The Owl: George Grant Journal

Simone Weil on 'Forgive us our debts' - trans. Brad Jersak

2011-08-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

‘And remit us our debts, in the same way that we also have remitted our debtors.’

In the moment that we say these words, we must already have remitted all debts. This includes not only letting go of the reparation of any offences we think we have suffered; but also any recognition and gratitude for the good we think we have done. And in a completely general way, anything that we expect from people or things, everything we believe is our due, the absence of which has made us feel frustrated.

Forgiveness is letting go of every right we believe is ours in the past or in the future. First, this includes the right to a certain permanence. When we have enjoyed something for a long time, we believe it is ours, and that fate must allow us to keep enjoying it. Second, we let go of the right to compensation for all of our efforts, regardless of the nature of our effort, work, suffering or desire.

Every time we expend effort and the equivalent effort is not returned to us in the form of visible fruit, we have a feeling of inequity, of emptiness, that makes us believe we have been robbed. The effort of suffering an offence makes us expect the chastisement of the offender, or an apology from them. The effort of doing some good makes us expect recognition or gratitude from the one obliged to us.

But these are only particular cases of a universal law in our soul. Every time anything is released from us, we have an absolute need that at least its equivalent should be returned to us. And because we have that need, we believe we have that right. Our debtors include all beings, all things, and even the entire universe. We believe we have claims over everything. In every claim we believe we possess, there is always an imaginary claim of the past on the future. This is what we must renounce.

Having forgiven our debtors is to renounce the past, en bloc. To accept that the future is once again virgin and intact. The future is tied to the past by links of which we are strictly ignorant, but it ins completely free from what our imagination believes it has imposed on it. Forgiveness is to accept the possibility that this can happen and that it can happen to us in particular -- that the future may make our lives in the past into a sterile and vain thing.

In renouncing in one stroke all the fruits of the past without exception, we can ask God that our past sins would not bear their miserable fruits of evil and error in our souls. As long as we cling to the past, God himself cannot prevent this horrible fruit-bearing in us. We cannot attach ourselves to the past without attaching ourselves to our crimes, for we are unaware of what is most essentially bad in us.

The principal claim that we think we have over the universe is the continuation of our personality. This claim implies all the others. The instinct to self-preservation makes us feel this continuation is a necessity, and we feel that a necessity is a right. As the beggar said to Talleyrand, ‘Sir, I must live.’ And Talleyrand replied, ‘I do not see the necessity.’ Our personality depends entirely on external circumstances, which have an unlimited power to crush it. But we would rather die than recognize that.

The equilibrium of the world is for us a series of circumstances such that our personality remains intact and seems to belong to us. Every past circumstance that wounded our personality seems to us like a rupture of equilibrium that must, infallibly, one day or another, be compensated for by an opposing phenomenon. We live in expectancy of these compensations. The imminent approach of death is especially horrible when it forces us to realize that compensation is not about to occur.

The forgiveness of debts is the renunciation of our own personality--renouncing everything that I call ‘me.’ Without any exception. It is to know there is nothing in what I call ‘me’-- no psychological element at all--that external circumstances cannot make disappear. It is to accept this. And it is to be happy that life should be this way.

The words ‘that your will should be accomplished,’ if pronounced with one's whole soul, imply this acceptance. For this reason, we can say some moments later, ‘We have forgiven our debtors.’

The forgiveness of debts is spiritual poverty, it is naked spirituality, it is death. If we completely accept this death, we can ask God to revive us, and to purify us from the evil that is in us. When we ask him to remit our debts, we are asking him to wipe out the evil that is in us.

Pardon is purification. God himself has no power to pardon the evil that is in us and that remains there. God will have remitted our debts when he has produced the state of perfection in us. Until then, God remits our debts partially, in the same measure that we remit our debtors.

From "À Propos du «Pater»," Attente de Dieu (1942) by Simone Weil, 155-157. Trans. Brad Jersak, Clarion Journal, 2011.

Review of Ron Dart and Brad Jersak's 'George P. Grant: Canada's Lone Wolf' by Robert Martens

2011-07-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

Ron Dart and Brad Jersak, George P. Grant, Canada's Lone Wolf: Essays in Political Philosophy. Abbotsford: Fresh Wind Press, 2011. 120 pp.

What is liberalism, and what conservatism? Over time, these terms have degenerated into clichés useful mainly for mudslinging and fingerpointing. George Grant, in his brief and enigmatic Lament for a Nation, articulated a vision of what "liberal" and "conservative" essentially mean. His open, suggestive style of writing, however, leaves room for a wide and healthy variety of interpretation. In their new book of essays, George P. Grant, Canada's Lone Wolf, Ron Dart and Brad Jersak help clear the air by introducing and then analyzing the ideas, or perhaps more accurately, the proposals of Canada's great philosopher.

In the book's first half, Ron Dart summarizes the concepts underlying Lament. He goes on to suggest that genuine conservatism has ancient historical roots, and is based on the notions of justice, ultimate order, and the sacrifice of the self for the Good. Liberalism, on the other hand, originates in ideas of personal freedom and ends with a formless and unrestricted personal will. Dart suggests that most of us today, on all sides of the political spectrum, are in essence "liberal." His seven stage historical analysis of liberalism pushes its origins all the way back to the medieval school of nominalism; moving on to the Reformation; the religious wars of the 17th century; the Enlightenment; the Victorian era of progress and evolution; the individualism of the 20th century; and finally postmodern deconstruction and fragmentation. From this carnage, Dart contends, George Grant attempted to resurrect an honest conservatism for his nation. Ernest Manning and his "neoliberal" followers, however, defended a conception of conservatism which, according to Dart, would turn Canada into a marketplace. Dart ends his part of the discussion by pointing out that the contemplative "I" espoused by mystics such as Simone Weil, differs radically from the self indulgent liberal "ego."

In the book's latter half, Brad Jersak explores the ideas of George Grant in relation to those of important thinkers such as Heidegger and Nietzsche, and especially Simone Weil. He writes: "While the ancients saw freedom as a byproduct of living by virtues prescribed by the Good (whether divine or natural law), the moderns prioritized freedom as following values created by the Self (the autonomous individual) or by society (a contract chosen by the collective of selves)" (75). Moderns – or, depending on one's preference, "liberals" – believe that freedom is the unrestricted use of the will. Simone Weil, one of Grant's fundamental influences, was obsessed with the idea of will. She proposed, and lived out, an extreme renunciation of the will, kenosis, the emptying of the self to the Great Good. In her passionate and paradoxical writings, Weil sometimes baldly equates will with power, which for her is fundamentally abusive, the Great Beast of Revelation. Eventually, however, she concedes that there is such a thing as a will to good. Here George Grant stands in agreement. Even Grant's most ardent followers, remarks Jersak, could be embarrassed by his will not to will – but he parted company with Weil on her extreme self renunciation, and on her avowed priority of the cross over the resurrection. Grant and Weil are united, however, in their critique of modernity as the practice of formless, irresponsible, self indulgent will. The results, cultural ennui and societal violence, can be catastrophic.

George Grant in Conversation (1973)

2011-07-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Unpublished Sermon Notes - George Grant (McMaster, 1961?)

2011-05-27T13:26:00.000-07:00

In a letter from Sheila Grant to Ron S. Dart, dated June 19, 1998, she typed out the following sermon notes from George's time at McMaster.

In a p.s. to the letter, Sheila left this note: "I enclose this sermon, mainly for its ending. It expresses G.’s kind of “theology of the Cross” quite well, though in note form."

Notes for Sermon at McMaster (1961?)

Rite

(1) talk about the Holy Communion

(2) call it what you will.

(3) Shared by all.

(4) It is what it is and petty differences don’t matter.

(5) It can be looked at in many ways.

(6) The feast of the suffering of the innocent.

(7) Suffering in general – the way of the world. Not our own, which is terrible – but others’.

(8) It is on suffering that the faiths of the western world divide.

(9) Humanism: N. America from liberalism.

European from existentialism.

Russia from Marxism.

Faced with suffering – man must make a world in which it does not exist.

The idea of God impossible in the face of suffering.

(10) This is where Christianity says no.

In some strange way suffering must be consented to.

It is part of the divine purpose.

(11) This is of course the terrible stumbling block in Christianity for the humanist.

(12) Let me make clear what I mean by consent – not consent to what we can do anything about;

(13) But there are things … that we can do nothing about.

(14) Not only present but past. Spartacus revolt.

(15) How are we to make consent to that, to love God through and in that?

(16) Marxists love the future.

(17) But we love God – the perfection which is now.

(18) How are we to make that act of consent, -- consent to that evil which may completely destroy us?

(19) Let us admit that most of us do not make that act of consent – that is for the saints and not many of us are that.

(20) The question is not then to make it – but to learn to approach it – to fix our gaze upon its perfection.

(21) We see it at many places in the world – families where a tide of evil and despair sweeps through – nothing seems to be able to break through – the only way it is broken is when a member of that family consents to that evil for herself or himself. Such consent is innocence –is the purity which alone breaks the cycle of evil. It is the just man or woman who consents to the consequence of evil.

(22) We see this always in the greatest literature of all eras, from Homer to Dostoievsky. Homer’s Iliad – force and violence and horror is what men live amongst – Cassandra consents, bears it.

(23) And of course the supreme act of consent is that of X in the Garden of Gethsemene. Here the absolutely pure, the absolutely just, the absolutely innocent consents to bear, to accept the full weight of the evil of his day,

[24] – the full weight of the Roman Empire, the evil of the ecclesiastics of his own race. And think what it cost him. “His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Think how we tremble and shake when we ourselves suffer – whether we consent to it or not. But this was the absolute consent. The perfect act.

(25) And as such it is the act of God himself, for only God can consent to be nothing. This to use language which is difficult for modern people – yet which is supremely significant. In the Garden of Gethesemene we see the very consent within God – as we say between the Father and the Son – that act which is love itself.

(26) It is that act of consent – far beyond any of our imagining of what consent could be – it is that perfection which is given us at every Christian altar – perfection upon which we can fix our attention.

(27) And it seems to me that this is finally why we should go to Church. I often ask myself, what is the use of going to Church when I am in such a mood – rushed, moody, quite involved in my own evil. Get the children through breakfast, see one’s neighbours in Church who one doesn’t much like. Why go when there is no spontaneity in one’s heart – when God seems far away?

One goes to contemplate that perfect act in which the innocent has absolutely consented to his suffering – that is to contemplate the divine act itself.

Announce Hymn 86. When I survey the wondrous Cross.

Reversing the Reversal: Contemplation and Action by Ron Dart

2011-05-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

George Grant was drawn to Martin Heidegger for the simple reason that Heidegger was, probably, one of the most severe critics of the modern way of doing philosophy and the western understanding of mind and what it means to think. Heidegger was convinced that western philosophy had lost its way, and rationalism led to a cul-de-sac that diverted the longing pilgrim from a deeper notion of being. Heidegger’s commitment to philosophy had a great deal to do with returning to the ancient way marks and a pointing of the way to wisdom and contemplation. Grant was convinced that the clearing that Heidegger was a guide towards offered more possibilities than the sterility of modern philosophy.

Grant was not only drawn to Heidegger’s commitment to contemplation and wisdom as an antidote and corrective to rationalism and a hyper activism, but Heidegger’s turn to the ancient Greeks was a turn that Grant also made, but did so with a difference. Grant agreed with Heidegger that much modern philosophy was lost in a dark wood with few paths out, but he differed with Heidegger on what wisdom and contemplation might mean on the journey.

Heidegger, like Nietzsche, thought that philosophy began to lose its bearings with the dialectical and logical approach to knowing initiated by Socrates and systematized by Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger thought that the Pre-Socratics had a deeper understanding of waiting, heeding and hearing as a philosophic way of knowing and being. The banter and arguments of Socrates as embodied in Plato’s life and writings was something that Heidegger opposed and stood against. This is where Grant parted paths with Heidegger. Grant agreed with Heidegger that the modern notion of rationalism and philosophy had replaced the older way of doing philosophy that was more about wisdom and contemplation, but Grant was convinced that Heidegger had erred and misread Plato. Both Grant and Heidegger, in different ways, attempted to deconstruct the logo-centric nature of much modern philosophy, but Grant was convinced that Plato offered a surer path in doing so than the Pre-Socratics.

Heidegger’s two books, What is Called Thinking? and Discourse on Thinking, make it abundantly clear that Heidegger was going after modern philosophy root and branch. What, indeed, does it mean to think, and what is the relation between thought and being? Philosophy, in the older sense, is about taking a position of waiting and receptivity, listening and letting go of the agenda of the grasping and need to know ego. There is a frantic drivenness in the west that is injurious and inimical to wisdom and meaningful insight. Knowledge, facts, measurement, control and calculation have come to replace an inner openness to being that can only be known by a letting go of the need to know and dominate.

Hannah Arendt was one of Heidegger’s most important students in the 1920s, and she became, after moving to the USA, one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century. It is significant that one of Arendt’s most important books in political philosophy, The Human Condition, was published in 1958. The Human Condition is divided into six sections (The Human Condition, The Public and the Private Realm, Labor, Work, Action and The Vita Activa and the Modern Age). The final section, ‘The Vita Activa and the Modern Age’, highlights all so clearly, Arendt’s indebtedness to Heidegger and her deeper view of the meaning of political philosophy. The modern age is one that knows not how to go slow, to listen, to heed an inner depth. In fact, modernity is addicted to the drug of the ‘vita activa’ or a hyper activism. Is it even possible to be philosophical in the modern age when the very means that is needed to know is subverted and denied by rationalism and a busyness of an uncritical activism? Arendt’s small chapter in the final section of The Human Condition, ‘The Reversal of Contemplation and Action’, is a gem and must read. It has Heidegger written all over it. The hidden king and master had taught his student well. Arendt, like Heidegger, was calling for a reversal of the reversal. Contemplation had once been the queen of knowing and philosophy, but modern rationalism had come to dethrone the queen and sit on the throne of knowing. The reversal of contemplation and action had to be reversed. This was the philosophic vocation of Heidegger and Arendt. Is it even possible to be political in the ‘polis’ in a meaningful manner when drivenness banishes depth and knowledge casts wisdom to the margins of learning and education?

