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Tres reformadores: Lutero, Descartes, Rousseau (Clásicos del pensamiento)
Tres reformadores indaga, desde una perspectiva cristiana y católica, las metamorfosis intelectuales que impulsaron las grandes transformaciones de modernidad a través de tres de sus más celebradas figuras: Lutero, Descartes y Rousseau. Estas metamorfosis tuvieron, al menos desde el punto de vista cristiano, mucho de inversión, profanación e incluso de parodia de doctrinas y articulaciones provenientes del ámbito de la teología y la dogmática cristiana. En este sentido, el estudio de Maritain aporta al debate contemporáneo sobre las tesis de la secularización materiales relevantes y significativos. Por otro lado, la presente obra puede entenderse como uno de los últimos intentos de combatir los hitos de la modernidad desde la perspectiva confesional católica, en definitiva, una ocurrente diatriba contra el individualismo, el inmanentismo y el naturalismo moderno.
328 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1944
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240 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Maritain
438 books167 followersT. S. Eliot once called Jacques Maritain "the most conspicuous figure and probably the most powerful force in contemporary philosophy." His wife and devoted intellectual companion, Raissa Maritain, was of Jewish descent but joined the Catholic church with him in 1906. Maritain studied under Henri Bergson but was dissatisfied with his teacher's philosophy, eventually finding certainty in the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. He lectured widely in Europe and in North and South America, and lived and taught in New York during World War II. Appointed French ambassador to the Vatican in 1945, he resigned in 1948 to teach philosophy at Princeton University, where he remained until his retirement in 1953. He was prominent in the Catholic intellectual resurgence, with a keen perception of modern French literature. Although Maritain regarded metaphysics as central to civilization and metaphysically his position was Thomism, he took full measure of the intellectual currents of his time and articulated a resilient and vital Thomism, applying the principles of scholasticism to contemporary issues. In 1963, Maritain was honored by the French literary world with the national Grand Prize for letters. He learned of the award at his retreat in a small monastery near Toulouse where he had been living in ascetic retirement for some years. In 1967, the publication of "The Peasant of the Garonne" disturbed the French Roman Catholic world. In it, Maritain attacked the "neo-modernism" that he had seen developing in the church in recent decades, especially since the Second Vatican Council. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, writing in the Saturday Review of Literature, "He laments that in avant-garde Roman Catholic theology today he can 'read nothing about the redeeming sacrifice or the merits of the Passion.' In his interpretation, the whole of the Christian tradition has identified redemption with the sacrifice of the cross. But now, all of that is being discarded, along with the idea of hell, the doctrine of creation out of nothing, the infancy narratives of the Gospels, and belief in the immortality of the human soul." Maritain's wife, Raissa, also distinguished herself as a philosophical author and poet. The project of publishing Oeuvres Completes of Jacques and Raissa Maritain has been in progress since 1982, with seven volumes now in print.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
July 31, 2020
This book has the best analysis and critique of Descartes' philosophy I have ever read. Maritain is scathing but fair in this respect. His treatment of Luther and Rousseau are similar. By constantly referring to Aquinas's description of the order inherent in material and immaterial reality, Maritain shows how each of these reformers deviates from this truth and the consequences of doing so that we to this day have to endure. He also goes into the personal traits of Luther and Rousseau and shows how disorder at this level also played an important role in the development of their thought. A ripper of a book, undoubtedly. Please note, however, that a fairly profound and broad understanding of philosophy (both classical and modern) is required to understand most of what Maritain is trying to convey.
October 25, 2025
Ciekawe. Co się zaś tyczy tych trzech - takimi ich nie znałem.
