Joseph Maréchal

Joseph Maréchal ( born July 1, 1878 in Charleroi, † December 11 1944 in Leuven ) was a Belgian Jesuit priest and philosopher of neo-Thomism. Maréchal appeared in 1895 in the Society of Jesus. He studied philosophy, theology, psychology and zoology and received his doctorate in 1905 at the University of Leuven. In 1908 he was ordained a priest. From 1919 to 1935 he was professor of philosophy at the Jesuit College in Louvain- Eegenhoven lions.

Maréchal confronted the neo-Thomism with Immanuel Kant and German Idealism. In addition, his studies on the psychology of the mystics have become known.

In his major work (Le point de départ de la métaphysique ) he developed a synthesis of Kantian critique of knowledge with the knowledge of metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. Maréchal interpreted Kant's a priori conditions of knowledge in the sense of the scholastic doctrine of the formal objects of knowledge. The reason has, in contrast to Kant not only a regulatory function, but recognized the being. Also, the mind and the senses take part in their own way on the existence - knowledge.

Maréchal exerted a significant influence on the development of neo-scholasticism of ( Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, John Baptist Lotz ).

Works

• Le point de départ de la métaphysique, Cahiers IV 1922-1947 ( The point of Metaphysics )
• Études sur la psychologie of mystiques. Vol I: 1924, Volume II: 1937 (Studies on the Psychology of the Mystics )
• Précis d' histoire de la philosophie moderne. 1933