What is Truth?

An excerpt from Robert George's discourse "On the Moral Purposes of Law and Government"

Our task as I see it should be to understand the moral truth and speak it, in season and out. Speak it lovingly, speak it civilly, engage those with whom one disagrees in civil discourse, open to hearing counter arguments, open to considering the other side's point of view. Yes, speak it lovingly, speak it civilly, but firmly and vigorously, because so much is at stake. Now we will be told by those who are pure pragmatists that the American Public is too far gone in moral relativism, or even moral delinquency to be reached by moral argument. Sometimes they say,"Give it up. Give up the argument for life, give up the argument for marriage. The public's too far gone. They've drunk the kool-aid of moral relativism." But we must have faith that truth is luminous and powerful, so that if we bear witness to the truth about say, marriage or the sanctity of human life, lovingly, civilly, but also passionately and with determination, and if we honor the truth in advancing our positions, then even many of our fellow citizens who now find themselves on the other side of these issues will come around. Don't underestimate our fellow citizens. People are open to the argument. Our problem is not so much that people are gone and sunk in moral relativism and so won't listen. Our problem is we don't make the argument and we don't make it often enough or well enough, with enough conviction, determination.

Now, to speak of truth frightens some people today. They evidently believe that people who claim to know the truth about anything—and especially about moral matters—are fundamentalists and potential totalitarians. But, as my friend Professor Hadley Arkes has patiently explained, those on the other side of the great debates over social issues such as abortion and marriage make truth claims, moral truth claims, all the time. They assert their positions with no less confidence and no more doubt than one finds in the advocacy of pro-lifers or defenders of conjugal marriage. They proclaim for example, not as some mere matter of abstract opinion, but as something true that women have a fundamental right even to elective abortion. They maintain with all the conviction you can have when you are speaking something that you believe to be true, that “love makes a family” therefore any two people, or perhaps more than two people, who feel affection for each other should constitute what is recognized as a marriage. The question, then, is not whether there are truths about such things as the morality of elective abortion and the nature of marriage; the question in each case is, What is the truth?

To read more about this, please check out my other blog, Preserving Marriage.