December 9, 2019
Right or wrong, purposely or inadvertently, these three men laid the intellectual groundwork that would eventually shift Western civilization from an ethic of community to an ethic of autonomy. Maritain takes each to task for their (according to Maritain) flawed ideologies that have infected modern thought. Here are his critiques:
-Luther placed the self at the center of his theology (vice the divine) while also declaring faith in opposition to reason. The results are numerous: the will conquers the intellect; individuality replaces personality; freedom of the self supersedes content of character. As these concepts take hold, the divine becomes simply an ally to the individual will. This individuality eventually culminates in isolation as immanence becomes us.
-Descartes detached knowledge from the past, which we are dependent on whether we recognize it or not. The divine is no longer the grounding and guarantor of reason, but individual cognition. However, if the divine is superfluous then mankind is inevitably subsumed by nature, and a mechanistic rendering of man quickly follows (an ironic ending to a project that seemed to free him from constraint). Human reason becomes the measure of all things. Though it still receives its contents from external objects, it is now supposedly grounded in itself.
-Rousseau gave us religious sentiment without religion; spirituality within naturalism. He is the culmination of Luther’s thoughts: the individual is declared naturally good and salvation lies within. This primitive goodness extols sentiment and undermines not only rationality, but civilized society itself.
-Luther placed the self at the center of his theology (vice the divine) while also declaring faith in opposition to reason. The results are numerous: the will conquers the intellect; individuality replaces personality; freedom of the self supersedes content of character. As these concepts take hold, the divine becomes simply an ally to the individual will. This individuality eventually culminates in isolation as immanence becomes us.
-Descartes detached knowledge from the past, which we are dependent on whether we recognize it or not. The divine is no longer the grounding and guarantor of reason, but individual cognition. However, if the divine is superfluous then mankind is inevitably subsumed by nature, and a mechanistic rendering of man quickly follows (an ironic ending to a project that seemed to free him from constraint). Human reason becomes the measure of all things. Though it still receives its contents from external objects, it is now supposedly grounded in itself.
-Rousseau gave us religious sentiment without religion; spirituality within naturalism. He is the culmination of Luther’s thoughts: the individual is declared naturally good and salvation lies within. This primitive goodness extols sentiment and undermines not only rationality, but civilized society itself.
March 12, 2016
Catholic theologian Maritain, who is extremely smart, decries three "Reformers" in his Thomistic critique of Luther, Descartes, and Rousseau. Essentially he blames Luther for the rise of all forms of modern volunterism, and calls the Protestant reformation the worst plague to ever infect theology. Calvinism is a heresy, Cartesianism is a heresy, Rousseau is responsible for the "naturalistic heresy" and is "worse than Voltaire." &c. &c.
November 2, 2015
No stranger to vitriol, Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain calls the Protestant Reformation “that immense disaster for humanity,” and attributes it to an “effect of an interior trial of a religious man who lacked humility.” Luther, however, appeared to merit the charge of egotism when he wrote, “I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, even by the angels. He who does not receive my doctrine cannot be saved.”
The Reformation views itself as a recovery of scriptural authority, but Maritain sees its essence as the exaltation of spirit over and against authority. It was “the interior energy of man, master of his judgment, against dead ideas and lying convention from without.” The belief that the Church and her Sacraments separate us from God led to the modern myth of immanence, which thinks the dignity of the spirit derives from opposition to anything which is not the self. “First it was church and dogma, then it was the authority of objective being and moral law that was inconceivable except as an external restraint forced on us.” Maritain argues that although receiving from others in the world of bodies is pure submission, “spirits increase intrinsically by perfect interiorization, by knowledge and love, of what is ‘other’ (coming from another than we).”
Maritain also believes Luther is the source of modern voluntarism (the priority of the will over emotion and reason). “With reason banished, the will must be exalted to bring man from mere brute, cut off from the universal body of the church, to stand solitary and naked before God and ensure justification by its trust.” Luther seemed to think that consolations, the assurance of feeling, was the whole point. This made man of greater concern than God, and this preoccupation with the human self can be seen in Protestant theology, which has long been dominated by the doctrine of salvation.
