Background
Maréchal, Joseph was born on July 1, 1878 in Charleroi.
Maréchal, Joseph was born on July 1, 1878 in Charleroi.
1919-1935, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Jesuit house of studies, Louvain.
Maréchal was an early exponent of what has come to be called 'transcendental Thomism’: a form ot neoscholastic philosophy generated by an engagement, confrontation and partial synthesis with the Kantian critique. At the heart of Maréchal s theory of knowledge is his conception of the intellect as active and dynamic, in the sense that it has a dynamic drive or tendency towards BeingThis dynamism, he argued, is one of the a prion conditions of the possibility of the objective contents consciousness. The objectivity of the phenomenal object, immanent in consciousness, is possible only on the supposition that consciousness is intentional, that real being is present as an end towards which the intellect drives itself. 3Ve do. therefore, have a direct knowledge of things in themselvesThus, even if we begin at Kant’s own startingpoint, we can go beyond him, methodological1) and philosophically, to the kind of metaphysics presented most completely in Aquinas, since, for Aquinas, the objectively real is the primiti'e datum, and mental contents are explained *** Marechal's great work constitute a remarkab*- history of the problem of knowledge, and the i»1 cahier gives us his critique, from a Thomist*'-' perspective, of the Kantian critique. A six cahier. which was to have presented his ovv0 theory of knowledge, was unfortunately never written. Marechal did not receive universa acclaim from the Thomists of his own time, bu his reputation has grown to the point where he now regarded as one of the leading Thomists the century.