Robert: Cornel, it's such a joy to be with you here at the American Enterprise Institute
in their wonderful new building.
The lead gift for the building was given by Mr. Dan Danielo, who's a great supporter of
AEI and of good public policy initiatives and of intellectual life, so we wanted to
pay tribute to him.
Such a delight to be with Arthur Brooks, the president of AEI.
Cornel: It was nice to meet him.
Robert: Someone thinks about many of the same issues that we think about, the importance
of human dignity and a founding economic and public policy initiatives on the principle
of human dignity.
It's always so great to be together with you, where we can continue this wonderful dialogue
that we've been carrying on in friendship.
Cornel: It's been almost 10 years now.
Robert: Almost 10 years, 2007 was the first time that we...
Cornel: We started the other day.
Robert: ...we taught together.
Next year will be our 10th anniversary, my brother.
Cornel: Now, when Andrew brought us together, was that 2006, you think?
Robert: Yeah, it must have been 2006.
Cornel: When we first had that dialogue.
Robert: Andrew Perlmutter was a student in the religion department.
He had worked with you in one or two of your courses.
He had one or two of my courses and he was starting a new magazine, the campus magazine.
Cornel: Green Light.
Robert: The Green Light.
Cornel: It came from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The Great Gatsby.
Robert: I think that's right.
Yeah, I think that's very appropriate for Princeton.
Cornel: Yes, yes.
Robert: One of the features of the magazine was going to be an interview of one professor
by another professor.
And so for the inaugural issue, they invited you to be the interviewer and they gave you
the right to pick who your interview subject would be.
And you did me the...
We didn't even know each other very well.
You gave me the honor of picking me as your interview subject.
I remember Andrew coming knocking on the door and saying, "Professor George, would you be
willing to be interviewed by Professor West?"
Of course I said, "Well, I'd be very honored to be interviewed by Professor West."
I remember the occasion when you came together with Andrew, he had a tape recorder.
One of his old-fashioned cassette recorders that would be an antique today.
He had a photographer with him.
I think we were supposed to talk for an hour, and we ended up talking for four hours.
And then I said, "I have to go have dinner.
My wife Cindy's going to be waiting for me, wondering what happened to me".
You walked me down to my car where I held my hand on the car latch for about another
half hour.
Cornel: We had another 30-minute dialogue.
We kept going at it.
Robert: While we kept going at it.
Cornel: I remember.
I do recall.
I do recall.
I said, "Now, I think we've got something special here though," because there's no doubt
our spirits and our souls resonated.
Intellectually, we were just on fire talking about the great classical and canonical texts.
I think...
Robert: That's when we decided to teach together.
Cornel: We figured, we've got to teach a class together, a great books class.
Robert: Yeah.
Cornel: From Plato through Newman all the way up to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Robert: I remember that very well.
For the first class, you chose six books and I chose six books and we decided that we would
each choose books that were important in our own intellectual odyssey.
Then after that, we just chose all the books together for the future seminars that we taught.
Cornel: That's 10 years.
Well, nine years now.
Robert: Yeah, almost 10 years.
Do you remember some of the authors from the very first one?
Of course we had Plato's "Gorgias."
Cornel: We always started with Plato.
Robert: That text, the "Gorgias" had been very important for me in my intellectual journey.
That's what opened my mind to philosophy when I was an undergraduate at Swarthmore.
You recommended Luther's "Babylonian Captivity of the Church", which I had never read.
Cornel: I forgot.
I forgot.
Robert: Yeah, and only when I read it that I finally understand how one man, an obscure
monk, could turn the whole of Christian civilization in Europe on its head and cause a revolution,
a reformation, because it is such a powerful...
Of course, as a Catholic I needed to hear that.
Cornel: It's coming at you.
Robert: That was celebrating the 500th anniversary.
I don't know if I'm celebrating, but it's the 500th anniversary of the reformation.
But you introduced me to that text and that shed a lot of light on the history of Christian
civilization in the west and how the reformation actually happened.