The Human Condition, as I mentioned above, was published in 1958. Grant had published his article, ‘Philosophy’, for the Massey Commission in 1951. Grant, like Heidegger, was more than aware that the very idea of contemplation and wisdom had been exorcised from most modern departments of philosophy. Grant lamented this worrisome fact, and in his article for the Massey Commission, he called for a return to the ancient idea of philosophy as the contemplative love of wisdom. Grant was, in short, almost a decade ahead of Arendt in calling for a return to the contemplative way of knowing and being. The philosophic mandarin class turned on Grant with a vengeance. Grant’s nemesis, Fulton Anderson, gathered the clan round him and pronounced an anathema on Grant. Descartes, Bacon and clan were the real modern philosophers and science was the master. Who was Grant to doubt this? He had offended the clan. Sadly so, John Slater’s history of the philosophy department at University of Toronto, Minerva’s Aviary: Philosophy at Toronto: 1843-2003 (2005), does not really do justice to the Anderson-Grant clash and tension and the deeper reasons for it.

What does it mean to do philosophy or do we even do philosophy? Is philosophy more about being than doing, contemplation than reason, wisdom than information, insight than facts? Heidegger, Grant and Arendt attempted to reverse the reversal that took place in the modern ethos (and this can be dated in different ways) between contemplation and action. Heidegger, Grant and Arendt were committed as both philosophers and political philosophers to seeing and setting the soul on the right course. If this was not properly done, philosophy betrays its noble heritage and leaves the hungry bereft of bread.

The soul longs for wisdom, and when such ways of knowing and being are denied, a disoriented restlessness comes to dominate inner and outer direction.

Grant did part paths with Heidegger on a basic and essential point. Heidegger held high the notion of Being, wisdom and contemplation as the cairn and waymarks for authentic philosophy. Grant would not disagree with these ideas in principle, but when Being is not informed by Goodness and Justice, Being can become a plaything of the ego and spirit of the age. This is why Grant, unlike Heidegger, turned to Plato and Aristotle rather than the Pre-Socratics. Plato and Aristotle held Being high, but Being is only mature when wisdom and justice, goodness and truth, shape, inform and educate Being. Heidegger’s notion of Being had no real grounding and this is where Grant and Arendt took to different paths than Heidegger. When Being has no content, it can become like silly putty—malleable and meaningless, vulnerable to the silliest and basest aberrations---such was Heidegger’s fate with the Nazis. Arendt, on the other hand, after moving to the USA, was no republican, but her integration of contemplation and politics lacked a feel for the fact the USA had become and empire greater and grander than Rome. There is no serious critique by Arendt of the USA is the spirit and depth of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky, like Grant, was alert to the fact that the USA had rapacious imperial tendencies. Both Grant and Chomsky emerged in the 1960s as leading prophetic critics of the New Romans. Chomsky and Russell were liberal critics of the American project, whereas Grant differed with the very premises from within which Russell and Chomsky did their peacemaking and deconstruction of the American empire. Grant was not convinced that a form of Enlightenment humanism went deep enough. This is why Grant had an affinity with Heidegger and Arendt’s synthesis, in principle, of contemplation and action. Grant differed with how Heidegger and Arendt applied the synthesis in action both in Germany and the USA.

Heidegger, like Grant and Arendt, were three of the leading political philosophers of the 20th century that attempted to reverse the modern mood and ethos of contemplation and action. The roots of the soul are contemplation from which the fruits of action emerge. Action without contemplation is like a drug that most in the west are addicted to. Few are the philosophers that realize the west needs to detoxify, but Heidegger, Grant and Arendt are three of the best who see what few do, and Grant is certainly the most important Canadian to see what needs to be seen and why. The task remains to reverse the reversal that took place between contemplation and action, the mountain and the valley.

George Grant and Canadian Broadcasting Regulation by Bruce D. Dyck

2010-12-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

In 1965, George Grant claimed that Canada had lost its identity, becoming a "branch plant satellite" of the United States (40). Grant argued that private broadcasters in Canada would make Canadian culture, like the Canadian economy, "redundant" (53), in that it would essentially be a carbon copy of American culture. While Canada's film and television industries suffered due to inadequate funding and infrastructure during the late-60s and early-70s that made it nearly impossible for them to compete with the slicker, higher budget American-made productions, Canadian radio was not saddled with the enormous costs and direct competition from cross border stations that Canadian television faced, nor the monopolistic film distribution structure that was controlled by the American movie studios (Dorland 117). However, despite competing on terms that were more favourable to Canadian artists, Canadian radio stations still filled the airwaves with almost exclusively American top 40 music. In the case of radio, the extent to which Canada had, according to Grant, lost its national identity during the late-sixties and early-seventies, had less to do with American cultural imperialism than a lack of political, economic, and creative initiative by both the government and regulatory boards that allowed station owners to pursue profits at the expense of promoting Canadian content.

In Lament For a Nation, George Grant traces the Canadian government's contradictory view of broadcasting as both a market process and a "public service with national responsibilities as a medium for communication and enlightenment" (Peers 136), back to Conservative Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker (Grant 19). Grant explains the paradoxical nature of broadcasting as a market process and a public service by saying that "the encouragement of private broadcasting must be anti-nationalist: the purpose of private broadcasting is to make money, and the easiest way to do this is to import American programs appealing to the lowest common denominator of the audience" (Grant 19). While critics justifiably argue that "American" does not necessarily mean "lowest common denominator," as Grant might suggest, the fact remains that private broadcasters in radio, as well as television, had little motivation to find, fund, or air Canadian content when they could just pipe in American content without much effort or expense. In fact, it is reasonable to argue that despite claims that private stations would increase the amount of Canadian content on the airwaves, their real purpose was to sell Canadian goods and keep advertising dollars at home, because, as Edwardson points out, "culture did not lend itself to bureaucratic ledgers; its benefits did not fill federal coffers" (80). So while the government paid lip service to their nationalistic views of Canadian culture through the late sixties, they were unwilling to fund the creation of Canadian content, or mess with market forces by forcing broadcasters to adhere to any strict quantitative or qualitative quotas.

As I have pointed out, the dichotomy between the government's desire for broadcasting to promote Canadian culture and the practice, which allowed the Americanization of Canadian airwaves for profit, was encouraged,in part, through the late sixties by nearly nonexistent content regulations and by toothless ones in the 70s. Television broadcasters received their first Canadian content regulations in 1958 when the Board of Broadcast Governors set the daily minimum at 55 percent (Rutherford 106). These broadcasters, however, had little trouble finding loopholes within these quotas that allowed them to show programs from the Commonwealth for partial Canadian credit or fill time with inexpensive content, such as a pianist in front of a camera (Edwardson 114). Radio stations, for their part, did not even have to jump through these hoops at this time, as they were not subject to their first Canadian content regulations until 1970, and even then the quota was pegged at just 30% for AM stations, while FM avoided any regulation until 1975. To put this into perspective, until 1970, Canadian radio broadcasters, who faced little competition from American stations (Vipond 51), could continue to broadcast however they saw fit without any interference from the government or the BBG. Realistically, there was no reason for American music to ever dominate Canadian radio; without the direct competition of American stations, nor the technical and budgetary deficits that television faced, radio broadcasters were in a unique position to promote Canadian artists on an equal plane with their American counterparts. But station owners obviously did not feel it was either in their interests, or their responsibility, to give Canadian artists equal air time, and they continued to base their play on U.S. charts. This was a double whammy to Canadian artists, because their inability to chart in Canada, due to a lack of opportunity, also affected their album sales, as record retailers across the country used CHUM-Toronto's 'Chum Chart' to identify the albums that were likely to sell. I should point out here that CHUM-Toronto was identified by Canadian music journalist, Ritchie York, as "the station that did the least for Canada" (Edwardson 126).

Of course, those who oppose cultural regulation would say that if Canadian artists do not have a presence in the Canadian marketplace, it is because Canadians do not value them enough to pay for it (Vipond 83, 84). Certainly, this was one the arguments used by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters in the 1970 Canadian Radio-Television Commision hearings on Canadian content regulations. This argument, like all the others used by the CAB during the CRTC hearings, which included "claims of censorship, quantity not equating with quality," and most ridiculously of all, "that Canada lacked talent" (Edwardson 201), does not stand up to the evidence. First, the CAB's claims of censorship and quantity not equating with quality were thinly veiled ways of saying that they wanted to continue doing what they were doing without any interference. The president of the CAB, J.A. Pouliot, even claimed that Canadian content on the radio was already between 75 and 80 percent, where the CRTC had estimated Canadian content levels to be between 4 and 7 percent (Edwardson 201). In the end, the CRTC somewhat acknowledged the CAB's argument of quantity not equating with quality, as they decided to set the Canadian content minimum at 30 percent, which was lower than television's 55 percent minimum, to see if radio broadcasters would spend more money on a smaller amount of Canadian content (Edwardson 200). I will discuss the detrimental effects of this decision later in this essay, but before I do that I want to look at the CAB's most insulting claim: that "Canada lacked talent."

What is ironic is that during the CRTC hearings where the CAB claimed that Canada lacked talent, a Canadian band sat atop the American radio charts. The Guess Who, a garage rock band from Winnipeg, whose song, 'American Woman,' hit number one in the U.S. in March 1970, and then number one in Canada a few weeks later in April (Edwardson 201, 202), are a fitting example of a common problem that Canadian artists faced: that success in Canada was dependent, first, on success in the United States. Since Canadian radio stations selected songs for airplay based on their popularity on American charts (Edwardson 201), countless Canadian performers were forced to migrate south to look for opportunities. Iconic Canadian folk singer, Neil Young, is quoted as saying, "I soon realized that nothing was ever going to happen in Toronto. I split and went Los Angeles. I was just completely fed up with the Canadian scene" (Edwardson 129). Young quickly found success in the U.S., first as part the folk rock group, Buffalo Springfield, next as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and finally as a solo artist. Another group that could relate to Young's experience, was first known as the 'Hawks,' while backing rocker, Ronnie Hawkins, before setting out on their own as the Canadian Squires. While the Canadian music industry did not take notice of the Squires, Bob Dylan did, taking the group on as his backing band for his legendary first electric tour. Following Dylan's motorcycle accident the group once again set out on their own, this time known simply as The Band, achieving two RIAA certified gold albums, and going platinum with their 1969 self-titled album (Edwardson 128) (note gold=500K, platinum=1m). But for each band or artist like The Guess Who, Neil Young, or The Band, who went on to make names for themselves in the United States, many others remained toiling in obscurity. Vancouver is noted for its rock and psychedelic scenes of the sixties and seventies that are the subject of a four volume compilation titled simply, The History of Vancouver Rock and Roll; the Winnipeg rock scene that produced The Guess Who is documented in John Einarson's Shakin' All Over: The Winnipeg Sixties rock scene (note here); and Ryan Edwardson writes in Canadian Content, that Yonge Street in Toronto was "lined with venues for rocking crowds" (127, 129). To put it concisely, there was no shortage of talent in Canada, just a shortage of opportunity.

Referring back to the earlier argument that if Canadian artists do not have a presence in the Canadian marketplace, it is because Canadians do not value them enough to pay for them (Vipond 82,83), Ronnie Hawkins put it best when he said, "nobody can tell whether you're good or bad if you're not heard" (Edwardson 128). Unfortunately, this is the major failure of the Canadian content regulations. Established at just 30 percent for AM radio following the CRTC hearings in 1970, and with no provisions requiring broadcasters to provide airtime to new and emerging acts, the Canadian content laws were quickly criticized for allowing stations to overplay the few artists who had already made their reputation in the United States. Gordon Lightfoot said, "the CRTC did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't need it . . . and I don't like it," while a Time magazine article joked that, "AM radio stands for Anne Murray," and the authors of Mondo Canuck, claimed that, "if you listened to pop radio in the early seventies, it was easy to believe that Burton Cummings was the voice of Canada" (Edwardson 229). It is hard to believe that anyone would think that broadcasters would follow anything other than the letter of the law when they had so clearly shown their disdain for Canadian content regulation during the CRTC hearings. Secretary of state, Gerard Pelletier, campaigned for a measure of quality in the regulations, saying that the CRTC's approach was just "an exercise in mathematics, and if you're good enough at mathematics, the rules can be circumvented" (Edwardson 200, 201). Since no measure of quality would be implemented, Canadian radio just continued to follow the lead of the American industry. Now, I realize that hindsight is 20/20, but the lessons that should have been learned through the early years of radio's Canadian content regulations, and the early years of television regulations even before that, still have not been learned today. I do not think that the problem is necessarily that the 30 percent Canadian content requirement (or 35 percent today) is too low. The problem is that this regulation still does not help the majority of Canadian artists, as it allows stations to play a handful of established acts ad nauseum to the exclusion of all others. When the BBG received its mandate to regulate the broadcast industry in order to provide "a varied and comprehensive broadcasting service of a high standard that is basically Canadian in content and character" (Rutherford 104), I do not think they intended to have acts of dubious artistic and critical merit, like Anne Murray in the seventies and Nickelback today, dominate the legislated Canadian content airtime. The solution to this problem is simple: enact firm guidelines that state that once an artist achieves a certain level of success, say three top ten hits in Canada, stations can no longer use them to fill quota airtime. By the time an artist reaches this level of success they should be well established and no longer need the assistance of the Canadian content regulations. This amendment would ensure that each new generation of artists would get a fair shot at airplay and success in Canada.

I do not hold the position of George Grant that American culture is synonymous with the "lowest common denominator" (Grant 19), but at the same time I do not agree with economist, Stephen Globerman's assertion that government intervention into the cultural industries has resulted in "the suppression of the public's right to consume foreign cultural programming" (Vipond 84), and while I agree with Rutherford that "Canadians could happily consume American products of all kinds without doubting that they were citizens of a better country" (143), I think that, as I have shown, Canadian artists were at an unfair disadvantage in the late-sixties and early-seventies. This disadvantage, which lead to Grant's claims that Canada had lost its identity, was not due to American cultural imperialism, but rather it came as a result of the government's contradictory desire to uphold the free market and promote Canadian culture that allowed radio broadcasters to avoid tough content regulations that would truly have allowed a broad spectrum of Canadian artists to succeed.

