Book Review: The professor of jurisprudence argues a healthy society must be grounded in five things…
When Judge Robert Bork was questioned before the Senate during his ill-fated confirmation hearings in 1987, he commented that he was excited at the prospect of serving on the Supreme Court because it would constitute an “intellectual feast” for him. As I read Robert George’s new book, Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment, Bork’s term kept going through my mind. Containing a total of 23 superb essays — examining a wide-ranging analysis of topics such as human dignity, common good, natural law, personhood, civic virtue, free market morality, and free speech in universities — George’s book is indeed an intellectual feast to be savored. Beyond that, the book is perfectly timed, for it provides philosophical underpinnings for Catholic conservatives in 2025.
In his preface, George notes that various ages are known to history by their predominant characteristics; the Middle Ages are known as the “Age of Faith,” for instance. But what about our age?
George argues that ours is the “Age of Feeling.” He writes, “A great many people today have come to believe that the touchstone of truth is not faith or reason (or, as I myself believe, faith and reason) but rather feeling or feelings.”
George’s point about feelings trumping reason is inescapable and broader than many would like to believe. Many of those on the “right” side of the political aisle may insist that this age of feelings applies only to the political left; if that is true, however, it is a fact not often evidenced by the main news sources on the right. Media that claim to be “conservative” seem unable and/or uninterested in even defining the term. Very often, the conservative networks on the right slothfully appeal more to anger than principle. That is one reason why George’s book is so refreshing right now, for it is not a book about political personalities, but rather about principles and ideas.
George argues a healthy society must be grounded in five things: “We can therefore think of universities and business firms, along with respect for the dignity of the human person, the institution of the family, and the system of law and government, as the five pillars of decent and dynamic societies.” George has much to say about all five, and the book collectively illustrates the symbiotic connection among them.
Universities and business firms. While noting the tremendous potential value of universities, George highlights the ongoing problem of “groupthink,” which leads to the silencing of ideas and canceling opposing voices. He pleads, “We should tolerate — and in a truth-seeking spirit, we should engage — ideas we think are wrong, even badly, indeed tragically, wrong. We should do that not because there is no truth, but precisely because the free exchange of ideas is the best way available to us for getting at the truth, deepening our knowledge and understanding, and achieving that rarest and most precious of all categories of truth, namely, wisdom.”
George contains an essay titled “Markets, Morality, and Civil Society,” which includes a powerful defense of the free market. But rather than adopt a libertarian stance, he argues that the free market must be conducted with virtue and morality. He writes, “The market economy, or what some people call ‘democratic capitalism,’ is, in my opinion, eminently defensible. That said, the market economy cannot be defended or even understood without reference to considerations of integral human well-being — in other words, moral considerations.” He also laments that professors in universities frequently take adversarial stances against the free market, concluding that the business world is governed by villains. He writes, “Students are sometimes taught to hold business, and especially businessmen, in contempt as heartless exploiters driven by greed.” Of course, this animus toward the free market is increasingly ironic, considering the skyrocketing price of college tuition.
Respect for the dignity of the human person. Three years ago, a documentary by Matt Walsh titled What Is a Woman? was released. Though it made some solid observations about education, medical malpractice and progressive politics, I found it exhaustively frustrating. Why? Because the documentary failed to answer a prior question that proves vital, namely: What is a person? In fact, the documentary attempts an answer at its titular interrogative at the conclusion, professing that a woman is “an adult human female.” But without employing the word “person,” Walsh’s definition is woefully incomplete. We must understand what personhood is, and our debates must center on that definition. In fact, considering its legal, constitutional, and ultimately theological ramifications, a proper definition and understanding of personhood is paramount.
Professor George clearly grasps the importance of properly understanding both “human” and “person.” Part One of his book is titled The Human Person: Ethical and Metaphysical Questions, in which he examines the ghastly practices of abortion, in vitro fertilization and assisted suicide.
How did we arrive at a point at which such procedures are widely accepted? George contends that these murderous practices trace back to a denial of humanness and personhood. As George notes, “Among the constants in human history is this: When people want to justify killing, enslaving, or otherwise abusing a class of their fellow human beings, they first dehumanize them.” Thus, George seeks to rehumanize them, so to speak. Using a wonderful economy of words in his essay “Human Embryos Are Human Beings,” George provides a clear and powerful argument against abortion:
“Embryos and fetuses do not ‘gradually’ become human beings. That is unscientific gibberish. Our development to adulthood is gradual, to be sure, but we come into existence as human beings — whole living members of the species Homo sapiens — and develop as (not into) human beings. Embryonic and fetal human beings differ from infant human beings in many ways. But then infants differ dramatically from adults. None differ in kind, as between humans and non-humans.”
When I read this quote, I hoped and prayed that thousands of people would copy and paste this on their Facebook walls, for it surely needs to be said.
The system of law and government. Of course, respect for the dignity of the human person must be reflected in law and government — a fact driven home by George. Thus he devotes a lengthy essay that provides a legal and specifically constitutional defense of the unborn by focusing on the personhood of these tiny babies. The essay, which I consider the best and most important in the book, is titled “Equal Protection and the Unborn Child.” Co-written by renowned natural law and legal expert John Finnis, this essay is an expanded version of an amicus brief that was submitted to the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case.
Agreeing with Boethius’ classic definition that a person is “an individual substance of a rational nature,” their argument is that “unborn children are Constitutional Persons entitled to equal protection of the laws.” George and Finnis illustrate that common law deemed the unborn persons for centuries, a stance that was widely confirmed by American statutory law and case law for many decades. The essay also serves to expose a great flaw in Alito’s Dobbs decision: While Dobbs overturned Roe and Casey, it failed to affirm constitutional protection for the unborn — instead, simply turning abortion back to the states, where their rights could be — and have been — trampled. The research here is extensive, powerfully reasoned, and critical reading for Catholics, because it is imperative that we know how to argue for constitutional personhood going forward.
The institution of the family. George repeatedly defends marriage and family in his book, yet one observation stood out to me in particular: There exists a reciprocal relationship between the free market and the family. He writes:
“The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the properly regulated market economy and the institution of marriage. I believe that these institutions will, in the end, stand or fall together.”
As a father of nine and a retired financial consultant, I’ve seen this relationship firsthand. Poor government economic policies such as tariffs, wage and price controls, and absurdly low personal tax exemptions have a direct and immediate effect not only a family’s ability to purchase necessities like food and clothing, but on a couple’s decision to marry in the first place. The number of Catholic marriages has fallen by about 70% in a single generation, and while there are several culprits, government policies toward families on both sides of the aisle have made marriage a luxury that fewer couples can afford.
In sum, George’s book serves as an apologetic for conservatism, but not merely political conservatism; rather, the sort of conservatism that Russell Kirk observed found its origin in a belief that a transcendental moral order indeed exists. Though the great ideas and principles in the book are timeless, it provides a philosophical defense of those things dear to us Catholics at this moment.
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