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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
SERIES EDITORS: DAVID F. HARDWICK · LESLIE MARSH
Reading George Grant
in the 21st Century
Edited by
Tyler Chamberlain
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Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
Series Editors
David F. Hardwick, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine,
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Leslie Marsh, Department of Economics, Philosophy and Political
Science, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, BC, Canada
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This series offers a forum to writers concerned that the central presuppositions of the liberal tradition have been severely corroded, neglected, or
misappropriated by overly rationalistic and constructivist approaches.
The hardest-won achievement of the liberal tradition has been the
wrestling of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations
of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries. The very precondition of
knowledge is the exploitation of the epistemic virtues accorded by society’s situated and distributed manifold of spontaneous orders, the DNA
of the modern civil condition.
With the confluence of interest in situated and distributed liberalism emanating from the Scottish tradition, Austrian and behavioral
economics, non-Cartesian philosophy and moral psychology, the editors
are soliciting proposals that speak to this multidisciplinary constituency.
Sole or joint authorship submissions are welcome as are edited collections,
broadly theoretical or topical in nature.
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Tyler Chamberlain
Editor
Reading George Grant
in the 21st Century
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This book is dedicated to Professor Peter C. Emberley (1956–2016)
Professor, Supervisor, George Grant scholar
Most of all, a great encouragement at the outset of my academic journey
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Contents
1
Introduction: Why Read George Grant in the 21st
Century?
Tyler Chamberlain
1
Part I Conservatism and Political Philosophy
2
3
4
5
6
“Tradition or Progressivism? Edmund Burke
and George Grant: Partners in Challenging
Imperialism and Modernization?”
Brian Thorn
17
George Grant and Simone Weil: Amor Fati
and Consenting to Otherness
Colin Cordner
35
Universal Civil War: Grant on Globalism
and Nationalism
H. D. Forbes
51
Technology as Empire: George Grant and Russell
Kirk on American Conservatism
Jeremy Seth Geddert
73
George Grant and Roger Scruton: Scrutinizing
Scruton and the New Left
Ron Dart
95
vii
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viii
CONTENTS
7
Only (a) God Can Save Us: Grant and Heidegger’s
Competing Responses to Technological Nihilism
Timothy Berk
115
What Are We Lamenting? George Grant’s High
Toryism as a Form of Canadian Nationalism
Nathan Robert Cockram
141
8
Part II Democracy, Technology, and Global Politics
9
Still Lamenting? Canada, Grantian Conservatism
in the Twenty-first Century, and the Paradoxes
of Grant’s Conservatism
Ben Woodfinden
10
George Grant and the Return of the Nation
Scott Staring
11
The Democratic Recession as Reversal or Fate
of Modernity?: Lessons From George Grant
Tyler Chamberlain
159
179
199
217
12
George Grant’s Reflections on Revolution
Nathan Pinkoski
13
Does Progress Need Liberalism Anymore? On George
Grant’s Critique of Technology
Toivo Koivukoski
235
George Grant and the Response to the COVID-19
Pandemic: The Triumph of Technology?
Mehmet Çiftçi
251
Between the Pincers: George Grant and the Crisis
of Totalitarianism
Ryan Alexander McKinnell
271
14
15
Index
289
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Notes on Contributors
Timothy Berk is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
Ottawa. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University
of Toronto, where he completed a dissertation on Martin Heidegger and
Charles Taylor. He has published articles on Heidegger’s influence on
Comparative Political Theory, and on the ethics of nationalism.
Tyler Chamberlain lectures in political science and philosophy at various
institutions including Trinity Western University, Simon Fraser University,
and the University of the Fraser Valley. He has published in the areas of
early modern political theory and Canadian political thought. He earned
his Ph.D. in Political Science from Carleton University in 2018.
Mehmet Çiftçi is an Étienne Gilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. He completed
his D.Phil. in Theology at the University of Oxford. His dissertation
sought to interpret and evaluate the Second Vatican Council’s teachings
on church-state relations.
Nathan Robert Cockram is an independent scholar who was awarded a
Ph.D. in philosophy from UBC in 2021.
Colin Cordner is a Chaplain at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada),
where he completed his Ph.D. at Carleton University in 2016. He is also
a writer and researcher on the history of religions and civilizations for the
ix
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x
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Institute of Reading Development. Among other projects, he is updating
Maben W. Poirier’s annotated bibliography of Michael Polanyi.
