O cancelamento da visita do Papa Bento XVI a La Sapienza em Roma devido a intolerância de parte do corpo discente e docente, tem sua origem em uma leitura superficial de um trabalho antigo em que ele cita uma passagem de um texto do Feyerabend(conhecido filosofo da ciência) sobre o julgamento do Galileo.
O debate no blog Leiter reports é, na minha opinião, a melhor introdução sobre a origem desta controversia. Abaixo uma pequena amostra do debate que pode ser acessado em:
"Mohan Matthen: I think you are reading far too much into this passage. Ratzinger was neither endorsing Feyerabend nor Weizsacker. Even the not very good translation at ncrcafe.org makes that clear -- Ratzinger's conclusion was that "it would be absurd, on the basis of these affirmations, to construct a hurried apologetics. The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation and from being inscribed in a still greater form of reason. Here, I wished to recall a symptomatic case that illustrates the extent to which modernity’s doubts about itself have grown today in science and technology."
So his point was to show examples of increasing loss in faith in science and technology as holding the key to human salvation.
But there is an official translation in the book A Turning Point for Europe (Ignatius Press, http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Point-Europe-World-Assessment-Forecast/dp/0898704618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200937884&sr=8-1, now out of print). From this you will see (Amazon search-inside-the-book!) that the remarks translated at ncrcafe.org are only part of a longer address on "Paths of Faith in the Revolutionary Change of the Present Day." The general point is about the loss of faith in various ideologies that had sustained hope in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Ratzinger begins with Marxism (writing in 1989) and then moves on to "Analogies and Variations in the Western World" which is subdivided into "The Crisis of Faith in Science," "The Search for the Spiritual and the Ethical," and "New Religiosity," before concluding with "Paths of Faith Today."
The offending passage comes from the section "The Crisis of Faith in Science," and the views of Feyerabend and Weiszacker are presented as extreme forms of this crisis of faith, which reject reason altogether and blame science for such things as the atomic bomb. Weizsacker took "another step forward" on this path, which is not the path that Ratzinger endorses. In the more official translation Ratzinger says that Feyerabend "sounds much more aggressive" than Bloch and that Weizsacker "goes even one step farther." The conclusion of the section then reads "It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views; faith does not grow out of resentment and skepticism with respect to rationality, but only out of a fundamental affirmation and a spacious reasonableness; we shall come back to this point. I mention all this only as a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today." In this version it is even clearer than in the ncrcafe version that Ratzinger was not endorsing the views of Weizsacker and Feyerabend (whatever you may think of the "loss of faith" story that he tells).
Posted by: Michael Kremer January 21, 2008 at 12:19 PM "
So his point was to show examples of increasing loss in faith in science and technology as holding the key to human salvation.
But there is an official translation in the book A Turning Point for Europe (Ignatius Press, http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Point-Europe-World-Assessment-Forecast/dp/0898704618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200937884&sr=8-1, now out of print). From this you will see (Amazon search-inside-the-book!) that the remarks translated at ncrcafe.org are only part of a longer address on "Paths of Faith in the Revolutionary Change of the Present Day." The general point is about the loss of faith in various ideologies that had sustained hope in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Ratzinger begins with Marxism (writing in 1989) and then moves on to "Analogies and Variations in the Western World" which is subdivided into "The Crisis of Faith in Science," "The Search for the Spiritual and the Ethical," and "New Religiosity," before concluding with "Paths of Faith Today."
The offending passage comes from the section "The Crisis of Faith in Science," and the views of Feyerabend and Weiszacker are presented as extreme forms of this crisis of faith, which reject reason altogether and blame science for such things as the atomic bomb. Weizsacker took "another step forward" on this path, which is not the path that Ratzinger endorses. In the more official translation Ratzinger says that Feyerabend "sounds much more aggressive" than Bloch and that Weizsacker "goes even one step farther." The conclusion of the section then reads "It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views; faith does not grow out of resentment and skepticism with respect to rationality, but only out of a fundamental affirmation and a spacious reasonableness; we shall come back to this point. I mention all this only as a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today." In this version it is even clearer than in the ncrcafe version that Ratzinger was not endorsing the views of Weizsacker and Feyerabend (whatever you may think of the "loss of faith" story that he tells).
Posted by: Michael Kremer January 21, 2008 at 12:19 PM "
