Benedict's plea for Hellenization draws on a German philosophical tradition--stretching from Hegel's The Spirit of Christianity
through Weber's sociology of religions to the post-World War II
writings of Heidegger--whose confrontations of Hebraism with Hellenism
contributed to, rather than prevented, violence against non-Christians
on a scale unheard of in the Muslim world. We may grant that such an
intellectual dependence is hard to avoid, given the deep and abiding
influence of this theological and philosophical tradition on the modern
humanities and social sciences. From a Eurocentric point of view, we
might even concede the pope's well-worn claim that, as Heine put it in
1841, the "harmonious fusion of the two elements," the Hebraic and the
Hellenic, was "the task of all European civilization."
What we cannot accept without contradiction or hypocrisy is the pope's presentation of the speech as an invitation to dialogue.
For the rest of his analysis, click here.