The Christian tradition has long emphasized the objective, historical narrative of God’s work in Christ. This larger story, along with creeds, rites, and churches, shaped and identified believers from outside of themselves. Evangelicals take the Reformation to its logical conclusion by largely rejecting these things. The only objectivity left is the scriptural text itself, but a careful study of key boundaries and practices show that most evangelicals frame the gospel less as a historical reality and more of a “story” in which a sinful individual can be saved in the present. This ascendance of subjectivity as exhibited by the personal “conversion” story helps explain much of their emotional hostility to divergent viewpoints. Ironically this is shared by gay activists who believe that rejecting the “societal imposition of the objective reality of the body and its natural complement in the other sex is the subjective achievement of the true self” (Alastair Roberts).
In the second part of the book, Maritain explains that Cartesian philosophy attempts to grasp existence by intelligence alone starting from pure ideas. We cannot know on trustworthy authority that there is a material world, or that things exist in conformity with our ideas, or that even the most evident intelligible object or eternal truth isn’t deceiving us unless we trust the guarantee of the truthful Creator. This constitutes a refusal to know through the senses and intellect together (as proper humans) but instead solely through our angelic cognition. Thus we are forcibly adjusted to the level of human experience, the treasures of experience is squandered, creative art is profaned, and the world God made is replaced with an inane world of rationalism in a universe imagined as a pure act of intelligibility. Rationalism, the belief that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response, is madness because it makes human reason and its ideological content the measure of what is, but human reason has no content except what it receives from external objects.
Maritain warns that Cartesian science does violence to reality by reducing it to the predestined scale of “scientific” explanation. The apostate West seems determined to die on the lie that our intelligence has perfect autonomy and immanence, absolute independence, and the aseity of an uncreated intelligence. Since the res cogitans (thinking thing) was a higher privileged dimension, res extensa (thing extended in space) was legitimately subject to manipulation and re-organization. So the purpose of philosophy and science is not to contemplate but to “master” nature (Fr. Robert Barron).
Since the perfect intellectual nature proceeds by discovery alone, the deepest and most spiritual root of sociability disappears. Thus Descartes in a high sense is the origin of the individualist conception of human nature, leading to Rousseau. Human nature and reason are now naked, without help from experience, magisterium, habitus, and the virtues developed in the depth of the intellect.
Luther would have the creature marry the Lamb without a wedding garment. Rousseau would have him naked in the outer darkness, lost in his own self-enjoyment. To Rousseau, every form imposed on the inner world of the human soul, whether it comes from nature or grace, is a sacrilegious wrong to nature. The rationalist self wants to be self-sufficient and refuses to lose itself in the abyss of God. Now it can only seek itself in the abyss of sensitive nature, where it will never find peace. He taught our eyes to take pleasure in ourselves and to connive at what they thus see, to discover the charm of those secret bruises of the most individual sensitiveness which less impure ages left with trembling to the eyes of God.
In the third and final section of the book, Maritain concludes that Rousseau completed Luther’s project of inventing a Christianity separate from the Church of Christ. His heresy was a “radical corruption of Christian feeling” that was a complete realization of Pelagianism. Conscience is not only the proximate rule of our free determinations against which it is never allowable to act, it’s also infallible, an immediate revelation of divine oracles springing from the very ground of our heart. This divine instinct confirmed Rousseau’s abandonment of his children, and is the founding principle of some modern, liberal churches (e.g. the United Church of Christ).
The Reformation views itself as a recovery of scriptural authority, but Maritain sees its essence as the exaltation of spirit over and against authority. It was “the interior energy of man, master of his judgment, against dead ideas and lying convention from without.” The belief that the Church and her Sacraments separate us from God led to the modern myth of immanence, which thinks the dignity of the spirit derives from opposition to anything which is not the self. “First it was church and dogma, then it was the authority of objective being and moral law that was inconceivable except as an external restraint forced on us.” Maritain argues that although receiving from others in the world of bodies is pure submission, “spirits increase intrinsically by perfect interiorization, by knowledge and love, of what is ‘other’ (coming from another than we).”
