Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment - Hardcover

by Robert George (Author)

A wide-ranging collection of essays from one of America's leading public intellectuals

In Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth acclaimed political philosopher and legal scholar Robert P. George tackles one of the most vexing issues dividing Americans today. He argues that the "Age of Faith" of the Medieval period and the "Age of Reason" of the European Enlightenments have been followed by a modern "Age of Feeling," in which people derive their beliefs not from faith or reason--or faith and reason--but from emotion, which becomes the central source of truth. And so, many have embraced a fierce moral absolutism on the basis of beliefs that are the products of nothing more than subjective inclinations and experiences.

This collection of essays challenges the "Age of Feeling" by appealing to reason in the pursuit of sound moral understanding on crucial and contentious topics of human dignity, the definition of marriage, philosophy of law, constitutional law, the nature of civil liberties, free markets, and others.

Robert George has taught generations of students at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and he has long proclaimed that a teacher's sacred mission is to form his students to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers. In Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth he shows us how it is done.

Author Biography

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics. He has also been the U.S. member of UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore, he holds the degrees of JD and MTS from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal and Princeton University's President's Award for Distinguished Teaching. He is Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.