Pedro Descoqs (; 2 January 1877 – 8 November 1946) was a French Jesuit and Neo-Scholastic philosopher of the Suarezian school who taught at the Jesuit scholasticate Maison Saint-Louis in Jersey. Descoqs was a supporter of Action Française and opponent of the emergent nouvelle théologie, which brought him into conflict with prominent liberal Catholic intellectuals such as Maurice Blondel and fellow Jesuits, including his students Henri de Lubac, Yves de Montcheuil, and Gaston Fessard as well as Joseph Maréchal.
Metaphysics
Descoqs defended the Neo-Scholastic position on nature and grace, defending a "direct natural vision of God" against the supernaturalism of Blondel and nouvelle théologie and opposed the use of Thomas Aquinas as a source for the nature-grace debate.
Political philosophy
He is noted as the author of a synthesis of , a work of Charles Maurras. This work had immense repercussions in French Catholicism. For Descoqs, "friends and adversaries cannot avoid being struck by the power of his dialectic, the sharpness of his ideas, the accent of profound conviction, seeing the perfection of language which marks without any possible contest this new work of M. Maurras." À traverse l’œuvre de M. Maurras examines the principal strains of the thought of Charles Maurras and analyses their convergences and divergences with Descoqs's interpretation of Catholic doctrine.
Reception
Henri de Lubac criticizes Descoqs at length in The Mystery of the Supernatural, arguing that he misrepresents the relationship between nature and grace and contributes to the misinterpretation of Thomas Aquinas in Neo-Scholasticism.
Personal life
Descoqs was born in Plomb, Normandy and died of typhoid fever in Villefranche, Rhône.
Notes
References
De Lubac, Henri. (1998) The Mystery of the Supernatural. The Crossroad Publishing Company Giaconti, Stéphane. (2006) Maurras – Le chaos et l'ordre. Flammarion McCool, Gerald. (1989) Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search for a Unitary Method. Fordham University Press Kirwan, Jon. (2018) An Avant-garde Theological Generation: The Nouvelle Théologie and the French Crisis of Modernity. Oxford University Press Shortall, Sarah. (2021) Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Harvard University Press