The full Robby

Robert P. George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence and director and founder of the James Madison Program, at Princeton University, is arguably the most influential conservative intellectual in America today. Since the early 1990s, he has distinguished himself in a variety of fields of academic inquiry—law, politics, philosophy, and theology—in addressing a diversity of contested social, moral, and jurisprudential questions that often overlap. These issues include abortion, same-sex marriage, religious liberty, constitutional law, and academic freedom. (George also happens to be a very good banjo and guitar player, a devotee of country, folk, and bluegrass music).

George has also distinguished himself as a man of impeccable personal integrity. In his careful and deliberate manner, a practice that is becoming increasingly rare among public-facing academics, George has not hesitated to criticize his fellow conservatives when he thinks they’ve gotten things wrong or defend liberal colleagues who he thinks have been treated unjustly. You may find yourself disagreeing with George, as I have on the rare occasion, but you cannot help but admire the intellectual and moral virtues that he has cultivated and consistently practiced over his illustrious career. A devout Catholic, he has collaborated with like-minded evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, Latter-day Saints, and unbelievers in his research and work in public policy. I know many professors, pastors, and wonks who part ways with George on a variety of matters, but I know of none who do not like him.

Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth Robert P. George

If you can read one book that gives you a sense of the depth and width of George’s interests and character, it is his latest tome: Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth (Encounter, 312 pp.). A collection of previously published essays, some of which were co-authored by colleagues and former students, this book gives you the full “Robby” (as he’s known to his friends). Divided into four parts, the topic of the book’s first section is the human person, with chapters on human dignity, the soul, natural law, medical ethics, and the beginning and the end of human life. (George, a sanctity of life champion, served on President George W. Bush’s bioethics council.) Part 2 focuses on law and political philosophy. Its chapters cover the Supreme Court’s flawed reasoning on same-sex marriage and abortion, American constitutionalism and the common good, Catholicism and American culture, and the increasing rejection of classical liberalism on the American right.

Part 3 addresses issues in culture and education. In this more topically capacious section, the chapters cover the morality of free markets, campus illiberalism and ideological orthodoxy, Christianity and paganism, Catholic doctrine and Judaism, and gnostic liberalism.

In Part 4—“Seekers of Truth and Bearers of Witness”—George honors five historically important figures: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Soviet dissident), Heinrich Heine (19th-century Jewish poet who predicted the rise of Nazism), Joseph Raz (Israeli legal philosopher at Oxford), Jonathan Sacks (chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth), and Ralph Stanley (American bluegrass artist).

Anyone familiar with George as a person will see immediately how each of these figures represents a dimension of George’s own character: Solzhenitsyn is the man of integrity who refuses to acquiesce to tyranny; Heine is the man of letters who can see the telos of cultural forms and knows precisely where they will lead; Raz is the careful teacher and scholar of jurisprudence who loves the truth and is committed to the intellectual excellence of his students; Sacks is the brilliant and devoted man of God who is as conversant with Scripture and tradition as he is with politics, law, and the vicissitudes of culture; and Stanley is the accomplished musician and performer who develops his craft and voice from the songs that arose from the American experience. That’s pretty much the full Robby.