On human rights
In his debate with Habermas, Ratzinger argued that, while the idea of a "natural moral law" had become "blunt", the idea of human rights (which had itself grown from the claim that there are moral truths we can know by reason) provided a kind of grammar for ordering the public debate about public goods. Within that grammar, real dialogue was possible, and both believers and secular people could once again embark on the adventure of truth as it touched issues of public life.
To the surprise of many, Ratzinger won the argument. Several months later, Habermas took to the pages of the European press to concede that the idea of neutrality between worldviews was too thin a cultural foundation on which to rest the political future of Europe. Something thicker, stronger, more compelling was needed.
Elements of this dialogue with Habermas continue to shape the thinking of Benedict XVI, who must now, of course, speak to a global audience, not simply a European one. Accordingly, at the United Nations in April, Benedict returned once again to the idea of human rights as a grammar for turning the noise that too often characterises exchange within the "international community" into genuine conversation - and perhaps even genuine deliberation. Benedict went further from the green marble rostrum of the General Assembly, however. The protection of human rights, he argued, was the fundamental task of government and the source of government's moral legitimacy. When this "duty to protect" was not met, he implied, the defaulting government in question risked losing its legitimacy - a bold proposal indeed in a UN in which the principle of sovereign immunity is typically cited to preclude action against the likes of Robert Mugabe, the perpetrators of genocide in Darfur and the Burmese junta.
On radical Islamism and Regensburg
Benedict's second point followed closely on his first: irrational violence aimed at innocent men, women and children is, as he put it at Regensburg, "incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the [human] soul". This was no blanket indictment; Ratzinger knows that there are multiple theologies of God at work in the complex worlds-within-worlds of Islam, and that serious interreligious dialogue is absolutely essential to identify whatever common theological borders may exist between Islam and "the rest". But it is also important to recognise, as Benedict did at Regensburg, that certain currents of thought in contemporary Islam insist (to take the most dramatic and odious example) that the suicide bombing of innocents is an act pleasing to God, an act of martyrdom meriting eternal bliss. Muting the latter point cannot be the admission ticket for engaging in the deeper dialogue about the nature of God and the moral obligations of man.
Pope Benedict's third point - which was an echo of his exchange with Habermas - was directed to the West. If the high culture of the West continues to fritter its time away in the intellectual sandbox of postmodern scepticism and relativism, the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because the West won't be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending. A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilisation possible cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilisations and cultures, Benedict argued; any such dialogue must be based on a shared understanding that human beings can, however imperfectly, come to know the truth of things.
Can Islam be self-critical? Can its leaders condemn and marginalise its extremists, or are Muslims condemned to be held hostage to the passions of those who consider the murder of innocents to be pleasing to God? Can the West recover its commitment to reason and thus help support Islamic reformers? These were the large questions that Benedict XVI put on the world's agenda at Regensburg.
