17: Jason West

Jacques Maritain was raised a protestant in France initially studying science at the Sorbonne in Paris. He became disillusioned with the perspective of scientism that dominate the academy. Attending the lectures of Henri Bergson whose work highlighted the place of intuition and sympathy Maritain and his wife Raissa Oumansoff, a Russian Jew, set upon a new path which led to their entering the Roman Catholic Church. Maritain has written “just about everything” and Jason West was working through his book Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry. Knowing Professor West’s penchant for logic and reason I was interested on hearing how art and the third transcendental, the beautiful, was woven into his thought. Professor West’s intellectual journey took him from atheism through the study of medieval logic and the work of Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas. A solitary month reading and rereading Saint Augustine’s The Confessions and a friend’s casual invitation to attend the Roman Catholic liturgy, not unlike Maritain, led him into the Church. Our conversation begins with Maritain, art, logic and reason and concludes thinking about the good, the true, and the beautiful. Welcome to our conversation.