Ron Dart is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University
of the Fraser Valley.
H. D. Forbes taught Political Science at the University of Toronto from
1969 to 2011 and is now a retired professor emeritus from that institution. He has published five books, including an anthology of Canadian
political thought (OUP, 1985) and a monograph on George Grant’s
thought (UTP, 2007). He is currently working on a book manuscript
tentatively entitled Plato and the Politicians.
Jeremy Seth Geddert is Associate Professor of Political Science at
Assumption University. He has published in Canadian Journal of Political Science, American Review of Canadian Studies, and Review of Politics
on religion and politics, responsible sovereignty, and natural rights.
Toivo Koivukoski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
Nipissing University.
Ryan Alexander McKinnell is an Assistant Professor of Political Science
at St. Francis Xavier University. He studied political philosophy at
Carleton University, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science. He
has also taught Carleton University, Concordia University, and Memorial
University of Newfoundland. He has published on Ancient, Renaissance,
and Contemporary Political Thought.
Nathan Pinkoski is a Research Fellow and Director of Academic
Programs at the Zephyr Institute. His research and teaching covers
twentieth century political thought, early modern political thought, and
classical political thought. He holds a B.A. (Hon) from the University of Alberta and an M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Politics: Political Theory,
from the University of Oxford. He had held research fellowships and
lectureships at Princeton University and the University of Toronto. He
recently co-edited Augustine in a Time of Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan
Press).
Scott Staring is a professor of Liberal Arts at Georgian College.
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xi
Brian Thorn teaches in the History and English Departments at
Nipissing University. He has published a number of academic studies
on conservative and liberal political ideologies, anti-war activism on the
“right,” and gender studies. He is currently working on a re-evaluation
of Edmund Burke’s influence on Canada politics and society (Position:
Service Course Instructor).
Ben Woodfinden is a doctoral student and political and constitutional Theorist at McGill University.
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CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Why Read George Grant
in the 21st Century?
Tyler Chamberlain
In 1996, Arthur Davis asked “Why read George Grant?” He suggests that
the value of reading Grant lies in his analysis of what has been lost with
the onset of modernity:
It remains true that the prevailing doctrines of our time do not support
the belief that all human beings should be treated with justice. Grant’s
thought was essentially a response to this catastrophic loss of the rational
grounds for affirming justice. Most of his work was an attempt to convince
others that there was such a loss, to define carefully just what that loss is,
and to nurture that awareness of it which must precede a renewal.1
Grant was a careful analyst of modernity who articulated a variety of
responses to it.2 Readers who assign to Grant a hopeless pessimism or
nostalgic longing for a bygone era miss the mark.3 As Robert C. Sibley
T. Chamberlain (B)
Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada
e-mail: Tyler.Chamberlain@twu.ca
1
T. Chamberlain (ed.), Reading George Grant in the 21st Century,
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44889-8_1
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2
T. CHAMBERLAIN
remarked in 2008, “Grant’s thinking about Canada’s impossibility cannot
adequately be understood from psychological or sociological perspectives.
To make such an attempt is to miss the philosophic dimension of his
lament.”4 Rather than lamenting for lamentation’s sake, he sought to
provide intellectual, and perhaps even spiritual,5 aid to all who were aware
of what had been lost without naively pretending that history could be
reversed.6 As long as we live in a world characterized by technological
modernity, Davis’ reasons for reading Grant will be appropriate.
To ask, “Why read George Grant in the twenty-first century?” however,
is to ask a slightly different question. Political developments in the decades
following Grant’s death suggest new possibilities and dangers not immediately evident in the 1980s. This puts today’s readers of Grant in the
unique position of being able to reflect on his broader criticisms of modernity from within a slightly different historical articulation of modernity. It
is the underlying assumption of this volume that reading Grant from this
position will serve two purposes.
