# Robert George **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 23, 2009, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288 "2009-12-23T04:25:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Piker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@Piker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Piker)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/1 "2009-12-23T04:25:19Z")
So the New York Times Magazine had a [long write up](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20george-t.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all) on Robert George, a Princeton Professor who appears to be on the vanguard of the ecumenical Christian conservative movement. As a committed secular rationalist, I savor the opportunity to read and study serious, intellectual writing in support of the traditional social conservative touchstones, i.e. abortion, gay marriage, etc. No Bible thumping Palinism here. George is one of the three co-authors of the “Manhattan Declaration”, which has been brought up in another thread here in Great Debates. Posters there, last I checked, are going back and forth on gay marriage. I’m more interested in a particular question that has been gnawing at me since reading the piece. George is described to describe Moral Philosophy as > [@](#): > > a contest between the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the Scottish enlightenment thinker David Hume. > > Aristotelians, like St. Thomas Aquinas, hold that there is an objective moral order. Human reason can see it. And we have the free will to follow or not. “In a well-ordered soul, reason’s got the whip hand over emotion,” George told the seminar, in a favorite formulation borrowed from Plato. Humeans — and in George’s view, modern liberals are usually Humeans — disagree. Against Aristotle, Hume argued that the universe includes facts but not values. You cannot derive moral conclusions from studying the world, an “ought” from an “is.” There is no built-in, objective reason for me to choose one goal over another — the goals of Mother Teresa over the goals of Adolf Hitler, in George’s hypothetical. Reason, then, is merely a tool of whatever desire strikes my fancy. “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them,” George said, paraphrasing Hume, just as he does in seemingly every essay or lecture he writes. > > In George’s view, if I have no rational basis for picking one goal over another, then I have no free choice, only predetermined “passions” — the result of genetics, a blow to the head, whatever made me prefer either curing the sick or killing the Jews. We have reason and free choice, he teaches, or we have amorality and determinism. What I don’t get is this: George posits that the Humean conception of the universe is inferior because it relegates morality to the “predetermined passions” that guide human agency in the absence of clear moral conclusions. But in his description of the superior, Aristotelian version of the universe, humans still have agency, still have choice; we have the ability to follow, or not to follow, the objective social order that “human reason can see”. How come our choice to follow that objective social order is not subject to the same “predetermined passions” that render morality in the Humean conception pointless? What would George’s response to my question be? ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/2 "2009-12-23T06:14:58Z")
George would direct you towards the end of the article: > [@](#): > > It is a debate at least as old as the Reformation, when Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church and insisted that reason was so corrupted that faith in the divine was humanity’s only hope of salvation. (Until relatively recently, contemporary evangelicals routinely leveled the same charge at modern Catholics.) **“This is a serious issue, and if I am wrong, this is where I am wrong,” George acknowledges**. Me, I really wouldn’t care what George’s response would be, as I’d be eagerly awaiting his response to my question, “why are you attributing such nonsense to David Hume?” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/3 "2009-12-23T06:20:57Z")
Send not to know for Hume the bell tolls… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/4 "2009-12-23T06:30:07Z")
OK, I’m Donne here… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/5 "2009-12-23T14:36:52Z")
That’s a Locke. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/6 "2009-12-23T15:56:14Z")
Those last three posts epitomize why I spend most of my time here. Bravo, fellas! ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/7 "2009-12-23T21:53:50Z")
They epistomize it for me, too. . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2009, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/robert-george/522288/8 "2009-12-23T22:04:50Z")
> [@Piker](#): > > So the New York Times Magazine had a [long write up](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20george-t.html?src=sch&pagewanted=all) on Robert George, a Princeton Professor who appears to be on the vanguard of the ecumenical Christian conservative movement. “Ecumenical” in the sense of including both Protestants and Catholics, or what?