Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) In Search of Freedom; Against Reason Fallen Ill and Religion Abused Stephen Eric Bronner Of Reason and Faith: A Reply to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
[1] This article has a history. It essentially summarizes the position taken by the Pontiff in his debate with the pre-eminent philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, which was held before a small invited audience on January 1, 2004 at the Catholic Academy in Munich. Cardinal Ratzinger argued the importance of "pre-political" foundations for a liberal secular state and a universal notion of common law derived from "nature"-- though what the former actually implies and what the latter concretely can contribute to the liberal state remains unclear. As for Habermas, in accepting the Peace Prize of the Deutschen Buchhandels in October 2001, his speech emphasized the need to reconnect "faith" (Glauben) and "knowledge" (Wissen) and "translate" the "religious content" of moral concepts into a "secular language." It became for him a matter of salvaging the "original religious meaning" of existence that modernity was eroding or ignoring. Thus, in spite of his belief that reason must still control religious faith, his position ultimately reflects the shift from a "post-metaphysical" to a "post-secular" theory. For more on this see: http://theodor-frey.de/dialog.htm; http://religion.orf.at/projekt02/news/0401/ne040120_harbermas_ratzinger.htm; http://www.sbg.ac.at/sot/ texte/2004-01-22-zsf-merkur.htm; and, in English, http://marston.blogspot.com/ 2005/05/habermas-ratzinger.html.
Debate: Atrocities in Palestine? Gamaliel Isaac Truth or Propaganda? Lawrence Davidson The Zionist Worldview and the Pitfalls of Confirmation Bias: A Rebuttal to Gamaliel Isaac
Latest issue of note as well, Aronowitz on the AFL-CIO split, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/main.htm and piece on the London Bombing.
-- Michael Pugliese