Baylor Conversation Series: Dr. Robert P. George and Dr. Cornel West

good afternoon welcome to this beautiful Friday afternoon and the wonderful event that we have planned I hope you're as excited about being here today as I am to here our guest speakers you know we've been doing conversation series for the last couple of years since I arrived and as we discussed what to do for the conversation series this year we began to look at what was happening around the country what was happening on college campuses and realized that in the world today there's a tremendous need for civil discourse for people to have meaningful conversations about challenging and difficult topics in ways that are charitable and respectful to one another and here at Baylor we need to be talking about these important and difficult issues that are facing the world we want Baylor to be the kind of place where we study and address issues that really matter where we bring solutions to the significant problems that are facing the world so we have to be willing to come together and to talk about these really challenging issues and if we can't do this at a Christian University where we're taught to love our neighbor as ourself then where can we do it but we also have to learn how to have these types of conversations this is especially important when discussing issues where people may disagree even in a communities of faith and I might say especially in a community of faith we need to learn how to listen to those who we disagree with rather than simply talking at them we need to learn how to give evidence for our opinions and evaluate the evidence that's behind others opinions and even if we still disagree we need to learn to love and care for those around us and to learn how to live and work in community together unfortunately we don't have a lot of good examples of this when we look into the the public sphere these days so we decided that we should focus our conversation series this year on civil discourse and how we could do that better here at Baylor and maybe be an example to other about how we can do that so in September we began with a faculty panel it Campu was composed of professors from our religion history excuse me history political science English and communication departments we talked about humbling ourselves before others considering the context of others opinions and rejecting the us-versus-them mentality that pervades so much of our discourse today then in October we had doctors Tim Yul Hoff and Rick Langer to our campus from Biola University in that conversation we focused on with winsome persuasion and how to exhibit Christian influence in a post-christian world and today we have a very very special treat for you with dr. Cornel West and dr. Robert George dr. Cornel West is professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University he's a prolific author commentator and public intellectual dr. Robert George is the McCormack professor of jurisprudence and director of the James Madison program in American ideals and institutions at Princeton University he's a renowned expert on constitutional interpretation political theory and public law these two men share the stage very often together and as you'll soon see they are on very different sides of the political and ideological spectrum and frankly disagree on many many issues but they have learned how to have civil discourse with one another and to learn from each other despite the differences that they might have both dr. West and dr. George have been friends at Baylor for years through our Baylor and Washington program we're thankful for their longtime support of Baylor and it is an honor to have them with us this afternoon please join me in welcoming dr. Cornel West and dr. Robert George [Applause] [Applause] well good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and thanks so very very much for coming I know the big question on your mind is which one is George and which one is West as that's what you're you're wondering yeah yeah well I'm gonna let you guess which is which but I know that I speak for Cornell as well as myself and saying how delighted we are to be here at Baylor for me it's back here at Baylor because this is an institution with which I've developed a very close relationship over the past several years to my own very great benefit I've learned an enormous amount from scholars here with whom I've been associated especially in your department philosophy but really across the university and I'm very excited about all that Baylor's doing for the education of young people and also for the cause of scholarship including the the cause of civil discourse and liberal learning that we're going to be talking about Cornell anar gonna be focusing on this afternoon I want to say special thanks to president Livingston this was my first opportunity to meet her and I'm delighted it was very gracious of her to invite Cornell and myself to come down to be part of this series of conversations thanks to to the entire staff that helped to arrange the visit getting these two guys around is a bit of a project and they did a great job in organizing the event and of course I want to thank my very very dear brother Cornel West it's always such a pleasure to be with Cornell in dialogue we've been at this now for more than a decade really about a dozen years it began at Princeton when we started teaching undergraduate courses together beginning in the very first case with a with a Freshman Seminar in which we decided we would work together assigning some of the classic works of the great traditions of thought particularly those of Athens in Jerusalem with Princeton freshman at that time we later taught upperclassmen but in the first instance it was with Princeton freshmen working with them on and I say working with them because we were engaged as learners as well as teachers in the seminar we always are working with them on great texts such as Sophocles Antigone Plato's dialogues st. agustín's confessions going all the way up through the medieval period and the Enlightenment Reformation and enlightenment into the 19th century studying figures like John Stuart Mill and and John Henry Newman into the 20th century reading figures like John Dewey and seus Lewis all the way up to Martin Luther King concluding with Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail and in that experience I learned something that I hadn't known I knew by reputation that that Cornell was meant to be a an outstanding teacher of course I knew his scholarship which is outstanding but this was an experience with a master teacher and so I felt I was a student in the seminar myself while learning from a master teacher how to teach how to engage these texts with young people and one of the things that was clear to me from Cornell's teaching is that to be a great teacher you have to be learning at the same time that you're teaching you need to be wrestling with the materials with the ideas with the arguments with the thoughts of the great thinkers in a course like that that you are putting before your your students since then Cornell and I have have continued to teach when we can he abandoned me to go up to Harvard which I'm trying to forgive him our Princeton's great loss was Harvard's Harvard's great gain but opportunities like the one we have today at Baylor are great opportunities for us to get together and to interact to think together to work together to wrestle with ideas and and with arguments so it's always a a great pleasure Cornell also exemplifies something else and that is a model of a scholar who is a true scholar and yet publicly engaged publicly engaged a lot of people want to be public intellectuals very often they focus on the public part especially in the publicity part not on the intellectual part and what Cornell shows is that it truly is possible to be a public intellectual that is a person who brings critical thinking who brings intellect who brings informed reflection to great questions of public affairs questions of culture questions of public policy questions of politics questions of economics without dumbing anything down or sacrificing anything and very importantly without descending into sheer tribalism in ideology that's a tough thing to do especially in a polarized political situation like the one we find ourselves in today in this culture it's very very hard to be truly scholarly to be truly intellectual to pursue the truth and speak the truth as one best understands the truth in season and out while trying to influence people's opinions people's decisions trying to educate people trying to move people in the direction that you think they should go for the cause of justice for the cause of goodness for the cause of right all the pressures are on us to become part of a team become part of a tribe never to criticize our own side always to go along to be in the business not of thinking but of cooking up rationalizations to support the team or the tribe or the party's policies those pressures are as much on those of us in the Academy as they are on people in public life people in politics or people who are in public affairs especially those of us who like