Challenge.

Robert George on truth-seeking and freedom ...

When I was a sophomore in college, I was persuaded of a position that I'd never even considered before, which is that the truth has intrinsic as well as instrumental value. In fact, its most fundamental value is its intrinsic value, which is not to deny that it has important instrumental value as well. But I became convinced that it was a basic, irreducible, constitutive aspect of the meaning and fulfillment of human beings: as rational creatures, as thinking beings, as agents. So that makes me want to know the conditions that have to be in place for people to look for the truth and find it. Well, they need to be free to look for the truth. They need to be free to speak the truth as best they understand the truth, subject to revision in light of counter-argument and evidence and reasons that critics might have. But you can't be a truth seeker, much less a truth speaker, if your speech—your right to think for yourself, to inquire, to express your views, to engage with others to put your ideas on the table—is restricted. I think that's the essence of the case for free speech. And it's important in a lot of areas, including economic matters. But it's really important with institutions whose whole reason for being is truth-seeking: universities, colleges, research institutes. And it's really important in government, in politics—not exclusively, but especially when you have a democratic republic, where the people are supposed to rule themselves and make good decisions for themselves. 

Now, you have to recognize that when you allow free speech, the demagogues have got it the same as the statesman. Huey Long has it just as much as Abraham Lincoln does. And here I'm operating on what you might call either a “bet” or “faith.” I prefer to think of it as faith but it's not certain either way. My bet, or faith, is that truth has a certain power and luminosity. That doesn't guarantee that it will win out every time. What it does mean is that we are more likely to get to it or nearer to it—grasp it a bit more fully—in circumstances of freedom than we are in circumstances where everyone is required to conform to a particular point of view, and where the institutions of society and we ourselves reinforce each other in what we already believe. In academia, groupthink and conformist culture are much too common, as you know, and I can tell you it is toxic to truth-seeking. 

Freedom doesn't mean you're going to get the truth. You might get things really profoundly wrong in circumstances of freedom. But I consider those circumstances much healthier for the truth-seeking enterprise than when those circumstances disappear, even if it's not because of course of laws or rules. A university might have great free speech rules. But if the culture is a culture of groupthink and conformism, that is absolutely toxic to the truth seeking process. Nobody learns anything. People are reinforced in what they believe whatever they happen to believe. A lot of what we believe at any particular moment—what right now, every human being on Earth, right this moment, has in his or her head—is wrong. That's because we're fallible, of course. We're going to get some things wrong, but our only hope of moving from false beliefs in any particular domain to true ones—swapping out the false ones, getting rid of them and getting some true beliefs in their place—is if we allow ourselves to be challenged, and if we're in conditions where we are challenged, and eventually able, at least, to challenge ourselves. My real goal for my students and myself is to get ourselves to the point where we're not only open to the challenge from others, but we're willing to be our own best critics, to be self-critical to challenge ourselves.