 As one might expect, Maritain’s metaphysics follows in the tradition of Aquinas, but it is far from a restatement of Aquinas’s views. For Maritain, metaphysics in general is always in need of renewal and defense (see Dewan 2009), and Maritain saw his task—and the task of Thomism in general—as being “to renovate” Aquinas’s thought, “a task whose novelty may well be greater than [Thomists] themselves realise” (Preface to Metaphysics, 1934 [1939: 12–13]). 