This paper explores the genealogy of philosophical personalism, a little studied but highly significant strand of Lebanese intellectual life in the 1950s and 60s. Personalism was a neo-Thomist movement that argued for a spiritualist “third way” between individualist Liberalism and totalitarian Communism. Its most prominent international advocate was the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, who supplied much of the intellectual framework for the post-war discourse of human rights. But its most prominent exponent in the Arab world was Charles Malik--the founder AUB's philosophy department in the late 1930s, and later a prominent diplomat (and uncle to Edward Said). This paper will examine the writings and pedagogical impact of Malik on a generation of Lebanese intellectuals, including Yusuf al-Khal, Hisham Sharabi, and Rene Habashi. It will examine how several tropes of personalism made their way into the poetry of the Shi'r magazine group--including Adonis and Unsi al-Hajj--and how it engaged rival humanisms of the period.