A choice of worries : a contextual study of the Ratzinger-Habermas encounter of 2004

Abstract

The 2004 meeting between Joseph Ratzinger, who a year later would be the head of the Roman Catholic Church, and Jürgen Habermas, heir to the philosophical legacy of the Frankfurt School, confirmed that an epistemological convergence between the two was not possible without at least one of the two sides abandoning the fundamentals of their respective position. The encounter, however, also confirmed that both of them had one common concern, namely the ‘derailment’ of the objectives of the Enlightenment whose goals constituted the ideals of the ‘unfinished’ project of Modernity. The absence of a mutually compatible epistemological foundation, however, does not preclude an ethical ‘elective affinity’ oriented towards practical outcomes.