Maritain also believes Luther is the source of modern voluntarism (the priority of the will over emotion and reason). “With reason banished, the will must be exalted to bring man from mere brute, cut off from the universal body of the church, to stand solitary and naked before God and ensure justification by its trust.” Luther seemed to think that consolations, the assurance of feeling, was the whole point. This made man of greater concern than God, and this preoccupation with the human self can be seen in Protestant theology, which has long been dominated by the doctrine of salvation.
The Christian tradition has long emphasized the objective, historical narrative of God’s work in Christ. This larger story, along with creeds, rites, and churches, shaped and identified believers from outside of themselves. Evangelicals take the Reformation to its logical conclusion by largely rejecting these things. The only objectivity left is the scriptural text itself, but a careful study of key boundaries and practices show that most evangelicals frame the gospel less as a historical reality and more of a “story” in which a sinful individual can be saved in the present. This ascendance of subjectivity as exhibited by the personal “conversion” story helps explain much of their emotional hostility to divergent viewpoints. Ironically this is shared by gay activists who believe that rejecting the “societal imposition of the objective reality of the body and its natural complement in the other sex is the subjective achievement of the true self” (Alastair Roberts).
In the second part of the book, Maritain explains that Cartesian philosophy attempts to grasp existence by intelligence alone starting from pure ideas. We cannot know on trustworthy authority that there is a material world, or that things exist in conformity with our ideas, or that even the most evident intelligible object or eternal truth isn’t deceiving us unless we trust the guarantee of the truthful Creator. This constitutes a refusal to know through the senses and intellect together (as proper humans) but instead solely through our angelic cognition. Thus we are forcibly adjusted to the level of human experience, the treasures of experience is squandered, creative art is profaned, and the world God made is replaced with an inane world of rationalism in a universe imagined as a pure act of intelligibility. Rationalism, the belief that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response, is madness because it makes human reason and its ideological content the measure of what is, but human reason has no content except what it receives from external objects.
Maritain warns that Cartesian science does violence to reality by reducing it to the predestined scale of “scientific” explanation. The apostate West seems determined to die on the lie that our intelligence has perfect autonomy and immanence, absolute independence, and the aseity of an uncreated intelligence. Since the res cogitans (thinking thing) was a higher privileged dimension, res extensa (thing extended in space) was legitimately subject to manipulation and re-organization. So the purpose of philosophy and science is not to contemplate but to “master” nature (Fr. Robert Barron).
Since the perfect intellectual nature proceeds by discovery alone, the deepest and most spiritual root of sociability disappears. Thus Descartes in a high sense is the origin of the individualist conception of human nature, leading to Rousseau. Human nature and reason are now naked, without help from experience, magisterium, habitus, and the virtues developed in the depth of the intellect.
Luther would have the creature marry the Lamb without a wedding garment. Rousseau would have him naked in the outer darkness, lost in his own self-enjoyment. To Rousseau, every form imposed on the inner world of the human soul, whether it comes from nature or grace, is a sacrilegious wrong to nature. The rationalist self wants to be self-sufficient and refuses to lose itself in the abyss of God. Now it can only seek itself in the abyss of sensitive nature, where it will never find peace. He taught our eyes to take pleasure in ourselves and to connive at what they thus see, to discover the charm of those secret bruises of the most individual sensitiveness which less impure ages left with trembling to the eyes of God.
In the third and final section of the book, Maritain concludes that Rousseau completed Luther’s project of inventing a Christianity separate from the Church of Christ. His heresy was a “radical corruption of Christian feeling” that was a complete realization of Pelagianism. Conscience is not only the proximate rule of our free determinations against which it is never allowable to act, it’s also infallible, an immediate revelation of divine oracles springing from the very ground of our heart. This divine instinct confirmed Rousseau’s abandonment of his children, and is the founding principle of some modern, liberal churches (e.g. the United Church of Christ).