Canadian Content: George Grant, the CRTC by Bruce Dyck

2010-12-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

Philip Blond's Red Toryism: A Canadian Tradition Revived and Revised

2010-10-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

Editorial Note: Red Toryism is a Canadian political tradition that has been revived (with some alterations) in the UK by the Radical Orthodox scion, Philip Blond. To get a sense of the similarities and differences between the Canadian Red Tory Tradition and its recent British counterpart, compare Ron Dart's article on the [Canadian] Red Tory tradition with the following variety of attempts to define Blond's current revised vision:

The Red Tory sounds like Margaret Thatcher in a Che Guevara beret, just as the distributist sounds, to someone unfamiliar with the term, like a redistributionist, or a communitarian might be confused with a collectivist. (It would not hurt the third-way Chesterbellocians to update their nomenclature.)

Zach Dundas describes Red Tories this way:

The Red Tories argue that modern free-market capitalism poses as potent a threat to individual liberty and communities as Big Government. Red Tories lump big-box stores, industrial agriculture, and high-finance shenanigans together with heavy-handed bureaucracy and high taxes: all, in their view, undermine the rock-ribbed Conservative values of local autonomy, strong community, diverse traditions, and decentralized power. The Red Tories view themselves as defenders of grassroots community against both the free market and the State.

Writes Patrick J. Deneen:

The brainchild of Phillip Blond, the “Red Tory” movement attempts to move beyond the well-rutted Left-Right positions of our time, instead seeking to combine a more Left-oriented concern for the depredations of concentrated wealth in advanced industrial economies with a more conservative defense of “virtue, tradition and the idea of the good.” Invoking the likes of Benjamin Disraeli and G.K. Chesterton, Phillip Blond has become something of a political force in England, even recently providing counsel to the likely future Prime Minister of England, David Cameron.

Here is Rod Dreher:

By advocating a localist, communitarian, distributist, anti-statist form of conservatism, Philip Blond gives us American conservatives something useful and important to work with. The GOP is a zombie party now; the conservatives to watch are Cameron’s Tories.

The term Red Tory originally comes from Canada, where the Tory color is blue and the Liberal color is red, and a Red Tory was a conservative whose platform contained some planks that could be regarded as liberal or progressive. Note that conservatism means different things in America and the British Empire: the preservation of classical liberalism and individual liberties here, and of monarchy and social order there.

Writes Shawn Summers at the Frum Forum:

On the one hand, Red Toryism is a reactionary conservatism. Distrusting the “atomized individualism” of the last half-century as leading ironically to ever-greater government as local civil society broke down, Red Tories emphasize the importance of local institutions – church, family, school boards, etc. – as a counterweight to excessive intrusion from an ever-prying state. However, Red Tories can also espouse traditionally leftist shibboleths like anti-corporatism with a fervor that would make Michael Moore blush.
Red Toryism, which really hasn’t had an equivalent here in America, strikes a chord among Front Porchers, who heard the philosophy’s leading spokesman speak at Georgetown and Villanova recently.

David Brooks writes:

To create a civil state, Blond would reduce the power of senior government officials and widen the discretion of front-line civil servants, the people actually working in neighborhoods. He would decentralize power, giving more budget authority to the smallest units of government. He would funnel more services through charities. He would increase investments in infrastructure, so that more places could be vibrant economic hubs. He would rebuild the “village college” so that universities would be more intertwined with the towns around them.

Essentially, Blond would take a political culture that has been oriented around individual choice and replace it with one oriented around relationships and associations.

Writes William Chellis at Regno Christi:

First, the Red Tories remind us that civil society matters. We are all in this together. Theologically we calls this the principle of solidarity and it reminds us that a cold libertarianism can never replace authentic, family and community based conservatism. Second, the Red Tories remind us that markets must be moral. A humane economy is the purpose of our economic freedom. Third, the Red Tories remind us that small is beautiful. Too big to fail is too big to exist. Fourth, the Red Tories remind us that localism can save democracy. Power is responsive to the people when exercised by folks you see at the grocery store. Finally, the Red Tories remind us that conservatives conserve. Our communities, our schools, our traditions and our environment. If Phillip Blond can help us recover these things, his trip will be welcome indeed.

Published from The Jury Box

The Red Tory Tradition by Ron Dart

2010-10-16T22:29:00.000-07:00

The language of Red Toryism became popular in the mid-1960s when Gad Howoritz suggested that George Grant was a Red Tory. The publication and immediate success of Grant’s, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (1965), made it abundantly clear that there were historic forms of conservatism in Canada that could not be equated with American republicanism. Horowitz, in his classic article, ‘Tories, Socialists and the Demise of Canada’(1965), argued that there was a ‘Tory touch’ in the Canadian political tradition that leaned more towards the commonweal and socialism than did the free enterprise system of Blue Toryism. It was this ‘Tory touch’ that was more ‘Red’ than ‘Blue’ in orientation that distinguished the Canadian from the American notions of conservatism.

Grant denied that he was a Red Tory in Horowitz’s understanding of the term, but there was no doubt that Grant, as a Canadian conservative, did not stand within the Blue Tory line and lineage. Grant stood on the shoulders of many that had gone before him, and many that followed him in their understanding of Canadian conservatism. The publication of Charles Taylor’s missive, Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (1982), went further than Horowitz in highlighting the family tree: Taylor suggested that Leacock, Sandwell, Deacon, Creighton, Morton, Purdy and Forsey stood within such a tradition. Grant was, of course, part of the clan. Taylor could have included Acorn rather than Purdy. Dalton Camp and David Orchard both worked within the Progressive Conservative party to further the Red Tory way.

Horowitz never mentioned Leacock’s ,‘The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice’ and Bennett’s The Premier Speaks to the People in his classic article, but both Leacock and Bennett stand back of Grant. Prime Minister Diefenbaker (1958-1963), the tragic hero in Lament, embodied a Red, Rogue or High Tory vision as did Howard Green, Diefenbaker’s Minister of External Affairs.

The pro-American stance taken by Prime Minister Mulroney signaled a different attitude towards the USA than many Tories had taken in Canadian history. The change in the Canadian understanding of conservatism from Mulroney to Preston Manning to Stephen Harper was a shift from Red to Blue Toryism, from a distinctive nationalist Tory vision of Canada to more of an annexationist/integrationist position. Those who read, for example, Grant’s Lament for a Nation and Ernest Manning’s Political Realignment: A Challenge to Thoughtful Canadians (1967) cannot but be taken by the stark differences between Grant’s older notion of Canadian conservatism and Manning’s more republican read of the conservative way.

There is no doubt there was in Canada a notion of conservatism that could not be equated with republicanism. This tradition was, in a literary sense, poignantly and succinctly summed up in Robertson Davies’, The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks. The language of Red Toryism has come to mean many things, but such a political heritage is part of the distinctive and unique Canadian way, and the Tory touch does mean that historic conservatism in Canada does have leftist leanings.

Readings

Charles Taylor: Radical Tories: The Conservative Tradition in Canada (1982)

Ron Dart: The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes (1999)

Ron Dart: The Canadian High Tory Tradition: Raids on the Unspeakable (2004)

Ron Dart

'The Red Tory Tradition' appendix article, that it can be found in The Canadian Encyclopedia for those who want to check sources.

Political Ressourcement: Anabaptist Inaccuracies, Radical Orthodoxy, Red Toryism, and George Grant by Ron Dart

2010-10-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

"George Grant was Canada’s most significant public philosopher."

Graeme Nicholson, Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics (p. 323)

The Constantinian Fall Myth

There is a rather inaccurate and shallow read of Christian history that unfolds in this manner. Once upon a time there was the pure New Testament church that was faithful and true to the radical commitment to Jesus Christ. This period of time was short, and the fire did not burn bright and with much light for long. The 1st century soon gave way to the post-apostolic era, and in the 2nd-3rd centuries, the intensity and spirit of the martyrs gave way to assimilation, many compromises and a thinning out of the faith journey.

The most serious distortion and compromise of the church took place when Constantine came to power in the early decades of the 4th century, and Eusebius’ oration and adoring speech to Constantine made it clear that the church had now become a lapdog and dancing bear of imperial politics. The age of true prophets and genuine martyrs was over. It was just a matter of time before Theodosius and Charlemagne took control of the church and reduced it to a vassal of political power.

This tale, of course, continues to follow the same theme but with an interesting twist and bend in the path. The church had grown weary of being a servant of the state, so by the Middle Ages she asserted herself, and insisted that the church dominate the state rather than the state the church. I remember, with much fondness, doing my BA in my 20s in the 1970s. I had planned in specializing in Medieval thought and politics, and I took a course on church-state relations from 1050-1300. The text we used was Brian Tierney’s The Crises of Church and State: 1050-1300. The crises that Tierney so aptly described was divided into four phases: 1. The First Thousand Years, 2. The Investiture Contest, 3. The Age of the Lawyers, and 4. Aristotle and the National State. The clash can be succinctly summarized, without going into details, in this way. The church, following the lead of the Pope, insisted that the state had no room in church decisions, and the church had a legitimate right to question the state. This intense clash between church and state lasted throughout various phases into the late Middle Ages. But, the battle over who has power and in which sphere created a backlash. Many 16th century reformers were convinced that both church and state had compromised the pure truth of the gospel, and reformation was an imperative.

The Constantinian Fall thesis is the ‘once upon a time’ argument that is part of the myth and lore of Anabaptist history. The fact that the Magisterial Reformation of Luther and Calvin continued to be public and political in a way that used violence to repress dissent meant that the magisterial reformers were all part of the same sordid story. The Anabaptists argued that the mainstream protestant reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and tribe), like the Roman Catholics, compromised the gospel. Anabaptists argued that it was they and they alone that understood and lived the nonviolent life of Jesus and the apostles. But, let us halt at this point and ponder three points. First, did all the Christians from the 3rd-6th centuries (Patristic era) uncritically accept the Eusebian-Constantinian compromise? Did all Christians genuflect to Theodosius in the latter half of the 4th century? Did Ambrose and Augustine, Jerome and Benedict ask no critical questions about Eusebius and Constantine? Was Basil and Chrysostom, Theodore and Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus or Hilary of Poitier silent about the Constantinian-Theodosius compromise? Of course not! Most of the Fathers of the Church were at the forefront of challenging such an unhealthy compromise and weakening of the faith. Only those that have little or no understanding of the Patristic Era in church history would naively accept such a false and shallow reading of Christian history. Many of the Fathers and Mothers of the Patristic Era were prophets and prophetesses of the most mature order, and when we take the time to immerse ourselves in their mystical insights and high view of the church, we cannot but be held by their prophetic candor and subtle insights when it comes to Biblical exegesis, theology, sacraments and church-state relations.

Erasmus, Ressourcement and the Origins the 16th Century Peace Tradition

There is, therefore, a serious Anabaptist inaccuracy in interpreting the Patristic Era. The Constantinian Fall thesis is a thesis that can be easily refuted by a minimal understanding of church history from the 3rd-6th centuries. There is, though, a second point that must be noted. Ideological Anabaptists tend to pride themselves on being the real bearers of the Christian peace tradition as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount. It is significant to note that the Oxford Reformers (Colet, More, Erasmus,Vives) were doing peace theology before the Anabaptists in the 16th century, and many Anabaptists sat at the feet of Erasmus. In fact, Erasmus was much more critical of Luther and Calvin than most Anabaptists, and he consciously drew his peace theology from the Bible and the Fathers of the West and East. Erasmus was turning to the ancient sources in a way many are today, but Erasmus was also keenly aware and alert to the political and peace theology of the Fathers. So, it was not the Anabaptists that initiated the turn to the Bible and its application in the area of peacemaking.—it was the Oxford Reformers and Erasmus. And, I think it can be argued that the Anabaptists seriously lacked the exegetical, theological and ecclesial depth of Erasmus.

The tale of the peace theology of the Oxford Reformers is ably recounted in Robert Adam’s well written tome The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496-1535, and the broader Roman Catholic peace tradition is succinctly summarized in Ronald Musto’s The Catholic Peace Tradition. Needless to say, most of the finest Roman Catholic reformers of the 16th century that consciously turned to the ancient sources in the Bible and the Fathers of the Patristic Era (West and East) did so in a way that was highly integrative: mystical theology was linked to a high view of the church and a form of public and prophetic politics. This means, therefore, that those in our time that are turning to the older and deeper wells for fresher and purer water need to receive the full counsel and vision of the Fathers rather than picking and choosing, in a reductionistic manner, what suits and serves a more limited notion of the past. If some Anabaptists tend to have inaccurate understanding of the Patristic Era and the 16th century, there are those within the Ressourcement movement that commit the same error but from a different perspective—the Fathers, within this perspective, are reduced to mystical and ecclesial theologians---their prophetic theology tends to be ignored. Both the Fathers of the church and the 16th century Roman Catholic reformers (who turned to the Bible-Fathers as sources of insight and inspiration) had a unified view of contemplative theology, a sacramental and unified view of the church as the divine body of Christ and a Kingdom vision of faith that was decidedly prophetic.

The Myth of the Schleitheim Confession

Third, did all Anabaptists of the 16th century agree on how theology should be interpreted and applied? Were all Anabaptists absolute pacifists? Were all Anabaptists fully committed to the details of Michael Sattler’s The Schleitheim Confession (1527)? There has been a great deal of work done in the last few decades on the complex nature of Anabaptist origins. The publication of Arnold Snyder’s Anabaptist History and Theology: An Introduction (1995) has made it abundantly clear that there is no such thing as a single origin to the Anabaptist tale: it is much more about polygenesis than monogenesis. This obvious fact comes as a disturbing contradiction to those Anabaptists that are still frozen in history with a monogenesis model.

