An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948: Nikolai Berdyaev and Jacques Maritain

In 1924 the Russian Orthodox philosopher in exile Nikolai Berdyaev ended up in the environs of Paris, where he met and befriended the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. Coming from different faiths and disparate cultures, they shared a common desire to assert the essential dignity and rights of the human person in an era torn apart by extremism and conflict. They embarked on a joint endeavour to promote ecumenical dialogue and philosophical conversation in interwar Europe. Their collaboration was instrumental in developing a philosophy of Christian personalism and seminal in the emergence of existentialism. Newly translated into English, An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948 reproduces the two thinkers’ correspondence, along with Bernard Hubert’s original introductory essay, his notes to the French edition, and a new introduction by Ana Siljak. An intimate and remarkable portrait emerges. The two men met and corresponded often during their two decades of friendship, their homes became spaces for conversations on religion and philosophy, and together they contributed to the development of a Christian humanism and personalism that inspired such disparate figures as Hannah Arendt and Martin Luther King Jr and that influenced Maritain’s work on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An Exceptional Dialogue, 1925–1948 reveals the connectedness between Russian and European thought, explores the contributions of French-Russian personalism to the history of human dignity, and provides insight into a strain of philosophy often ignored in contemporary scholarship.