Person And The Common Good [Paperback]

It is no grave matter that Maritain's wisdom had strongly inspired King's argument in his historic essay, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." Rather, it is a fitting and enduring tribute to Maritain's penetrating insight into the human person and the vital relationship between the person and society.

On pages 72 and 73, Maritain explains that the "human person is engaged in its entirety as part of political society, but not by reason of everything that is in it and everything that belongs to it. By reason of other things which are in the person, it is also in its entirety above political society. For in the person there are some things- and they are the most important and sacred ones- which transcend political society and draw man in his entirety above political society- the very same whole man who, by reason of another category of things, is part of political society."

Certainly, our knowing of King's excellent borrowings from Maritain facilitates our own understanding of King. For example, how else would we know deeply his feelings that there could be no waiting in the struggle for African- American liberation? Indeed, such reference is helpful when we attempt to grasp the urgency of the Birmingham situation.

In King's opinion, the personality of the black American in Birmingham was so disabled and "perverted" by the discriminatory laws, that their spiritual pilgrimage had been seriously endangered. Therefore, he could not wait for Kennedy or anyone else to make good on long-delayed promises.

Again, "The Person and the Common Good," well illuminates (1) the primacy of the transcendental destiny shared by all persons and (2) the necessity of civilization to guarantee the opportunity of every person to find their complete fulfillment in God . With intensely philosophical precision and a rare passion for Truth, Maritain made an exciting and energetic argument that forcefully affirms the uniquely transcendental character of the human personality.

On pages 15 and 16, Maritain writes: "The most essential and the dearest aim... is to make sure that the personal contact of all intellectual creatures with God, as well as their personal subordination to God, be in no way interrupted. Everything else- the whole universe and every social institution- must ultimately minister to this purpose; everything must foster, strengthen, and protect the conversation of the soul, every soul, with God."

This is the same powerful insight that compelled King to protest the discriminatory laws of then-Birmingham.

-Stan Faryna, Black and Right (Praeger Trade, 1997)