Jacques Maritain and human rights

Abstract

Jacques Maritain’s concern and thoughts on human rights and natural law are analyzed and studies in the context of the humanist tradition of mankind. For this, St. Thomas Aquinas-J. Maritain types of law: 1) the natural law, 2) the people law, and 3) the positive law are discussed in relation to the three Maritain characteristics of the human being, i.e., wholeness, independence, and belonging to a society of human beings. From these considerations emerges the superadditive property of society, which is in complete agreement with Aristotle's principe that the whole is more than the addition of its parts.

Maritain’s concept of normal functioning (doing) jointly with the ontological (being) and the teleological (the goals) dimensions of the human being and society form the basic framework for the analysis of the individualistic, the communist, and the humanistic types of society.

This study concludes with the proposition of 1) freedom 2) economic efficiency, 3) social justice, and 4) preservation of the human species and its natural habitat, as the four essential principles for the realization of human rights in a society of societies.