I was recently reading Clarence Bauman’s pamphlet ‘Christian Discipleship’ (which is included in his larger tome, On The Meaning of Life: An Anthology of Theological Reflection: 1993) and John Redekop’s Politics Under God (2007). Both authors falsely assume and wrongly hold together a certain notion of Anabaptist history: the Constantinian Fall Thesis which seriously distorts the Patristic Era and early 16th century Anabaptism=Schleitheim Confession and a sort of monogenesis.

There is, obviously, a rather dated and shallow read of Anabaptist origins that still lingers in some quarters within the tribe. Those like Bauman-Redekop and Weaver-Yoder tend to fall within such a tradition and limited read of the origins of Anabaptism. Needless to say, such thinkers have their uncritical devotees. But, there is also a more sophisticated and subtle read of Anabaptist origins from within the clan. I mentioned Arnold Snyder, and equally important is A. James Reimer’s Mennonites and Classical Theology: Dogmatic Foundations for Christian Ethics (2001). Kenneth Davis’ Anabaptism and Asceticism: A Study in Intellectual Origins (1974) has an excellent chapter (5) on the role Erasmus played in the peace theology of 1st generation Anabaptists. Needless to say, such pointers and hints need fuller and deeper probes, but the indicators are there for those wishing to follow the cairns.

It should be noted that many naïve postmodern Christians uncritically accept both the Constantinian Fall thesis and the rather reactionary notion of the church and church-state relations as embodied in Anabaptist ecclesiology. Gratefully so, the church in her 2000 year plus wisdom has pondered church-state relations from a variety of perspectives, and those who live, move and have their being from such a classical heritage need not accept, as many Anabaptists have done and do, a narrow view of the church or a simplistic notion of church-state relations. Those who are willing to let down their buckets into deeper faith-politics well should turn to From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought as a primer on the historic topic. The reason we turn to the wisdom of ‘The Great Tradition’ is to hear and heed what the communion of the saints can still tell us about the imperfect Body of Christ, and the relationship between the church in her organic historic life and her public and prophetic responsibility and ministry.

Radical Orthodoxy, Philip Blond and Red Toryism

There has been some fine and subtle discussion between Anabaptists and the Radical Orthodox in The Gift of Difference: Radical Orthodoxy, Radical Reformation (2010). John Milbank wrote the ‘Foreward’ to the slim book, and, for the most part, the articles are written by members of the ‘radical reformation’ as they have pondered the insights of Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy. The Gift of Difference is a judiciously informed book on how radical reform types might learn from the radical orthodox and what the radical orthodox can learn from the radical reformers. There is, though, serious and substantive differences between these two traditions that, when day is done, cannot be bridged. The radical orthodox are much more grounded in an intellectual, ecclesial and political historic way than the radical reformation types even though both clans can learn from one another at a certain yet limited level.

It seems to me that the Ressourcement movement must, if it is to be true to ‘The Great Tradition’, enter more deeply and fully into the prophetic commitment of those that made the Patristic Era the golden age of the church. I mentioned above From Irenaeus to Grotius as a fine overview of the topic. Amnesia is the besetting sin of the 20th-21st centuries, and memory is a form of intellectual self defense against much that distorts and demeans the past.

It is significant to note that the ‘Radical Orthodox’ movement in England very much sees itself as in the process of reclaiming and recovering the ancient sources as a means of renewing the church and society. Radical Orthodoxy has walked the extra mile in the last 20 years to target the origins of modernity (and the implications of heeding the liberal way), and offered an alternate path for the church to reconsider in her journey. The turn to the Classical tradition that is so central to the Radical Orthodox way holds together a deep mystical spirituality, a high view of the church and a substantive commitment to public and political life. There is little doubt that the Radical Orthodox tradition can come as a sophisticated and generous critique of those that turn to the Ressourcement way but ignore the public and prophetic dimensions of the church. The thinker who has been most alert and active within Radical Orthodoxy in a political way has been and is Phillip Blond.

Blond has moved the ‘Radical Orthodox’ clan from a group that was primarily preoccupied with the relation of theology to philosophy to the relationship between theology-philosophy and politics. Blond edited an earlier book, Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology (1998), that reflected a more inward approach to theology and philosophy, but, in his most recent book, Red Tory: How Left and Right Have Broken Britain and How We Can Fix It (2010), we can see Blond doing political theology in a way most within the Radical Orthodox tradition have not.

It can be argued that Blond is attempting, in Red Tory, to thread together, within an English context, an integrated vision of faith, rooted in history and applied to the political issues of our time. There is something to be said about the ressourcement approach of Blond that is much closer to the Fathers of the Church and the 16th century Roman Catholic reformers. Blond, unlike some Anabaptists, has a more sure footed and consistent read of the tradition, and he is much more political than many who claim to be committed to the ressourcement approach to the sources.

Red Tory is neatly and crisply divided into two parts: 1) The Mess We’re in and How We Got There and 2) Alternatives. The ‘Conclusion’, ‘Why Red Tory?’, is a must read to get a feel for Blond’s use and justification of the term. There is no doubt that Blond has aptly and ably put his finger on the raw nerve of the problems of much contemporary intellectual and public discourse and action. There is an ample thinness and many worrisome and not to be missed inconsistencies that are back of the different crises that Blond describes. I do, though, have my questions about the ability of ‘the civil state’ to adequately deliver the goods. I have no problem in holding high Burke’s ‘small platoon’, but the communitarian left and civil society does need the essential role of the state to deliver social and economic goods when society falters and fails in their role. It is in the lived tension of state-society that the deeper Red Tory tradition finds its raison d’etre.

Blond, to the amusement of most Canadians, has used the term ‘Red Tory’ in his application of Radical Orthodoxy to political life. Red Tory was a term applied to the well known Canadian George Grant by Gad Horowitz in the 1960s. Blond’s book on Red Toryism has some affinities with Grant, but there are distinctive differences. I published a book more than a decade ago on the indigenous Canadian Red Tory way: The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes (1999). I mentioned, in the missive, the line and lineage of Red Toryism in Canada, how such a tradition has substantive theological and political roots, and how the fruit of such a heritage is public and political. I touched on the marks of the Canadian Red Tory way and how it was under siege from Blue Tories. The fact that Blond has used a distinctly Canadian term that was applied to George Grant raises some interesting points. Blond and the Radical Orthodox movement see themselves as tapping into the ancient way—so does Grant. Blond uses the term, Red Tory, that was applied to Grant, and Grant is never mentioned in Blond’s writings or the Radical Orthodox clan—why is this the case? Grant was as radical and orthodox as was Radical Orthodoxy yet he finds no home in their inn.

Is Blond’s use of the term ‘Red Tory’ true to the Canadian origin of the term, and, if not, how is Blond misusing the term? Did Grant see himself as a ‘Red Tory’ in Horowitz’s use of the term? I co-edited a book a few years ago on George Grant, Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics (2006). There are two articles in the tome that are pertinent to this article. ‘Was George Grant a Red Tory?’ by William Christian deftly dissects the Grant-Red Tory discussion, and Christian knows of what he writes--he is one of the leading Grant scholars in Canada. My article in the book, ‘Stephen Leacock and George Grant: Tory Affinities’ touches on the same issues. I had another book published in 2006, Stephen Leacock: Canada’s Red Tory Prophet. I mention these points for the simple reason that I’m not quite sure how thoroughly Blond has understood Canadian Red Toryism, Horowitz, Grant, Leacock and the older Canadian Red Tory way. My recent book on Grant, George Grant: Spiders and Bees (2008), continues to probe these issues yet further.

The fact that Radical Orthodoxy has such a classical notion of the church means that there are more points of affinity with Orthodoxy than with the radical reformation. This obvious fact has born fruit in Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy: Transfiguring the World Through the Word (2009). George Grant had many an affinity with Orthodoxy also, and I have highlighted how this was the case in my article, ‘George Grant and the Orthodox Tradition’ (clarionjournal.typepad.com). The turn, therefore, by the Radical Orthodox to the ancient and time tried trails means that Grant and the Radical Orthodox have much in common (although Grant was decades before the Radical Orthodox in his intellectual sleuth work into the roots of modernity and the classical alternate to liberalism). Grant’s thinking and ideas permeate much of the writings and insights of the Radical Orthodox, but there is no mention of Grant in their publications. Why this is the case?

George Grant, Ressourcement, Red Tory

There is no doubt that Grant was committed to the Ancients as a way to counter, question and interrogate the uncritical attitude of many towards liberal modernity. In fact, Grant compared the ancients to the bees in Swift’s Battle of the Books—the modern liberal tradition is like the spider that spins out reality from its womb. Grant used such terms as enucleate, enfold and unfold to clarify the inner core of modernity and the implications of such a worldview and principles for the soul and society. Grant turned to Plato as his philosophical north star and to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount as his ethical lighthouse. Grant tracked and traced the origins of modernity to unresolved tensions within the Bible and the Greeks, Jerusalem and Athens. Unlike many who see the origins of liberalism in the secular enlightenment, protestant reformation, late medieval thought or the high middle ages, the genius of Grant was to locate the origin of modernity at the very source and headwaters of western civilization itself. The clash between power and goodness can be found in a view of God as found in the Hebrew canon. Plato grappled with this tension in the Republic and Gorgias. The tensions between a God who is pure will, and a God who is Just is at the core of the complex nature of the Hebrew canon. Grant saw this most clearly and its implications for the unfolding of western thought and civilization. This is what makes Grant such a fascinating thinker. Grant is, in many ways, a sophisticated and charter member of ressourcement, but he has never been given his due and credit for his pioneering work. He has dared to go to places that few go and often paid the intellectual price for doing so. Grant has been called ‘Canada’s greatest political philosopher’ of the latter half of the 20th century, and the University of Toronto Press has now published the Collected Works of George Grant in four large volumes. Even these published writings do not exhaust the fertile and creative interpretive mind and imagination of Grant. There is still more to publish of Grant’s writings.

Grant would have little interest or patience with the rather dated and questionable read of a form of Anabaptism that caricatures both the Patristic Era and 16th century Roman Catholic humanist reformers. Grant, like Stephen Leacock and the 16th century Anabaptists, turned to the Sermon on the Mount as his ethical polaris, but unlike some Anabaptists pondered the relationship of church-state in a much more sophisticated way and manner. It is important to note that Grant had an impact on the well known Mennonite theologian, A. James Reimer, and Reimer wrote a variety of articles on Grant. Grant was doing the work of ressourcement decades before the term became trendy and popular, and he did so in a way that was wise, informed, integrated and applied. It was Grant’s application of ancient and classical thought to the reality of liberal modernity that makes him such a challenging presence. Many of Grant’s readable and accessible missives such as Philosophy in the Mass Age, Lament for a Nation, English Speaking Justice, Time as History, Technology and Justice and Technology and Empire are classical tracts for the times. Grant was, of course, too incisive and brilliant a thinker to be taken captive by the ideology of the political right, sensible centre or left---such forms of intellectual tribalism were themselves the product of fragmented liberalism. Blond is right, therefore, to be searching for a vision that transcends the left, centre and right, but we need to ask, by way of conclusion, where do Blond and Grant walk side by side and where do they part paths? We might just get a hint of an answer by entering a clearing in which the language of ‘Red Toryism’ is discussed in its Canadian context, Grant’s interaction with the term and Blond’s appropriation of it. Such could be fertile ground to sow new seeds of a deeper conversation at a variety of instructive and illuminating levels.

Ron Dart

Lament -- Poetry by Eric H. Janzen

2010-08-29T04:23:00.001-07:00

LAMENT

This shredded flag hangs low

like the burdened shoulders

of a visionary watching the

vision of his passion fade

'what is necessary is not necessarily

good' says the wind as it

moves the flag aside, passing

with the memory of resistance,

the recollection of the desire

to make something distinguished

and like George Grant

witnessing the dream so slowly

extinguished, a northern fire

smouldering like so much smoke and ashes

rising now falling free to mark

the mourning few and leave

the shredded flag to hang askew

over a hill pondering the loss of

the true north and its strength

given over for weakness.

George Grant and the Orthodox Tradition by Ron Dart

2010-08-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

George Grant was Canada’s most significant public philosopher.

Graeme Nicholson[1]

George Grant has been called one of the most important public intellectuals in Canada in the latter half of the 20^th century. He had a wide ranging mind and imagination that covered and touched most aspects of the Western and Eastern traditions. Grant was a Christian renaissance humanist in the best sense of that compelling term. The fact that Grant was drawn to the best of the Western theological, philosophical and political tradition meant that he encountered the riches of Orthodoxy in his many probes. This brief essay will touch on Grant’s encounter with Orthodoxy. I will ponder his encounter and engagement with the Orthodox tradition in five unfolding phases.

First, Grant’s initial encounter with Orthodoxy was through the marriage of his sister, Alison Grant, to George Ignatieff. Grant had studied with George Ignatieff’s brother, Nicholas, who taught History at Upper Canada College in the 1930s. But the meeting of George Ignatieff and Alison Grant

and their marriage in November 1945 brought Grant into the centre of the Russian Orthodox way as it was embodied in England and Canada in the WWII period. George Ignaitieff had this to say about his Russian Orthodox heritage in his classic book, Memoirs of a Peacemonger:

The Orthodox church gave me a sense of belonging, of being in touch with my roots, of safety and stability in an otherwise confusing world. Even in early childhood I derived great comfort from prayer and from the familiar Orthodox liturgy, and I have remained a devoted member of the church ever since. p. 33.

Ignatieff had this, also, to say about the unusual nature of the wedding:

We were married in Montreal, in the United Church in deference to Alison’s family and in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral for the sake of mine. p. 84.

