Academic Saturday

If you are interested in religious matters, I recommend reading the speech given by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg on September 12. As predicted by Godwin's Law, the Pontifex Maximus has already been villified for his academic comments.

Personally, I found the speech to be amazing. It is not at all surprising that something as technical would be utterly munged by reduction to sound bites. In particular, I was not aware that the first line of the Gospel of John, in Greek, says "In the beginning was the logos". In translations from the Greek, logos is replaced by Word in English and Tao in Chinese.

I also liked this paragraph, towards the end:

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application.

Aristole in his Ars Rhetorica identifies three modes of persuasion: Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. The first is emotional, the second is based on logic, and the third on character or authority. It is interesting to juxtapose the Pope's speech (logos), versus the reaction it stirred (pathos). The gulf between the Pope and many of his critics is more than language.