Dark Maritain: A Catholic Postliberal Alternative to Integralism

Catholic postliberalism presents one of the most systematic intellectual critiques of liberalism. Catholic integralism is the purest form of such postliberalism, but it faces serious challenges in modern pluralistic societies, and hangs like an albatross around postliberalism’s neck. Liberal critics can rightly dismiss it as utopian and authoritarian. Perhaps postliberals can find a better expression of their position, and I propose to find it in an unlikely place: the thought of Jacques Maritain. Maritain was once an integralist, but moved away by disentangling postliberal normative principles governing church–state relations from their institutional realization. Here, I present a darker form of Maritainianism, what I shall call Dark Maritain, which weds those principles to the Thomistic proposition that sin can corrupt our knowledge of natural law. Societies can collectively lose their grip on natural law. The result is a postliberalism that forbids certain kinds of integralist coercion while remaining consistent with postliberal normative foundations. Dark Maritainianism is epistemically modest. It begins from our current social world, pursuing feasible reforms based on postliberal standards. In this way, it finds a middle path between liberalism and integralism.