First, it will help us to better understand the import of Grant’s
thoughts decades after his death. His thought transcended disciplinary
and partisan classification, but recurring themes include the nature of
technological modernity and its implications for local cultures, political
freedom and equality, and the public awareness of an objective or transcendent moral order. In response to the inexorable march of modernity,
he often found common cause with conservatives who wished to preserve
what they could of the classical western heritage—which for Grant was
the combination of Platonic philosophy and Biblical revelation. However,
his political conservatism was unlike many of his contemporaries’; his
philosophical foundation in premodern modes of thought did not line
up neatly with either the political left or right of his day. He famously
supported whichever political party or movement he thought might
best resist the globalizing and dehumanizing tendencies of technological modernity, at one time favouring the New Democratic Party before
supporting, and later rejecting, the Progressive Conservative Party.7
Many political developments since his death in 1988 come into contact
with his philosophical commitments and political diagnoses. Globalization
has come under increasing strain, the benefits of science and technology are being openly questioned, and illiberal political movements are
gaining influence. By reading Grant in light of our political situation and
highlighting the continuing relevance of his thought in a world faced
with problems he did not himself witness but are consequences of the
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1
INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
3
modernity he so carefully interpreted, it is hoped that this volume will
highlight the continuing relevance of his thought, and potentially help to
reinvigorate scholarly interest in it.
Second, this book will serve a practical purpose in contributing to
current debates at the popular and scholarly levels. Many of the topics
dealt with in this volume are of immediate concern to political scientists, philosophers, and policymakers. Grant was a theorist of nationalism,
conservatism, and the relation between religion and public life, and therefore can make a meaningful contribution to these debates. Many chapters
in this volume explicitly put Grant in conversation with pressing political
problems. A particular emphasis of the present volume is Grant’s position
viz-à-vis other leading thinkers in the conservative tradition. These chapters will draw attention to what Grant held in common with others, but
of equal importance, the uniqueness of his variety of what has been called
Red, or High, Toryism.8
The years before and immediately following Grant’s death saw multiple
conferences and edited volumes dedicated to clarifying his legacy, the
nature of his critique of modernity, and the way in which his reflections
on education, religion, politics, philosophy, and literature were related.9
• Larry Schmidt (editor)—George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversation (1978)
• Peter C. Emberley (editor)—By Loving Our Own: George Grant and
the Legacy of Lament for a Nation (1990)
• Yusuf K. Umar (editor)—George Grant and the Future of Canada
(1992)
• Arthur Davis (editor)—George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, and Education (1996)
The first three of these, while reading Grant as a philosopher and political theorist in his own right, pay special attention to the question of
Canada in his thought. George Grant in Process, for example, opens with a
multi-chapter section on Canadian politics. By Loving Our Own contains a
section of four chapters entitled “The Political Independence of Canada.”
Editor Peter C. Emberley tells us that the conference for which the chapters were written was meant as a tribute to Grant’s “abiding theoretical
and practical concern,” which he describes as “justice, as it demands of
us to love our own as the necessary prelude to any human excellence.”10
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4
T. CHAMBERLAIN
The centrality of Canadian nationalism as understood by Grant thus takes
a central place in that volume. George Grant and the Future of Canada
likewise contains multiple chapters that centre Lament for a Nation—and
more broadly, the question of Canada’s place in the Universal Homogenous State—and closes with Barry Cooper’s posing of the question of
whether the Canada whose death Grant lamented ever actually existed.11
Something should also be said about Joan O’Donovan’s early study
of Grant’s thought, published in 1984. It centres Grant’s moral critique
of modernity, by arranging his thought into three phases, beginning
with his hopeful Hegelianism and culminating in a Nietzschean “tragicparadoxical” phase.12 I mention this book along with the early edited
volumes because Grant himself had high praise for it, noting especially
how it “helped me greatly to look at my own thoughts and see their
contradictions more clearly.”13 Along with these early edited volumes—
and O’Donovan’s well-received study—William Christian’s biography did
much to provide a fuller account of Grant’s thought, contextualized
within a detailed account of his life.14 Christian’s access to (at the time)
unpublished material and private letters, allowed the book to “help others
to see more clearly what Grant really meant.”15
George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity, published eight years
after Grant’s death, follows O’Donovan by reflecting more broadly on his
significance as a critic of modernity, drawing together a multidisciplinary
set of perspectives on “art, philosophy, politics, religion, and education,”
to directly quote the subtitle. Though this volume admirably expounds
Grant’s more general critique of modernity, it is perhaps notable that his
concern with and for Canada is not given a prominent place here.
