Wilson is the most terrific intellectual snob and for him to come to the conclusion that he does says all one needs to know about B16 as a teacher.He is a marvelous teacher. Oriana Fallaci said when she read the works of Ratzinger she felt less alone, and I know just what she meant. There's a lucidity in his writing that refreshes the mind, I find. Yesterday WaTi ran a review of two other books from Joseph Ratzinger. The excerpts from On Conscience are worth your time, but sticking with the subject of rhetoric, I call your attention to one line from The Dialectics of Secularization, which is an exchange between Ratzinger and the Marxist Jurgen Habermas. Here's a sentence from Habermas:
'Weak' suppositions about the normative contents of the communicative constitution of socio-cultural forms of life suffice to defend a non-decisionist concept of the validity of law both against the contextualism of a non-defeatist concept of reason and against legal positivism.Why do Leftist theorists always talk like that? It's weak. One reason there's hope Europe will listen to Benedict is that people can understand him.
Update: Mr. W. found the Sandra D. translation of the Habermas, above:
These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.Tee-hee. And may I refer you once more to what Ratzi writes about conscience?