The Ignatieff family was well known in Russia, but they had to flee the country when the communists came to power. George’s father (Count Paul Ignatieff) was the last head of education in Russia under the Czar, and even though he was at the forefront of reforming the educational system in Russia before the revolution, he saw the writing on the wall in 1917. The Ignatieff clan, initially, moved to England, then to Canada. George Ignatieff became a prominent civil servant in Canada, and he worked closely in the 1950s-1960s with Lester Pearson. Ignatieff’s book, The Making of a Peacemonger: The Memoirs of George Ignatieff (1985) tells the tale well of the journey of the Ignatieff clan from Russia to England to Canada. There is little doubt that Grant, as a young man, would have been exposed to Russian Orthodoxy through his friendship with Nicholas Ignatieff and the fact his sister was married to George Ignatieff. The son of George Ignatieff-Alison Grant is Michael Ignatieff (leader of the Liberal party in Canada), and Michael has written about the Ignatieff-Grant family connection in True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada (2009). There emerged in the 1950s-1960s serious tensions between George Grant and George Ignatieff. Grant felt that the Pearson-Ignatieff duo had become fawning servants of the emerging American empire, and this difference fragmented the family. Grant thought that there was an indigenous form of Canadian nationalism that had to been affirmed to resist and oppose the liberal Canadian drift into the embracing arms of imperial America. It is somewhat interesting to note that George Ignatieff never mentioned George Grant (his brother-in-law) in The Making of a Peacemonger. It seems the two men had quite different understandings about what it meant to be a peacemonger. But, there is no doubt that George Grant’s exposure to Orthodoxy came through the Ignatieff family. It’s too bad we do not have any serious records of conversations that took place between George Grant and George-Nicholas Ignatieff on Orthodoxy. It is significant to note that after George Ignatieff had finished his more active role as one of the more prominent Canadian diplomats of the 1950s-1960s, he was offered the position of Provost of Trinity College (the leading High Church Anglican College of the time in Canada) in 1972. The convergence of the Orthodox tradition and catholic Anglicanism was very much alive in Canada at the time, and the Ignatieff-Grant, Orthodox-Anglican dialogue was part of the Canadian ethos. In some important ways, the Orthodox-Anglican ethos as embodied in the Ignatieff-Grant families had some affinities with the English St. Alban-St. Sergius convergence of Anglicanism and Russian Orthodoxy. George Grant did have his differences with George Ignatieff, but he was quite miffed, though, when Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau bypassed George Ignatieff for the role of Governor General in 1979. I do see in Ignatieff’s close relationship with Pearson, and Pearson’s close alliance with Kennedy contra Diefenbaker, Ignatieff’s explicit merging of church and empire. It was this updated Constantinian synthesis that Grant so saw through and opposed in Lament for a Nation.

Second, when Grant became chair of the Religious Studies department at McMaster University in 1961, he was quite keen to check the drift of liberalism by bringing to the University those forms of Christianity that embodied the more classical Christian way. It is important to note at this juncture that Grant’s more catholic form of Anglicanism made for many an affinity with the Orthodox way, and in England at the time much work was being done on Anglican-Orthodox dialogue. Grant would have imbibed the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue that was going on in England in the 1930s-1940s, and this made him eager to bring the dialogue to the Canadian context. George Ignatieff, as a young man, had attended the well known Anglican Trinity College in Toronto in the 1930s, and George-Alison had an affinity with the High Church Anglican-Orthodox way that was unfolding in Toronto. The selected letters of George Grant, George Grant: Selected Letters (1996) make it clear that Grant was drawn to some of the sounder and more stable aspects of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox way in opposition to the way he thought that the Anglican tradition was capitulating to liberal modernity (‘George Grant and the Anglican Tradition’ in Ron Dart’s George Grant: Spiders and Bees: 2008). There is no doubt, therefore, by the early 1960s Grant had a growing interest in Orthodoxy and he was keen to get Orthodox theologians lecturing at McMaster University.

Third, when Grant was doing research on Simone Weil in the 1960s he read Philip Sherrard’s The Greek East and Latin West (1959). Sherrard’s read and interpretation of Orthodoxy had a profound impact on Grant for a variety of reasons. Sherrard had suggested in The Greek East and Latin West that the clash between the East and West hinged on the way the West had accepted at the Third Council of Toledo (589) and ratified such a position in 1014 that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son (Jesus) and the Father. This move by the Roman Catholic West is called the ‘filioque clause’ which deeply offended the Greek Orthodox church. What is the issue at the core of the dilemma, and why was Grant drawn to Sherrard’s read of the clash and its implications? There is no doubt that the conflict separated the Eastern Orthodox from the Western Roman Catholics, and Grant took the side of the Orthodox on this issue. Does it really matter whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone or the Father and the Son? Why bother quibbling about such details? But, details can make a difference, and this is what interested the Greek Orthodox Sherrard and Grant. For Grant, the distinction is important for the simple reason that the West attempted to too clearly define God and God’s Being, whereas the Orthodox tradition was more willing to dwell in the Mystery and Essence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The fact that the Roman Catholic church attempted to be too sure about the economy and operation of God by the inclusion of the ‘filioque clause’ (the relationship between Father, Son, Spirit and Son and Spirit) worried Grant. It was this Western need to sharpen, clarify and fully understand that blinded the West to that which could not be comprehended. Grant thought that Aristotle was back of the Western Roman Catholic-Protestant way, and Plato informed the more mystical and contemplative Orthodox way. (George Grant: A Biography: pages 232-237). It was the meditative Orthodox way that Grant held high, and he thought that Western Christianity had lost its spiritual and mystical way. Grant was fusing Simone Weil, Sherrard and Orthodoxy in the 1960s, and he knew where he stood and why. Grant, therefore, saw in the ‘filioque clause’ the budding of the Western rationalist way that would blossom into the need of 16-17^th century science for clear and distinct ideas and the western technological drive in the 19^th-20^th centuries to master through reason and will the earth, knowledge and human relationships. It noted, though, that Grant thought the origins of sheering willing could be located in the Hebrew canon. The God that willed creation, chose the Jewish people, elected some and not others, commanded the Jewish nation to slaughter other peoples was, Grant feared, a god in which Will often trumped the Good. The modern synthesis of ‘Willing-Techne-Reason’ could be located at the very fount and source of the Jewish-Christian tradition. So, the Eastern-Western debate about the ‘filioque clause’ was just one more act in such an unfolding drama. This means, therefore, Grant went to much older places than Sherrard to examine and explore where and when the beast of unleashed willing emerged from the depths.

Fourth, Grant had a real fondness for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but he was more drawn to the Russian Orthodox vision of Dostoevsky than Tolstoy. In 1941, he commented on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and he favoured the former to the latter. Grant’s lecture in 1959 on Dostoevsky on CBC for ‘Architects of Modern Thought’ walked the attentive listener and reader into the centre and core of Dostoevsky’s painful probes of the human condition. Grant drew from Dostoevsky’s novels to highlight the depths to which humans can sink and the heights to which the saints can rise. Where but in such Russian classics so grounded in the Orthodox way could such a tantalizing vision be articulated and lived? There is no doubt, also, that Dostoevsky was a profound critic of the way Russia and the Russian Orthodox had become westernized and modern, and he attempted to reverse this capitulation to liberal modernity.

Grant was very much with Dostoevsky in the clash between the ancients and the moderns, and he thought the ancient and time tried way of Orthodoxy was absolutely needed and necessary to question the progressive liberal drift of the modern world. Grant gave a series of lectures in 1976 to graduate students on ‘Platonic Christianity’, and in the final lecture, he dealt with ‘Dostoevsky’s Christianity’. The lecture went deeper and further than his 1959 CBC lecture on Dostoevsky, and in the span of the presentation he pondered Dostoevsky’s understanding of the relationship of suffering and freedom, and more to the point, how the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov embodied, in the most beguiling and seductive way, the temptation of the West and Western Christianity. The Jesus of The Brothers Karamazov confronts the western Christian church. The Roman Catholic church had become the Judas figure in many ways. Jesus’ reply to the Grand Inquisitor is a kiss on the cheek. Such a kiss, like the much earlier kiss of Judas to Jesus, speaks volumes. There is no doubt where Grant stood in all this. The Orthodox vision of the Jesus in The Brothers Karamazov comes as an affront and challenge to the Judas like church of Western Christianity. Grant had by 1976, in many ways, fused the theological Greek Orthodox tradition with the literary Russian Orthodox tradition in his reflections on Sherrard and Dostoevsky.

Fifth, a good teacher is often indebted to those that have gone before, and their students and such wise teachers pass on, like a torch, the noblest that has been given them—Grant is no exception to this truth and reality. What, though, has this to do with Grant and Orthodoxy? Grant was a member of the Socratic Club at Oxford that C.S. Lewis started and developed. Grant had a high view of Lewis, and the affinities between the two (Lewis the elder and Grant the novice) have been duly noted in my article ‘C.S. Lewis and George Grant: A Tale of Two Anglican Tories’. Lewis was a Classical-Medieval-Renaissance scholar, and Grant walked the extra mile to hold high the ‘discarded image’ of such an ancient way of thinking and being. The fact that Lewis was so grounded in the classical tradition meant that both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions have often seen Lewis as a convincing embodiment of their heritages. The well known English Orthodox bishop and theologian, Kallistos Ware, for example, has written quite fondly of Lewis in his touching and timely article, ‘God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity’. Grant was held by Lewis, and Lewis’ rooting in the classics (and by implication Orthodoxy) was something that Grant would understand. Grant also passed onto his interest in the Russian Orthodox and Classical way to his students. Bruce Ward did his MA and PH.D. with Grant at McMaster, and Ward’s two books on Dostoevsky are Canadian classics on this seminal Russian writer. Dostoevsky’s Critique of the West: The Quest for the Earthy Paradise (1986) is Ward’s doctoral thesis under Grant turned into a book, and Remembering the End: Dostoevsky as Prophet to Modernity (2000) turns once again to the insights of Dostoevsky as a prophet to the failings of the liberal west. Spencer Estabrooks, another student of Grant’s at McMaster, is now an Orthodox priest, and is front and centre in the running of St. Arseny Orthodox Institute in Winnipeg. Archbishop Lazar, unlike Bruce Ward and Spencer Estabrooks, never studied with George Grant, but as one of the most prominent Orthodox theologians in Canada and the USA, Lazar has a high regard for George Grant, and the way Grant attempted to integrate the often fragmented realities of spirituality and politics. It is significant to note, also, that David Goa (yet another prominent Orthodox intellectual in Canada) has tipped his cap often to George Grant. Goa’s A Regard for Creation: Collected Essays (2008), from an Orthodox perspective, is a Canadian first on Orthodoxy and ecology, and Goa is quick to acknowledge in the missive his interest in Grant. There is no doubt that Grant has passed on the Orthodox way to both Ward and Estabrooks, and both men have taken Grant’s lead further and deeper. Grant has, also, had an impact on important Orthodox thinkers and activists in Canada such as Archbishop Lazar and David Goa.

Grant’s commitment to recovering the discarded image of the ancients meant he had affinities with those classical forms of Christianity that were rooted and grounded in the Great Tradition. Orthodoxy is very much immersed in such an ancient and time tried way, and this is why Grant and Orthodoxy have much in common. There is, indeed, a sense in which Grant is a probing pioneer in Canada of both Anglican-Orthodox dialogue and an approach to Orthodoxy that is not enmeshed with American imperial politics. Grant can, in many ways, offer North American Orthodoxy a way beyond its often worrisome legacy of Orthodoxy being the chaplain to the state. Grant can, also, when read aright, offer a way to challenge the present trend of a common ground between Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Orthodox from degenerating into a reductionistic and republican read of these ‘ad fontes’ and ‘ressourcement’ traditions.

Ron Dart

[1] Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy and Politics (2006) p. 323.

Allen Ginsberg and George Grant: Howl and Lament for a Nation - Excerpt from Ron Dart's 'Spiders and Bees'

2010-06-27T13:29:00.001-07:00

Introduction: It's 55 years this year (1955-2010) since Ginsberg's Howl was published, and 45 years (1965-2010) since Grant's Lament was published. This article on Ginsberg's Howl and Grant's Lament appears in print in Ron Dart'sSpiders and Bees. In it, Dart brings to the forefront how two different 'jeremiads' are handled.

It is fifty years this autumn since the Beat Movement was launched atSix Gallery in San Francisco (October 13, 1955). Some of the American Beats from the East Coast (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and the West Coast (Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) met and read together at this gathering. John Suiter rightly says, ‘The Six Gallery reading has sometimes been called the first synthesis of the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation’(p.148).

Kenneth Rexroth had hiked to many of the peaks in the North Cascades in the 1920s. His rambling and tramping tales are well told in An Autobiographical Novel (ch. 30). Gary Snyder worked on lookout peaks (Crater and Sourdough Mountains) in 1952–1953, but he could not get work in the North Cascades in 1954 because of his affiliations with unions and anarchist left groups. These were the McCarthy years, and Snyder was a victim of such a red scare. Philip Whalen worked on lookout peaks (Sauk and Sourdough Mountains) in 1953–1955. Jack Kerouac, a year after the Six Gallery reading (1956), spent a summer on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades. The Dharma Bums (1958), Lonesome Traveler(1960) and Desolation Angels (1965) all reflect much of what he saw and experienced on Desolation Peak.

The Six Gallery reading of 1955 was, therefore, a pivotal event in bringing together the ecological Beats of the West Coast and the Bop and Beat tradition of the East Coast. Allen Ginsberg attended and participated in the Six Gallery reading, and a year later,Howl and Other Poems was published.

The back cover of Howl, in the City Lights Books, says

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems was originally published by City Lights Books in the Fall of 1956. Subsequently seized by the U.S. Customs and the San Francisco police, it was the subject of a long court trial at which a series of poets and professors persuaded the courts that the book was not obscene. Over 30,000 copies have since been sold.

There is no doubt Howl created a commotion and stir in the San Francisco area at the time.

Forty years have passed since George Grant’s Lament for a Nation (1965) was published. Lament for a Nation, like Howl, created strong reactions. Many in the New Left and Counter-culture in Canada were drawn to Lament for a Nation. Many in the political centre and political right in Canada were offended by what Grant was saying inLament. Grant was fully aware of what he was saying and doing at the time, and he knew that his criticisms of the American empire (and the Canadian colonial and comprador class) would not be taken well by the ruling establishment and high mucky-mucks at the time.

