Truth Over Tribe: An Interview with Cornel West & Robert George | 3.15.25
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Who are Cornel West and Robert George, and what is their new book about?
It's Saturday, March 15th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now to discuss their new book and to comment on the current state of the parties is scholar, Democratic presidential candidate and self-professed progressive Cornel West and current Princeton professor and conservative political philosopher Robert P. George. Cornel and Robert, thank you both for coming on.
Absolutely. Thank you so very much for having us. Yeah, thank you, Georgia.
So first off, I'd like to hear an overview of your book before we get into some of your perspectives on some current things. Robert, let's start with you.
What is the significance of truth in a divided society?
The title says what the book is about. The title of the book is Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an age of division. So Brother Cornell and I are both dedicated. It's our vocation to get at the truth of things, to try to get in touch with reality. At the same time, we recognize that we, like every other member of the human family, is fallible. We get things wrong. We never know the truth perfectly. We never know it fully. Nevertheless, it's our calling as professors, but it's also the calling of every member of the human family. to try to get at the truth of things, not to live in error, not to live with lies, not to live with falsehoods, but to try to get the truth of things. It's intrinsic to our flourishing as human beings.
So in this so-called post-truth society, or this society in which people think there's my truth and your truth, but really no such thing as the truth, Cornell and I are putting forward the proposition that, in fact, there is a truth. It's hard to get to sometimes, can never know it perfectly, but there is a truth, and we should be about the business of knowing it, and knowing it really matters.
Absolutely. I think that Brother Robbie and I view ourselves as being part and parcel of great traditions, the Socratic legacies of Athens, where we try to muster the courage to think critically for ourselves, to examine ourselves, examine our society and world, do it in the spirit of intellectual humility, but also tenacity. So we're in pursuit of the truth, but also the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem, the courage to love. And because justice is what love looks like in public, to actually be justice seekers. But we recognize that truth, capital T, and justice, capital J, they're bigger than any of us, any of our groups, our tribes, our nations, our races, our genders, our sexual orientations.
So we have a certain sense of acknowledging we're both fallible, but we do believe that we've got to get beyond any kind of narrow relativism and any kind of sense of not being deeply concerned about courage, courage, courage to think, courage to love.
How can we foster fruitful conversations across partisan lines?
So just getting to the brass tacks of it, what are some of your top suggestions for actually getting to those fruitful conversations in an age like this?
The first point I think that it's important to understand is we think you need to get beyond tribalism. You need to abandon tribalism. You need to think for yourself. And anybody who thinks for himself, although he may, by virtue of his views, belong to a certain community of conviction, there will always be points on which he disagrees, where he's critical of his own tribe, his own ideological group, his own comrades in arms in political and cultural struggles.
What are the challenges of tribalism in politics?
And you need the courage to be able to and willing to dissent when you think your team has gone wrong on this point or that point. Number two, you need to be open to the possibility that your side isn't always in the right. Your side can be wrong about things. You can be wrong about things. So you need intellectual humility and a self-critical attitude. That's all part and parcel of truth seeking.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Who are Cornel West and Robert George, and what is their new book about?
0:27–1:07
2
What is the significance of truth in a divided society?
1:07–3:16
3
How can we foster fruitful conversations across partisan lines?
3:16–3:54
4
What are the challenges of tribalism in politics?
3:54–6:04
5
How do Cornel West and Robert George view recent political events?
6:04–15:39
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Morning Wire
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