From Natural Law to Relativism

The aim of this article is to fill a certain gap in the assessment of relativism by drawing on Joseph Ratzinger’s (1927–2022) criticism of the normative transformation since Kant. During the Enlightenment, Natural Law was doubted as a cultural feature of Christianity that had no bearing on pluralist society. Consequently, this jurisprudential tradition underwent de-Hellenization and branched out in radical directions, the most decisive of which was Kant’s post-metaphysical system of natural values. Positivism and German Idealism attempted to restore the unity of philosophy that Kant’s philosophy had disrupted. Yet even more influentially, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was Marxism that relativized the doxological aspect of normativity by emphasizing the importance of praxis. Since philosophy became neither an exact science as Kant had conceived it to be, nor a practical programme for social justice as Marxism had promised, the Existentialists, and particularly Sartre, advocated a more radical philosophy of freedom. Ratzinger argues that despite the nuances of post-Kantian philosophy, Positivism, Existentialism, and Marxism failed to comprehend the human condition and that the positivist method resulted in an overwhelming relativism that has reduced normativity to a matter of correct procedures rather than regarding it as the foundation of the inviolable dignity of the human being

Archaeology · Epistemology · Natural law · Normative · Relativism · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · History · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty

• Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue with Philosophical Traditions

  Alejandro Sada, Tracey Rowland et al.•Joseph Ratzinger in Dialogue with…•2024

  Añadir item

• Critique of Pure Reason

  Open Access•Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer et al.•Critique of Pure Reason•1998

  Añadir item

• Existentialism Is a Humanism

  Open Access•Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean‐paul Sartre et al.•Existentialism Is a Humanism•2007

  Añadir item

• From on “ Time and Being ”

  Martin Heidegger•Continental Philosophy of Science•2005

  Añadir item

• An answer to the question

  Immanuel Kant, Allen W Wood et al.•Practical Philosophy•2012

  Añadir item

• The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte

  Open Access•Auguste Comte, Auguste Philosoph Frankreich Comte et al.•The positive philosophy of…•2009

  Añadir item

• Philosophy after Wittgenstein and Heidegger

  Charles Guignon•Philosophy and Phenomenological…•1990

  Añadir item

• Some Antecedents of Sociology

  Ernest Kilzer•The American Catholic Sociological…•1952

  Añadir item

• Course in General Linguistics

  Ferdinand De Saussure, Charles Bally et al.•Journal of American Folklore•1960

  Añadir item