PERSONALISM IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Brooks got it right. READ HERE PERSONALISM THE PHILOSOPHY WE NEED. At last, someone has discovered the philosophy of the human person. It was about time. I am glad he realizes of the richness and pertinence of this tradition to give a proposal to the meaninglessness of our time. Brooks, correctly, does not forget the  great personalist, Karol Wojtyla, Peter Maurin and, M.L. King Jr. And of course,  my maestro Jacques Maritain. Yet, there are countless of another personalist thinkers, with “little and big” names, who has been in the trenches for the last fifty years. I am thinking of my friends of the American Maritain Association who, for more than one generation, has been persistent in keeping the flame of personalism alive in this sea of relativism, skepticism, and irrationalism.AMERICAN MARITAIN ASSOCIATION Not to mention many of the Latin America personalists, two of whom, became presidents, Rafael Caldera in Venezuela, and Eduardo Frei in Chile. Vividly is still in my memory, the encounter I had with then-President Caldera in 1997, to whom I presented my dissertation on Personalism,   Maritain and the development of Political Philosophy in  Latin America. Caldera was witty, with an encyclopedic culture (un pensador) for whom democracy was more a moral experience than anything else. CALDERASee. Maritain Political Thought in Twentieth-Century Latin America. Brooks article makes me realize that our proposal of Personalist Republicanism, is more than ever, urgent and timely.