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Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division
Two leading public intellectuals and dear friends—one progressive, one conservative—explore What is Truth? and Why Does Truth Matter?
In Truth Matters, Cornel West and Robert P. George address a range of social issues on which Americans today are bitterly divided. Their book models robust intellectual engagement and civil discourse as they explore vital questions surrounding the idea of truth and its foundational role in our lives. Along the way, they reflect on social conditions—such as respect for freedom of speech—that must be established and maintained if truth is to be seriously pursued. They also explore the virtues—such as intellectual humility and courage—that must be acquired and practiced if we frail, fallible, fallen human beings are to be determined truth seekers and bold truth speakers.
In Truth Matters, Cornel West and Robert P. George address a range of social issues on which Americans today are bitterly divided. Their book models robust intellectual engagement and civil discourse as they explore vital questions surrounding the idea of truth and its foundational role in our lives. Along the way, they reflect on social conditions—such as respect for freedom of speech—that must be established and maintained if truth is to be seriously pursued. They also explore the virtues—such as intellectual humility and courage—that must be acquired and practiced if we frail, fallible, fallen human beings are to be determined truth seekers and bold truth speakers.
- GenresPolitics
160 pages, Paperback
Published January 21, 2025
29 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
Robert P. George
84 books120 followersMcCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, where he lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law. He also serves as the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. George has been called America's "most influential conservative Christian thinker."[2] He is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and the Herbert W. Vaughan senior fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He is also a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 28, 2025
I wish I could go back to my 2020 self and tell her she was wrong. After I read Race Matters by West I thought I understood him and his arguments.
I did not.
Either I have changed, or it's something about the juxtaposition of the ideas, but I get it now.
This fed my mind and soul. It was like being back in a seminar again, like hanging with friends who love learning just for learning's sake, like watching ideas beginning to connect into wisdom and character in the mind of a student and breaking like a butterfly out of its cocoon.
Okay, maybe I've got a case of timelag. I did stay up until almost midnight last night reading this.
This is a prime example of what is right with the world. 2 people who love others, both living and dead, and choose accordingly. And I'm absolutely thrilled that somehow I found out it existed and read it. Chock full of wisdom, exposition, and genuine goodwill to man...do yourself a favor and read it.
I did not.
Either I have changed, or it's something about the juxtaposition of the ideas, but I get it now.
This fed my mind and soul. It was like being back in a seminar again, like hanging with friends who love learning just for learning's sake, like watching ideas beginning to connect into wisdom and character in the mind of a student and breaking like a butterfly out of its cocoon.
Okay, maybe I've got a case of timelag. I did stay up until almost midnight last night reading this.
This is a prime example of what is right with the world. 2 people who love others, both living and dead, and choose accordingly. And I'm absolutely thrilled that somehow I found out it existed and read it. Chock full of wisdom, exposition, and genuine goodwill to man...do yourself a favor and read it.
March 3, 2025
"TRUTH MATTERS: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division" is a master class in civil discourse between two brilliant scholars with differing political opinions who are still dear friends. In these times of political divisiveness that ruin friendships and split families, this book demonstrates how debate was meant to be conducted in a respectful and robust manner discussing facts and consequences not feelings and histrionics. It's also highly readable and very enjoyable with varied references ranging from Dostoevsky to the red and blue pills in the Matrix. Professor Robert George & Professor Cornel West are two of the best and the brightest minds to ever teach in the Ivy League. It's no wonder their classes have wait lists.
March 7, 2025
Highly engaging, thoughtful, and hopeful discussions between two caring individuals!
August 30, 2025
Like many people, I first ran across the duo of Robert George and Cornel West via their amiable youtube lectures, and eventually I wanted to see what they might write together. I had seen specific articles which they had co-authored on timely topics, but I wanted to see what a book-length treatment would do. Unfortunately, this is not that. Neither of the authors wrote anything for this; instead, it is a transcript of a talk (or series of talks?). If you've listened to the two of them enough, you can hear their words in their voices, and sometimes its quite endearing. Basically, this is wholesomeness porn for the dialogue-starved moderate Christian. It doesn't go in depth on many topics, and the few that they do tend to lose their vivacity by being damned to the dead letter of print. The majority of the book thus ends up being agreeable platitudes which it's easy to enjoy at first, but eventually it drags a bit. Robert George especially becomes longwinded at points, repeats himself, and prefers to stay at the general and abstract levels. Though this repetition works in-person, it prompts skimming when reading on a page.