Let's see, what else did we read.
We read Hayek and we read Marx.
Cornel: We could have read Hayek and Marx.
Robert: We read Marx's "Communist Manifesto."
Cornel: We read both.
Absolutely.
Robert: That's exactly right.
I remember one of the books you chose was Leo Strauss' "Natural Right and History."
Cornel: Yes.
Classic.
Robert: That's right.
Now, people would be surprised about that because they think, "Cornel West, he's a
big leftist.
He's gonna hate Leo Strauss.
Why would he insist on reading Leo Strauss?"
But what people don't know about you, my brother, is that you got a deep appreciation of the
conservative tradition.
Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin.
Cornel: Eric Voegelin.
Robert: Burke.
Cornel: Edmund Burke.
Robert: Yeah.
I'm outing you now in front of all these people.
Cornel: No.
I tell the world.
I tell the world.
But you insisted on Martin Luther King Jr.
Robert: I did, because I'd been teaching "Letter from the Burmingham Jail."
It was a very important text for me.
And of course it's important to the history of the civil rights movement, but it's actually
a work of political philosophy, one that draws on many of the other works that we were reading.
It draws on Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
It's an explication at a popular level, it wasn't just for scholars, an explication of
the tradition of natural law.
And as you know, I've devoted my career to the idea of natural law theory, which goes
back through the middle ages and the Christian period, back all the way to Plato and Aristotle
and to the Roman philosophers and jurists.
So King is a kind of synthesizer and summarizer in the context of the civil rights struggle
of these treasures of civilization that give us reason to believe that there are standards
above the merely human law, moral standards, principles of natural law, under which the
human law always stands in judgement.
Cornel: Absolutely.
Robert: That's how we can judge human law to be good or bad, right or wrong, just or
unjust.
If it weren't for those standards, as King points out, then there would be no saying
that Hitler was wrong or Hitler was bad, or that Mother Theresa is good.
Cornel: That's right.
Robert: We'd be left in a kind of swamp of relativism and ultimately nihilism.
Cornel: One of the things that we had been able to experience together is the awakening
and coming alive of the minds, hearts and souls of the students.
Robert: That's the joy.
Cornel: For freshmen, the juniors, and seniors, and sophomores.
Robert: That's the joy of teaching, yeah.
Cornel: Also, I get a chance to observe you in the classroom, as such a masterful teacher
weaving these ideas and arguments.
I mean, you reflect on the "Communist Manifesto" and the students wonder, "We thought Professor
George was conservative."
Oh no, the critique is there, but let's put forward the strongest version of the argument
that you see in this text.
Robert: Well, right back at you brother, because you do exactly the same thing.
Cornel: I try to.
I try to.
Robert: That's right, and I think that's what teachers ought to be doing.
When we approach an important text, whether we agree with it or we don't agree with it,
the first we should be asking is, "What is to be learned from the mind behind that text?"
I think about that with Nietzsche all the time, Nietzsche haunts me.
Cornel: Yes, and for good reason.
Robert: Because I deeply, profoundly, disagree with him and yet I recognize the power of
his intellect and the power of his arguments, and I know I'm not entitled to my position
until I have a good answer for Nietzsche.
In reading Marx, I want to present it in its most favorable light, even though I reject
it utterly, but we did it, I think, the way you should do it.
And we always do it the way you should do it.
We presented Marx but we also presented Hayek.
So students got to see both positions, the profound critique of communism that you have
in Hayek along with the case being made for communism by Marx himself, or Marx and Engels
in that case, in the "Communist Manifesto".
Cornel: Absolutely.
You know I think one of the things that brings us together is this fundamental commitment
to looking at the world through spiritual and moral ends, so that even at disagreements
about policies, with our politicians and so forth that, I think in the end, there is a
deep similarity in terms of our commitment to the least of these, a commitment to the
orphan and the widow and fatherless and motherless and poor.
