By Sheila Liaugminas

Pope Benedict XVI raised the role of philosophy in the modern world at a summer gathering of university professors in Rome that received little attention, but asked big questions. The symposium, titled “Broadening the Horizons of Reason. Prospects for Philosophy,” provided the pope the opportunity to re-launch philosophy into the academic world as an answer to cultural angst.

“Indeed, the crisis of modernity is not a symptom of the decline of philosophy,” said Pope Benedict, “on the contrary, philosophy must embark upon new lines of research in order to understand the true nature of that crisis”.

Philosophy, he proposed, is the means to the end of understanding ourselves in the modern world.

“Modernity is not simply a historically-datable cultural phenomenon; in reality it requires a new focus, a more exact understanding of the nature of man.”

Religion is in danger of being “surreptitiously manipulated” today, he said. To know that is to see the need for intellectual clarity in university studies.

“The new dialogue between faith and reason which is needed today cannot come about in the terms and the ways it did in the past”, said the Pope. “If it does not want to see itself reduced to the status of sterile intellectual exercise, it must start from the current real situation of mankind, and upon that build a reflection that embraces man’s ontological and metaphysical truth”.

In other words, his core as a spiritual being. It’s the “new humanism” Benedict talks about in some way in practically all of his addresses.

In closing, the Holy Father referred to the need to “promote high-profile academic centers in which philosophy can enter into dialogue with other disciplines, in particular with theology, to favor new cultural syntheses capable of guiding society”. He expressed the hope that “Catholic academic institutions may be ready to create true cultural laboratories” and he invited the professors to encourage young people “to commit themselves to philosophical studies by facilitating appropriate initiatives” to guide them toward the goal of joining faith and reason.

This recalls his address to Catholic educators on his papal visit to America. Though many of those educators were reportedly relieved they weren’t ‘scolded’ for allowing some Catholic institutions of higher learning to veer off on an increasingly secular path, that is not Benedict’s style. Instead of admonitions, he gives encouragement.

For instance, he said Catholic schools have a mission to ensure that reason “remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths,” and then made a reference to the modern goals of diversity and tolerance.

“Far from undermining the tolerance of legitimate diversity, such a contribution illuminates the very truth which makes consensus attainable, and helps to keep public debate rational, honest and accountable,” Benedict told the educators. “Similarly the Church never tires of upholding the essential moral categories of right and wrong, without which hope could only wither, giving way to cold pragmatic calculations of utility which render the person little more than a pawn on some ideological chess-board.”

Benedict said this is all the more important “in societies where secularist ideology drives a wedge between truth and faith,” a message the pope often addresses.

“This division has led to a tendency to equate truth with knowledge and to adopt a positivistic mentality which, in rejecting metaphysics, denies the foundations of faith and rejects the need for a moral vision. Truth means more than knowledge: knowing the truth leads us to discover the good.”

The crisis of modernity can be averted, Benedict told educators, by teaching the truth and encouraging students to seek it.

“Once their passion for the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, young people will surely relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of what they ought to do.”