July 20, 2024
THE FAMED CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT THESE THREE FIGURES
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a French philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1906; he was known as a prominent "neo-Thomist." He wrote many books, such as 'Natural Law: Reflections On Theory & Practice,' 'An Introduction to Philosophy,' 'Scholasticism and Politics,' etc.
In this 1929 book, he treats these three figures separately. He begins by observing, "Three men, each for very different reasons, dominate the modern world, and govern all the problems which torment it: a reformer of religion, a reformer of philosophy, and a reformer of morality---Luther, Descartes, and Rousseau. They are in very truth the begetters of... the modern conscience... I shall study Luther... to bring out certain features in the character of that enemy of philosophy which are of consequence to our philosophical battles... (Pg. 4)
He wrote, "What Luther's doctrine especially expresses is Luther's interior states, spiritual adventures, and individual history. Unable to conquer himself, he transforms his necessities into theological truths, and his own actual case into a universal law." (Pg. 10) He asserts, "(T)he sin of Descartes is a sin of 'angelism.' He turned Knowledge and Thought into hopeless perplexity, an abyss of unrest, because he conceived human Thought after the type of angelic Thought." (Pg. 54) He suggests, "Was not Rousseau... for years a Catholic, steeped in Catholic feeling? ... Are there not, besides, obvious oppositions between the optimism of Jean-Jacques and Lutheran pessimism?... the spirit of Rousseau (is) a revival of the old spirit of Luther." (Pg. 94)
He concludes on the note, "Christian wisdom has not avoided the problem of liberty, it has attacked it boldly along its whole line. That wisdom must end a book of which this problem really forms the chief subject." (Pg. 162)
Maritain has been somewhat "forgotten" these days; but he was a significant thinker, whose thought is still worth considering.
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a French philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1906; he was known as a prominent "neo-Thomist." He wrote many books, such as 'Natural Law: Reflections On Theory & Practice,' 'An Introduction to Philosophy,' 'Scholasticism and Politics,' etc.
In this 1929 book, he treats these three figures separately. He begins by observing, "Three men, each for very different reasons, dominate the modern world, and govern all the problems which torment it: a reformer of religion, a reformer of philosophy, and a reformer of morality---Luther, Descartes, and Rousseau. They are in very truth the begetters of... the modern conscience... I shall study Luther... to bring out certain features in the character of that enemy of philosophy which are of consequence to our philosophical battles... (Pg. 4)
He wrote, "What Luther's doctrine especially expresses is Luther's interior states, spiritual adventures, and individual history. Unable to conquer himself, he transforms his necessities into theological truths, and his own actual case into a universal law." (Pg. 10) He asserts, "(T)he sin of Descartes is a sin of 'angelism.' He turned Knowledge and Thought into hopeless perplexity, an abyss of unrest, because he conceived human Thought after the type of angelic Thought." (Pg. 54) He suggests, "Was not Rousseau... for years a Catholic, steeped in Catholic feeling? ... Are there not, besides, obvious oppositions between the optimism of Jean-Jacques and Lutheran pessimism?... the spirit of Rousseau (is) a revival of the old spirit of Luther." (Pg. 94)
He concludes on the note, "Christian wisdom has not avoided the problem of liberty, it has attacked it boldly along its whole line. That wisdom must end a book of which this problem really forms the chief subject." (Pg. 162)
Maritain has been somewhat "forgotten" these days; but he was a significant thinker, whose thought is still worth considering.
