Transcendental Dimension of Human Dignity in Joseph Ratzinger’s Evaluation of Normativity

Abstract

Observing the ramifications of relativism in various spheres of social life, Joseph Ratzinger proposed that nature and reason, rooted in the Creative Reason of God, are the source of law. This opens up the question of the transcendental dimension of human dignity when thinking about normativity. The non-metaphysical conception of dignity, born of secularism and humanist rationalism, has secured several significant rights for us within the context of liberal democracy, many of which religious justifications might not have permitted. Notwithstanding this merit, our lived experience testifies that the categories of good and bad became confusingly interchangeable with the eclipse of God in normativity. The apex of theoretical tolerance coincides with a loss of identities. The deficiency of the non-metaphysical basis for dignity is clearly visible in the experience of Marxism, which, in its pursuit to erect just social structures, undermined the metaphysical grounding of personal ethos. Its eschatological promises, confined to history, enslaved people rather than liberating them. This calls for a renewed need to affirm that the totality of human hope lies beyond any political action. Hence the need to re-read the relationship between faith and reason, in whose harmony the transcendental dimension of human dignity opens up within normativity.