POPE BENEDICT XVIhas shifted: What sources does terror draw upon? How can we succeed in averting this
new illness of humanity from within? An alarming thing here is that terror legitimizes
itself—at least partly—morally. The pronouncements from Osama bin Laden present ter-
ror as the answer of powerless and oppressed peoples to the arrogance of the powerful, as
just punishment for the latter’s presumption and for their blasphemous arrogance and
cruelty. For people in certain social and political situations, such motivations are appar-
ently convincing. Terroristic behavior is presented partly as a defense of religious tradi-
tions against the godlessness of Western society.
At this point, a question arises to which we must return: If terrorism is also fed by
religious fanaticism—and it is—is religion then a healing and saving power, or is it not,
rather, an archaic and dangerous one, which constructs false universalisms and thus leads
to intolerance and terror? And if this is so, mustn’t religion be placed under the guardian-
ship of reason and carefully contained? The question then surely arises: Who can do that?
How does one do that? But the general question also remains: Is or is not the gradual
abolition, the overcoming, of religion to be looked upon as a necessary human advance-
ment, so that humanity can enter on the path to freedom and universal tolerance?
Meanwhile, another form of power has come to the fore. But what at first seems to
be purely beneficent and wholly worthy of praise could in fact turn into a new kind of
threat for mankind. Humans are now capable of making humans, of producing them, so
to speak, in a test tube. Humans have become a product, and with that, their relationship
to themselves changes radically. They are no longer a gift of nature or of God the Creator.
They are their own product. Humans have descended into the wellspring of power, into
the source of their own existence. The temptation now to construct the proper human
being, the temptation to experiment with humans, the temptation to view humans as
trash and to cast them aside, are not fantasies of antiprogressive moralists. If a short while
ago the question of whether religion is actually a positive moral force presented itself,
now doubt about the reliability of reason arises. Finally, the atomic bomb must also be
considered a product of reason; finally, the breeding and selection of humans was con-
ceived by reason. Should it, then, not now be the other way around, with reason placed
under supervision? But under the supervision of whom or what? Or should religion and
reason perhaps limit each other mutually, with each showing the other its respective
limitations, while also pointing the other in the right direction? Here a question again
arises: In a world society, with its mechanisms of power, its unchecked forces, and its
different views of what law and morality are, how and where can there be found effective
ethical evidence with sufficient motivational and assertive force to help answer and suc-
cessfully meet the above-mentioned challenges?
Prerequisites of the Law: Law—Nature—Reason
It at first seems obvious that we should look at historical situations that are comparable
to ours, insofar as there are comparable ones. At any rate, it is worthwhile to consider
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