Robert P. George on the Reality and Importance of Human Exceptionalism
Whether or not human beings are exceptional is one of the most important questions of our age. Either we have unique value and moral responsibilities, or we are just another animal in the forest, and if that is how we perceive ourselves, it is precisely how we will act.
Most contemporary commentary about this crucial issue deny our exceptionalism. But now, making his second appearance on this podcast, Princeton professor Robert P. George has authored an important new book — Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth — which argues in favor of human exceptionalism (although he doesn’t use that term) and grapples with the issues that flow from that important understanding.
George holds Princeton University’s celebrated McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence and is Founder and Director of Princeton’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a presidential appointee to 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.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds the degrees of MTS and JD from Harvard University and advanced degrees from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-three honorary doctorates. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, the Barry Prize of the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
In other words, he is a very smart and accomplished guy.
Show Notes
- Robert P. George’s Website
- Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment by Robert P. George
- Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division by Robert P. George & Cornel West
- Robert P. George’s Music Archive
- “A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture” on The New Yorker Radio Hour
- Humanize Season 1, Episode 19: “Robert P. George on teaching and free thought, defending Peter Singer, and natural law”