Christian democracy as a worldview ideological doctrine was formed, among other things, on the basis of religious philosophical concepts, in particular personalism. Personalism – the vision of a person as a person in the context of his or her social responsibility to society and future generations – has become part of the political platform of all Christian democratic parties.
In social matters, personalism is focused on universal values: the right to life, human dignity, freedom, private property, and a civil society dominated by the rule of law. Personalism is strongly opposed to socialism, especially its Soviet model, as well as to capitalism with its social ills. These values became the basis of the socio-political doctrine of Christian democracy.
The philosophy of the prominent Christian thinker Jacques Maritain was the greatest contribution to the formation of personalism. He participated in the drafting of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and the Second Vatican Council approved many of his ideas as part of modern Catholic philosophy. Having received a Protestant upbringing and studied biology at university, Jacques Maritain nevertheless converted to Catholicism in 1906.
Maritain saw a way out of the crisis of modern times in the establishment of “theocentric humanism,” “personalistic democracy,” the Christianization of all spheres of spiritual culture, and the ecumenical rapprochement of religions. He considered his task to be the integration of modern philosophy and the ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In opposition to liberal individualism and socialist collectivism, Maritain substantiated the personalist concept of man. Personalism as a philosophical trend emphasizes that a person is not just an individual, but first and foremost a person, and has social obligations – family, community, and society – and exists as a member of society. The human being, according to the thinker, always has a spiritual aspect, which materialistic liberalism did not recognize. Maritain introduced the principle of responsibility into Christian democracy and substantiated the importance of the family and private property for the development of the state. At the same time, the thinker insisted on the need to reduce the influence of the state on social interactions of the population.
Maritain’s philosophical works and ideas influenced the policies of the Christian democratic parties that ruled Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries after 1945. Jacques Maritain opposes the humanistic individualism of the New Age with “integral humanism,” according to which man is perceived as a unity of the natural and the supernatural. According to Maritain’s concept, only the improvement of modern democracy through its gradual Christianization is the way that opens up the possibility of integral humanism. Jacques Maritain’s Christian democracy is an ideology that, based on humanism, the doctrine of human rights, and democratic values, at the same time adds to them the values of integral humanism – goodness, mercy, and mutual assistance. In 1967, in his encyclical “On the Progress of Peoples” (“Populorum progressio”), Pope Paul VI proclaimed the Catholic Church’s desire to realize the ideal of “integral humanism.”
Supporters of the philosophy of personalism are characterized by a desire to move away from the outdated dogmatism of the Christian concept of man, to update it and fill it with modern content. One of the main ideas of personalism is the active participation and dialogue of Christians with modernity, their involvement in active public life, so that Christianity plays a more significant role in politics and the social sphere and contributes to the realization of changes in the world for the better.
Personalism is a philosophical doctrine that, in understanding the modern world, proceeds from the problem of “total” human development based on the priority of spiritual values. The crisis of the modern man is explained as a consequence of the crisis of civilization as a whole, where the shortcomings of the distribution system lead to a decline in morality, deprive people of self-development, and the dominance of comfort turns people into consumers. As the Dutch publicist Jeff Fontaine rightly points out, personalism emphasizes the centrality of the individual in human activity, where a person’s identity is revealed and defined through his or her relationships with others. In politics, personalism is reflected in the programs of Christian democratic parties, which came to power in many European countries after the war and still play a significant role in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and, thanks to the activities of the European People’s Party, in the European Parliament.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk
