The Europe of Joseph Ratzinger

The author presents the considerations of the most qualified theologian and philosopher among the popes of the last two centuries on a tremendously important issue of late modernity: Europe itself. Joseph Ratzinger sees Europe nor just as a geographic entity, but fundamentally as a "cultural and historical concept." European identity is the product of a quadruple cultural-historical legacy; Greek, Christian, Latin, and of the modern era (the Enlightenment). The same Europe is currently experiencing a fracture, a polarity, as the European idea is threatened by the lure of a purely economic arithmetic," within a logic of domination and power likely to usher in a new era of "heathendom" (Heidentum), of 1 nihilism stemming from the currently dominant "second Enlightenment"-scientistic, relativistic, and atheistic. Joseph Ratzinger sees the possible end to this crisis (experienced by Europe, by the European idea, but also by the world at large) in a comprehensive understanding Of reason, irreducible to instrumental reason, to scientism, in a reconciliation between the culture of the Enlightenment and Christian Culture (the latter seen as a religion of Logos, of creative reason).