Cornell and myself try to be engaged in public questions in questions of public policy in questions of culture and resisting those pressures I can tell you from my own personal experience is very very hard but here again Cornell has been the model and has set the example of of doing that he's not for sale he's not gonna go along with something he thinks is wrong just because it's our sides position or our tribes position or our party's position or our party's nominee or our party's candidate or what have you and when you stand on principle like that in the Civic domain you're gonna come in for a lot of criticism when you stray from the fold when you in conscience just can't go along with this position or this nominee or this idea or this cause suddenly you're no longer welcome suddenly you're no longer considered a team player you're no longer considered someone who should be recognized and honored in our community whoever whoever counts as the are now this can be on the right it can be on left doesn't make a bit of difference you have the same thing across the political spectrum Cornell's on the progressive side I'm on the conservative side and we have both had exactly the same experience of being alienated even from our own group people who generally agree with us or with whom we generally agree because in conscience we can't go along with this or that or the other thing we can't go with the party on this nominee or on this position or or what have you but when you're in that situation you're really faced with a choice do you sacrifice your own integrity for the sake of staying relevant staying influential remaining a player or do you stand fast at the cost of no longer maybe being so influential no longer being welcomed in the council's of the of the tribe or the party it's very easy to make the wrong decision there but I think we all know what the right decision is you don't sacrifice your integrity for anything your integrity is the one thing sometimes I think it's the only thing over which ultimately you and you alone me and me alone Cornell and Cornell none has control just about everything else in life you don't ultimately have control over you don't know what the weather's gonna be tomorrow or later today you don't know whether you'll fall into destitution for some reason or another no matter how affluent you happen to be at the at the moment you don't know when a depression is coming you don't know when a war is coming you don't know if you're gonna be hit by a car when you walk across the street so many things we can try our best to exercise some control over but ultimately we don't have control but there is one thing over which we and we alone have control that's our soul that's our integrity that's our character no one can take it from you they can take your money they can take your life they can't take your integrity the only way you lose that is if you give it up you give it up for whatever the shiny object is it might be status it might be power it might be money it might be influence it might be being a person who counts it might be being a person who's invited to the White House or to the State Department or to Congress might be any of those things but I think all of us know certainly those of us who are Christian know but I think this is true across the great traditions of faith all of us know that it's not worth giving up your integrity for any of those things there's just nothing more important than your integrity I want to introduce another subject and and Cornell will speak at some length about this in a minute and that is civility in our discourse if you're going to be in the public square you're entering in our time and this is not the first time in human history or in the history of the United States when this has happened but it is a time when you will be interested into entering a toxic environment an environment that's characterized by name-calling by shaming by calling out by canceling those of you who are my age might not know the term cancel as used in this con next I had to be taught it by my students if you think of the old-fashioned shunning but in the age of social media in the age of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram whatever the latest is it's no longer being treated as a person being canceled as a person because you stepped out of line Barack Obama to his very great credit recently made a very powerful statement against this culture against this culture of calling people out for saying the wrong word for saying the wrong thing calling people out for deviating in the slightest from an orthodoxy well your Cornel West are you Robbie George you're just not gonna accept those terms of discourse you know we're not gonna we're not gonna accept the idea that you have to stay within any lines you're gonna have to instead follow the truth wherever it leads and if the truth says I'm gonna have to say this and I'm gonna have to break with you here that's it's all we're gonna have to to do and we might be cancelled but we'll be cancelled with our integrity intact now it might be easier for a couple of older guys you know who've had a lot of experience behind them and have who've had their their their share of a good fortune in life it is hard and I think we have to admit those of us who are older it is harder for our young people for students here at Baylor for students around the country for young people around the country it's it's very hard you live in a kind of fear because of the toxicity of the environment fear that if I deviate if I speak out if I say something that is considered inappropriate and incorrect that I will suffer on social media that I'll be called names that I'll be subjected to shaming I may suffer professional impediments or lose friends or even even family members but to speak out doesn't mean to speak out crudely or obscenely or violently or meanly certainly Cornell and I believe that as Christians it's our task to speak the truth but always to speak the truth in love don't contribute to the toxicity of the culture now you know sometimes you're going to fail at least if you're me sometimes you're gonna fail I've said many things I've regretted or regretted putting them the way that I've put them because I violated my own test my own principles by being harsh or harsher than I should have been and here we're in an area where finding what Aristotle called the golden mean is that is the trick on the one hand it's important not to be harsh not to be astringent not to talk in ways that alien ate people just for the sake of of alienating people on the other hand there's something called party Xia what the Greeks called par heezy a plain speech blunt speech where you're calling a spade a spade or something that needs to be said and needs to be said bluntly is hard to say because if you say it bluntly you'll be accused of impoliteness civility civil discourse is not just a matter of poly tests that's not what it's about what makes civil discourse civil is not that it's polite though it's good to be polite when you can it's not that you're being polite it's that you're genuinely listening to your interlocutor and considering what he or she has to say you're not just just teaching but you're also willing to learn you're willing to subject your own position to another person's scrutiny or criticism you're willing to work with that person and if I can use the fancy philosophical term the dialectical process of truth seeking where you're treating your interlocutor not as an enemy or an adversary to be defeated but as a friend with whom you're joined in the common pursuit the common quest for for truth it's the see that's the common bond between two people for honorable people who are engaged in truly civil discourse despite the fact that they may profoundly disagree they may be a socialist on the one side and a libertarian on the other side they may be a Christian and an atheist they may be a Content and a utilitarian but if they are truly engaged in civil discourse they're not just being polite to each other they're listening to each other and engaging each other and honestly considering each other's point of view out of a shared concern to get at the truth of the matter and their exemplifying certain critical virtues on both sides intellectual humility grounded in the understanding of their own phal ability we can only engage in civil discourse if we accept premise number one I might be wrong because I'm not God I'm not infallible and I might be wrong not only about trivial and superficial and minor matters I might be wrong about some terribly terribly important things as deeper strong or powerful as my convictions might be on a subject I still might be wrong and the only way I can get from being wrong to being right from falsehood the truth if in fact I'm wrong is to listen attentively and with an open mind and an open heart to somebody who's got a different you know I might be right all along but I can't know that with certainty because I'm not infallible which means I always have to listen I've often quoted the great early 20th century jurist learn at hand who said that the spirit of Liberty is a spirit of being not too sure one is