Instead of buying this book, which I was tempted to do, I inter-library loaned it, and I'm thankful I did. The book can probably be found online on youtube (in the original lectures), and even if it can't, you get essentially the same content from watching a few of their lectures and synthesizing the content they cover.
That all being said, the reason why I wanted to read this book was because I invoked the pair in a paper abstract I submitted earlier in the month, and I wanted to ensure I wasn't talking out of my ass when I went up to give my presentation. The experience of reading the book was initially uncanny, given how many of my talking points from my abstract/my reviews that they echoed. These include 1) needing to have a synoptic/synechdochic imagination, 2) seeking the truth instead of trying to win "debates", (3) incarnational epistemology, 4) challenging your own views, 5) instrumental [business] pedagogy versus holistic wisdom pedagogy, 6) reading primary sources instead of secondary summaries, 7) the pagan roots of fascism, 8) Nietzsche being one of the only "true" atheists [who followed a rejection of Christianity to its maddening, {il}logical conclusion], 9) comfort with apparent contradictions/paradox, and 10) the necessity for trust/faith, broadly understood.
As it progressed, I saw more clearly how partisan the two thinkers are, and how my own opinions are a healthy mixture of the two (I lean more toward the fideism of West than the rationalism of George, but I am more socially conservative like George, and less willing to use the -ism language like West). The strange paradox in my opinion is how these two men who are so much more well-read than me still cling to these dry, tired partisan cliches. It's fascinating watching their minds sometimes wander and speak originally and poetically, but, like a snail that you poke, certain topics make them revert back to political cliche. As far as I can tell, the political is thought-deadening, whereas the theological is both what unifies and enlivens them, giving them nuance that their superficial political stances wouldn't allow for.
The most beautiful disagreement that the two had in the book was about belief in the resurrection. At root, it boils down to the rational/fideist distinction I mentioned earlier, where George is in my opinion too comfortable with reason, not nearly critical enough of the great evils it causes, and at times naively incapable of admitting its overwhelmingly post-hoc nature (especially on page 102, where Hume and Hobbes rightfully observe that reason is "the slave of the passions" and the "scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the thing desired", respectively). George strangely latches on to the term "convinced," as if that's a logical process. In my experience, being convinced is overwhelmingly an emotional, sub-rational thing. The etymology of "convince" is literally "to overcome with overwhelming force, to be conquered." George and West clash in the ways that they arrive at the truth of the resurrection: for George, the evidence is convincing to him, and he has to make no leap of faith, which is what West (and Kierkegaard) argue for. I think the solution is fairly obvious: the evidence is what closes the gap enough that a leap of faith is anything more hopeful than a suicidal leap or a blind wish. The problem with George's approach is that he crowds out faith entirely.
The more I've thought in recent years about Conservative (not traditional, mind you) versus liberal approaches to Christian faith, the more I've noticed that what Conservatives call faith is really an artificially modern hyper-fixation upon absolute certainty which was absent for all of Church history until the Reformation. Even the dry Aristotelian mind of Aquinas I think ultimately used his logical proofs for God more as a defense (apologia) against atheism, rather than a conclusive proof of God which requires only the machinations of the mind. Surely, of the Christian denominations, Catholicism flirted most closely with rationalism, but it always also held in tension a healthy stream of mysticism which leveled out the scales.