March 16, 2023
Three Reformers was first published in France in 1925, but Jacques had been lecturing on the topic as early as 1914, when at the start of World War One he began to grapple with the causes of European self-destruction. By then, he and his wife Raïssa had discovered the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, in which they saw an integrated paradigm of the human person living harmoniously in society, dependent on the Source of being. Three Reformers analyzes the philosophical influence of Martin Luther, René Descartes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Western culture, from the perspective of the Thomist philosophy that they rejected. Maritain’s basic thesis is that Western modernity consists of an unraveling of the integrated Christian paradigm that used to hold together, before the strands were peeled away from each other into competing segments. Jacques dedicated Three Reformers to his mother, and among other things the book explains why, having actually studied Martin Luther as an adult, he found he could not be Lutheran....Read the full review at https://catholicreads.com/2021/10/14/...
May 23, 2021
I respect Dr. Maritain's work immensely and really wanted to like this book even more than I did. I did enjoy it; The actual work done explicating the major themes of each of the three reformers was very well done, and someone with both a knowledge of the history of philosophy and steeped in Catholic philosophy will find this book a good (if brief) documentation of the major errors of these three thinkers. All of this having been said, the book is both too disjointed and far too personal in some of the comments made by Dr. Maritain. This is not to say that there are not common lines of thought connecting each section, or that Dr. Maritain's observations on each man are incorrect per se, but that such lines of thought could have been made more apparent in each chapter, and the use of these personal comments should have been cut down.
did-not-finish
October 23, 2024I found the Luther part quite informing. Started on the Descartes part and I was quickly lost. Didn't even try the Rousseau part.
There are an immense amount of (long) notes,in the back of the book, that kept breaking my pace.
There are an immense amount of (long) notes,in the back of the book, that kept breaking my pace.
June 19, 2019
Tough read - went over it twice - very enlightening although over half of what he had to say went way over my head.
September 8, 2020
Sucinto y detallado análisis de tres pensadores clave de Occidente
February 20, 2023
Will need to return to the Descartes section after studying up. Luther and Rousseau chapters are worth the patience for a sense read
August 13, 2023
This one was FUN
October 14, 2025
Brilliant book. Minus the confused section on individual and person.
November 5, 2013
Definitely an interesting book worth reading for a neo-Thomist's take on where and in whose thought the problems of the modern world are rooted. The book is certainly polemical in nature, and it's tempting (as someone in fundamental and fairly detailed agreement with the author's religion and philosophy) to cheer him on unduly. However, unlike much polemicism, there are I think valuable points and a sober frame of mind in which to read this book.
Maritain's point is specifically to identify central erroneous and poisonous features of each "reformer's" thought, not to judge them wholesale, and he is at most pains to make this distinction with Descartes.
Briefly, according to Maritain, the central problem of Luther is that he broke and obscured the successes of Catholic spirituality based on his own failure to transcend his emotions and progress, in Catholic mystical jargon, from the purgative path to the illuminative path. As a result of the spiritual crisis any monk can expect to undergo, Luther gave up on virtue and grace and decided that concupiscence was unavoidable. Luther was crippled by his inability to reason in general and selfless terms, although he was certainly a crafty man with great rhetorical skills.
The central problem of Descartes is that he was impatient with the "discursive" nature of human reason and wanted to attain truth that was inherently, intuitively, inescapably true. The failure of his "cogito, ergo sum" and all that followed it to establish such truth led to the opposite extreme, the blind alley of modern idealist philosophy, which denies the existence of objective truth, a useless enterprise that cripples human thought.
The central problem of Rousseau is that he completes the failure of Luther to regulate his passions at all, and in fact to make any such regulation a "betrayal" of human nature, and thus to set up the transient desire of the moment of each individual as the standard of morality. This is compounded by his ludicrously impossible vision of the state and its common will, in which somehow all the desires of each individual can be realized at once without conflict, which despite its idiocy managed to secure quite a grip on Western political thought.
The main problem with the book is that, unless my French is bad enough that I'm missing things left and right (certainly possible), it's far too long and repetitive. I finally gave up and started skipping through the Rousseau section, the longest of the book, and I don't think I missed anything of interest. As Karl Popper somewhat hypocritically notes, philosophers owe it to their readers to be not only clear but concise, as much philosophy as there is out there to try to keep abreast of.
