this changed. While some Catholic clerics - like Cardinal Hlond of Poland - continued to attack the jews while broadly distancing themselves from anti-Semitism and the Third Reich more specifically: others went the opposite way - like the English Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton - and endorsed a kind of Judeophilia (an irrational love of the jews) in spite of having made many previous comments which - even at that time - were borderline anti-Semitic.

Maritian, of course, decided on the second approach to the problem and what seems to have in large part decided this was his jewish wife as well as his already - and increasingly - liberal reading of Christianity, which had been taking shape since 1904. That it was Maritain's jewish wife that was the key factor in his increasing Judeophilia is easily evidenced by looking at his work on the jewish question.

Now - to briefly explain - I have utilized one of the few times that Maritain addressed the issue of the jews and anti-Semitism to elucidate his views (i.e., his short book 'Anti-Semitism' from 1939) largely because it is his major statement on the issue and contains an excellent distillation of all that had to say about the jews in a chapter of another of his books ('Questions de Conscience' from 1938 although originally written in 1937) and his other book on the jewish question ('A Christian Look at the Jewish Question' also from 1938). Thus I felt it unnecessary to cite everything that Maritain wrote on the issue of the jews as 'Anti-Semitism' is simply a repeat of his earlier arguments with additional qualification and new information on his part.

With this necessary side issue out of the way we can proceed to Maritain's actual text and the stress - or rather lack of it - that Maritain places on racial doctrines in regards to the jews.

Maritain tells us that:

'The truth is that the Jews are not a race in the biological sense of the word.' (6)

He then proceeds to add that:

'Eminent scientists have concluded that, in man's present historic stage, the idea of race corresponds to no anatomical-physiological reality, to no unity of “blood,” but merely to types of “mentalities” produced by historic and social conditions. Its significance rests on extremely complex historical factors (of a psycho-ethico-sociological character) formed by the course of time, rather than on hereditary characteristics transmitted by blood.' (7)

Before briefly analysing this - to put it politely - nonsense we should take note of the qualifier that Maritain introduces in his argument:

'We know that in man's present stage of development there is no group of any importance, even that most favoured in this respect, which is pure in race.' (8)

Now what is interesting about this qualifier is that we can very clearly see that Maritain is trying to degrade the very idea of relative racial purity - which is central to both nationalism and to most forms of anti-Semitism - so that every individual of every suggested racial group becomes de facto racially impure thus rendering any reason for not sleeping with other racial groups moot.

This then clearly plays into Maritain's personal situation given his love for and union with a jewess as if racial classification holds true then it means very simply that he is betraying his race and that Oumansoff is still jewish regardless of her formal profession of Christianity.

To justify this rationalizing need to attack the concept of race: Maritain engages in what I can only refer to as a lie by omission. He cites the fact that 'eminent scientists' - which is incidentally a use of the fallacy that has come to be known as 'weasel words' - have 'concluded' that there is no such thing as race. He wasn't technically wrong in saying this as some scientists did argue precisely this, but yet they were not all - or even a majority - of the major figures in biological science at the time such as Wesley George and Carleton Coon to name but two: who agreed that race was a valid taxonomic category and also that pure races did exist.

In essence Maritain is being thoroughly dishonest here as he would have - and indeed should have - known better: that he did is shown by his airy-sounding remark about 'extremely complex historical factors', which is basically telling us that he doesn't know why he is right (with the implication he knew a lot of 'eminent scholars' disagreed with him) but that he believes he is regardless (i.e., it is an appeal to mysticism as opposed to a piece of evidence or an argument).

What is perhaps more interesting is that Maritain does not remark on the substantial debate on the subject of the categorization of the jews as a racial group which was then going on between largely German, Swedish and French scientists (For) and British and American scientists (Against). It is odd that Maritain didn't plump for the British and American interpretation in part because it would have resolved his immediate issue with Oumansoff's jewishness, but as Maritain was a philosopher and a Christian one at that: he took the logic to its ultimate conclusion.

Mankind had to be one and the same people to be equal in the sight of God, which would necessarily render race an invalid classification (in humans anyway). This then makes sense of Maritain's adoption of the extreme position of the denial of race and belief in the infinite plasticity of humanity - vis-a-vis the use of environmental factors - which was the hallmark of the fashionable left-wing counter to racialism: Boasian anthropology. (9)

The irony is, of course, the fact that Boas was not even a trained biologist (much like the German author on race: Hans Guenther) and was directly involved in distorting biological science and American anthropology into supporting Marxism's assumptions about nature. (10) Maritain did not not realise it, but his 'eminent scientists' were actually communists of the very kind that most Christians were decrying and the Pope was forcibly and volubly condemning at that particular moment in time. It also confirms the charges that were levelled at him by French nationalists at the time of being a 'mongrelizer of the races', (11) which works on two levels in that he was married to a jewess and advocated the abandonment of racial classification.

