George Grant (philosopher)

George Parkin Grant
Born 13 November 1918
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died 27 September 1988
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Era 20th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School
Main interests
Notable ideas

George Parkin Grant, OC, FRSC (November 13, 1918 – September 27, 1988) was a Canadian philosopher, professor, and political commentator. He is best known for his Canadian nationalism, political conservatism, and his views on technology, pacifism and Christian faith. He is often seen as one of Canada's most original thinkers.

Academically, his writings express a complex meditation on the great books, and confrontation with the great thinkers, of Western Civilization. His influences include the "ancients" such as Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine of Hippo, as well as "moderns" like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Leo Strauss, James Doull, Simone Weil, and Jacques Ellul.

Although he is considered the main theoretician of Red Toryism, he expressed dislike of the term when applied to his deeper philosophical interests, which he saw as his primary work as a thinker.[1] Recent research on Grant uncovers his debt to a neo-Hegelian idealist tradition, Canadian Idealism, that had a major influence on many Canadian scholars and Canadian political culture more broadly.[2]

Family legacy

Grant was born in Toronto, the son of Maude Erskine (née Parkin) and William Lawson Grant.[3] He came from a distinguished Canadian family of scholars and educators. His father was the principal of Upper Canada College, and his paternal grandfather George Monro Grant was the dynamic principal of Queen's University. His maternal grandfather was Sir George Robert Parkin, also a principal at Upper Canada College, whose daughter Alice married Vincent Massey, the Canadian diplomat and first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. His nephew is public scholar and Canadian former Leader of the Opposition Michael Ignatieff.

Education and teaching

Grant was educated at Upper Canada College and Queen's University from which he graduated with a History degree. He attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, a trust his grandfather, George Parkin, had headed at one time. Upon winning the Rhodes Scholarship, he enrolled towards a degree in Law at Oxford, but after World War II ended, and Grant had experienced a deeper personal bond with Christianity, he decided to change studies. His D.Phil. research was interrupted by the war, and he was already teaching in Dalhousie University's Philosophy department when he completed his thesis, "The Concept of Nature and Supernature in the Theology of John Oman", during a year-long sabbatical in 1950. Grant was a faculty member at Dalhousie twice (1947–1960, 1980–1988), York University (1960-1; he resigned before teaching) and McMaster University's Religion department (1961–1980), which he founded and led in the 1960s and early 70s.[4] In 1977, he became an Editorial Advisor of the journal Dionysius, which published his essay Nietzsche and the Ancients: Philosophy and Scholarship in 1979.[5]

In George Grant: A Biography his struggles as a self-taught philosopher are highlighted.[6]

Grant was not readily accepted into the traditional academic community of scholars in Canada. Resistance was provoked by some of Grant's less 'progressive' stances, most notably the definition of philosophy he published in 1949: "The study of philosophy is the analysis of the traditions of our society and the judgment of those traditions against our varying intuitions of the Perfections of God". Especially angered and upset was Fulton Anderson of the University of Toronto’s Philosophy department. Grant’s definition is telling, in that it marks his unique take on the philosophy's human perspective, which did not necessarily include assumptions regarding the 'objectivity' of science, or the blind acceptance of the Enlightenment’s Fact-value distinction.

Throughout his career Grant was seen as a unique voice within academic institutions, and thus had strong appeal beyond the strict 'community of scholars'. In fact, Grant criticized the trend in universities to move away from the 'unity' of the traditional academy to a 'multi-versity' comprising separate hives of undergraduate students, graduate students, professional faculties and professors (years before American Allan Bloom would become famous for similar themes).[7]

