A Contemporary Catholic Viewpoint on War and Non-Violence | Dr. Gregory Reichberg

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Gregory Reichberg examines the viewpoint of Jacques Maritain, a Catholic philosopher, on the concept of just war and Christian engagement in the temporal world. Maritain proposed a hierarchy of means for Christians to effect change, ranging from spiritual practices to carnal warfare, emphasizing the importance of coordinating these approaches. Maritain argued against the notion of holy war, particularly in the context of the Spanish Civil War, asserting that war belongs to the profane domain and cannot be considered a supernatural act in the modern era.

This lecture was given on June 11th, 2024, at The Dominican House of Studies.

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About the Speaker:

Gregory M. Reichberg is Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). He is a philosopher specializing in military ethics and is currently engaged in a multi-year project on the use of artificial intelligence in armed conflict. He also writes on linkages between religion, peace, and conflict. For the last eight years he has led the Research School on Peace and Conflict, an academic consortium for doctoral students. From 2009-12 he was director of the PRIO Cyprus Centre in Nicosia, where he coordinated research and dialogue activities on the search for a political settlement to the island's division. Over the last fifteen years he has been engaged in religious dialogue on social/political issues in Iraq and other settings. Reichberg is a consultor to the Dicastery for Integral Human Development (appointed by Pope Francis in 2020).

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events,
0:21.7	visit us at Thomisticinstitute.org.
0:25.6	The quadlbedal questions is a very tough regime
0:29.4	for the professor.
0:31.3	Thomas Aquinas faced it alone,
0:33.2	and I'm happy that I'll have company,
0:35.4	like two good Dominican friars.
0:46.2	So what I'd like to talk about with you now is Jacques Maritin's engagements on questions relating to war.
0:53.0	Now, if you go to Marantan's writings, you're not going to find a book on just war.
0:59.1	So it might look as though this was an episodic or very peripheral topic for him.
1:07.0	But actually, having gone into his writings, I discovered that from around 1933 to 1940,
1:12.8	he reflected very carefully about issues around war.
1:19.8	At the beginning, it was in a speculative vein, but then as he progressed, it was under the press of world events.
1:30.2	And I say that that reflection around issues around war ended approximately 1940, you know, the outbreak of the Second World War.
1:38.1	Just a caveat there, in maybe his major book in political philosophy, man in the state,
1:46.3	he does have a chapter on world government. And that actually was in response, you know, world government is one of the solutions proposed to the problem of war. And in particular, when Maritan, the man in the state was
1:53.3	delivered his lectures at the University of Chicago. And at that time at the University of Chicago,
1:58.1	around 1952, I think, there was something called the Chicago
2:01.8	School. This was a group of political scientists who were trying to grapple with nuclear
	...

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