Robert: We're both deeply rooted in the prophetic tradition of Judaism and of course as we're
fellow Christians, so of course, the first question we always wanna ask about, for example,
a policy will be the impact on the poorest, the weakest, the most vulnerable members of
the community.
Cornel: That's right.
Robert: Now, conservatives and people on the left would have different policy prescriptions,
but they're fundamentally about means and not about ends if you believe in the principle
of the profound, inherent and equal dignity of each other.
I remember that they...
Cornel: Reaching out their mogul day.
Robert: The family.
Cornel: Absolutely.
Robert: Yeah.
I think that's exactly right.
The other we recognize, and this was pointed out in the dialogue we did this morning for
the American Enterprise Institute, the public dialogue that we did...
I think I noted that Camus, to take an example, someone who was not a Christian, who was not
a theist, who was not a believer, nevertheless recognized that the project and challenge
of leading human life was fundamentally a spiritual project and challenge.
It was a search for meaning, a search for transcendence.
Camus, although not a believer, was willing to engage the great existential questions
because he knew that the human person was not reduceable to merely material things or
mere appetites or feelings or emotions.
He recognized a spiritual element of the human being that could never simply rest, that was
always reaching out for something transcendent, something beyond.
He didn't find it in the God of classical theism where I would find it and where you
would find it, we as Christians.
Cornel: Right, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Robert: But nevertheless, he knew that that's what the quest was.
He knew that the quest was a quest for...
Cornel: It's fascinating because you and I had no idea that 10 years later, we would
be living in the age of Trump.
Robert: Yeah, that's for sure.
Cornel: No idea.
And so, on the one hand, you figure, okay, in the Republican party, you've got a number
of candidates.
And you make your choice as Democratic party, you got a number of candidates, you make your
choices.
You and I chose candidates that didn't win in the primary, and then we had to choose
are we going with the two candidates that in our view, don't meet the criteria of integrity?
Robert: We were in the same position, because the question was did Hillary Clinton or Donald
Trump, either one, reach the threshold of decency and integrity required to be President
of the United States.
Cornel: Required for the office.
Robert: I'm sure you were under the same pressure that I was under.
You as a former Bernie Sanders supporter, me as a former Ted Cruz supporter.
Cornel: That's right.
Robert: We were under the same pressure to go along, to join the team, to conform, and
we were under the same threats.
If you don't, you'll be an outsider.
If you don't, you're excommunicated from the movement, from the club.
And yet, I admire you.
Cornel: I was not surprised.
I was not surprised, and you stood your ground.
Robert: Yeah, as you did as well.
Cornel: You stood your ground.
Robert: As you did as well.
Of course, now, you've been doing it for years as a critic from the left of the Obama administration.
I know that you are under tremendous pressure and criticism for not going along with Obama,
for your willingness to criticize publicly the first Black American president.
But, you were willing to do it even though you knew that it meant you weren't gonna get
invitations to the White House, you were not going to be an insider, you weren't going
to have the status that you might otherwise have enjoyed.
You weren't going to be on MSNBC every night and all that stuff.
Cornel: And you would have done the same thing to the first president from West Virginia,
first Catholic.
Robert: I like to think I would have.
Cornel: Whatever, you know what I mean?
Because as a matter, we're fallible and finite and fall, so we fall on our faces.
But we really tried to the best of our ability, and this is when we help each other in this
regard, to trying to sustain our quest for integrity, honesty, and decency.
It's a precious quest, and it's not pure.
It's not pristine, but it has much to do with how we were raised.
It has much to do with the choices we make in terms of our religious Christian faith.
It has something to do with the traditions that we choose to be a part of, and also how
we choose to die, that we intend to be faithful unto death.
Robert: That's what it's all about.
Think of just how precious integrity is, and this I try to impart to our young people.
I know you do as well.
Everything else can be taken from us, our material possessions can be taken from us.
Our liberty can be taken.
We may be thrown in jail.
I was wondering whether they're keeping Guantanamo open for the two of us.
Whoever won the election might want to take advantage of Guantanamo.
They can take away your standing in society.