Maritain's point is specifically to identify central erroneous and poisonous features of each "reformer's" thought, not to judge them wholesale, and he is at most pains to make this distinction with Descartes.
Briefly, according to Maritain, the central problem of Luther is that he broke and obscured the successes of Catholic spirituality based on his own failure to transcend his emotions and progress, in Catholic mystical jargon, from the purgative path to the illuminative path. As a result of the spiritual crisis any monk can expect to undergo, Luther gave up on virtue and grace and decided that concupiscence was unavoidable. Luther was crippled by his inability to reason in general and selfless terms, although he was certainly a crafty man with great rhetorical skills.
The central problem of Descartes is that he was impatient with the "discursive" nature of human reason and wanted to attain truth that was inherently, intuitively, inescapably true. The failure of his "cogito, ergo sum" and all that followed it to establish such truth led to the opposite extreme, the blind alley of modern idealist philosophy, which denies the existence of objective truth, a useless enterprise that cripples human thought.
The central problem of Rousseau is that he completes the failure of Luther to regulate his passions at all, and in fact to make any such regulation a "betrayal" of human nature, and thus to set up the transient desire of the moment of each individual as the standard of morality. This is compounded by his ludicrously impossible vision of the state and its common will, in which somehow all the desires of each individual can be realized at once without conflict, which despite its idiocy managed to secure quite a grip on Western political thought.
The main problem with the book is that, unless my French is bad enough that I'm missing things left and right (certainly possible), it's far too long and repetitive. I finally gave up and started skipping through the Rousseau section, the longest of the book, and I don't think I missed anything of interest. As Karl Popper somewhat hypocritically notes, philosophers owe it to their readers to be not only clear but concise, as much philosophy as there is out there to try to keep abreast of.
October 27, 2015
Muy interesante aunque en ocasiones confuso
Un análisis puntual de las principales ideas de estos tres personajes contrastadas con la doctrina de la Iglesia Católica. Permite, a grandes razgos, formarse un esbozo de estas tres personalidades y el papel que han tenido como instigadores de la ideologías modernistas como precursores del relativismo e individualismo.
Le doy solo cuatro estrellas porque en algunos pasajes me fue dificil entender si lo que estaba expresando el autor eran las ideas del personaje o la doctrina católica, y en otras ocasiones me perdí en la complejidad de algunos conceptos filosóficos y/o teológicos demasiado elevados para mi.
Pero en general la lectura de esta obra es muy recomendable sobre todo para los católicos que desean aprender más acerca de las ideas protestantes de Lutero y de la gestación de las herejías modernistas.
Un análisis puntual de las principales ideas de estos tres personajes contrastadas con la doctrina de la Iglesia Católica. Permite, a grandes razgos, formarse un esbozo de estas tres personalidades y el papel que han tenido como instigadores de la ideologías modernistas como precursores del relativismo e individualismo.
Le doy solo cuatro estrellas porque en algunos pasajes me fue dificil entender si lo que estaba expresando el autor eran las ideas del personaje o la doctrina católica, y en otras ocasiones me perdí en la complejidad de algunos conceptos filosóficos y/o teológicos demasiado elevados para mi.
Pero en general la lectura de esta obra es muy recomendable sobre todo para los católicos que desean aprender más acerca de las ideas protestantes de Lutero y de la gestación de las herejías modernistas.
May 29, 2011
Good, but dense and difficult. This book examines Luther, Descartes and Rousseau using a sort of psycho-philosophical approach. I suspect that someone more accustomed to reading philosophy would have gotten more benefit from the book than I did. If anyone reading this can suggest a more accessible point of entry to Maritain's work, I would appreciate it!
November 28, 2011
Jacques Maritain makes a number of interesting points about the three reformers. The only drawback is that he uses quite a bit of rhetorical language.
November 26, 2022
Interesante punto de vista
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