Maritain himself however adopted the position that in a choice between two evils: the Nazis were worse than the Communists. His rationale for this was that while Communism was secularism: it was 'against God universally', while the Nazis are secular while being specifically anti-Christian and anti-Semitic (and thus worse). (12)

This is obviously rather strained reasoning, which only makes sense when we recognise that - according to Maritain - Christians are the new jews (13) and that this is why both Christians and jews were persecuted in equal numbers in the Third Reich. (14) That is simply wrong is neither here nor there, but we should note that it is regardless. (15)

Indeed Maritain actually goes further in developing his idea of the 'mystical body of Israel' (16) in that he styles the Christians as being merely the followers of the jews, (17) which suggests that Maritain's thought had developed to the point of implicitly placing the jews a superior group of people to gentiles. (18) This is particularly brought out when Maritain speaks of the 'special mission' of the jews to essentially be an indivisible remnant making the jewish question unsolvable outside of the Second Coming of Christ. (19)

The jews then - according to Maritain - are to in effect hold witness to the truth of Christianity in their 'heroic tribute to the sanctity of a personal and transcendent God.' (20) In other words the jews are a kind of spiritual and literal sacrifice to the God of Israel, because they sacrifice in the 'unjust persecution' to which they are subjected and also in the literal persecution which Maritain claims - on more than one occasion - will see them 'exterminated' by the Third Reich (i.e., a blood sacrifice as in the Old Testament). (21)

This is obviously prescient given that Maritain believed in 1939 that the jews were going to be subject to a 'Holocaust' type scenario and in 1945 it was Maritain who spent a good deal of time trying to persuade the Vatican to support the official 'Holocaust' narrative. Either Maritain was remarkably good at divining the future or Maritain was predisposed to a belief in a ‘Nazi extermination program’.

The latter is the more likely given Maritain's strident belief - in spite of the large amount of evidence from the mass migration of jews from the Russian Empire from the 1880s up till the early 1920s - that mass emigration was quite impossible (22) and that the German attitude to the jews so bad (23) that the Germans would necessarily have to attempt to exterminate the jews in order to be rid of them.

Indeed we can see on this point that Maritain's belief - that emigration was impossible and that extermination the likely alternative in countries where anti-Semitism was state policy - informs his theological positions on the jews which emphasizes the idea of a jewish 'remnant' as witness to Christian truth and also assumes that all that the jews have been accused of as a group is necessarily false or unjust.

It also notably allows Maritain and the Church to escape complicity in - what Maritain viewed as - the inevitable attempt by the Third Reich to exterminate the jews by arguing that the Church had historically been a pro-jewish institution and needed the jews in order to fulfil her purpose on earth (thus its opposition to the jews was purely theological and completely different from anti-Semitism). (24)

Maritain develops this view by attacking what he considers as common anti-Semitic charges such as the jews were behind the Russian Revolution, that the jews own all the large banks and so on. Maritain's arguments on this score - such as they are - amount to emphasizing a distinction between the individual and the group. In so far as he argues that the actions of several jews cannot be used to condemn the whole of jewry (25) and further that no critic of jews has ever known enough jews to make a sound judgement about as them as a group. (26)

This is fairly standard intellectual fare for those arguing against anti-Semitism to this day, but as with such intellectually liberal propositions: it doesn't stand up to even basic scrutiny.

The reason for this is very simple in so far as Maritain and others - in regards to the second point - are not arguing from an agnostic position on the judgement of the jews. In fact they are arguing from the position of believing the jews to be a universal (or a net) force for good as a group - or as 'the agent of higher culture formation' as Maritain might phrase it - (27) which means that Maritain; and those who tend to use this argument, are trying to have their cake and eat it.

In order to suggest that no group judgements can be made without knowing or sampling a sufficient amount of the given group: one has to abstain from making judgements about them whatsoever oneself because if we introduce our own subjective value into the equation (be it positive or negative) then it necessarily means that you are asserting that a group judgement cannot be made when the it is (in this instance) for the assignation of blame, but yet a group judgement can be made when it is for the assignation of praise.

This is simply put a contradiction in terms.

This then nicely brings us back to the first point in that Maritain is - as I have above outlined - trying to assign the jews praise as a group, but then refuses to assign them blame as a group. This is necessarily an invalidation of his own argument, but it doesn't stop there because Maritain actually suggests that the jews have been 'adopted by God' as a people and thus 'godly' group judgements can be made. (28)

This is obviously another appeal to mysticism (i.e., saying 'it is a mystery' as your rationale for making a contradictory or incomplete affirmative case) on Maritain's part and as such deserves little attention other than pointing out that it necessarily demonstrates how weak Maritain's arguments - regardless of his bombastic theological rhetoric and pleasing written style - actually are, because he cannot show material evidence for them but rather tells us that he knows it to be true because he was informed by a higher power (in effect).