Lament has been called ‘a masterpiece of political meditation’, and Darrol Bryant sees it as a tract for the times that stands within the Old Testament prophetic tradition ofLamentations. Kenneth Rexroth has argued, in defending Ginsberg, his poetry stands ‘in the long Jewish Old Testament tradition of testimonial poetry’. It is significant to note that Grant in his 1970 Introduction to Lament for a Nation refers twice to the image and metaphor of Molech. Molech was seen by the Jewish people as a devouring god that consumed and destroyed the life of one and all. Molech is a central metaphor in Part II ofHowl. Grant also refers to the Beats and the Counter-culture in Lament for a Nation. Ginsberg and Grant seem, at first glance, to be lamenting and howling against the same Molech. The American empire seemed to consume one and all. The best and the brightest did their best to oppose and resist such a monster and leviathan, but souls and bodies were required to feed the ravenous appetite of such a beast. Was it possible to live a meaningful life without bowing and genuflecting to Molech?

Howl and Lament for a Nation seem to be on the same page and fighting the same enemy and opponent. But are they? Ginsberg and Grant do agree on what they want to be free from. Do they agree on what they want to be free for? It is by understanding this difference that we will understand the different paths taken between American anarchism (and Canadian devotees of such a tradition) and Canadian High Tory nationalism. The different paths hiked do lead to quite distinctly different places on the political spectrum. Let us, all too briefly, light and linger at Howl and Lament for a Nation to see how and why American anarchism and Canadian nationalism, although seeming to have much in common at one level, have less and less in common at more substantive levels.

It is significant to note, by way of beginning, to mention who Howl and Lament for a Nation are dedicated to. Ginsberg offers up Howl to Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady; all three were East Coast Bop and Beat poets and activists. Howl was written for Carl Solomon, and William Carlos Williams wrote the Introduction. Kerouac is very much in the lead in the dedication, and Ginsberg says, ‘Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him’. We need to ask ourselves this simple question if we ever hope to get a fix and feel for Ginsberg’s drift and direction: what is the essence and core of the East Coast Bop and Beat ethos, and how did Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady, Williams and Solomon embody such an ideology? There tends to be six distinct points to be noted here: i) individual feelings and emotions are paramount (reason and one-dimensional science are the problem) ii) protest and rebellion against the American empire and Puritanism are dominant, iii) uprootedness and unrootedness are welcomed—being on the road becomes a new creed and dogma, iv) eclectic spirituality becomes the new sacrament—a rather raw sexuality and spirituality are fused, v) institutions (whether they are religious, political, cultural, economic) are seen as the problem, and vi) anarchism is seen as the liberating way in opposition to the authoritarian and repressive nature of all ideologies and institutions.

Liberty tends to trump order, individuality repels the common good, equality of desires is held high, raw experience banishes the wisdom of tradition, and spirituality is freed from the bondage of shackles of religious dogmas and institutions. Needless to say, such a position becomes its own ideology, creed and institution that cannot be doubted and must be defended at all costs by its guardians and gatekeepers.

There is no doubt that Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady embodied such a vision. Carolyn Cassady dared to expose and question such an ideology in Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Gins- berg (1990). Even Kerouac was beginning to ask substantive questions about the Beats and distance himself from them in the early 1960s. He makes this quite clear in Lonesome Traveler (1960) when he said, ‘I am actually not Beat but a strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic’, and with the publication of Vanity of Duluoz(1968), Kerouac made it clear that much of the Bop and Beat tradition was much more about a rather inflated vanity and egoistic and indulgent individualism than anything else. But Kerouac still remained the liberty-loving and solitary Catholic mystic. The American DNA and genetic code of individualism was still his master and guru.

Grant dedicated Lament for a Nation ‘To Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson: Two Lovers Of Their Country: One Living and One Dead’. Who were Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson, and how, as Canadian lovers of their country, were they different from Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady? Derek Bedson, unlike many of the Beats, had a strong commitment to the Anglican High Tory tradition both in politics and religion. He was active in the Anglican Church of Canada (ever the gadfly to its emerging liberalism) and he worked in the area of both federal and provincial politics. Bedson, unlike the Beats, realized that both political and religious institutions (although always imperfect), were important means to work within for the common good of the nation and the people. Society and the state (both have their distortions and demons) when understood aright should and can work together, in an organic, just and ordered way, for the commonweal.

The philosophic tradition of liberalism, in either its American imperial form or its Beat reactionary form, was about individuals using their liberty in a unilateral way to undermine and deconstruct those things that, as people, we share in common. Grant turned to Bedson as a true teacher and mentor who loved his country. Judith Robinson was a feisty and fiery Red Tory who, as an animated journalist, challenged both liberalism and the Liberal party in Canada. In fact, her relentless assaults on the Liberal party led to the Royal Canadian Military Police (RCMP) bloodhounds being turned on her in the 1950s. Robinson thought the liberals were selling out Canada to the USA, and she would have none of it. The Liberal party of St. Laurent and King were an anathema to her. The American way (both in principle and fact) were something she had little or no patience for. George Grant, therefore, when he dedicated Lament for a Nation to Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson knew what he was doing and saying.

Many Canadians have, I suspect, heard of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady, Williams and Burroughs. I question whether many have heard of Judith Robinson or Derek Bedson. What does this tell us about our Canadian soul and how it has been colonized by the American matrix?

There is little doubt that Bedson, Robinson and Grant stood in a very different place on the political and personal spectrum than Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady and Ginsberg. Both clans could agree that American imperialism, corporate capitalism, consumerism, liberal bourgeois thought and Puritanism needed to be exposed and undressed. There was no depth to them. They embodied Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’ or Miller’s ‘Wrong Dream’. Surely there was more to the good life than defining and defending personal peace and happiness. In short, Canadian High Tories and American Anarchist Beats do agree on the fact the patient is ill and ailing. They have much in common in their diagnosis. But they have quite a different way of healing the failing and faltering patient. The prognosis takes Grant and Ginsberg down different paths and to different places. What then is this different prognosis? Let us turn to Howl and Lament for a Nation to see what is seen. It is in this different seeing we will come to understand some important differences at a root, core and genetic, philosophic and practical level between Americans and Canadians.

It is fifty years since Howl was published. It is forty years since Lament for a Nationwas published. It is at such remembering points we are offered the opportunity to see again what animates and tends to define the True North from the empire to the south.

Howl is divided into three sections and a ‘Footnote to Howl’. Section I opens with the memorable lines that none forget once heard and read: ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness’. The rest of the section is a prose-poem that describes how these best minds were destroyed, and equally so, how the artistic and visionary nature of such minds were bent and broken on the anvil of the modern world. Section I is both tragic and sad, and the ruined and wrecked lives are amply laid out for all to see to the most graphic and poignant of ways. We might ask, as we read Section I, whether these are the best minds (given their end points), but Ginsberg has told us these are the best and the brightest, so we heed and hear.

Section II turns, in a penetrating manner, to the place that has savaged such minds, and the potent image that speaks of such an alluring and tempting place: Molech, Molech and Molech becomes the destructive and dominant metaphor. The metaphor of Molech is unpacked and unraveled in a variety of ways, but there is no doubt that the best minds are defeated victims of Molech, and Molech will devour one and all. Who is Molech? Ginsberg makes this most clear. It is all forms of tyranny and authority that brutalize and are callous to the best minds. The USA is very much in the foreground, though.

Section III presses home the point in a more urgent and not to be forgotten manner. Section III is directed to Carl Solomon in Rockland. The political left is held high and idealized, and the USA is seen as the place of repression and destruction. The language is raw and graphic in Howl, and social reality is neatly and crisply divided into a rather simplistic either-or way of looking at things. ‘Footnote to Howl’ walks the extra mile to shout from the rooftops the Holy, Holy, Holy theme. All is holy and needs to be seen as such. Ginsberg in this section is doing his best to fuse spirituality and sexuality, street life with city life. Nothing should be seen as unholy. All has goodness in and to it, and when this is seen, eternity is in our midst.

There are other poems in the Howl collection, also. ‘A Supermarket in California’ doffs the cap to Walt Whitman, and ‘Transcription of Organ Music’ takes the reader through and beyond the purpose of organ music. The transcription and the organ are meant to walk the attentive and alert to higher and deeper spiritual states. This poem points the way to what such a fusion of spirituality and sensuality might look like. ‘Sunflower Sutra’ tells the tale of Ginsberg and Kerouac as they see, through Blake’s sunflower, a sutra of insight in hard places. ‘America’ is a longer poem, and true to form, turns on the USA. ‘In the Baggage Room at Greyhound’, like other poems in the collection, take the reader into the underground and underbelly of America. ‘An Asphodel’, ‘Song’, ‘Wild Orphan’ and ‘in back of the real’ close off this final section in Howl and Other Poems.

It must be remembered that these poems were published in 1956. The USA was in the thick of the Cold War, and anyone with the mildest sympathies with the left was seen as communist. The raw sexual and sensual language that permeates and pervades most ofHowl and Other Poems is a frontal assault and attack on both middle class bourgeois America and the Puritan ethos the shaped such an ideology. Ginsberg, in short, was pulling no punches. He thought the best minds in American had been driven mad by combination of the military industrial complex, anti-communist thinking and Puritan and bourgeois ethics. He howled against such a repressive way of being, and the state and police turned on him for doing so. Howl (1956) and On the Road (1955) became sacred texts and Bibles for the Beat generation, and Ginsberg became a high priest to such a generation with his fusion of sensuality/spirituality, anarchist/protest politics and a raw and in your face assault on middle class values. Howl became a lightning rod missive for those who felt ill at ease with expectations laid on them they had no interest in. Ginsberg’s Howl spoke what many felt but had not yet put to words.

What are the points of concord and convergence between Grant’s Lament for a Nation and Ginsberg’s Howl, and equally important, what are the points of discord and divergence?

The 1965 edition of Lament for a Nation is divided into seven chapters. It some ways it is a prose/poem that deals with major political themes in Canada, and between Canada and the USA. George Grant added an ‘Introduction’ in 1970, and Sheila Grant (George’s wife) added an ‘Afterword’ in 1997. I will stick with the 1965 edition of Lament for a Nation. I mentioned above that the very language of lament conjures up for the reader the tradition of Jewish political thought. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah wroteLamentations. The fact that Lament for a Nation is divided into seven chapters reminds the reader of the seven days of creation in the Jewish tradition. The fact the seventh chapter is theological means that the political reflections have a deeper source than merely politics.

Chapter I in Lament deals with Diefenbaker’s defeat by Pearson in the 1963 election. Grant saw this as a source of much concern, since Pearson was pro-American and Diefenbaker was a thorn in Kennedy’s side. And, more worrisome for Grant, most Canadians were overjoyed to have Pearson as the new Prime Minister of Canada. What did this say about Canadian nationalism?

Chapter II and III ponder both the follies and foolishness of Diefenbaker and his nobility and heroism. Grant was no uncritical fan of Diefenbaker, but he did think that Diefenbaker stood on principles, and his nationalist political principles brought about his demise. Chapter IV touches on both liberalism and the Liberal party in Canada, and why such a party has tended to dominate much of Canadian political life (and the consequences for Canadian nationalism).

Chapters V and VI, consciously so, walks the reader into the realms of political theory and political philosophy, and why at root and ground level, Canadian conservatism (in its English and French forms) is almost the opposite of American republican conservatism.

The fact that American liberalism (in its democratic and republican forms) seeks to dominate the world raises for Grant a worrisome question. Is there any way to oppose or resist this Molech? Is this, as Canadians, our fate and necessity? What can we do given this stubborn fact? Chapter VII opens up a dialogue about the between fate/necessity and the Good. How, as Canadians, can we live from something higher than what seems to be our dominant fate? Is it possible to get out of the matrix of American liberalism?

Lament for a Nation has been called a masterpiece, and it is for a variety of reasons. The tract for the times moves from the facts of Canadian/American political history, to Canadian/American political philosophy to theology. It is poignant and pungent prose writing in the best tradition of political pamphlets.

How, though, is Lament for a Nation similar and different from Howl, and what can these points of concord and discord tell us about the differences between Canadian and American thought and culture. There are five points of convergence, and five of divergence.

First, both Lament and Howl raise serious and substantive objections about the American military industrial complex, the power elite in the USA and the damage done by such an elite in various parts of the world.

Second, both write in an intense, committed and accessible manner. Ginsberg can be raw, crude and excessively graphic. Grant was much more polished, incisive and delicately evocative. Grant and Ginsberg do communicate through plain and direct speech, though, as participants in the tough issues of the time rather than as detached and cool-headed observers. Both are on the ice. Neither is in the balcony or bleachers.

Third, both men were critical of the liberal bourgeois tradition and a form of American Puritanism that justified such a smug view. Ginsberg rebelled against this by indulging all sorts of desires and interests, whereas Grant rebelled against the liberal bourgeois tradition by deepening and ordering his interests and desires towards the highest and noblest things. Both could agree that Locke’s ‘life, liberty and estates’ and Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ were something they did not want to be. They disagreed on the best path to hike when the Puritan-bourgeois-last man was left behind. Plato is quite different from Whitman, Coleridge from Blake. Grant was for the former, Ginsberg the latter. Allen Ginsberg sent me a couple of letters in the late 1980s (Jan. 1, 1989 both Ginsberg and Grant opposed the unilateralism of American military and corporate power. The aggressive notion of liberty and rugged individualism that underwrote and justified such a stance was abhorrent to both Grant and Ginsberg. But—and this is the catch—Ginsberg used the same American notions of liberty and individualism in his anarchist and protest approach as did the power elites. He applied such principles in more of an anti-establishment and, of course, anti-authoritarian way, but the notions of liberty, choice, individualism, protest, dissent were all there.

