POPE BENEDICT XVIabout what pertains to allanimalia, but rather about the specific human tasks that human
reason has created and that cannot be accomplished without reason.
Human rights have remained the last element of natural law, which essentially—in
modernity, at any rate—sought to be a law of reason. Human rights are incomprehensible
without the premise that man as man, simply by virtue of being a member of the human
species, is the subject of rights, and that inherent in his being itself are values and norms
that are to be found but not invented. Perhaps the doctrine of human rights today should
be supplemented by a doctrine of human duties and of the limits of man. Now, this
addition could help renew the question of whether there might be a reason of nature, and
thus a law of reason for man and his existence in the world. Today, such a conversation
would need to be laid out and designed interculturally. For Christians, this would have
to deal with Creation and the Creator. In the Indian world, it would correspond to the
concept of ‘‘dharma,’’ the inner lawfulness of being; in the Chinese tradition, it would
correspond to the idea of the Tao of Heaven.
Interculturality and Its Consequences
Before I attempt to come to any conclusions, I would like to elaborate a little on the ideas
just laid out. Interculturality seems to me today to be an essential dimension of the discus-
sion of the basic questions about what it is to be human, a discussion that can be con-
ducted neither solely within the Christian tradition nor solely within the Western tradition
of reason. It’s true that both traditions see themselves as universal—which, de jure, they
may well be. De facto, however, they must recognize that they are accepted only by certain
parts of humanity and are also understandable only to certain parts of humanity. The
number of competing cultures is, of course, much smaller than it may at first appear.
Above all, it is important to note that unity no longer exists within individual cultural
spheres. Rather, all cultural spheres are marked by far-reaching tensions within their own
cultural traditions. This is entirely evident in the West. And while the secular culture of a
strict rationality, of which Habermas has given us an impressive picture, is predominant
and understands itself to be a cohesive force, the Christian understanding of reality also
continues to be an effective one. Both poles exist in varying proximity to or tension with
one another, in mutual willingness to learn or in more or less decisive rejection. The
Islamic cultural sphere is marked by similar tensions; it is a long way from the fanatical
absolutism of a bin Laden to attitudes that are open to a tolerant rationality. The third
large cultural sphere, Indian culture or, more accurately, the cultural spheres of Hinduism
and Buddhism, is in its turn also marked by similar tensions, even if these, at any rate
from our perspective, appear to be less dramatic. These cultures also see themselves ex-
posed to the claims of Western rationality and to the inquiries of Christian faith, both of
which are present within them. They assimilate both of these in different ways, while
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