That said Maritain does make one quite interesting argument - aside from trotting out the claims that the Protocols of Zion were the result of an anti-Semitic conspiracy headed by the Tsarist secret police (29) and the jews were only disproportionately over-represented among the leading Bolshevisk because of unjustified anti-Semitic persecution before the event - (30) when he argues that - as the jews are individualists by nature (31) and are natural capitalists not communists (32) [he actually labels modern economics to be of jewish inspiration] (33) - that the solution to the jewish question in society - as it was then - would be to get gentiles to compete better against nature's capitalists: the jews. (34)

Maritain believed that free competition between jews and gentiles could allow for the creation of better economies and also liberalize society creating tolerance. However Maritain failed to understand that free competition is not simply limited to a set playing field of business with firms and entrepreneurs competing on price, quality, brand and so on. It is much wider than that because the freer the competition the more firms and entrepreneurs will take to using extra-market methods to influence the competitive struggle: so for example bribing a politician to introduce legislation that would be more favourable to them than all or some of their competitors leading; potentially, to an increase in market share for them.

This means - in effect - that Maritain's solution was completely unrealistic and part of the reason that the legislation was preferable to this so-called 'free competition'. Was precisely because the jews had abused the hospitality of North American and European countries by not competing fair and square, but rather being so ruthless as to begin to employ extra-market methods to get their own way and turn these same countries into miniature versions of Eden for jews and miniature versions of hell for non-jews (although the jews believed - and still believe - this was the divinely-ordained order of things). Anti-jewish legislation simply represented an extra-market method by the majority of non-jews to combat the extra-market methods that the jews had been using to better their situation at the expression of that of the gentiles.

The irony is, of course, that it was these same extra-market methods which were being used by jews in Germany to bring in policies which was contrary to the interests of Christianity at that time such as the attempt to normalize homosexuality (led by Magnus Hirschfeld), the attempt to bring about a Communist state in Germany (led by Rosa Luxembourg and Kurt Eisner among others) and the destruction of the home by feminists (such as the non-jewish Klara Zetkin but whose ideas were often taken in actuality from Rosa Luxembourg).

However we are told by Maritain that the Germany of the 1920s was a paradise for the jews: (35) but yet he doesn't seem to realise that in defending the jews he is actually voting against everything he himself is against as a Christian in addition to working for the abolition of Christianity in Germany.

In essence Maritain was a brilliant philosopher - reading his interpretation of Saint Thomas Aquinas is a very pleasurable experience - but he was also an intellectually weak and naïve man divided by the love of his jewish wife on the one hand and Catholic orthodoxy on the other. He chose to fight against his own faith for his wife's sake as his objections to anti-Semitism are based on the supposition that he knows Christianity better than anyone else and that God has chosen the jews to be his agents as much as he has the Christians.

In other words Maritain advocated 'mongrelizing the races', because that was what he himself was doing every day.

References

(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jacques-maritains-jewish-problem

(2) Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, 'On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War', 1^st Edition, Simon and Schuster: New York, p. 32

(3) Quoted in David Kertzer, 2001, 'The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism', 1^st Editon, Knopf: New York, p. 251

(4) Jacques Maritain, 1939, 'Anti-Semitism', 1^st Edition, Geoffrey Bless: London, p. 27

(5) Wasserstein, Op. Cit., pp. 31-32

(6) Maritain, Op. Cit., p. 13

(7) Ibid., pp. 13-14

(8) Ibid., p. 13

(9) On the absurdity of this position see Frank Miele, Vincent Sarich, 2004, 'Race: The Reality of Human Differences', 1^st Edition, Westview: Boulder

(10) On this see Gary Bullert, 2009, 'Franz Boas as Citizen-Scientist: Gramscian-Marxist Influence on American Anthropology', Journal for Social, Political and Economic Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 208-243

(11) Leon Poliakov, 2003, [1979], 'The History of Anti-Semitism', Vol. IV, 1^st Edition, University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, p. 304

(12) Maritain, Op. Cit., p. 21

(13) Ibid., p. 16

(14) Ibid., pp. 12-13

(15) See Susannah Heschel, 2008, 'The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany', 1^st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton

(16) Maritain, Op. Cit., p. 18

(17) Ibid., p. 16

(18) Ibid., pp. 11; 16

(19) Ibid., p. 17

(20) Ibid., p. 23

(21) Ibid., pp. 3-4; 6; 24

(22) Ibid., p. 3

(23) Ibid., pp. 6-7; 36-37

(24) Wasserstein, Op. Cit., pp. 30-32 neatly summarizes this.

(25) Maritain, Op. Cit., pp. 5-6

(26) Ibid., pp. 8; 19

(27) Ibid., pp. 5; 20; 22

(28) Ibid., p. 12

(29) Ibid., p. 7

(30) Ibid., pp. 7-8

(31) Ibid., p. 7

(32) Ibid., pp. 4-5; 9-11

(33) Ibid., p. 9

(34) Ibid., p. 5

(35) Ibid., pp. 9-10