Perhaps due to the weakening of the American empire and the growing
consensus that the end of history—at least as theorized and predicted
by Francis Fukuyama—was not immediately upon us, many discussions
of Grant in the new millennium revived the question of the status of
Canadian nationalism, and indeed of the possibility of Canada. Athens
and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics, edited
by Ian Angus, Ron Dart, and Randy Peg Peters and published in 2006,
opens with sections on “Canadian Toryism” and “Modernity in North
America,” signalling a revival of interest in Grant’s role as a thinker of
particularistic Canadian import.16 Many discussions of Grant’s politics
since 2006 pay attention to the question of whether Canadian nationalism is a plausible or even desirable stance. This was indeed a, if not
the, crucial question throughout much of Grant’s work. His critique of
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1
INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
5
modernity is unmistakably from the perspective of a Canadian—that is,
someone living on the borderlands of empire. It is taken up by some of
the contributors to the present volume.
2006 and 2008 saw the publication of two books arguing for the
importance of Hegelian idealism in Canadian political philosophy. Robert
C. Sibley’s Northern Spirits (2006) investigated Hegel’s influence in John
Watson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor. Robert Meynell’s Canadian
Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom (2008) analysed Grant and Taylor,
while C.B. Macpherson took the place of John Watson. On the surface,
these books make similar claims, but a lively debate arose between them
concerning the desirability of Canadian nationalism.
Sibley’s discussion of Grant’s relationship to Hegel revolves around the
relationship between necessity and goodness. Grant, according to Sibley,
does not dispute Hegel’s claim (interpreted via Kojève) that the Universal
Homogenous State is necessary. He simply disagrees about whether it is
good, quoting Joan O’Donovan’s characterization of Grant as a “reluctant Hegelian.”17 If Hegel is correct—and Grant thinks he is—then,
Sibley concludes, “Grant is correct to pronounce Canada’s impossibility
as a sovereign state.”18
Meynell, for his part, thinks that this is an overly pessimistic account
that ultimately serves to legitimate Canada’s annexation. In a postscript
entitled “In Response to Robert Sibley’s Northern Spirits,” Meynell
argues that Sibley “is not interested in finding the value of either Canada
or idealism; rather he is co-opting Canadian Idealism to promote globalization and the establishment of a neoliberal world order governed by the
United States.”19 Though Meynell and Sibley disagree about aspects of
Hegel within Grant’s thought, their disagreement concerns the tenability
of Canadian nationalism and the possibility of a Canadian future apart
from America. The most recent book-length study of Grant’s thought,
William Pinar’s Moving Images of Eternity, explores a different implication
of life in the Universal Homogenous State, namely the impact of technological reason on educational practices.20 Questions about Canadian
nationalism, the totalizing effect of the Universal Homogenous State,
and other important political questions at the heart of Grant’s thought
are explored within the context of their effect on modern education.
This project hopes to broaden the range and applicability of Grantian
and Grant-inspired political philosophy in the twenty-first century. Grant
was a great theorist of Canadian nationalism and the prospects of local
attachment under technological modernity, but he was not only that.
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6
T. CHAMBERLAIN
His careful engagement with the tradition of western thought led him
to interpret the meaning of technology, modernity, conservatism, and a
multitude of socio-political themes that, I suggest, help us arrive at a
deeper understanding of contemporary currents of thought and action.
Reading George Grant in the twenty-first century involves reading him
in a political environment somewhat different than the one in which he
himself lived, thought, and wrote. The chapters in this volume are guided
by the assumption that what Grant wrote in the twentieth century is still
worth reflecting on in the twenty-first. The manner in which his writing
remains relevant today, however, is worth parsing. It is not the case
that his prescriptions, such as they are, can be re-applied without proper
contextualization. Consider, for example, his lamentation of the death of
Canadian nationalism.21 The sense of Canadian nationhood whose death
he lamented was rooted in older Tory traditions of peace, order, and good
government. A naïve application of the argument of Lament for a Nation
that put it in support of the burgeoning nationalist and anti-globalist
sentiments on the contemporary right would be as contrary to Grant’s
philosophical and political concerns as would be a call for increasing
homogeneity and universality. Since Grant’s nationalism, such as it was,
appealed to classical notions of a transcendent moral order “by which
we are measured and defined,”22 contemporary iterations of nationalism
grounded in freedom and autonomy (from overbearing domestic governments or meddling international forces) are also un-Grantian. A central
characteristic of modernity is that man’s essence is his freedom, so a strong
case could be made that many of today’s nationalist movements instantiate
modernity just as much as the drive for global homogeneity.23 Needless
to say, a simple 1:1 application of Grant’s terms and explicit conclusions
is liable to confuse more than help.