Grant saw through this charade. Ginsberg was just the other side of the corporate elite. They just used their liberty and freedom in different ways, but neither disagreed about the priority of the American vision and dream: life, liberty, choice and individualism. Grant dared to question the very philosophic principles of American liberalism, and as such, hiked a different path than Ginsberg and the Beats. Canadian notions such as law, order and good government take the curious and thoughtful to different places than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Grant realized that when Canadians uncritically genuflected to the American Beats, they were welcoming the American Trojan horse into Canada is a more subtle way. There are more ways to be colonized than mere military and economic pressures. The literary and cultural traditions of the USA (the Beats) have done much to colonize many Canadians, and there have been many Canadian cultural and literary compradors that have facilitated such a process. Grant would have said No to Ginsberg for the simple reason that Ginsberg was as much a devout and committed American, like a Noam Chomsky, as the very Americans he howled against and opposed.

Fifth, Grant was a much more sophisticated thinker than Ginsberg, and there is no doubt that Lament for a Nation is a more substantive work than Howl. The level of political and philosophical depth in Lament opens up vistas of thought that are just not there is Ginsberg and Howl. Howl never rises much beyond rant and reaction, and sadly so, Ginsberg’s intellectual world tends to polarize between the evil and nasty power elite and the good, pure and lovable anarchist, Beat and protest types. It is a simplistic interpretation of reality that Grant was much too wise to bow his uncritical head to. He saw too much, and saw too far to worship at such a shrine and to such reactionary priests, and he urged Canadians not to turn to such a comic book view of the world.

In sum, Ginsberg and Grant, at first glance, seem to have much in common, but on deeper and further inspection, have little in common. Both protest against many of the same things. Both agree on many of the things that must be opposed. But by day’s end, the American Beat anarchism of Ginsberg is quite different from the Canadian High Tory vision of George Grant. It is by understanding such differences that we can see why and how the American and Canadian traditions create and make for different national outlooks. It is somewhat sad and tragic when Canadians know more about American models and take their leads from such fashions than they do from their own kith and kind.

Meditative Thinking as a Response to Technological Rationalism: George Grant’s Socially Concerned Christian Apologetic By Andrew Kaethler

2010-06-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

Who is George Grant? He is often referred to as Canada’s most influential philosopher and social commentator. Numerous articles and books have been published by him and about him, there are even two such books in our limited LCC library. It is especially appropriate to look at Grant’s thought as this Spring there are a few books coming out on Grant to celebrate the twentieth anniversary since his death.

Why present a paper on meditative thinking and technological rationalism at a conference on Culture and Dialogue? The answer is simple: technology consumes us, controls us, and is us—technology is all around us; it is a paradigm of thought. As this is the case, dialogue and culture do not reside outside of it. The way I present, the way you formulate what I say, and the questions you may ask are shaped by the culture that you live in and the one overarching commonality among all the cultures is technology.

Due to the brevity of this presentation and the publication that follows I have had to change the direction of this paper limiting the theoretical while increasing the practical. Rather than unpacking the abstract that I submitted I will use the abstract as a springboard to look at the way that Grant engaged the great scholars of his time in order to perceive and critique the culture that surrounded him. And hopefully this will not only expose some of the problems of Christianity in cultural dialogue, but it will also provide an example for Christians within academia. The abstract as follows: George Grant insightfully put forth the notion that technology as a way of existing and thinking has become the dominant language of modernity. Turning to the formidable German philosophers Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche, Grant exposes the dangers of this modern predicament. The homogenizing and systematizing effects of technology removes the ability to think deeply and destroys our autochthony (our indigenous place of identity. The place where we are grounded in our own particularity) leading to an existence void of particularity and, as Grant posits, transcendence and thus justice (Note that the use of justice is not in your copy). However, Grant cannot stay within the German existential camp because of his belief in that which transcends the particular, God and justice. Here Grant turns these two great thinkers back onto themselves arguing that both of them critique the technological paradigm but in doing so they succumb to it. With this maneuver Grant attempts to show that contemplation in the platonic Christian tradition is the only response to the destructive force of technology that may be able to redeem modern society without falling into the technological trap.

First, Grant, was concerned with broad questions of meaning, rather than detailed minute specialization. He wanted to be in dialogue with the public, not solely with those hiding in the ivory towers of academia and both of these groups have, on the whole, lost interest in traditional Christian apologetics (an area that many Christians are still stuck in). Such apologetics typically hide in the old bunker of modernity and take pot-shots at post modernity, but refuse to actually engage with post-modern thought and to learn from it. Rationalism, analytic philosophy and logical positivism only hold the interest of a relative few. Arguing propositionally for the existence of God hardly hits home with the existential needs of a society that no longer thinks in such a manner. In addition, Grant claims that such thought only reflects the objectifying and systematizing nature of technology, a paradigm that inevitably leads to the erasing of transcendence. Interestingly it was the postmodern thinkers that so many Christian academics were afraid of that led Grant to his insight concerning technology.

Second, as already alluded to Grant wrestled with the big questions by dialoguing with the current thinkers and using their language. Realising the insight of the thinkers so closely linked with post-modern thought Grant ran out to meet them with great interest. First, Grant devoured the works of Sartre and was mesmerized by his thoughts; however, in the early 1950’s he began to closely study Heidegger’s works and soon espoused that Heidegger was the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. The profundity of Heidegger’s writings overshadowed Grant’s former interest in Sartre—later in life he claimed Sartre was a mere plagiarist of Heidegger. It was Heidegger that allowed Grant to understand the overarching power of technology and it was Heidegger that also reinforced the notion that transcendence was at stake.

Grant was concerned about the technological paradigm because of its affects on the world at large. The loss of transcendence would cause ripples that would do more than just shake the boat of religion. The systematizing and homogenizing affects of technology close one down from thinking. Here we hear the voice of Heidegger: Thoughtlessness springs from modern humanity’s constant ‘flight from thinking.’ The achievements of the modern world disclose this and reveal that calculation is the primary method of knowing rather than thinking. Heidegger states, “Calculation is the mark of all thinking that plans and investigates.”1 Calculation computes and is always racing from one prospect to another never taking the time to stop. It is always achieving and is highly pragmatic. Such thinking does not contemplate meaning in everything that is, as meditative thinking does.

Grant’s meditative approach is similar to Heidegger’s, but there is a major distinction with their differing uses of philosophy. Heidegger turns to philosophy to gain receptivity of the Being of being (what it means to be) to understand the meaning of how things appear to us. Grant believes that philosophy “deals with the wholeness of existence . . ..”2 In his lecture notes on political philosophy Grant posits, “To ask what technical civilization portends for good or ill is to ask a question of the whole. To ask any question about the human good is to ask a question about the whole.”3 For Grant there are intimations of the whole that can be understood if one is open to the Good/God (Note: Grant read Plato as a pre-Christian mystic and thus the Good and God are synonymous. Early on in his career Grant learned the hard way that God was not well received in the world of academic philosophy). What may be understood or perceived from the whole is supra- historical truth: truth that exists outside of the individual and outside of time. Heidegger does not purport that such intimations of ‘reality’ can be perceived, but rather all perception is within time—we are beings in time—and thus we learn from appearances because appearances are all we have. Heidegger is open to the otherness of appearances, that is, appearances that have yet to be determined, explained, and categorized. Grant shares Heidegger’s openness to the other, but their concept of the other differs. Heidegger rejected cold calculated reasoning so that he could be open to anything (meditative thinking); Grant rejected modern reasoning so that he could receive intimations of the Good/God.

At this point their paths diverge. Heidegger, like Nietzsche, who unfortunately I do not have time to deal with, were silent before the notion of justice. Heidegger’s absolute openness did not allow him to close down on justice. This is apparent for Grant as Heidegger unashamedly was involved in the Nazi regime during WWII. Justice for Grant must transcend us; it must be linked to the Good/God, otherwise, like Heidegger, one will be left silent in the face of justice.

Justice was something that Grant cared deeply about and he knew that few would see this as negative. Justice is the concept that Grant used to interest his readers. Who does not like justice? Who wants to praise the folly of injustice? Nobody! But technological rationalism is removing our ability to think about justice. Such thought cannot be racing from one prospect to another or be based upon achievement and pragmatic utility as justice would then become a matter of convenience. Technology is removing our ability to think about what is of primary import, justice. To think about justice is to contemplate the whole, to open one up to that which is beyond us, namely God. Here we see the third way in which we can learn from Grant. Grant found a note—justice—that rings true for everybody and this became the picture that he painted in juxtaposition to technology and to Heidegger who, according to Grant, slid into technology because of his view of historicism and freedom, which, as mentioned, left him silent before justice.

In summary, Grant reveals the need to grapple with the big questions. All too often we get bogged down in the details of theology or philosophy and become detached from the very questions that drove us in this direction in the first place. The big questions also keep us connected to the world outside of academia. Secondly, as Christian scholars we need to learn the language of the culture that we are part of, learn from it, and use it to critique itself; the language of modernity is little more than nonsense for those enmeshed in post modernity. Grant didn’t simply hide in the land of Plato and Christianity—his home, his base-camp--where he felt comfortable, rather he traveled into the land of Heidegger and Nietzsche. Thirdly, we need to find something that all people are invested in, for Grant this was justice. Perhaps we could add: ‘something which all people are emotionally invested in.’ Justice, the pivot point of Grant’s thought, existentially draws the reader in. Few people can talk about justice in a cold-hearted abstract manner. This leads into one more point: the heart and the head need to be connected. Grant did not want to separate the knower from knowing. Knowledge and learning must be holistic.

_____________

1 Martin Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” in Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 46.

2 George Grant, “Philosophy,” in Collected Works of George Grant, ed. Arthur Davis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 2:10.

3 Grant, “Notebook M: Lecture on Political Philosophy and its Relation to the Tradition” (unpublished class notebook).

Originally presented at the Culture and Dialogue Conference on Interdisciplinary Research and the Future of Higher Education. April 11-12, 2008. LCC International University.

Andrew Kaethler's "The Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem" - Review by Ron Dart

2010-05-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

T he Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem:

George Grant’s Defense Against Modernity

Andrew Kaethler

VDM Verlag: Germany, 2009

The ongoing research on George Grant continues to emerge from a variety of creative directions. The MA thesis turned missive, The Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem, by Andrew Kaethler, is yet another primer to read on the topic of Grant’s engagement with the modern liberal matrix. The burden of Grant’s philosophical and political journey was to probe how the modern ethos is enfolded within liberal prejudices, then unfold what such an enfolding means at a variety of religious, ethical, economic and political levels.

Grant turned to the Classical tradition (Greek, Jewish, Christian) as a way of engaging the modern worldview, but the Classical way was not a homogenous way of knowing and being. Whose read and version of the Classical way should be heeded contra modernity and why? The Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem deals with these subtle and trying issues.

The Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem is divided into five chapters: 1) Ripening of Thought: The Development of Grant’s Thought, 2) Grant, Heidegger and Nietzsche: An Alternate Way of Knowing, 3) Grant’s Synthesis Contra Heidegger and Nietzsche: An Expose on the Modern Technological Paradigm, 4) The Good in Contradistinction to Values, and 5) Justice, Love and Grace: The Salient Aspects of Grant’s Synthesis.

Kaethler makes it abundantly clear that Grant thought that in Nietzsche and Heidegger he had found incisive poetic and philosophic critics of the modern liberal and bourgeois agenda, and Grant was drawn to them for their piercing analysis of the thinness of the modern mood and sentiment. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger turned to the Ancients as a way of highlighting the inadequacies of the Moderns, but Grant was also aware that Nietzsche and Heidegger were seriously tainted with the Modern. This is why in Chapter 3 of the book, Kaethler deals with Grant contra Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Chapter 4 turns to Grant’s read of Simone Weil/Irish Murdoch as a way of demonstrating a way of approaching the ‘Good’ via Plato that has not been contaminated by the language of values that so dominates modern discussions of justice and ethics. It is in the Classical language of the ‘Good’ that Grant finally rests his head when it comes to questions of God, the soul, society, human nature and politics. The implications of Grant’s conclusions are spelled out in insightful detail in chapter 5 where Kaethler touches down on such themes as justice, forgiveness, grace and questions yet to ponder in Grant’s seeming synthesis.

The Synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Defense Against Modernity adds another feather to the cap of the emerging research on Grant and amply illustrates why Grant deserves to be called ‘Canada’s greatest political philosopher’

Ron Dart

Gandhi and Grant: Their Philosophical Affinities - Review by Brad Jersak

2010-04-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

Barua, Arati (ed.), Gandhi and Grant: Their Philosophical Affinities. Delhi, India: Academic Excellence, 2010).

Review

I recently received a first edition copy of Arati Barua's collection of scholarly essays comparing and contrasting Canada's George Parkin Grant with India's Mahatma Gandhi. The book features contributions primarily from Indian and Canadian scholars and serves to further promote the interfaith dialogue that both Gandhi and Grant modelled and championed.

The book opens (see end of review for contents) with a concise introduction to George Grant by biographer William Grant and a piece on the "Motive for Coincidence between Gandhi and Grant" by Gandhi expert, Ramjee Singh. As the reader proceeds through articles by some top Grantians (Christian, Dart, Emberley, Kaethler, et al), it becomes apparent that the affinities between Gandhi and Grant are neither superficial nor contrived. In spite of their very different backgrounds, their faith-based philosophies led to comparable, independently discovered conclusions and convictions.

Both men were prophets of dissent against the prevailing modernism of their age, critical of the way technology can dehumanize the masses as we lose the capacity for contemplative life and thought. They both opposed modernity's inevitable tyranny through Western imperialism and militarism in their quite different contexts. Gandhi the Hindu and Grant the Christian both embraced a synthesis of contemplative theology, political philosophy, and their public outworking toward a just society. They lived as promoters of nonviolent resistance to moral darkness and opposed political oppression in costly and courageous ways.

Some of the ethnically Indian writers (esp. R. Raj Singh, Arati Barua, and Grant's former collegue, John Arapura) demonstrate their knowledge of and appreciation for Grant, and their desire to introduce him to the Indian scene. Grant never attained the success of Gandhi's international fame as a political activist or modern martyr-saint. But his legacy is that he ran well the marathon set before him as a restless philosophical "seer" who, in his undramatic Canadian way, stands beside Gandhi in announcing that "the emperor [any emperor!]has no clothes!" That Grant did not also meet a similar violent end says more of an accident of geography and political context than any comparative lack of courage (when one considers the Bermondsey air raids).