always right and what hand said what judge hand said about the spirit of Liberty is also true of the spirit of truth seeking the spirit of civil discourse that is a spirit of not being too sure that always right that you don't have something to learn from somebody else who dramatically disagrees with you and to have that kind of openness of mind that kind of intellectual humility that recognition of one's one's own FAL ability takes courage and that's in short supply always but it's certainly in short supply today it takes a lot of courage to hold open the possibility that I might be wrong it's embarrassing to turn out to be wrong it's embarrassing to lose an argument it's embarrassing to be shown to have believed something that one shouldn't have believed takes courage to be willing to face that possibility and it takes courage to face oneself I'll tell you why it's because we human beings kind of creatures we are we fail we frail fallible human creatures we naturally wrap our emotions more or less tightly around our convictions what we do some of our beliefs we identify with our very selves we've wrapped our emotions so tightly around them we think to be me means to be to believe this on this or that subject may be a very important subject now it's not in principle a bad thing for us to wrap our emotions around our convictions because that's how we get things done if we didn't have some emotional oomph behind our beliefs we wouldn't get up out of bed in the morning and get to work or get to school or get down to the books or go out there and work for some cause we believe in the trouble is when we wrap our emotions too tightly around our convictions when we wrap our emotions so tightly around our convictions that we lose the sense of our own fallibility we become close-minded we become dogmatic we quickly fall into groupthink where we only acknowledge as valid those who agree with us we're gonna cancel everybody else because they're not with our program it's one thing to have strong convictions Cornell and I have strong convictions often don't agree with each other but have strong convictions about the things we disagree about and yet we recognize that you can't wrap those emotions too tightly around the convictions you shouldn't be a Dogma just you have to be open it's always the possibility that you might be wrong and even if you're not wrong you might still learn an awful lot from somebody who's got a different view they deepen your understanding John Stuart Mill taught this in the second chapter of his great work on Liberty the chapter entitled of Liberty of thought and discussion talked about how we can learn even from someone who's wrong when we're right from that person's challenges to our view we deepen our understanding of the matter understanding not only that something is the case we've got this right such as so is the case but understanding more deeply why it's the case how it's the case what its larger significance might be the larger significance of it being the case might be and we understand how a reasonable person of goodwill might nevertheless have gotten it wrong we learn something very important very deep so you can see that in the domain of civil discourse whether we're out there in politics or were in our classrooms here at Baylor or any other university around the country in this domain a lot of the project is trying to find that Aristotelian golden mean not being dogmatic yet still having convictions being a person of conviction a person of conscience not being cool or harsh but nevertheless willing to engage in par he's iya plain speech blunt speech greet to treat the truth plainly being willing to say to someone else I think you're wrong but respecting that other person is a precious human being equal in Worth and dignity of myself of anyone of anyone else that's our project nobody you corner mm-hmm yeah let's get it up our dear brothers making a lot of sense making a lot of sense and be I first want to say that I'm just blessed to be at Baylor University largest Baptist University campus in the whole world as a fellow Baptist I'm just not used to being in a university that goes back to those Baptists truth that left-wing of the Reformation theological II what a rich tradition and to be with my dear brother I have deep deep love for this brother even when he's wrong even when he's wrong I just revel in his humanity it's not just the abstract fact that he's made the image of likeness of the same God that I am but 14 or 15 years we spend together with our families did various contexts in which we have been able to come together and help each other in hospitals streets synagogues temples Air Force academies and so forth and you would think that it's just a normal thing that you can revel in the humanity of somebody who you have deep ideological political disagreements but we live in a time in which lo and behold we have these kind of conversations and people think it's a rare thing to see you say oh how sad it is so I want to begin first by just saluting my dear sister D your president Linda Livingstone and I'm told that her mother is here somewhere and if she is let's have both of them stand they said Charlotte Charlotte Sheila but both of them stand both I'm standing together that's a beautiful thing beautiful beautiful beautiful thing he's my mother grew up in Texas so each time I come to Texas I feel like I'm coming home Orange Texas Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church on the chocolate side of orange and on the other side of the railroad trapper and I do also want to salute brother Daniel and his wonderful parents Doug and Linda weird weird Daniel and Doug and Linda where are you where are you where are you JJ here oh I give it up for these to get give it up for both of them as well that wonderful conversation we had driving down from the airport and I appreciate it wrestling with Flannery O'Connor check coughing check regard and so forth he's a distinguished graduate of this institution and decided to come back and work in the speechwriting Department it's a beautiful thing I think that we're in such a deep trouble and it's it's it really brings tears to your eyes when you have such a fragile experiment and democracy that's undergoing such spiritual breakdown the National meltdown and the question becomes what kind of prophetic fightback do we have left empires come and go democracies come and go societies come and go we come and go what kind of bounce back do we have at least on this side of the Jordan and that's very much what brother Robby and I find ourselves more and more thrown into just being brothers who love each other recognizing that love is never reducible to politics we know that you know that deep genuine friendships are never reducible to agreement on public policy but we do agree on a number of things and one of the things we agree was on a very deep level is how do you keep alive a Socratic legacy of Athens and the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem and that spiritual is as essential as political its moral its economic and given the M sending ecological catastrophy much is at stake for the globe and I'm speaking especially to the young brothers and sisters of all colors who are students here at this historic institution did you happen to arrive at a time in which the great legacies that ought to be bequeathed to you and you critically engaging you unflinchingly wrestle with it there's more and more being lost weaker and it's more feeble and the result is relative collapse of integrity honesty decency generosity and what sets in is power money spectacle image manipulation and then instant gratification and narrow forms of titillation and stimulation that rarely nourished one soul and we end up living in a culture which is very much a joyless quest for insatiable pleasure and it makes it difficult to engage in the Paideia that Socrates enacted at Paideia that deep education not that cheap schooling that's the baylor university is not about cheap school in that racist cylinder no no no no no if you just want to donation information and gang assets to a diploma to live in some vanilla suburb with some grand status you're in the wrong place this is Paideia this is Paideia that deep education that formation of attention that gets you to attend to the things that matter and hold at arm's length the superficial things that cultivation of a critical consciousness so you learn how to think for yourself in relation to traditions that you have access to not in nation it is education but in the end it's not just about information it's about transformation we we talked about this in our class in terms of the students are coming you have come in our class to learn how to die I thought it was just for great no no you're missing out you're missing out you learn how to die in order to learn how to live by critically examining yourself scrutinizing yourself and when you give up an assumption or presupposition when you let loose a prejudice or a prejudgment that's a form of death and there's no maturation there's no development there's no growth without that kind of death and somewhere I read Christians must learn how to die