All of these things, all of these goods can be taken away, the one thing that nobody can
take away from you is your integrity.
The only way you lose it is if you give it up by your free choices and actions because
you value wealth or power, status or prestige, your influence more than you value your integrity.
That's why I say that the worst form of slavery, the most abject form of slavery is slavery
to self, it's to be under the control of your desires and feelings and emotions and unable
to control them.
The physical slave is in a terrible, unjust condition.
His freedom has been taken away.
His family may be separated, sold down the river.
His material possessions are not even his material possessions, but he can still have
his integrity because no master, no tyrant can take that internal thing away from you,
but you can give it up.
And, you cannot be in slavery, you can be rich.
You can be powerful.
You can be respected and yet have no integrity because you gave up your integrity.
It's such a precious thing.
It can't be given up for anything.
Cornel: That's a message that is more relevant now than ever.
Robert: Yeah.
Absolutely.
Because the incentives...
Cornel: Market forces have taken over.
Robert: The incentives to give up your integrity are very powerful.
Cornel: Very powerful.
Robert: We want to be somebody.
We want to be respected and we want to be admired.
Cornel: Included, part of the in-crowd.
Robert: Part of the in-crowd.
The pressure to conform, even where conforming means abandoning integrity...
Cornel: That's exactly right.
Robert: ...is very powerful.
I think the pressure on young people is the worst.
They're barely formed.
They're barely adults and this pressure is bearing down on them to conform in order to
get ahead, to stay part of the in-crowd, to be regarded as sophisticated.
But of course, we as Christians, we have the example of Jesus, who told us, if we want
to be his followers, don't expect power and influence and wealth and prestige and status.
Cornel: That's right, and pick up your cross.
Robert: Take off your cross and follow me.
Cornel: No, that's very real.
Robert: It wasn't supposed to be easy.
Cornel: That's very real.
The examples make a difference though when you think of those in our own life.
I have been blessed to meet your father, your family, and they are exemplars of integrity,
so I can part see from whence you come.
But then, you chose to follow that trajectory.
You could've chosen something else.
Robert: Examples are important.
You've had them in your life with your father and your mother.
Cornel: Yes.
Robert: Clifton and Irene.
Cornel: Absolutely.
Robert: We've all had them in terms of figures like Dorothy Day, who both of us admire.
Cornel: Yes.
Towering figure.
Robert: We rely on that.
I think this is why saints are important in the Christian faith.
They're exemplars.
Cornel: Those are grand exemplars.
Robert: They're not perfect.
They're made of flesh and blood the way we are.
Stained of original sin just the way we are.
Cornel: That's right.
That's right.
Robert: I mean think of... 11 of the 12 apostles, when Jesus was being tried and persecuted
and crucified, they fled.
Cornel: They fled.
Robert: They fled.
Peter was warming his hands in front of the fire and the servant girls says, "Surely,
you're one of this man's disciples," and he said, "I don't even know the man."
Cornel: No, no, no, didn't know him.
I don't know him.
You're right.
Robert: But, like all of us, they fell, but then they got up and dusted themselves back
up.
They might have fallen again.
They get up and try again.
Fail, try again, fail try again.
Cornel: Samuel Baker - "try again, fail again, fail better".
Try again, fail again, fail.
And he's a lapsed Protestant Christian and a Catholic.
Robert: The role models are terribly, terribly important.
Cornel: But they did make a difference.
They really...
One of the things we didn't get a chance to talk too much about upstairs was I was gonna
invoke Emerson and his Representative Men text, which is representative of persons,
what it means to be an exemplar.
My little brother Jeff Styles has been thinking much about this.
Again, for his building, for his different lectures.
Robert: Yeah.
Of course, Al Rabbatore, our friend and colleague Al Rabbatore has a book.
Cornel: On the American prophets.
Robert: On the prophets, American prophets.
Cornel: For text.
In fact, they are meeting today, Al Rabbatore, Jeff Styles, Eddie Gloy.
And they said, "You must come, brother West."
