Everaldo Robert

Since the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Eschatology has been stigmatized for its alleged influence from Greco-platonic philosophy and for purportedly distorting Revelation. Based on a presumed biblical exegesis, the duality and distinction between body and soul were rejected. Thus, the idea of the immortality of the soul should be abandoned in favor of adopting only the idea of resurrection. In his work "Eschatology," Joseph Ratzinger rejects these theses and affirms that the immortality of the soul and the intermediate state are elements both of Scripture and Church Tradition. The Bavarian theologian highlights the dialogical aspect of immortality: humanity is immortal because it is called to a relationship and dialogue with the Creator. Analogously, one could say that the final cause of human immortality lies in its relational and dialogical condition, and the formal cause lies in the spiritual structure of its soul. Ratzinger also emphasizes that it is through communion with Christ that humanity enters into "the time of Jesus," opens itself to love, transforms time, and opens itself to eternity. This article is structured in three parts: the first addresses the status quaestionis of the problem, the second part presents Joseph Ratzinger's answer, and the third part gathers the main conclusions.

The Federalist, justifying the Electoral College to elect the president, claimed that a small group of more informed individuals would make a better decision than the general mass. But the Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the more independent, better-than-random voters there are, the more likely it will be that the majority among them will be correct. The question thus arises as to how much better, on average, members of the smaller group would have to be to compensate for the epistemic costs of making decisions on the basis of that many fewer votes. This question is explored in the contexts of referendum democracy, delegate-style representative democracy, and trustee-style representative democracy.