daily that was a eulogy of our dear Catholic sister Dorothy day towering figure that she was for Martin Luther King jr. April the 5th 1968 that Marlow's the King jr. learned how to die daily the Civic discourse simply becomes a site in which you are wrestling with yourself and trying to become more mature more courageous more critical more compassionate so that the Socratic energy on the one hand and then the prophetic legacy of Jerusalem kicks in you know Socrates never shared the tear he never cries Jesus weeps so does Jeremiah what is it about those tears that have everything to do with the love that we were talking about and not just about man who neva reminds us any justice that's only justice soon degenerates into something less than justice justice is always saved by something more profound than justice that deep sense of yes it that our Jewish brothers and sisters gave to the world spreading that steadfast love to orphan and widow and fatherless and motherless how do we get young folk to understand that the socratic legacy tied to pi day and party easier that line 24 a in Plato's apology the cause of my unpopularity is par he's yeah Frank speech plain speech unintimidated speech fearless speech that's what led Socrates to the hemlock what led Jesus to the cross what is the mystery of this word made flesh in the mystery of this word in flesh crucified the overflowing of the love in a world dominated by hatred contempt Envy manipulation domination that is the dominant ways of the world so what does it mean to be in the world but not of it intellectually psychically spiritually to have one focus on things that are qualitatively different than the dominant orientations values and priorities we were talking about this above daniel earlier about the golden calf the market model that's ubiquitous viewing life as the gold rush in the worshiping a golden calves the golden rule becomes he or she who has the power defines the gold and the way in which you live he or she has the gold defines what is real what is right what is moral we're back to through Symmachus and Plato's Republic might makes right we're back to the grand inquisitor and Dostoevsky is great now with the brothers of Cara miles off let's just give the folk what they think they need rather than unsettle them unnerve them with messages that forced them to wrestle and undergo transformation and the market model is give the consumer what the consumer wants they got the money and this is true in every institution in our society we wrestle with it at Harvard just like you'd wrestle it at Princeton and we need money there's no doubt about that I want to take this thing too far here be everybody needs your money everybody needs some resources but we also know when you talk about Paideia you talk about education you're talking about the most precious things in the world it goes far beyond money and buying and selling far beyond commodification and commercialization and marketization and our young people more and more have been under have been so thoroughly saturated with market forces that the minute many times they described themselves as a brand they come in my class number this is my brand what is your brand brother Wes I said I got a cause it's called the kingdom of God that's not a brand if the kingdom of God is within you doing everywhere you go you ought to leave a little heaven behind that's not a market strategy that's not careerist that's not opportunist that's a conception of what it means to be human at the deepest level at the very deepest level and you can come out of the Judaic tradition in Islamic tradition Christian traditions secular traditions you're wrestling with the most terrifying question what does it mean to be human Paideia is at its center because pi there may not always take place in a universe James Baldwin never went to college but a college went through him Jimmy Hendrix never went to college but a college went through here and we all wanted to haven't got to Curtis Mayfield dropped out at eighth grade he could write I'm so proud when he's 15 years old I know professor Horace max I was here somewhere problem but a distinguished professor he is he's dealing with classical black composers the floors prices in the William grants deals and so forth but it has everything to do with how do you keep alive Socratic legacy this prophetic legacy as it relates to our present-day crisis and allow for exchange and it's something deeper than just civility I've always had a deep suspicion of civility because it can easily be deployed in such a way that it has too many mechanisms of exclusion it just won't respect because there's times in which brother Ravi and I might not always be civil because love spills over in a whole lot of mysterious way I mean it's now it's not like we punching each other out and nothing but I mean we we go at it but it's disrespect and giving each other the benefit of being wrong as well as right and then building on the anthem of black people lift every as they lift every echo you got to get out of our echo chambers get out of our narrow silos and what is it define your voice just like a jazz musician or a blues warmer how do you find your voice you can hear William Butler Yeats and it takes more courage to dig deep into the dark corners of their own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield that's how you get an Aretha Franklin she's not imitating any longer she found her voice that's how you get a Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel cutting against the orthodoxy of his day in the name of the best of the elements of that Orthodox you all read Chesterton's great worker of 1908 orthodoxy ways in which you're wrestling with tradition and this of what we want our young folks to do this is what I've been blessed to do with with my dear brother robbing up for the last almost what 13 years now in-class and out-of-class but let me hand it back to you pick up on a point that brother Cornell made that I actually haven't heard him make before and it's very striking he said at one point justice when it's all you've got pretty soon isn't justice anymore we've come to think of justice mainly in terms of states of affairs is this state of affairs just as that state of affairs just it's not wrong but it's too narrow traditionally historically in the great traditions of philosophy justice has been regarded as a virtue not so much a state of affairs as a virtue just man possesses the virtue of justice the just regime possesses the virtue of of justice but there's a broad lesson I think in what Cornell says about justice because it's true not only about justice but about all of the other virtues isolated and left to run on their own they soon to generate in devices they become justifications for cruelty and wrongdoing take the virtue of courage for example it's a virtue right if you're a parent you among the things you want to bring up your sons and daughters to be as courageous don't want them to be but what if courage is isolated from the other virtues what if it's isolated from justice I've heard Cornell often tell the story over the past year or two of confronting the Nazis at Charlottesville Cornell was down there on that day and Cornell correct me if I get this story wrong that he talked about how he was face to face with one of these neo-nazis and he saw the hatred in the eyes of this character but he also saw courage over him he saw a virtue but he saw a virtue that was cut loose from the other virtues the virtue of love the virtue of justice the virtue of compassion saw a virtue that was cut loose and now was like a wild animal that courage could have cost one life could have cost many lives and historically that kind of courage has cost many many lives it's unleashed in the cause of injustice or just to drive the point home when L mentioned Chesterton it's a great great thinker and figure that Cornell and I both admire GK Chesterton he made exactly the same point about compassion when we think of compassion we think of something good right and compassion is good we should be compassionate we want our children again to be compassionate but what happens when compassion is cut off from the other virtues when it's isolated and we're simply moved by compassionate feeling well this is what gave rise to the eugenics movement against which Chesterton did combat in the nineteen teens and 20s and 30s a movement that was embraced by the Great and the good by the forward-thinking by the progressive by the great institutions of our culture by the by the economic institutions by the great philanthropic foundations by government even by the Supreme Court is Oliver Wendell Holmes the most famous Supreme Court justice of the 20th century in a case of holding a Virginia statute for mandatory sterilization of people who were judged to be inferior or judged to be incompetent famously said in upholding that decision against due process famously said three generations of imbeciles is enough that kind of thinking was motivated by a misguided misplaced compassion it's what gave rise to the concept of lives unworthy of life Leoben sons hurtin laven you probably know that slogan in the German as well