Jacques Maritain and the moral foundation of democracy

Probes the philosophical presuppositions that undergird Jacques Maritain's political theory, particularly his theory that democracy and Christianity are inexorably linked. Maritain's theory of democracy is particularly relevant today with the ascendancy in the United States and Western Europe of what Maritain called bourgeois liberal democracy -- a type of democracy that Maritain thought would lead to the eventual demise of Western culture. In opposition to the bourgeois liberal democracy, Maritain posited a personalist democracy with a uniquely Christian soul. The author traces the historical and philosophical development of Maritain's debt to Henri Bergson and Alexis de Tocqueville as well as Maritain's break with classical Christian and Catholic political thought.