Jacques Maritain on Democracy

“THE FORM and this ideal of common life, which we call democracy, springs in its essentials from the inspiration of the Gospel and cannot subsist without it; and by virtue of the blind logic of historical conflicts and habits of social memory, which has nothing whatever to do with the logic of thought, we saw for a century the motivating forces in the modern democracies repudiating the Gospel and Christianity in the name of human liberty.”

“THE WORD democracy, as used by modern peoples, has a wider meaning than in the classical treatment on the science of government. It designates first and foremost a general philosophy of human and political life and a state of mind. This philosophy and this state of mind do not exclude a priori any of the “regimes” or “forms of government” which were recognized as legitimate by classical tradition, that is, recognized as compatible with human dignity. Thus a monarchic regime can be democratic if it is consistent with this state of mind and the principles of this philosophy. However, from the moment that historical circumstances lend themselves, the dynamism of democratic thought leads, as though to its most natural form of realization, to the system of government of the same name, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, in “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

~Jacques Maritain: Christianity and Democracy & The Rights of Man and Natural Law.

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