as the English because of the Nazi use of it but we need to remember the Nazis didn't invent it oh no before several years before Hitler even arrived on the scene in the Beer Hall Putsch in the 19-teens two perfectly polite well-educated progressive German scholars in debt and hokum who were respectively a medical doctor and a lawyer published a book justifying the taking of lives unworthy of life out of a sense of compassion we need to end suffering unnecessary suffering sometimes that means killing people whose lives are unworthy of life those lives are no good to them and to other people so the ancient teaching going back to the Greeks and of course forcefully reiterated by the great medieval thinkers on the importance of the unity of the virtues here is very very important a lot of wrongdoing is done not only in the name of good but genuinely out of a misguided concentration or focus on a single virtue or on a single good we have to keep all the virtues together we need courage yes but also justice we need compassion yes but also humanity if we're ever in a situation where we lose our sense of the balance of these things we end up if not like that Nazi like bending and hokum or like the people who embraced you up and down through our American Society and that's not a place where we want to be Cornel mentioned something else that I thought it would be important to lay some emphasis on especially for young people especially for our students wealth power fame influence these are not bad things it's good to have money it's good it's good to have influence it's good it's good to have power where things go bad is when we think of those things not as means but as ends when we want those things for their own sake rather than for the sake of the much more important things for the sake of which they can if rightly used be used the trouble with so much in our society today it seems to me is that we are sending messages through every media we can possibly conceive the new ones that are appearing every day sending messages especially to our young people but really to everyone we're teaching ourselves through these media that wealth is good and power is good and influence is good and status is good and fame is good for their own sakes it's important to be somebody and you are somebody when you have wealth you are somebody when you have influence you are somebody when you have power but those things are not good in themselves if that's what you're working for if you're working for those things without a sense of what those things are for you're gonna go off track and when you treat those things as ultimate rather than proximate as primary rather than secondary as the thing we're really after rather than something derivative then you're willing to pay too high a price for them pretty soon you find you're gonna be sacrificing your integrity for the sake of let's say maintaining influence we both had this experience Cornell and I both have we're people who matter in public affairs want to know what your view is I don't know what your opinion is want to call you in want to listen to you and it feels good to be called into the corridors of power to be listened to by people with influence who are important who are in the public eye or in the news you got to be careful that kind of thing is that it's addictive as heroin it's addictive as any drug and once you've got a bit of it you don't want to lose it but the moment will come when you gotta say something because your conscience tells you so that's gonna separate you from the people who give you that access who give you that influence will give you that standing who give you that status and now you face the choice do I follow conscience and maintain my integrity and become now an outsider or not if you're addicted to that heroin that spiritual heroin you're not gonna be able to give it up you'll fall in line it's only if you've maintained your distance maintained your perspective understand that that access that power that influence or that wealth that's thatis that money are secondary things derivative things means not ants that you'll be able to say well I'm just very sorry but I cannot go along I can't go along with that I'm not on board I'm out of here I'm not with the program and it's genuinely not easy we can we can claim it is and in every human life there's gonna be failure Cornell has wonderful saying I don't know who you you're quoting somebody but Cornell often often quotes the line that we we we try and we fail and then we try again and try to fail better you never get to who has that ask the great Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett he was a lapse Protestant in the Catholic country try again fail I better was brother fail better mm-hmm Oh his genius is something we can't hold ourselves to the standard of perfection although it has to be our guiding ideal but for the young people the important thing it seems to me to understand is that when Cornell says that a liberal arts education what you're doing here at Baylor is preparing you for death what that means is it's preparing you it's empowering you it's equipping you to distance yourself for the things that the world counts as ultimately important that's what you were dying to you're dying to the idea that what really matters is being a big shot having a lot of dough have an influence and power status being somebody now you make in your life not be called to give those things up but if you're Baylor education if your liberal arts education is doing for you what a liberal arts education is supposed to do if you are experiencing Paideia deep education as Cornell said not the cheap schooling if you get the real Paideia then you're being formed equipped now to die to those things you will be in a position that when you are tested and push really does come to shove you will be able to step away because you're not addicted to that spiritual heroin you understand what really matters in life and what is secondary what's a mere means and not an end back to you Oh indeed indeed indeed you know one of the differences that brother Robbie has from myself is that I'm rooted in Kierkegaard and he's tied to st. Thomas Aquinas and it's a fascinating tension actually because as a Christian thinking a Catholic thinker brother Ravi steel has some real weight ascribed to the force of Reason alongside grace that a fair characterization of logos and forms whereas for me coming out of the Protestant tradition and of course Kierkegaard was a Lutheran but he was very econo clastic most of the Lutheran's didn't like him which is always an interesting point because when any one group starts pointing patting you on the back too much you're becoming a yes woman or a yes man so all of a sudden the world that you're supposed to be in but not of is embracing you too enthusiastically it's good for your ego it's not good for your integrity and with Kierkegaard the stress is always going to be on the ways in which being linked to Paideia in a Christian mode will strike most of the world as so absurd it makes no sense whatsoever but for you it is the most alluring because it makes all the sense in the world given the personal relations you have in given what you learn from the stories and narratives in light of one's own interpretation of an interpretation is always mediating the stories and the narratives and therefore in this particular moment it seems to me Christians have a very very important role to play in terms of being a spiritual leaven in a loaf that is in deep decline in decay not in a self-righteous way but in a long history of those who have come before it could be Teresa lalala towering figure in so many ways it could be fannie lou hamer they could be Martin King they could be miles Horton and I think it's very sad that we haven't had enough Christian spokespersons and leadership at this particular moment by example by example by your fruits you shall know them the market is concerned with foliage by your foliage you will know mean spectacle image peacock status Stretton around and the smartest I'm the richest and so forth and it's so easy these days to act as if brother Trump is somehow the the cause when he's just a sign and a symptom of their people to why you called him a brother well he made an image of God just like me and he's got the potential to change even though I'm not banking a political program on that but he does have the capacity to change anybody who's been transformed and undergone conversion no did you change I've publicly on TV called him a gang stumbles every time I'm on TV that people call me I call the president against our set because I was against the floor met Jesus and now I'm a redeemed Center with gangster proclivities when I called him against I'm talking about something inside of me that I have to conquer day in and day out all that hatred that Envy that revenge that coldness that numbness that callousness that in difference to the suffering of others by heshto says indifference the evils more insidious than evil itself the ended with a whole culture of callousness and indifference as you make your careers way up the into the upper echelon of the society as if those folk