Abstract

Joseph Ratzinger has several incursions into the field of political theory. He argues that politics should be based on Law and that the latter should be based on natural law, the objective truth inscribed in human nature by creative reason (divine). In other words: politics should be founded in the truth. Without truth, politics ends at the “dictatorship of relativism” and totalitarianism. This vision contrasts directly with the view of Hannah Arendt, which advocates the transformation of truth into opinion (doxa) when it enters the political field. We show how Ratzinger identifies the root forms of dictatorial and totalitarian power in the abandonment of truth."