The hermeneutical philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer may offer
some help here. Like Grant, Gadamer spilled much ink exposing the
pretentions of modernity. Consider his playful suggestion: “there is one
prejudice of the Enlightenment that defines its essence: the fundamental
prejudice of the Enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself,
which denies tradition its power.”24 Much of Gadamer’s project was
the rehabilitation of prejudice, not necessarily as a good in itself but
merely as a condition of understanding. He inherited from Nietzsche and
Heidegger an ontology of historically situated being, according to which
a God’s eye view or philosophical “view from nowhere”25 is impossible.
Living in and being shaped by a tradition, or horizon, is an inescapable
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1
INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
7
fact of human existence; the Gadamerian question is not how to avoid
being shaped by prejudice but rather how to distinguish between “legitimate prejudices” and “the countless others which it is the undeniable task
of critical reason to overcome.”26
We are shaped, then, by our horizon. Reading and properly interpreting a text produced from within a different horizon is not simply
a matter of shedding the prejudices that constitute our own horizon in
order to insert ourselves into the horizon of the original author, for that is
impossible. Although true understanding involves empathy and an honest
effort to understand the other, when we enter into their horizon, we do
so only by bringing ourselves, which includes the prejudices that have
helped constitute us and our concerns.27
Gadamer is careful to warn against the dangers of “overhastily assimilating the past to our own expectations of meaning.”28 This is not a
subjection of the past to the concerns and prejudices of the present, but a
genuine fusion of horizons in which the prejudices of each are mitigated
by being put into dialogue with those of the other. “It always involves,”
Gadamer insists, “rising to a higher universality that overcomes not only
our own particularity but also that of the other.”29
Without fully committing oneself to Gadamer’s historicist ontology,
we can nevertheless recognize something of the everyday experience of
reading and interpreting in his description of the hermeneutic situation.
The chapters in this book engage in something akin to Gadamer’s fusion
of horizons. Although Grant’s life and writing are not of an entirely
different period—some of his students and interlocutors are alive at the
time of this volume’s publication, for example—the world has changed
significantly since his death in 1988. Readers in the twenty-first century
bring different concerns to the text than Grant’s original readers might
have. We cannot help but bring new questions, worries, and political
problems to his writings. As long as we avoid the danger of appropriating
his thoughts in light of our contemporary expectations without allowing
our own prejudices to be challenged by him, revisiting Grant’s writings
today can be a fruitful experience. His work was obviously shaped by the
questions of his time, and indeed his own analysis of political problems
occurred by way of a fusion of horizons, as he judged modernity in the
light of premodern philosophy and religion.
Although twenty-first-century concerns bear some similarities to
twentieth-century concerns, insofar as both are typical of modernity, they
are not entirely identical. For example, whereas Grant’s “horizon” was
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8
T. CHAMBERLAIN
characterized by the consolidation of the American empire, globalization,
and the Universal Homogenous State, our world is marked by the rise
of illiberal democracy and the backlash against globalism. Whereas Grant
warned against the technologization of every aspect of life, there now
seems to be a growing reaction to modern technocracy and reliance on
experts.30 This is not to downplay the obvious similarities between our
world and his concerns, including but not limited to increased access to
Medical Assistance in Dying and the West’s tragic disregard for human
life at the outposts of empire, for example in the increasing use of drone
warfare.31 Nevertheless, bringing our concerns and prejudices to Grant,
while allowing his horizon to speak to us, may just bring about the higher
universality of which Gadamer spoke.
The chapters in this book are organized into two sections. The chapters comprising Part One reflect on Grant’s relationship to the history of
political philosophy. Some of these chapters clarify his relationship with
familiar interlocutors such as Simone Weil and Martin Heidegger, while
others situate him alongside, or in opposition to, contemporary thinkers
of the right.
Brian Thorn argues that Grant shared some important themes with
Edmund Burke, namely an opposition to modernization and imperialism. Claiming that some Canadian conservatives have selectively read
Burke by downplaying his liberalism, Thorn offers a broader interpretation of Burke’s writing that accounts for his earlier liberalism as well as his
conservative response to the French Revolution. He suggests that such a
reading sheds light on the ways in which Burke’s thought can be seen as
a forerunner of Grant’s.