in the hood in the barrio on the reservation the poor brothers and sisters who grew up right down the way from where brother Robby grew up in West Virginia in Appalachia as if their fate and destiny is not inextricably interwoven with our faith and destiny let alone the fact that in the eyes of God they have exactly the same value as our brothers and sisters on Wall Street or at Harvard a Baylor a Princeton looking at the world in a very different way through a very different lens that makes absolutely no sense in the eyes of the dominant or Ian tation of the world and I think part of the reasons why so many of our young people are suffering from depression and overwhelming nihilism this sense of meaninglessness a void in their souls is that we haven't been able to bequeath to them rich deep traditions that are spiritual and social their political and personal their economic and s essential but at the center of them is the primacy of the moral and the spiritual and we can fight over how we understand and interpret the morality and the spirituality but at least that ought to be part and parcel of our pie today and let us be very honest I think one of the saddest things about our curriculum these days is that the arts and music is the last form of transcendence for so many young people these days because they're unchurched their own master on synagogue they're on temple and when they want to get some distance from their grief and objectify their sorrow it is the music but then you look at the quality of the music it's not Donny Hathaway you know what I mean yeah that Kurtis not the emotion that a dramatic sort of Delfonics not James Cleveland it's dumb down too often they've got their geniuses and their talents but who's running things who are they only got to the Recording Industry who are the plutocrats of the Recording Industry and live performance and radio its money driven all the way down and I've been blessed to teach in prisons for 37 years and I can see the shift in the hearts and minds and souls of those precious brothers made in the image of God many of them who have done things they shouldn't have done but they also can change done gangsta engage in gang activity also can be transformed but they're just hungry for how to do it wonderful song but a genius from New Orleans named Lil Wayne yeah you got a song cow that's Hamlet the greatest literary protagonist in the history of the modern world he suffers from the in capacity to love Harold Bloom we just lost the great Harold Bloom they dead out he's absolutely right Dostoevsky says in The Brothers Karamazov hail on earth ears those who live in such a way that they suffer from the incapacity to love that's what we're seeing more and more of the incapacity to love truth to love beauty the condition of all truth is to allow suffering to speak you don't want to hear anybody suffering you're gonna get truncated versions of yourself in the world Beauty always rooted is real he says in terror and trauma you're denying terror and trauma you're not gonna get beauty you're gonna have to lated moments of pleasure that you think have something to do with beauty that's the difference between the deodorized discourse of the market and the funky mess of life I come from funk master James Brown that's Bootsy Collins that's George Clinton we all emerge in our mamas wombs it's funky down there all that blood all that love our bodies on the way to culinary delight it to rest the worms that can be funky to what is the status of your soul thereafter but conception of Resurrection do you have what allows you to be able to persist in the name of a love and a justice that it makes very little sense and we should be very honest about this in terms of the best of American history that you think of a Frederick Douglass who terrorized and says I refuse to terrorize back I had to be Welles Barnett I'm traumatized I refuse to traumatize back Martin King John Coltrane I know I am hated given the dominance of white supremacy in the nation I refused to hate back I will engage in charitable Christian hatred I will hate the sin but still love the sinner and if in fact the history the best of black folk at the 244 years of being terrorized by slavery 89 years under the US Constitution now the hundred of Jim Crow and Jane crow of lynching of every two and a half days for 50 years some black body hanging from some tree that strange fruit two southern trees bear that Billie Holiday's thing about a Jewish brother me report writing the lyrics if black people have responded to that with a black version of the Ku Klux Klan there would have been a civil war every generation there'd be no American democracy at all Christian witness as Levin in a loaf the Christmas black Christmas have no monopoly on that cuz we got Christmas dogs and gangsters - it just tend not to be President when we had a black president and he was brilliant and poised and so forth I was highly critical of too close to Wall Street not tight enough to the homeowners and their working people too tied to those drones dropping bombs on folk in Libya in Afghanistan and Pakistan and for me a baby in Pakistan has exactly the same value as a baby in Texas I learned that in Vacation Bible School Jesus loves the little children all the children of the world red yellow black or white they are precious in His sight I'm a radical fundamentalist on that I'm a little across-the-board on that so that every flag is on it across every flag and that cross signifies unarmed truth and unconditional love manifesting to God in loved the world so much so much that Canosa takes place empties God's self for us making available this power to us to build on that in burn that of and to be then a university there's wedded to that kind of tradition and legacy takes tremendous audacity it's a beautiful audacity but it means there's a heavy every challenge in that regard I mean in a way Harvard and Princeton can get away with it because we shared our Christian origins and become so secular but it's fairly common stir that secularity itself can be thoroughly colonized has been a power spectacle image and in many ways dumb it ways it has we still got some secular brothers sisters who trying to cut against the grain but those of us who still want to be part of a Christian tradition with smiles on our faces we got to do it with joy you have to do it with joy if you don't have the joy in it did something is wrong but you ought to get ready to be lied on and undergo character assassination or some kind of a attack if not you know murder now somebody up here has got to say at least a good word for the market and since Cornell isn't very critical point that Cornell made when when he talked about the primacy of the spiritual moral this is the teaching of all the great traditions and it's certainly the treatment teaching of Christianity the Primus primacy everything else is relative to that everything else is under that and the way the flag is under the cross all flags are under the cross all vocations all callings are under the primacy of the spiritual on them and moral I join her van crystal later Ben crystal late very greater than crystal and giving two cheers for capitalism now not three because the market is not an end it some means it's like money it's like well it's like now it's like status it's like influence where we go wrong is when we get overly enthusiastic and imagine that the market is the arbiter of right and wrong we give it prongs that doesn't mean that we should go to the opposite extreme and imagine that we can or should do away with the market you know in all the years of Cornell and I have been working together I'm not quite sure I know we disagree about this I'm not quite sure exactly where the disagreement is but one way of putting it might be that Cornell tends to think that the market which he understands the importance of is a necessary evil I tend to think of it as a positive but relative good I think the market system of exchange has many virtues enhances human freedom enables needs to be met it is an engine of prosperity that lifts people out of posit poverty when it works right now that's not crony capitalism corny capital is not the market it's the opposite of the market but when we've got the real thing when we got the market operating has many good features but it's not ultimate and we don't want to go from one extreme say socialism on the one side so the opposite ultra libertarian lays a fair extreme where we put anything up for sale we'd imagine that the market gets to say and determine all features of our common social life there are good reasons for regulation of markets classically traditionally in our common law parlance these are reasons of public health safety and morals in the common good the market has to be regulated too because of something shouldn't be for sale babies shouldn't be for sale contrary to what Judge Posner argued a few years ago in the wall street want an adoption system based on the selling of babies now no they shouldn't be for sale certain things that you I don't think woman's body should be for sale in prostitution I don't think drugs should be for sale drug legalization a big controversy but