"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires,.." Cardinal Ratzinger
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My first thought, oh goodie, Leo Strauss has been resurrected and dressed up in red drag. Goodie? Yes, because the tedious weeks I've spent in background reading on Strauss's first book, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1925) finally has some relevance to something. The material directly applies to Ratzinger's view of relativism.
Max Sawicky writes on MaxSpeak:
``...This man is going to be a huge pain in the ass. The quote above looks like it was written around the corner from me, at the American Enterprise Institute. It's part of the rightist moral conceit we've been getting for years from sinners like Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich...''
Indeed.
In case anyone is interested here is the theological-political outline. It argues in a series of parallels:
a. private v public (social realms)
b. church v state (theological v political realms)
c. revelation v reason (metaphysical realm )
d. absolute v relative (laws and moral realm)
e. Augustine v. Aristotle (historical-philosophical realms)
This is a crude outline of an argument that Hannah Arendt made in various places. In early form it was an argument against founding Israel with no separation between the theological and the political realm, and equally no separation between private and public realm. That was the exact opposite of early Strauss who maintained the individual consciousness was the ultimate source of moral order, in concert with Plato and Aristotle. In his early Zionist writing Strauss supported Israel as a theological-political state.
Strauss later developed a theory of natural rights that corresponded to an ancient hierarchy theoretically based on reason (absolute)---but dissolved of all of its political-rational Enlightenment trappings (relativism).
The problem with this view is the one that Hegel pointed out. In brief, if we allow individual consciousness (or revealed truth) to determine what is right and wrong, then claims of intention and motive after the fact, the telos of intending to do good is allowed to cancel any bad means to get there. The end (good) justifies any means (including bad), and there is therefore no moral order at all. (Neocon war on Iraq--good intentions, road to hell, etc.)
Further arguments are that revelation is in principle a private experience (making the above possible) and can not be demonstrated by public means to be false. A revelation can be labeled heresy and proscribed, but only by absolute authority. Nobody voted on the Ten Commandments.
Reason on the other hand is predominantly a public act in debate and discourse, fundamentally a public (and political) product that can in principle be demonstrated to be false. (Hence leading to relativism.)
Laws such as the Ten Commandments are based on revealed truths (orthodoxy) and are absolute. They maybe interpreted, but not changed or nullified. (Ancient and feudal hierarchies of obedience and obligation, divine right of kings, etc.)
Laws based on public political process are relative, can be modified, amended, or nullified by political processes. Consent of the governed versus obediance to the absolute.
(Most of this is also covered in Strauss's Spinoza.)
CG