Politics and philosophy

In 1965, Grant published one of his most widely known works, Lament for a Nation, in which he deplored what he claimed was Canada's inevitable cultural absorption by the United States, a phenomenon he saw as an instance of 'continentalism'. He argued that the homogenizing effect in current affairs during the period when it was written would see the demise of Canadian cultural nationality. The importance of the text is reflected in its selection in 2005 as one of The Literary Review of Canada's 100 most important Canadian books. Grant articulated a political philosophy which was becoming known as Red Toryism. It promoted the collectivist and communitarian aspects of an older English conservative tradition, which stood in direct opposition to the individualist traditions of liberalism, and subsequently neo-liberalism.[8] The subjects of his books, essays, public lectures, and radio addresses (many on CBC Radio in Canada) quite frequently combined philosophy, religion, and political thought. Grant strongly critiqued what he believed were the worst facets of modernity, namely unbridled technological advancement and a loss of moral foundations to guide humanity. He defined 'philosophy' as the search for the "purpose and meaning and unity of life".[9] What he proposed in place of the modern spirit was a synthesis of Christian and Platonic thought which embodied contemplation of the 'good'. It is a synthesis that was given form by his neo-Hegelian Canadian idealism, which had been a part of his upbringing (his grandfather had been student of John Caird and a close friend of John Watson) but only really took explicit form when he was introduced to Hegel's work by James Doull.[10]

His first book, Philosophy in the Mass Age (1959), was his most explicitly Hegelian book. It began as a series of CBC lectures, and in it he posed the question of how human beings can reconcile moral freedom with acceptance of the view that an order exists in the universe beyond space and time. He applied a neo-Hegelian concept of history to the modern dilemma of reconciling freedom and order.[11] He saw history as the progressive development of humanity's consciousness of freedom and argued that Canada's unique combination of British traditional institutions and American individualism put it at the forefront of this final stage of history. In 1965, furious that the Liberal government had agreed to accept nuclear weapons, he published Lament for a Nation. At this point, Grant had been influenced by Leo Strauss and his neo-Hegelian conception of historical progress became more restrained, losing the hope that we had reached or were on the verge of reaching the fullest consciousness of freedom. Lament for a Nation created a sensation with its argument that Canada was destined to disappear into a universal and homogeneous state whose centre was the United States. The idea of progress had lost its connection to our moral development and had been co-opted into a utilitarian mastery of nature to satisfy human appetites. Technology and Empire (1969), a collection of essays edited by poet and friend Dennis Lee, deepened his critique of technological modernity; and Time as History, his 1969 Massey Lectures, explained the worsening predicament of the West through an examination of the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche. Grant's works of the 1960s had a strong influence on the nationalist movement of the 1970s, though many of the New Left were uncomfortable with Grant's conservatism, his conventional Anglican Tory beliefs, Christian-Platonist perspective, and his uncompromising position against abortion.[12]

Grant's last work was Technology and Justice (1986), which he prepared together with his wife, Sheila Grant. His three-decades-long meditation on French philosopher Simone Weil's works led to the conclusion that there were fundamental moral and spiritual flaws in Western civilization, consigning it to a fate of inevitable collapse. Nevertheless, Grant affirmed his belief that a better civilization could eventually replace it.[13]

Honours

In 1981, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for having "become a major force in Canadian intellectual life"[14] and was also awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Pierre Chauveau Medal. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

In 2005 Grant's book Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism was voted one of The Literary Review of Canada's 100 most important Canadian books.

List of works

Works as subject

Articles on subject

References

  1. ↑ "Was George Grant a Red Tory?" Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics. Angus, Ian, Ronald Dart and Randy Peg Peters (editors). University of Toronto Press, (2006).
  2. ↑ Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011, 107-8.
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ George Grant: A Biography. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993
  5. ↑ http://classics.dal.ca/Journals/Dionysius/Index_to_Volumes_I-X.php
  6. ↑ William Christian
  7. ↑ George Grant, "The Teaching of Philosophy in English-Speaking Canada," draft copy, (24 October 1950), Hilda Neatby Papers, University of Saskatchewan Archives, II. 93
  8. ↑ George Grant, Lament for a Nation. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995, 57-63.
  9. ↑ Grant "What is Philosophy" (George Grant Reader) p. 34
  10. ↑ Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom: C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011, 107-8.
  11. ↑ Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom. p. 117.
  12. ↑ http://www.uffl.org/vol%208/mathie8.pdf
  13. ↑ http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/george-grant
  14. ↑ http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=675

External links