Colin Cordner explores Simone Weil’s influence on Grant by
reflecting on his two common paraphrases of her: “faith is the experience of the intelligence illuminated by love” and “love is consent to
otherness.” He argues that these helped Grant (1) understand the relationship between necessity, freedom, and eternity and (2) conceptualize
an alternative to the technological quest for mastery over nature.
H.D. Forbes’ contribution to this volume contends that too much
has been made of the nationalism in Grant’s thinking. His nationalist
lamenting, he argues, is perhaps best understood as the sugar coating of
some bitter reflections on the nature and sources of technology and the
threat it poses to our humanity.
Jeremy Seth Geddert puts Grant in conversation with a potential
kindred spirit in Russell Kirk. After cataloguing their many similarities,
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1
INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
9
both biographical and political, Geddert ultimately concludes that Grant
and Kirk offer fundamentally different visions of the relationship between
virtue and liberty, and the meaning of conservatism in the modern age.
Ron Dart’s chapter situates Grant alongside another potential fellow
traveller Roger Scruton. Dart presents Scruton’s conservatism as firstgeneration liberalism, complete with an either–or approach to political
ideology that dismissed the concerns of the New Left in a way that Grant’s
Toryism did not.
Timothy Berk begins with the observation that both Grant and
Heidegger took issue with the technological nihilism at the heart of
modernity. His chapter delves into the radical differences between the two
thinkers’ diagnoses and subsequent prescriptions. Moreover, by relating
the discussion to Heidegger’s influence on the contemporary far-right, an
opening is created for a Grantian response to some of these contemporary
movements.
Nathan Robert Cockram takes aim at superficial readings of Grant’s
nationalism (particularly that of Michael Ignatieff) that reduce it to mere
nostalgia for Canada’s fading connection to Britain. Cockram argues, in
contrast, that Grant’s nationalism is more than a wistful longing for a
return to imperialism but follows from his Platonist Tory critique of technological liberalism. That Grant’s nationalism flows out of a philosophical
encounter between Plato and liberalism gives it an enduring relevance to
contemporary debates about and within liberal political theory.
All of the chapters in this section bring to light both the depth and
nuance of Grant’s conservative vision, if that term still has meaning in the
twenty-first century. That Grant learned much from Weil or that he would
be ardently opposed to today’s Heideggerian nationalists points to the
way in which his conservatism is more complex than a simple appeal to the
right–left spectrum permits. Many writers trace a common conservative
tradition including, inter alia, Burke, Kirk, and Scruton. A debate emerges
in this section over where, or if, Grant belongs in this tradition. Thorn
explores some important similarities between Grant and Burke, whereas
Geddert and Dart draw our attention to the ways in which Grant can be
seen as departing from this lineage—or rather, looking beyond it to an
older conservative vision. This is an important question and one which
deserves continued treatment.
The essays in Part Two consider the continuing relevance of Grant’s
thought in the world of the twenty-first century. The issues explored
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T. CHAMBERLAIN
include revolution, globalization, nationalism, and democracy; an implication of most chapters is that Grant’s work, written decades ago, provides
valuable resources for making sense of today’s politics.
Ben Woodfinden opens the second half of the book with a slightly
optimistic account of the fate of nationalism. He sees in Grant’s work two
distinctive bases of conservatism: the “tory-touch” that is specific to his
understanding of Canada, on the one hand, and the general importance
placed upon love of one’s own. While Canada itself may indeed have been
subsumed into the Universal Homogenous State, thus overcoming the
first account of conservatism, Woodfinden argues that love of one’s own,
understood as local attachment and belonging, is irrepressible, even in
technological civilization. This, writes Woodfinden, offers a basis of hope
not explicitly found in Grant’s writings themselves.
Scott Staring joins scholarly discussions of the role of the state in
the globalized world of the twenty-first century. His chapter critically
interrogates some calls for a return of the state as a remedy for neoliberal globalization, subjecting them to a Grantian analysis that finds them
as compatible with neoliberalism as the globalization they are meant
to replace. He then articulates a non-neoliberal nationalism based on
Grantian notions of the common good and love of one’s own community.
