Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

CAN ANYTHING GOOD COME OUT OF POSTMODERNISM?... 247
(§§ 5, 85), a broad cultural tendency toward scepticism, nihilism
and wilful pluralism (§§ 5, 90), the reduction of the quest for
meaning to a provisional, ephemeral quest (§ 91) and so forth.
In short, human reason, having made some progress
through the centuries in the acquisition of truth, has suffered in
modern times under the excesses of modern critical rationalism
and is currently being exposed to the even more devastating assault
of postmodern nihilism (§ 9).
It is precisely in this cultural context, as a response to this history,
that the encyclical wishes to affirm and encourage the role
of reason in the quest for the meaning of human existence. There
are numerous texts in which the value and dignity of this fundamental
natural resource are affirmed: reason opens up the horizon
of “ personal self-consciousness”(§ 1); if employed rightly, it
is capable of grasping the first principles of truth (§§ 4, 49); of its
own nature, it is capable of recognising the transcendent nature
of truth (§ 49); it can and should aspire to the intelligible articulation
of the fundamental and universal truths at the level of
metaphysics and of theology (§§ 20, 77 ). Not least, reason is indispensable
in guiding the human being in making moral choice:
No less important than research in the theoretical field is research
in the practical field – by which I mean the search for truth
which looks to the good which is to be performed. In acting ethically,
according to a free and rightly tuned will, the human person
sets foot upon the path to happiness and moves towards perfection.
(§ 25)
If we recall the destructive and disorientating tendencies of
modern and postmodern culture, the vital importance of reason
in guiding the human quest for the good is all the more
clear. Aware of its own dignity, reason will not limit itself to
functional and technical matters but open itself to the deeper
truths of its own being and of transcendence. The whole argument
of Fides et ratio hinges upon the capacity of human reason
to know the truth, both at a speculative and at a practical
level. Only in the horizon of universal and objective truth can
the questions of the good and the right be adequately posed
and rightly answered. If reason can grasp the “truth of values”
(§ 25), then this truth will prevent it falling victim to the mod-