Inside Look at Maritain's Home in Princeton!

From Stranger to Friend: Art as a Journey to God in the Life of the Maritains

Dear Friends,

As I prepared to speak on Divine Inspiration and the Vocation of an Artist at Scala’s upcoming symposium at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, I nostalgically walked past the former Princeton home of Jacques and Raissa Maritain, whose legacy our July 1, 2025, event will ponder. I hope you join us in person or live-stream for that!

To my delight, this time (at least my 20th pilgrimage to their former home), the present owners were outside. Not only did they invite me in and show me how they have maintained the murals the Maritains commissioned from French artist Andre Girard, but they also asked me questions about the Maritains for nearly an hour.

The present owners, both scientists, were eager for me to share with them all my writings about the former owner of their beautiful home. When I was a stranger to philosophy, Jacques Maritain’s voice inspired me to go on an intellectual journey of clarifying the basic categories I use to think about religion, culture, and politics. Only later did I discover his writings on educational curricula, the vocation to teach, and the centrality of the inner dynamism of the student. Recently, I’ve explored how the Maritains viewed the fine arts as essential to our journey to God.

The owners of the Maritains’ home in Princeton shared with me a letter from Elsa Einstein, the wife of Albert Einstein, about the dinner they shared with the Maritains. “We heard he gathered scientists, artists, and philosophers all together to talk about the issues of the day,” they told me. “Would you come back sometime with your husband so we can continue learning about the Maritans and discuss with you all the topics the Maritains discussed?”

Encountering Jacques Maritain when I was a graduate student in sociology changed the trajectory of my career. He has been my constant companion on my own journey from a stranger to philosophy to a lover of wisdom. His writings led me to embrace my vocation to teach as essentially focused on the ability to awaken the inner dynamism of my students to encounter great traditions and make them their own, bringing new ideas and things into the world. His passion for bringing artists and scientists into dialogue with philosophers is the model of what a university is supposed to be. And his statement that theology unites speculative philosophy and practical philosophy has given me confidence to write about the journey we all share: from being strangers to God to being intimate friends, children of God, who created us out of nothing but calls us to contemplate him and to co-create with him.

Below, I’ve compiled a list of resources on the Maritains which I’ve shared with hundreds of students in class, at public lectures on Maritain, and now, with all of you!

Enjoy the readings and the pictures from the Maritain home in Princeton!

Margarita Mooney Clayton, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Practical Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary

Executive Director, Scala Foundation

Here’s a video of the longest mural.

Here are the other images on the walls.

Here is my lecture from the University of Notre Dame on creativity in the thought of Jacques Maritain.

This documentary “The Man Who Loved Wisdom” has amazing footage from various parts of the Maritains’ life, including their time in Princeton.

Here I talk with Pepperdine’s Ted McAlister about Maritain’s Thomist philosophy and compare it to John Dewey’s pragmatism, with a focus on implications for education.

Here I speak with Princeton Professor Robert George, also comparing Dewey and Maritain.

This article from Comment magazine is one of many where I use Maritain’s educational philosophy to highlight the importance of beauty in education.

This blog for Reclaiming the Piazza summarizes Maritain’s main ideas from Education at the Crossroads about educational philosophy and teaching as a vocation.