I'm against it right I think that we could should regulate the market for moral reasons public health public safety and public morals and we need regulation of the market to prevent exploitation and abuse monopolization and and the restraints on trade that come with monopolization with price gouging with predatory lending there are all sorts of good reasons because the market is not a god the market is not ultimate it's a means so my view a good thing but it's not a thing that is subject to no regulation it's not a thing that determines what's right and wrong that the market produced a result does not mean the result is just that's I think where the issue is very hard core lays a fair advocates gonna say I understand is people want to argue with them want to think about what do yes I want to listen to him but I never persuaded me that the fact that the market generated an outcome means the outcome is just and yet I do not want to give up the market nor do I want to give up the idea that business can be a vocation not just a way of making money not just a job but a vocation what's a vocation what's the difference with a vocation and a job a vocation is a way of serving when your job becomes a vocation when you make a job a vocation you are serving and not just earning a living it's good to earn a living neither Cornell nor I are gonna say you shouldn't earn a living a good living we want you to put when once you make a lot of money and give a bunch of it back to Baylor they deserve it they give me a good education but when you're understanding business itself as a vocation you're seeing it as a way of serving and that's going to structure how you conduct your affairs in business so I don't want to treat business people as greedy or business people as bad people or even business as somehow inferior to higher Collings right because of the primacy of the spiritual and moral that doesn't mean that you all need to go become ministers and preachers priests know some of you are called to that I want you to be the best possible ministers and preachers but some of you are called to other vocations in law in medicine in business and those are callings those are vocations they are ways of serving and you can do an enormous amount of good for Humanity in any of them but you've got to keep things in order keep things in line keep things in perspective remember the unity of the virtues don't get so focused on one thing that it becomes wild and out of control and leads you down the wrong path keep everything in balance well now we should take a little minute well you go ahead yeah I think we actually agree more it's just that once we actually they bare which way we're going we tend to disagree that's why you would not be with brother Bernie the way I would yeah that's right you know what I mean that that the got to be a defense of personal liberties of private sectors and markets under certain kinds of regulation agree we agree with that across the board very much so Devils in the details absolutely because when you think of the primacy the more on the spiritual what was it about Jesus going to the temple and running out those money changes and in those first three synoptic Gospels John's got a different story about Lazarus heading to the cross that's one of the key reasons why he ends up on the cross now you forget at that time the temple was probably a combination of Hollywood Wall Street Harvard Princeton Baylor and the State Department Jesus is going in and saying these elites are too callous to the least of these the vulnerable the vincible and the Richard of the earth in a language of France it's not a political statement it's a moral spiritual witness that has political consequences so then the question becomes and this is I know the work that you've done could you and I very much kind of abolitionist in many ways when it comes to poverty you've been one of the rare conservative brothers who have been talking about poverty throughout your whole career you know but remember a lot of conservatives are not heard they talk about but they're not heard to talk that's true that's true Jack Kemp was another man and so forth or so on so that I would agree about the means but then when it comes to the ends you say well when we look at markets we really we know we don't have a free enterprise capitalism because these monopolies and oligopolies have a disproportionate amount of influence well yes it's often purchased right so you get businesses who want regulation because regulation prevents the upstart small guy from coming in and competing they can't afford the regulatory cost that can be absorbed by the Giants that's crony capital as crony capitalist which so what see when it comes to small scale markets yeah yeah I mean there are wonderful markets and then there's sick markets I mean health care is a sick market because if the only motivation is for the most was gonna be profit maximization and end up with almost 30 million of God's children who don't have access something is wrong they're not we live and and there I think there are legitimate differences that have to be aired and genuinely engaged that's right how much market and how much that's relevant because I think you can make mistakes in either oh yeah and the last thing we want is monopoly or concentration of power in the public sphere which is government or the private sphere which is these oligopolies of monopolies Chester can call that distributism oh I like Keith on that I like Gilbert Keith and Gilbert Keith would say over and over again why is it that in our churches we don't see the picture of Jesus chasing the money changers out of the church where's our Christology calm serene war every once in a while on the cross but even we Protestant unlike our Russian Orthodox we don't like Jesus on the cross too much and we don't have major rituals on that Saturday between Good Friday and Easter would what god is dead Russians stay there that's Dostoevsky Christian that he was the greatest critic of Christianity a Christian but he's Russian Orthodox he's Holy Saturday County Christian and in America we identify with winners so we just can't wait for Easter I mean you can drive by some of these churches and say he is risen on Friday having been crucified yeah I just want to win I just want a winner I just want number one no you let me neither we'd won we don't want to get into but you can't go up if you don't go down with him but that's a whole different thing but we're gonna open it up now absolutely we go open it up for dialogue because you have been very patient and uh who would like to leave might ask a question I don't hit it or their microphones out there someone leanness actually a student if possible if not just stand up and shout out it's just I know I see I see a hand over here oh he's got a microphone excellent Oh Mike Sisco might be but um both of you seem to be convinced that the purpose of discourse ultimately is to attain to the proximity of truth yes and it seems by implication that you would both hold that there is such a thing and that it can at least in part be known how does one carry on civil discourse in a in a conversation with someone who has abandoned the notion that there is such a thing as truth and that end or that it can be known at all yes very good question and and and it's not just an abstract question because a lot of people have abandoned the idea of truth this is the nihilism that that Cornell was it was mentioning it's a bleak picture when truth disappears from the picture because what do you have what's it all about when truth is considered no longer attainable it's not a thing not something you can chase that for because it's an illusion there's something else that always steps in power power when we don't have the common bond of truth all of us are just seeking to dominate to protect ourselves and we do that by dominating others we descend into Hobbes's war of all against all and what's life like in the state of nature some of you who study political theory what's life like in the state of nature when it's the war of all against all because there's no truth only power tell you what it's like Hobbes tells you what it's like it's poor solitary nasty brutish and short so there's a lot hanging on this question of truth so what do you do when your interlocutor says I'm not if Siddhant truth I don't believe in such a thing that's an illusion that's a myth that's just a way that you're trying to get power over me by claiming that your position is true there is no truth there's just power I think here our models gotta be Socrates engaging with source images racemic us is a kind of proto he's the guy who thinks might makes right there's only power kind of drawn into the dialogue all into the dialogue one question you might ask is well tell me this is it true or false that there's no such thing as truth you're gonna say that's a trick question okay fine but what's the answer there's not an answer to that question that tells us something do you have any reasons for believing what what Socratic exchanges what civil discourses is the giving and exchanging of reasons and and it's not just the giving because you got to take as well