philosophical viewpoint, prominent in the 19th and 20th cent., that sought to apply the doctrines of scholasticism to contemporary political, economic, and social problems. It is often called neo-Thomism for its close links to St. Thomas Aquinas , but it is more properly called neo-scholasticism, as the movement encompassed the principles of other scholastics, such as Duns Scotus . Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson were eminent neo-scholastics.