Speaking of apologias, I also find fault with George's continual defenses of capitalism (especially in his saying "there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a bunch of money!", just because he's at Princeton), as well as with West's silence. This is one place that Christianity in my opinion gave up way too early in its history. When it became the Roman state religion, many theologians blunted their interpretations of Christ's clear condemnation of wealth. West goes quiet here and at other points, and it worries me because these are some of the places I, a traditional Christian, find myself at odds with what I would call Conservative, or Republican Christianity; I don't recognize the Christ that many Conservative pastors preach, because often the Gospel gets twisted into something bloodless and disembodied, right up until it has something to do with defying political correctness. Then, suddenly Christ's teaching is very embodied.
Though these two men embody a good deal of amiable dialogue, as one YouTube comment observed, sometimes their "agree to disagree" attitude comes across as relativism at best, or complicity at worst. Rather than challenging each other on their partisan cliches, they bolster them up (especially obviously in George's case) with post-hoc reasoning. I wish I would have been there to bring up my understanding of the importance of both of their views on the resurrection, and frankly I'm surprised they didn't figure out a middle ground or a way to integrate both into a more holistic understanding, since that's ostensibly what they're trying to do together. I fear that more importantly they sell the spectacle of feel-good conversation that doesn't come to any clearer of ideas, but instead further entrenches Americans into the false dichotomy of right/left politics.
Instead of buying this book, which I was tempted to do, I inter-library loaned it, and I'm thankful I did. The book can probably be found online on youtube (in the original lectures), and even if it can't, you get essentially the same content from watching a few of their lectures and synthesizing the content they cover.
That all being said, the reason why I wanted to read this book was because I invoked the pair in a paper abstract I submitted earlier in the month, and I wanted to ensure I wasn't talking out of my ass when I went up to give my presentation. The experience of reading the book was initially uncanny, given how many of my talking points from my abstract/my reviews that they echoed. These include 1) needing to have a synoptic/synechdochic imagination, 2) seeking the truth instead of trying to win "debates", (3) incarnational epistemology, 4) challenging your own views, 5) instrumental [business] pedagogy versus holistic wisdom pedagogy, 6) reading primary sources instead of secondary summaries, 7) the pagan roots of fascism, 8) Nietzsche being one of the only "true" atheists [who followed a rejection of Christianity to its maddening, {il}logical conclusion], 9) comfort with apparent contradictions/paradox, and 10) the necessity for trust/faith, broadly understood.
As it progressed, I saw more clearly how partisan the two thinkers are, and how my own opinions are a healthy mixture of the two (I lean more toward the fideism of West than the rationalism of George, but I am more socially conservative like George, and less willing to use the -ism language like West). The strange paradox in my opinion is how these two men who are so much more well-read than me still cling to these dry, tired partisan cliches. It's fascinating watching their minds sometimes wander and speak originally and poetically, but, like a snail that you poke, certain topics make them revert back to political cliche. As far as I can tell, the political is thought-deadening, whereas the theological is both what unifies and enlivens them, giving them nuance that their superficial political stances wouldn't allow for.
The most beautiful disagreement that the two had in the book was about belief in the resurrection. At root, it boils down to the rational/fideist distinction I mentioned earlier, where George is in my opinion too comfortable with reason, not nearly critical enough of the great evils it causes, and at times naively incapable of admitting its overwhelmingly post-hoc nature (especially on page 102, where Hume and Hobbes rightfully observe that reason is "the slave of the passions" and the "scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the thing desired", respectively). George strangely latches on to the term "convinced," as if that's a logical process. In my experience, being convinced is overwhelmingly an emotional, sub-rational thing. The etymology of "convince" is literally "to overcome with overwhelming force, to be conquered." George and West clash in the ways that they arrive at the truth of the resurrection: for George, the evidence is convincing to him, and he has to make no leap of faith, which is what West (and Kierkegaard) argue for. I think the solution is fairly obvious: the evidence is what closes the gap enough that a leap of faith is anything more hopeful than a suicidal leap or a blind wish. The problem with George's approach is that he crowds out faith entirely.
