The scholarly works of Jacques Maritain, a prominent mid-20th-century Catholic philosopher, are beyond the comprehension of most casual readers. Fortunately, his essays on education are quite approachable.

Written after World War II, the essays in The Education of Man offer insight into the strong and ever-relevant quest for freedom.

For Maritain, freedom starts with the individual person. Unlike others who perceive human behavior as determined either by circumstances or exclusively by rational self-interest, he believed in free will. He does not ignore the vast and complex dynamism of instincts, tendencies, psycho-physical dispositions, acquired habits and hereditary traits.

Nevertheless, he proposed that a person can emerge from these circumstances such that a degree of choice is exercised. As such, a person can learn to give or withhold the inclinations and urges of his or her nature.

When speaking of human beings, Maritain does not refer to individuals, like blades of grass or flies, but rather as those who have a supernatural existence capable of knowledge and love. In other words, a person, made in the image of God, is a microcosm of the universe. Such a person cannot transcend external and internal constraints but retains a degree of spontaneity free of the compulsion imposed by an exterior agent. We become agents of our own personalities.

To simplify, Maritain characterizes a person as a bundle of animal spirits and self-regarding interests, along with a longing for freedom and the Divine. He admits that human personality is a great mystery, but one that develops through judgment and behavior. Success in achieving personal aspirations, however, is a constant struggle, because we cannot escape from being united substantially with matter and human limitations.

Certain aspirations are part of human nature and others to the supernatural. Human persons, Maritain maintains, aspire to escape from the dependency in which they are born in order to survive and thrive materially and socially. However, in aspiring to transcend human vulnerability, they can become trapped in a false quest for freedom which is illusory and homicidal.

Consider two ways in which the concept of freedom is perverted. In denying free will, some suggest that everyone should be “free” to do that which is determined by nature and circumstances. Also, certain atheists and those who deny the existence of a personal God propose that everyone be “free” to reject measures of goodness received from anyone other than themselves.

On the contrary, according to Maritain, human beings are born with an innate quest for genuine freedom that must be earned:

“…he becomes free, by warring upon himself and thanks to many sorrows; by the struggle of the spirit and virtue; by exercising his freedom he wins his freedom. So that at long last a freedom better than he expected is given him.”

The type of freedom, about which Maritain writes, is gained through the development of personality. As one conquers depersonalizing behaviors such as harmful addictions, he or she becomes freer in making judgments consistent with his or her higher aspirations.

Maritain does not limit the quest for autonomy to the personal. As someone who was influential in drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, how does he deal with ensuring certain inalienable rights, including liberty?

He saw the role of the state and the development of democracies as inseparable from the human impulse for freedom but proceeding as well from biblical inspiration. He believed that democratic aspirations were formed in peoples’ hearts through history and realized often at the price of heroic sacrifice. Maritain warns, however, that democratic freedom and human rights can be easily corrupted and deformed by a false philosophy of life.

What characterizes this false philosophy of life? Essentially, it perceives the person as somewhat divine, either as an individual, a government leader or a “bourgeois liberal” (a technical or business expert).

According to Maritain, this false philosophy proposes a practical atheism in which God is no longer God “except perhaps in a decorative way and for private use.” What is lost is a theoretical and practical understanding of the common good followed by the belief that any external authority is incompatible with freedom.

Attempts to divinize the personal, social and political realms, Maritain argues, paves the path to totalitarianism. In totalitarian regimes, people are reduced to an anonymous mass led by “a sort of inhuman monster whose omnipotence is based upon myths and lies.” In the normal way of arriving at freedom, however, people:

… must gradually win a freedom which consists, in the political and social order, above all in becoming, under given historical conditions, as independent as possible of the restrictions of material nature.

In this statement, Maritain suggests that progress is possible in the material, social and political realms and that such advances increase freedom. Government failure exists when officials cease striving for the common good.

In these essays, it is not clear if Maritain identifies the common good exclusively in terms of indivisible public goods, a pluralistic consensus, or some higher purpose. However, it is difficult to accept Maritain’s implication that the market economy, or what he refers to as “bourgeois liberalism,” provides only private goods. Surely, improvements in overall standards of living and increased trust, developed either by corporations or in the worker co-ops favored by Maritain, increase freedom from the restrictions of human nature.

Nevertheless, Maritain does emphasize the importance of all organic communities, regardless of structure, beginning with the family. He maintains that the soul of social life abounds from the life of individual persons and their gratuitous generosity. However, this fraternity is not a privilege of human nature. It comes at the end of a slow and difficult conquest.

Maritain offers an eloquent statement on the quest for liberty, and he clearly outlines the costs of freedom in no uncertain terms. From Maritain, we learn that personal freedom is unattainable unless we overcome harmful behaviors and accept the truth about ourselves and others.

He also suggests that the right to freely associate breaks down with unnecessary restrictions on private organizations responding to ever-changing human desires and needs. Finally, the pursuit of freedom requires that the state not be permitted to support special interests that crowd out common interests and religious aspirations.

Maryann O. Keating holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Notre Dame and is a member of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. She frequently co-authors with her husband, Barry P. Keating, with whom she shares three adult children.