| Author Quoted | Jacques Maritain |
| Title Quoted | Dream of Descartes |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1963/03/19 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : Philosophical Librarey. 1944 |
| Quotation | I read Maritain's essay on Descartes today (in connection with Fenelon, but it is revealing in relation to Zen). The task for Zen in the West is probably a healthy reaction on the part of people exasperated for four hundred years by the inane Cartesian spirit-the reification of concepts, the idolization of reflexive consciousness, the flight from being into verbalism, mathematics and rationalization. Descartes made a fetish of the mirror which Zen shatters. |
| Quotation Source | Turning Toward the World: The Pivotal Years. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 4, 1960-1963.; Edited by Victor A. Kramer. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 304 |
| Letter to | |
| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
(If there is a link above showing up as a number, click it to open another window with a full text version.) |