Tyler Chamberlain’s chapter focuses on Grant’s interpretation of
modernity, and what it means for the prospects of liberal democracy.
He sees in Grant’s reflections a different conception of the relationship between modernity and democracy than that found in some social
scientific accounts.
Nathan Pinkoski contributes a study of Grant’s reflections on the
permissibility of revolution. Grant’s theological and philosophical defence
of the primacy of the Good leads him to support revolutions, but only
under regimes that are no longer characterized by constitutionalism
or representative government. Analysing the circumstances surrounding
Charles de Gaulle’s return to power in 1958, Pinkoski concludes it is an
example of a modern revolution that satisfies Grant’s criteria for a just
revolution.
Toivo Koivukoski asks a question that takes us to the heart of Grant’s
understanding of technological modernity: “Does progress need liberalism anymore?” He traces the development of Grant’s moral thought,
highlighting the way in which Grant’s later critique of modernity’s
emphasis on willing sheds light on contemporary crises of liberalism.
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INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
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Mehmet Çiftçi offers a Grantian reflection on a particularly salient
example of technological reason in the twenty-first century, namely the
response/s to the COVID-19 pandemic. Paying attention to the failure to
define health in relation to a teleological understanding of human good,
Çiftçi concludes that this episode confirms Grant’s suspicions regarding
the triumph of technology.
This section ends with Ryan Alexander McKinnell’s suggestive argument that Grant is guilty of washing over one of the most important
political differences of his century and ours, namely the moral difference between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. In an era when liberal
democracy is in decline and authoritarianism and ethnonationalism are on
the upswing, McKinnell’s argument is worth paying attention to.
There is no single approach to Grant among these chapters. Some
authors take an expository or interpretive approach, trying to better
understand his intended arguments. Some take his insights and re-situate
them alongside contemporary thinkers or problems, and some offer criticisms or new ways of thinking about themes common to his writing.
Moreover, true to the breadth and nuance of Grant’s thinking, some of
the chapters highlight his sympathies with conservatives whereas some
emphasize his affinities with today’s left. However, the reader is encouraged to look beyond these surface resemblances to Grant’s grounding in
earlier ways of thinking and the way in which they call into question the
ideological patterns of modern thought itself, wherever it is to be found
on the spectrum.
Notes
1. Arthur Davis, “Introduction: Why Read George Grant?” in Arthur
Davis (ed.) George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art,
Philosophy, Politics, Religion, and Education (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press 1996): 7.
2. For what to make of Grant’s multiple responses to modernity, see
Zdravko Planinc, “Paradox and Polyphany in Grant’s Critique of
Modernity” in Yusuf K. Umar (ed.) George Grant and the Future of
Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press 1992): 17–45; Joan
O’Donovan, George Grant and the Twilight of Justice (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press 1984): 10–11, and Laurence Lampert,
“The Uses of Philosophy in George Grant” in Larry Schmidt (ed.)
George Grant in Process (Toronto: Anansi 1978): 179–194.
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3. See for example R.K. Crook, “Modernization and Nostalgia: A
Note on the Sociology of Pessimism,” Queen’s Quarterly 73:2
(1966), 269–284, and Chapter 8 in this volume.
4. Robert C. Sibley, Northern Spirits: John Watson, George Grant,
and Charles Taylor: Appropriations of Hegelian Political Thought
(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press 2008):
166.
5. For more on Grant’s spirituality see Harris Athanasiadis, “Waiting
at the Foot of the Cross: The Spirituality of George Grant”
in Ian Angus, Ron Dart, & Randy Peg Peters (eds.) Athens
and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2006): 256–269.
6. For one of the Grant’s many reflections on this theme see Grant’s
“A Platitude,” in George Grant, Technology and Empire (Concord:
Anansi 1969): 135–143.
7. For more on the deeper consistency underlying Grant’s political
shifts, see Arthur Davis, “Did George Grant Change His Politics”
in Angus, Dart, & Peters (eds.) Athens and Jerusalem, 62–79.
8. Although the similarities between Grant’s thought and other Red
Tories are difficult to ignore, Grant himself resisted applying the
label to his thought without qualification.
9. The following is not intended as a comprehensive review of the
literature on Grant. Rather, the focus will be on the approach
taken by edited volumes. Some recent single-author volumes are
discussed where appropriate.
