Comment and Reply

Despite all the talk about a prioris and metaphysics, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's criticism amounts to an attack on pluralism and the evolutionary scientific point of view from a traditional Catholic perspective. The proposal by Andrew Hodge and Alan Duhs to entertain Ratzinger's criticism affords the opportunity to remind us of how John Dewey would respond from his secular, scientific point of view to the issues under discussion. From Dewey's point of view, I discuss briefly issues about the nature and place of presuppositions, the nature of human potentiality, the place of faith, the way to view society and human character, the nature of human growth and freedom, teleology, the nature and role of reason and intelligence, the failures of absolutism, and the importance of the method of intelligence and democratic habits against the methods and institutions of absolutism.