Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth

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. 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.