and by taking doesn't just mean listening tolerantly while the other guy talks it means seriously engaging what the other guy has to say and there's no alternative that it's just you got to keep circling around keep the conversation going keep raising the question why should I believe that why should I believe that there's only power what do we do with the great models of people who have been self sacrificial with the Dorothy days with the Mother Teresa's with the Martin Luther King's what do we how does our interlocutor our friend our dialogue partner account for them were they fools they weren't fools were they frauds if they weren't frauds were they just actually self-interested people who are getting their kicks out of doing good for other people that's just their way of getting their kicks Hitler got his kicks in a different way gotten by pushing people into ovens but there's no difference between the two that's the conversation you have to keep going you have to keep pressing Accord out what do you say no I think that there's a wonderful essay by the great Michael Byrne huge called can the skeptic live his or her skepticism because I think skepticism is a good thing when it's retail but not wholesale that there's certain truths of skepticism that allow our critical discourse to look at corners that are being hidden and concealed that's part of what a healthy robust conversation is all about but wholesale skepticism is to call all of this judgements in the all of the truth claims in the question and at that point they're spectators of life rather than participants because I asked them does that mean that the death of a mosquito on the wall has the same value as the death of your mama and they say yes I said okay all right it's clear that you really a spectator now you just being cute in the academic discourse philosophy is a way of life it's not just a mode of academic reflection that's right does that mean that the crushing of your child has the same status as the crushing of that roach in the corner yes because there's no such thing as truth when it comes to morality epistemology aesthetics or whatever okay you're still a spectator and I'm sending some folk to your house I'm gonna see what your responses see at that point as a matter of ortho practices not just orthodoxy because when you're also practice and you're involved in life and all of the mess and the funk that goes with it that's where you have to make your judgement in that context and so in that way is it true that there is no truth you still making a truth claim you're still a spectator there's a role for SPECT tutorial disposition in intellectual discourse you can get a certain detached objectivity that can be very important but when it comes to a substantial issues see when Jesus says I am the truth that's not orthodoxy that is an essential appropriation with a relationship with a God has been revealed that changes your life and lead you to bear fruits of love that's a way of being a participant in space in time which is what it is to wrestle with one's own humanity so that's one of the responses I would I would make to just such a move of them take another question microphones being handed down here I think to the front yes sir right here I'm sorry that lights in our eyes it's okay oh so you mentioned right right belief and right practice thinking about questions of right of right feeling so for example from from James Baldwin to be to be a Negro in this country and relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time as a Christian off that be more or less true of us and how does that affect the way that we enter into civil discourse - wonderful question you want to jump in I should I jump in there you go first on this I did mine well I've lived such a blessed life and one of my blessings was to see James Bond it's been time for James Bond genius that he was he wasn't in rage all the time no no he's drinking his cognac I didn't detect any rage I'm saying that he has a moral sensitivity to the suffering both death perpetrated on him and others that's the primacy of the moral and the spiritual I he'd lapse Christian but Christian him prematures did all of his agnostic writers and he knows that rage in righteous indignation is something that is not the most fundamental thing about him there's something deeper going on it comes out of a love it comes out of a care comes out of a concern it his laughter his sense of humor the incongruity that he's wrestling with that's not reducible to talk about rage so in that sense I would I would put that in that larger context righteous indignation back to Jesus in the temple that's righteous indignation that's not raw anger because there's a moral and spiritual dimension to it and and and and therefore I would want to push Baldwin on that especially the students read that's it what that means but I would go further than that say I think that any human being who aspires to integrity honesty decency all I have the same sensitivity to suffering you don't have to be black to respond to black people suffering I mean you got vanilla butter sauce was walking around I have to wait to feel rage until the injustice gets to their house one is about a nun Christians you can imagine but it's also just not humane we ought to be concerned about our suffering here and around the world but it's a righteous indignation that then is juxtaposed with these other things the humor the reflection the laughter the tears and so forth and so on the modalities of the human responses to a world a veil of Tears a valley of the shadow of death which is very much what so much of a life is but I want to go on too long Baelor can teach you in your courses of a lot of things that your mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and pastor back home and your mentors and those who those who brought you up can't teach you it's tough in economics and mathematics English literature history philosophy political science grandma might happen to be an expert on Plato and in any particular case but most most people don't have a grandparent or parent who's an expert on economics are on English literature or biology or whatever so Baylor can teach you these things but there's another kind of teaching that's not so much of the mind as it is of the will we might call it the tutoring of the emotions that Seiler can help with and all the intellectual stuff can help with that but more fundamentally here we learn from mom and dad and Grandma and Grandpa and passed her at home and the great aunt and the mentor and the coach people we look up to in the role models the Kings the Dorothy days the mother teresa's they teach us to make sure that our emotions are not ultimately in charge there's something else in charge Plato would put it in terms of reason that in the well-ordered soul in the well-ordered self and the well-ordered person there is emotion there is feeling there's passion but that passion is not undirected or untutored or uncontrolled it's controlled by the rational part of the human being the trouble happens when things flip when now passion is in charge and reason is subjugated to passion at this point we're gonna do whatever rage or envy or lust or greed calls us to do and what role will reason play it will be passions ingenious servant it'll be the slave of the passions to cook up rationalizations reason rationale rationalizations for behavior that would otherwise be judged to be morally wrong because greedy lustful envious angry and so forth so at least in the Christian tradition we don't suppose that emotion should be eliminated as in some forms of Buddhism for example or in strict very strict forms of stoicism not saying that the purpose of life is to eliminate passion no it's to tutor passion make sure that passion is taught it's under control the object of life I mean the job the task that we all have is to be masters of ourselves masters of ourselves and that means we and not our passions decide what to do we direct our passions our passions do not direct us so there will be righteous anger there righteous comes before the anger it's the rationally justified position that shapes the emotional response it's not rage calling the tune because of course that's the road to help once that is in place where rage or greed or any other emotion is in control then Katie bar the door there's nothing to sing no there's no principle for why we stopped and very bad things can done this is this is how we end up with retaliatory wars the Cornel mentioned I grew up in West Virginia and Appalachian we were the we're the place that gave you the Hatfields in the McCoys within two generations nobody can remember what the rage was all about but they're still killing each other at every opportunity they have because we hate them and they hate us passion is totally in control of that situation there is no reason there is no self-mastery Madam President we at the our do we have time for another question [Applause]

Channel: Baylor University

Views: 22,281

Keywords: baylor university, robert p. george, cornel west, civil discourse

Id: YwBxVjkOeV0

Length: 94min 19sec (5659 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019