PHL 260 3 B Lecture on “Without Roots” by Marcelo Pera and Joseph Ratzinger
This is lecture 3 part 2 of PHL 260 Ethical Issues at Salve Regina University. In this lecture I discuss the book Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity and Islam (Basic books, 2007) by Marcelo Pera and Joseph Ratzinger. Pera is not a Christian, and Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) is. They wrote a book together because they have some common concerns about Europe. In this lecture/discussion we try to build a picture of the current state of culture in the West, offer some historical, philosophical and religious reasons for it and explore the question of the relation between faith, the history of Europe and current cultural and public policy questions. Pera and Ratzinger offer solutions, and we compare and contrast those.