I said, "No, I wouldn't mind brother Robbie at AEI".
I was going to miss that.
But the same issue, how do we come to terms with these exemplars of high quality, of spirit,
mind, intellect, courage, in our own times?
Robert: Yeah.
This is one of the problems that I saw with our young people with Clinton and Trump, because
they were bad role models.
Cornel: Yeah.
Just not good.
Robert: No, I wish president Trump the best.
I mean he is now our president.
We have to wish that he seeks good ends and that he succeeds, and I think we need to be
prepared to help him if he's prepared to...
Cornel: Yeah, if he's moving in the right direction and so forth.
Robert: ...to move in the right direction and yet the model, the example that was set,
the line, by both them, the simulation and deception.
Cornel: That's true.
Robert: The terrible things that Trump said about women and Muslims and John McCain.
Cornel: Mexicans.
What he said about John McCain...
Robert: Carly Fiorina.
Cornel: I know.
I know.
Even Ted Cruz.
What he said about Ted Cruz's father.
Robert: What he said about Ted Cruz's father, yeah.
I don't wanna beat up...
I mean he's our president now.
I hope he's reformed, but the example...
Cornel: No, but I mean we'll see.
We'll see, we'll see.
Robert: If people like this get ahead, that sets an example for young people about how
you get...
It was always terrible about the Bill Clinton administration.
It would have been terrible about a Hillary Clinton administration.
I fear it's gonna be terrible about a Trump administration, so what young people need
is good roles models, models of integrity, of self-sacrifice, of decency.
Cornel: Exactly, exactly.
And that's part of what we were talking about upstairs, about the spiritual black out.
Robert: You should say more about that.
Cornel: What it really means to live in a culture, it's experiencing the relative eclipse
of integrity, honesty and decency, in which the rule of money, especially big money, carries
with it an attendant culture of cupidity, which is love of money, of mendacity.
You can lie and do anything you want to gain assets to money, and venality in which you
sell your soul for money.
That culture now is seeping in every nook and cranny of our souls, and especially the
souls of our precious young people.
That kind of soulcraft, of those smartness and dollars rather than wisdom and justice,
is very dangerous.
I don't think a Democratic experiment can survive based on that kind of cold soulcraft.
Robert: I think there is a very deep spiritual problem, but I think it goes deeper than desire
for money.
I think it's the desire for the sort of thing that money gives you in a society like ours:
influence, status, prestige, being somebody, counting, being important.
Most people I know, even those who are too occupied with getting money, and there's nothing
wrong in itself with getting money.
I mean what would we do without it?
We have responsibilities.
We have family responsibilities.
And many people, this is a country in which so many philanthropists have done so many
great things with money.
Cornel: Well, that's true.
That's true.
Robert: We have reason for great gratitude and many...
Cornel: The Gates family and others have made philanthropic contributions.
Robert: We praised Dan Danielo this morning for the great building that he gave to AEI.
But I think the problem is people needing to feel as though they matter, needing to
feel that they're important, not understanding that you're importance doesn't have to do
with how much influence you have or what your social status is.
The spiritual danger here is nihilism.
It's imagining that unless we gain the status, the prestige, the influence that people now
strive so much for and that money sometimes brings, or sometimes obtainable in other ways,
including by cheating, or by lying or by deceiving, then we are just nobody.
We don't count that there's nothing else there.
There's a lack of appreciation of the inherent dignity of the person and appreciation by
the person himself of his own dignity and his appreciation of the dignity, the inherent
dignity of other people.
Cornel: Of the other people too.
That is a profound spiritual and moral crisis, profound.
Robert: Well, Cornel, we're gonna have to wrap up our conversation.
We got to get you on the road back up to New York.
Cornel: Yeah.
This is good stuff like always, my brother.
Robert: Yes.
It's been so wonderful to be with you.
God bless you.
Cornel: I'm telling you.
Good God Almighty though.
Robert: Let's keep it up.
Cornel: We will, until death.
Robert: Amen.
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