Jacques Maritain, “Pure” Nature, and the State’s Teleological Crisis

In response to increased threats of totalitarianism in the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain proposed a separation of the spiritual and temporal planes which purported to limit the State’s power and resist the totalitarian and absolutist claims found in rising political movements. I argue, however, that the very distinction Maritain attempts to establish pushes the temporal plane into a teleological crisis which results in the totalitarianism Maritain sought to resist. By granting that temporal powers pursue ultimate ends autonomous from humanity’s absolute ultimate end, Maritain’s schema yields an unstable temporal plane which requires supernatural claims to make itself intelligible as an ultimate end. Whereas William Cavanaugh criticizes Maritain for mistakenly relying upon a scholastic understanding of “pure nature,” I propose that a recovery of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the openness of pure nature to supernatural ends can better justify Maritain’s proposed limited state and prevent the teleological instability at the root of Maritain’s political theory.