Blind Reason is Irrational and Therefore Uncivil

Medieval Market

"The ambivalence of the modern era is based on the fact that it obviously failed to appreciate the roots and the real-life basis of the idea of freedom and urged an emancipation of reason that intrinsically contradicts the nature of human reason (which is not divine) and therefore necessarily became unreasonable itself. The epitome of the modern era appears--wrongly, in the final analysis--to be that completely autonomous reason which no longer recognizes anything but itself and has thereby gone blind and, through the destruction of its own foundations, becomes inhumane and hostile to creation." 170

"[The] independence of reason has led in the modern era with increasing rapidity to its total emancipation and to an unlimited autonomy of reason. Reason thereby assumes the form of positive reason, as Auguste Comte understood it, which takes as its only standard what is experimentally verifiable. The radical consequence of this, however, is that the entire realm of values, the entire realm of what 'is above us', drops out of the sphere of reason, that the sole binding standard for reason and thus for man, politically as well as individually, becomes what 'is under him',  namely, the mechanical forces of nature that can be manipulated experimentally. Granted, God is not rejected absolutely, but he belongs to the realm of what is purely private and subjective... [T]he real revolution of 1789 [is that God's status was changed], the fact that God ceased to be the public summum bonum (highest good), that he was replaced first by the nation and then, from 1848 on, by the proletariat or else the world revolution... [O]ne would have to say about modern consumer society that its God is its belly." 162

"...[T]he things that constituted [society] as a spiritual reality have been abandoned. ...[T]oday's Western societies appear to me to be largely post-European societies..., which of course live on the aftereffects of the European heritage and to that extent are still European. The plurality of values that is legitimate and European is noticeably exaggerated into a pluralism that increasingly excludes every moral mainstay of law and every public embodiment of the sacred, of reverence for God as a value that is communal, too. Even to question this is considered, in most circles, an offense against tolerance and against the society founded on reason alone. But a society in which this is radically the case cannot, I am convinced, remain a society for long. It will open the door to tyranny when it is sufficiently weary of anarchy... 'An unchristian State is possible in principle, but not an atheistic State.' [Rudolf Bultmann]." 163

Four Necessary Principles for the Survival of Civilization

1. There is an intrinsic correlation between democracy and eunomia, laws that cannot be manipulated but are based on moral standards, on what is intrinsically right. cf. 171

2. "If eunomia is the prerequisite for the viability of democracy, as opposed to tyranny and mob rule, then the fundamental prerequisite for eunomia in turn is a common--and, for public law, obligatory--reverence for moral values and for God...

"This implies that God is by no means relegated to the private sphere but is recognized publicly also as the supreme value. This certainly includes--and I would like to emphasize this strongly--tolerance and a place for the atheist, and it must have nothing to do with coercion in matters of faith. It is just that, the way things are beginning to develop now, in many respects they should be the other way around: atheism is starting to be the fundamental public dogma, and faith is tolerated as a private opinion, yet this arrangement ultimately does not tolerate faith in its essence...

"I am convinced that in the long term the rule of law has no chance of survival in a State that is radically and dogmatically atheistic and that it is necessary to reconsider this question fundamentally--as a matter of survival. I likewise venture to declare that democracy is capable of functioning only when conscience is functioning and that the latter has nothing to say if it is not oriented to the validity of the fundamental moral values of Christianity, which can be put into action even without a Christian profession of faith, indeed, even in the context of a non-Christian religion." 172-173

3. "The rejection of the dogma of atheism as a prerequisite for public law and the formation of a State, along with a publicly recognized reverence for God as the basis for ethics and law, means rejecting both the nation and also the world revolution as the summum bonum." 173

4. "...[T]he recognition and the preservation of freedom of conscience, human rights, academic freedom, and hence of a free human society must be constitutive." 174

"Europe: A Heritage with Obligations for Christians" 1979 Strasbourg Lecture in Joseph Ratzinger, Fundamental Speeches from Five Decades, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2012.

Reason needs faith to free it from its blind spots.

"Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics. Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining the rules of public life: its origin and its goal are found in justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics. The State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be achieved here and now. But this presupposes an even more radical question: what is justice? The problem is one of practical reason; but if reason is to be exercised properly, it must undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.

"Here politics and faith meet. Faith by its specific nature is an encounter with the living God—an encounter opening up new horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly. This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.

"The Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being..."

Pope Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, #28.