 Also distinctive in Maritain’s account of metaphysics is the emphasis on “the act of existing”. It is because of this that Maritain has been called an ‘existentialist’; indeed, his Existence and the Existent, is subtitled “an essay on Christian existentialism”, and he describes his view as an “existential intellectualism” (Existence and the Existent, 1947 [1948: 70]). Maritain believes that such an emphasis is characteristic of any consistent Thomism; 