 Maritain’s moral and political philosophy lies within what may be called the Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law tradition. Maritain held, however, that Aristotelian ethics, by itself, was inadequate because it lacked knowledge of humanity’s ultimate end. The Thomistic view—that there is a law in human nature that is derivative of (though knowable separately from) a divine or eternal law, and that humanity’s ‘end’ goes beyond anything attainable in this life—was, Maritain thought, a significant advance on what Aristotle had provided. 