The more I've thought in recent years about Conservative (not traditional, mind you) versus liberal approaches to Christian faith, the more I've noticed that what Conservatives call faith is really an artificially modern hyper-fixation upon absolute certainty which was absent for all of Church history until the Reformation. Even the dry Aristotelian mind of Aquinas I think ultimately used his logical proofs for God more as a defense (apologia) against atheism, rather than a conclusive proof of God which requires only the machinations of the mind. Surely, of the Christian denominations, Catholicism flirted most closely with rationalism, but it always also held in tension a healthy stream of mysticism which leveled out the scales.
Speaking of apologias, I also find fault with George's continual defenses of capitalism (especially in his saying "there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a bunch of money!", just because he's at Princeton), as well as with West's silence. This is one place that Christianity in my opinion gave up way too early in its history. When it became the Roman state religion, many theologians blunted their interpretations of Christ's clear condemnation of wealth. West goes quiet here and at other points, and it worries me because these are some of the places I, a traditional Christian, find myself at odds with what I would call Conservative, or Republican Christianity; I don't recognize the Christ that many Conservative pastors preach, because often the Gospel gets twisted into something bloodless and disembodied, right up until it has something to do with defying political correctness. Then, suddenly Christ's teaching is very embodied.
Though these two men embody a good deal of amiable dialogue, as one YouTube comment observed, sometimes their "agree to disagree" attitude comes across as relativism at best, or complicity at worst. Rather than challenging each other on their partisan cliches, they bolster them up (especially obviously in George's case) with post-hoc reasoning. I wish I would have been there to bring up my understanding of the importance of both of their views on the resurrection, and frankly I'm surprised they didn't figure out a middle ground or a way to integrate both into a more holistic understanding, since that's ostensibly what they're trying to do together. I fear that more importantly they sell the spectacle of feel-good conversation that doesn't come to any clearer of ideas, but instead further entrenches Americans into the false dichotomy of right/left politics.
September 20, 2025
Best book I’ve read all year, although I think it deserves 4.25-4.5 stars. And that’s not to say it was the most well written or any other metric that would matter in saying something is the best book. But don’t get me wrong, it was well written. Not to mention in general it’s good to segment by genre because it’s pretty hard to do apples to apples comparison across genres.
Anyways I loved this book because I got to read two great thinkers of our day, who I have a ton of respect for, model out what true, civil, and robust discourse should look like. They have done a fantastic job articulating the issues in our country today, explaining the importance of truth, dissecting complex issues.
I consider myself to be a fair and open minded person. But I also learned new ways on how I can push and critique positions as well as how to even better respond to people and recognize my own short comings.
I think this should be required reading especially today. Plus they bring light to some great books/works/authors that I hope to pick up one day. It’s also astonishing how well read they are. I aspire to be a true truth seeker and I think we all should. And this has not only further validated that pursuit but also better equipped me to pursue it
So glad I took Robby’s course this spring and went to the talk during reunions. I could hear both their voices as I read, and it was a great follow on to this last semester.
Super excited to read Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein and get a more journalist perspective (may or may not be the right framing) on our country today and how it compares to this book.
Anyways I loved this book because I got to read two great thinkers of our day, who I have a ton of respect for, model out what true, civil, and robust discourse should look like. They have done a fantastic job articulating the issues in our country today, explaining the importance of truth, dissecting complex issues.
I consider myself to be a fair and open minded person. But I also learned new ways on how I can push and critique positions as well as how to even better respond to people and recognize my own short comings.
I think this should be required reading especially today. Plus they bring light to some great books/works/authors that I hope to pick up one day. It’s also astonishing how well read they are. I aspire to be a true truth seeker and I think we all should. And this has not only further validated that pursuit but also better equipped me to pursue it
So glad I took Robby’s course this spring and went to the talk during reunions. I could hear both their voices as I read, and it was a great follow on to this last semester.
Super excited to read Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein and get a more journalist perspective (may or may not be the right framing) on our country today and how it compares to this book.
September 22, 2025
This should be essential reading for every American, or at least every educator and young person. Not only do George and West model respectful disagreement and dialogue, the substance of the dialogue is itself so deeply engaging and inspiring. It's just brimming over with ideas, both their own and those of the countless voices of the past from their shared and distinct traditions.
July 31, 2025
It's better to be wise than to be smart.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews