Among the tasks of the Lyceum Institute is a preservation and accessibility of great texts in the tradition. Our latest work in this initiative is the republication of Jacques Maritain’s Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being. Though it has remained available in public domain reprint editions for some time, these have been unreliable and overpriced. Making it available in a clean, reasonably-sized copy—with an added brief index—and in an affordable paperback copy seemed an easy decision to make.
Maritain and the Preface to Metaphysics
Jacques Maritain (18 November 1882–1973 April 28) was a French Catholic philosopher and one of the most important Thomists of the twentieth century, known for renewing the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas in dialogue with modern culture, politics, and art. Maritain wrote extensively on metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and education, defending human dignity, natural law, and a Christian vision of democracy. His influence extended well beyond academic philosophy, affecting Catholic social thought, the drafting climate of modern human rights discourse, and the intellectual formation of many mid-century thinkers. The Preface to Metaphysics provides an insight into the foundations of his own thought: at once dramatic and moving while thought-provoking.
As with all our republications, we have priced it affordably: a mere $9.99.
A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being is a concise but demanding introduction to the reality, subject, essential considerations, principles, and causes which are rightly studied in a metaphysical inquiry. Written from a Thomistic standpoint, the work argues that metaphysics is neither an obsolete speculation nor a merely linguistic exercise, but the highest natural science of being as being. Maritain guides the reader through the conditions that make metaphysics possible, distinguishing it from the empirical sciences while showing its grounding in intellectual experience and judgment. The book serves both as a defense of classical metaphysics against modern skepticism and as a primer in the habits of thought required for genuine philosophical wisdom. It is especially suited to readers seeking a rigorous entry into Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and the first principles underlying all knowledge.
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