10. Peter C. Emberley, “Preface” in Peter C. Emberley (ed.) By Loving
Our Own: George Grant and the Legacy of Lament for a Nation
(Ottawa: Carleton University Press 1990): xxii.
11. Barry Cooper, “Did George Grant’s Canada Ever Exist?” in Umar,
George Grant and the Future of Canada, 151–164.
12. O’Donovan, George Grant and the Twilight of Justice, 10–11.
13. Letter to Joan O’Donovan, 4 January, 1981, in William Christian (ed.) George Grant: Selected Letters (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press 1996): 312.
14. William Christian, George Grant: A Biography (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press 1993).
15. H.D. Forbes, “Review of George Grant: A Biography, by William
Christian” Canadian Journal of Political Science 27:3 (1994),
612–614.
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INTRODUCTION: WHY READ GEORGE GRANT IN THE 21ST …
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16. It should be mentioned here that this book was recalled due to
plagiarism found in one of the chapters. The approach taken in
the present volume has been to treat all chapters except for the
offending one as legitimate.
17. Sibley, Northern Spirits, 124.
18. Sibley, Northern Spirits, 280.
19. Robert Meynell, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom:
C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor (Montreal &
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2008): 215–216. For
Sibley’s response to Meynell, see his two chapters in Susan M.
Dodd and Neil G. Robertson (eds.) Hegel and Canada: Unity
of Opposites (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2018), “Idealism and Empire: John Watson, Michael Ignatieff, and the Moral
Warrant for ‘Liberal Imperialism’” (pp. 198–214), and “Grant,
Hegel, and the ‘Impossibility of Canada’” (pp. 275–293); Sibley,
“Idealism and Empire” from Hegel and Canada; Sibley, “Grant,
Hegel, and the Impossibility of Canada” from Hegel and Canada.
20. William F. Pinar, Moving Images of Eternity: George Grant’s
Critique of Time, Teaching, and Technology (Ottawa: University of
Ottawa Press 2019).
21. I note here that there is some debate about whether Grant was
truly hoping to inspire nationalist sentiments or simply lamenting
their impossibility. However, if a true Canadian nationalism were
possible, it is reasonable to assume Grant would take it to be a
good thing.
22. George Grant, Philosophy in the Mass Age (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press 1995 [1966]), 93.
23. See Chapter 10 in this volume for an extended reflection on Grant,
neostatism, and neoliberalism.
24. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Translation revised by
Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum
2004): 272–273.
25. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford
University Press 1986).
26. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 278.
27. Some readers might object to my reliance on Gadamer in this
context, given his philosophical inheritance from Heidegger which
Grant emphatically did not share (cf. Grant’s critique of historicism in Time as History). On this point I would briefly reply
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that Gadamer succeeds, in my view, in incorporating the undeniable fact that our thinking is shaped by our horizon without
thereby giving in to the anti-foundationalism or relativism that
troubled Grant. For more extensive treatments of Gadamer that
bear this out, see Ryan R. Holston, “Anti-Rationalism, Relativism,
and the Metaphysical Tradition: Situating Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics” in Gene Callahan & Kenneth B. MacIntyre
(eds.) Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan 2020): 193–209, and Brice Wachterhauser, “Getting it
Right: Relativism, Realism, and Truth,” in Robert J. Dostal (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 2002): 52–78; Leo Strauss, on the other hand, saw
in Gadamer a clearer linkage to Heidegger’s historicism and relativism. See the Strauss-Gadamer correspondence in “Correspondence Concerning Warheit Und Methode,” Independent Journal
of Philosophy 2 (1978), 5–12.
28. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 304.
29. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 304.
30. It is not necessarily the case that this represents a genuine move
beyond technological thinking, but the explicit belief that science
and technology themselves are not necessarily the answer is nevertheless an important development. It is of course a relevant consideration that anti-technocratic views have spread largely through
online, thus technological, platforms.
31. P.W. Singer provides a fascinating, if horrifying, account of the
military uses to which contemporary robotics technology is being
put in Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict
in the 21st Century (New York: The Penguin Press 2009). See
especially pp. 391–396 for a discussion of the ways in which technology allows for further dehumanization of enemy combatants
into “target[s]… that need to be serviced” (395).
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PART I
Conservatism and Political Philosophy
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