CALL FOR PAPERS
THE 48th ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN MARITAIN ASSOCIATION
Thursday, April 3 to Saturday, April 5, 2025
Hosted by the Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, FL
§ The Range of Reason: From Empirioschematic Science to Natural and Supernatural Mysticism §
Program Committee: James M. Jacobs (President), James M. Murdoch (Vice-President and Program Chair), Matthew Minerd (Secretary and Web Editor), Francisco Plaza (Treasurer), Travis Dumsday (General Editor)
In The Range of Reason, Maritain confidently avers: “If I…am a Thomist, it is in the last analysis because I have understood that the intellect sees, and that it is cut out to conquer being.” Maritain stands in clear contrast to one of the more paradoxical developments of modern thought: the growing distrust of the capacity of human reason to attain truth. So disconcerting is this development that even Popes have made it a focus of their pastoral concern. As St. John Paul II notes in Fides et ratio: “It has happened therefore that reason, rather than voicing the human orientation towards truth, has wilted under the weight of so much knowledge and little by little has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being…. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned.”
Against this reductionist tendency, Jacques Maritain ardently defended the power of human reason to grasp the truth of all being. This is evident in the breadth of his work over his career, from the philosophy of science to metaphysics, from political theory to mysticism. The essays collected in The Range of Reason exemplify the necessity of reason attaining truth in every sphere of human endeavor: “By its very nature, knowledge does not tend toward power, nor even toward action; it tends toward truth. And at all the degrees of knowledge, from the lowest to the highest, it is truth that liberates.”
In response to the modern tendency to limit reason, we invite papers that consider the range of reason; not only the essays in the collection by that name, but the principle that the entire spectrum of being is accessible to human intelligence. We especially encourage papers that consider those aspects of knowledge which modernity marginalizes as not within the purview of reason. Maritain’s repeated studies of mysticism, both natural and supernatural, are an outstanding example of this.
The plenary speakers reflect this breadth of the intelligibility of being from ethics to metaphysics to mysticism: Fulvio di Blasi (Thomas International); Steven A. Long (Ave Maria University); Cajetan Cuddy, OP (Dominican House of Studies); and, Brian Kemple (Lyceum Institute).
Please send proposals of up to 500 words to Dr. James Murdoch at [email protected] by January 15, 2025. Final presentations should be 25-30 minutes in length.
The AMA has a longstanding book series arising out of its annual conferences, with volumes published in partnership with Catholic University of America Press. All accepted submissions will later be eligible for inclusion in the resulting peer-reviewed volume. There is a $250 prize and a guarantee of publication for the best graduate student paper; to be considered for the graduate student prize, please submit your complete paper by January 15, 2025.
The conference registration fee is $150 ($60 for students). The optional conference banquet is an additional $65. Membership in the American Maritain Association is $100 ($50 for students). We encourage online payment by March 15, 2025. Registration after that will be $185.00 ($75.00 for students).
For more information, visit www.americanmaritainassociation.com.