My joy was made complete as I stumbled onto the appendix where Grant's "Introduction to Simone Weil" of 1970 is reproduced. I don't know what prompted this inclusion, but for those who do not have Grant's Collected Works Vol. 4, this little lecture is worth the price of admission. Weil, like Gandhi, was a great philosopher, activist, and some--not least George Grant--would say a genuine modern saint. This particular lecture contains long excerpts by Weil, testifying to her own unique conversion and faith. What makes Grant and Weil unusual as Christians is their thorough knowledge of and love for the Vedanta, to the degree that Grant described himself as part of the "extreme Hindu wing of Christianity" (and Weil, even more so). What does this mean? I would like to reflect on this statement briefly in closing.

Reflection

My understanding of Grant's comparison of West and East as it pertains to faith is as follows. For Grant (and Weil), Western civilization is very "will-oriented" across the board. By this he meant Westerners are about willing, deciding, choosing, creating our own destiny, mastering human and non-human nature. As an entire society and era, we ooze Nietzche's will to power. We believe that controlling our circumstances (esp. through scientific knowledge and technology) leads to greater freedom as that which controls us (disease, toil, etc.) is overcome. This type of willing-liberty is expressed in Western Christianity (indeed, derived from it, Grant would say) through the Calvinist-Puritan tradition and lived out in the conquest of the American continent.

Willing comes out strongly in the Evangelical tradition and it's revivalist call to "the hour of decision" (a la Billy Graham), the altar call where we "decide to follow Jesus" and "invite him into our hearts and lives." In that stream, the "moment of salvation," is when I make a decision to be saved by praying the "sinners prayer" or enter the waters of baptism. While that decision may include "surrendering control to the Lordship of Christ," one can see how central the question of will and willing is in the process.

In the East, whether among the Alexandrian Fathers, the Greek philosophers like Plato, or much further east (to Hinduism and Buddhist traditions), the emphasis is less on willing and has more to do with enlightenment. I.e. seeing, becoming aware, awakening, perceiving reality, apprehending ultimate truth, beholding a vision of God. Any human response is preceded by some sort of grace-given revelation, an unveiling of truth, or disclosure of God. The spiritual organ that perceives and receives the overtures of divine love is the heart-mind (nous) rather than the will. At best, we can only wait with open, receptive hearts for the Sun to illuminate our understanding. Even that openness is a work of grace by which God ripens us for love. In Christianity, Paul described this when he prays that God "would give [the Ephesians] a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened" (Eph. 1:17-18).

The contrast between East and West is illustrated by remembering Christ's parable of the prodigal son. The younger of two sons demands an early inheritance from his father, and promptly squanders it on a short-lived binge of hedonism. He soon finds himself reduced to work in a pigpen, coveting the bare corncobs on which the swine are feasting. As Jesus tells the story, in a flash this wayward boy comes to his senses, realizing that back on his father's farm, the servants at least get a square meal each day. He determines to return home to beg his father for a job. Midway through his much-rehersed repentance speech, his father welcomes him home as a full son and prepares a homecoming banquet for him.

The question here is: when was the boy "saved"? Ultimately, his reconciliation with the father (God) is consummated by the welcome he receives, not by his own sincerity or eloquent contrition. But even initially, what triggers his homeward journey? Is it that he decided, made up his mind, determined to make things right? In the West, we seem to frame salvation that way with terms like "repent and believe" I.e. Change your mind ... but how? By an act of the will? Believe ... but how? By deciding to have faith?). An Eastern faith would recognize that before any decision or response, the son "came to his senses," i.e. through the grace of God via the sufferings of life and the enlightenment of the Spirit, the boy woke up, he snapped out of it, he saw the light--a light already there (in God) but now also turned on inside (his heart).

These are generalizations, but I propose that this is what Grant and Weil saw in Plato, in Jesus, in the apostle John and Paul, in the Vedanta and Gandhi. We may not want to make too much of their similarities, but to call them "affinities" is not an overstatement.

Contents

1. George Grant: Introduction to his life and philosophy -- William Christian
2. The Motive for coincidence between Gandhi and Grant -- Ramjee Singh
3. George Grant and Mahatma Gandhi: On Pacifism and Technology -- William Christian
4. Gandhi and Grant: Deeper Nationalisms -- Ron Dart
5. Gandhi and Grant on Empire and the Longings of the Soul -- Peter Emberley
6. The Saint and the Professor: Integrating Nationalism and Religious Thought in the Writings of Gandhi and Grant -- George Melnyk
7. Rethinking Democracy and Beyond: In the Backdrop of Gandhi's views -- S.R. Bhatt
8. Gandhi, Heidegger and the Technological Times -- R. Raj Singh
9. George Grand and Hinduism -- Ron Dart
10. The New Sociological Imagination, Jnana Yoga and the web of life: Gandhi, Grant, Mills, Pierce -- Johannes Bakker
11. Were Mohandas K. Gandhi and George Grant Neo-Luddite Nationalists? -- James B. Gerrie
12. Grant and Gandhi: A Live Interview with Mrs. Sheila Grant -- Arati Barua
13. George Grant on Order and Creativity -- Andrew Kaethler
14. Secularism: A Gandhian Perspective -- Geeta Mehta
15. George Grant and his Lament for a Nation: With a Special Reference to M. K. Gandhi's Hind Swaraj: A Comparison -- Arati Barua
16. Gandhi's Idea of Nation in Hind Swaraj -- Anthony Parel
17. Gandhi's Economic Philosophy -- Joseph Prabhu
18. A Tribute to Dr. George Grant -- John Arupura
Appendix

Ron Dart's Spiders and Bees - Foreword by William Christian

2010-03-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

Foreword to George Grant: Spiders and Bees by Ron Dart

The image of Ron Dart that stands out most strongly in my mind is a tall, lanky, dark-haired man on a snow-covered peak in the pristine wilderness of the interior of British Columbia. There is, in him, some-thing of Rousseau’s solitary wanderer. Although he’s innately social and seems to have friends of all sorts and conditions everywhere in the country, I think that he’s probably most truly himself when he’s alone with his thoughts. Because thoughts he has aplenty. He has published over twenty books. He produced one of the most innovative and imaginative literary magazines in the country. And although he ponders deeply on the wisdom of the past, that doesn’t prevent him from spreading his ideas by blogging in the present. He’s both a Renaissance man and a web 2.0 man at the same time.

Another image I have of Dart is the poet, sitting at my dining room table with my wife and me, talking with great affection, sensitivity and knowledge about many of Canada’s great poets from coast to coast. Some of them, like Milton Acorn, are well-known. Others are not. But Dart has a deep knowledge of their writings.

There is also Professor Dart, who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, BC, one of Canada's fine undergraduate universities. Dart is capable of producing first rate scholarship. One of his books was an edited volume that attracted some very fine scholars from across Canada and was published by one of Canada's leading academic outlets, the University of Toronto Press.

Why then is Dart not as well known as he should be? If he taught in a major urban centre like Vancouver or Toronto there would be greater recognition of the range and quality of his output. I think the real reason, though, is the sheer originality of his thought, of which this collection of essays is a fine example.

The essays are loosely grouped around a common theme. The theme is the thought of a philosophical giant in the life of Canada, George Grant. Grant was famous in his lifetime. He was a fellow of the Royal Society in his forties, awarded seven honorary degrees, elected to the Order of Canada. There were few honours that an academic could win that Grant missed. His thought was controversial, but he had more devoted admirers than detractors. Still, it has only been since Grant’s death in 1988 that his philosophical legacy has been explored (‘unpacked’ is the word Dart uses) in increasing depth. The greatness of Grant’s genius is becoming undisputable, and Spiders and Bees is a valuable contribution both to the deeper understand- ing of this great philosopher and to the further development of Dart’s own philosophical insights.

Dart takes us into recesses of Grant’s thought that no one else has previously explored. One essay looks at the connection between Grant and C.S. Lewis. Grant had regularly attended Lewis’s Socratic Club when he returned to Oxford after the Second World War and Dart explores the impact of this association on him.

Another essay looks at Stephen Leacock and the Tory tradition. Leacock had been a teacher at Upper Canada College when George Parkin, Grant’s grandfather, was principal and William Grant, Grant’s father, was a fellow teacher. Later, after William Grant’s death, when Leacock was teaching at McGill, Grant’s mother Maude became Dean of Women there. Dart convincingly traces a connection between Lea- cock’s political ideas and Grant’s early writings on politics and the British Empire.

Whenever I discussed the Anglican Church with Grant, he was dis-missive of its theology and denied that it had much influence over his life. I took Grant at his word on this and Dart and I have had spirited discussions over the years on this issue. He is slowly prevailing. His essay on ‘Grant and the Anglican Tradition’ has almost convinced me that Grant minimized something that had, at one time, been of real importance to him. Dart has an uncanny ability, because of his great sophistication, to find connections between Grant’s thought and other contemporaries. The essays on Grant and Clark Pinnock, a contemporary of Grant’s at McMaster, and Preston Manning, founder of the Reform party are insightful, but the gem is the comparison of Lament for a Nation with the beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. What a wonderful idea to put two such different works together and learn so much from the juxtaposition.

The two most important essays, though, are those that explore the connection between Grant and India. Grant was deeply influenced by Hinduism and the Vedanta. Although he wrote very little about Eastern religion directly, it penetrated to the core of his writing on almost every other subject after about 1970 when the influence of his col- leagues in the Department of Religion at McMaster University—especially John Arapura—had made its impact. I once met Dr. Arapura and, in the course of our discussion, he said that he and Grant used to meet frequently at his house, where they sat and talked about philosophy... ‘just the three of us,’ Arapura said. ‘The three of you. Who was the third?’ I asked. ‘Oh, there was Dr. Grant and myself. The Eternal was always present too.’

You will enjoy this book even if you have never heard of either George Grant or Ron Dart. And I can assure you that, after you’ve read it, you will want to read more of both thinkers.

William Christian Guelph, Ontario

George Grant and Hinduism: Contemplative Probes by Ron Dart

2010-03-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Christianity seems in a certain way closer to Hinduism than it does to its fellow religions that arose in the Middle East.

George Grant, George Grant in Conversation (1995) p. 176

In talking about a philosophical response, are we not supposed to have agreed upon understanding as to what philosophy is? And certainly one should not try to take advantage of the fact that there is no definition of philosophy on which all are agreed.

John Arapura Modernity and Responsibility: Essays for George Grant (1983) p. 52

The recent book, Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics (2006), probed Grant’s deeper theological roots, but in the doing of this, Grant’s interest and affinity with the Orient and Hinduism was missed and ignored. This is a serious lack and weakness in an otherwise needed and necessary commentary on Grant.

Grant saw himself as standing within the ‘Hindu wing of Christianity’, and, as mentioned above, he thought the contemplative and mystical core of Christianity made it ‘closer to Hinduism’ than to either the Jewish or Islamic traditions.

What did Grant mean by the statements mentioned above, and why was he, as a Canadian, at the forefront of probing greater contemplative depths in the Christian Tradition, and, by doing so, opening up new trails for interfaith dialogue?

If Grant’s interest in the East is ever to be properly understood, it is essential that the state of Western philosophy he encountered, opposed and resisted be brought into focus. Grant confronted the philosophic Brahman class in Canada as a young man. Fulton Anderson was one of the most important philosophers in Canada in the 1940s (he taught at University of Toronto), and in 1949, Anderson’s The Philosophy of Francis Bacon was published.

Anderson did not raise serious criticisms of either Bacon’s empirical method and some of the conclusions Bacon reached and Anderson accepted. Grant just thought this was a case of philosophy being co-opted, assimilated and uncritically genuflecting to a form of scientific rationalism. Such an approach to knowing and being, Grant thought, was reductionistic and undermined the classical contemplative approach to philosophy. Grant did a review in Dalhousie Review (Volume 28:1948-1949) of The Philosophy of Francis Bacon, and Anderson was not pleased. Anderson was a senior scholar and elder in the philosophic clan in Canada, and Grant a younger apprentice. Grant had dared to challenge the master. Anderson would not forget nor forgive such impertinence, but Grant’s criticism of Anderson-Bacon did speak much about his emerging way of understanding and doing philosophy. Grant objected, in short, about the increasingly limited way that philosophy was being defined and defended.

George Grant’s uncle, Vincent Massey, became the first Canadian born Governor General in Canada, and in the early 1950s, Vincent Massey launched the Massey Commission. The purpose of the Massey Commission was to examine the state of arts and culture in Canada and make recommendations to the government about a post-WW II way forward for Canadians. Vincent Massey asked George Grant to do the article in the Commission on philosophy. The article was published in 1951 as ‘Philosophy’. Grant makes it quite clear in ‘Philosophy’ that he thinks most Canadian philosophy and philosophers had lost their way. They had given themselves to an empirical and narrow scientific rationalism, and this simplistic form of the ‘vita activa’ had banished the classical notion of the ‘vita contemplativa’. Grant urged and argued, insisted and pleaded, made it clear and obvious that if philosophy was merely going to be an errand boy to science, the death knell of philosophy was already ringing. Grant’s straight

on criticisms of the state of Canadian philosophy in ‘Philosophy’ drew forth the ire of Anderson and tribe. They would and could not accept Grant’s approach to philosophy and his criticism of them. The Brahmin class gathered to protect their commitments.

‘Philosophy’ was published in 1951, and in 1952, a symposium was held, PHILOSOPHY IN CANADA, in which Grant was brought to the dock. Philosophy in Canada: A Symposium (1952) makes it more than clear that Grant’s contemplative approach to doing philosophy would not be accepted, and, predictably so, Fulton Anderson led the intellectual armada against Grant. Needless to say, Grant learned quite early in his academic career that the classical contemplative way would not be welcomed in a serious approach to philosophy or, by extension, in theology. Theology, to a greater or lesser extent, had also been co-opted by an empirical, confessional and rationalist method that had little to do with the classical contemplative way of knowing.

Western philosophy had become, for the most part, a plaything of rationalism and empiricism, and the study of religion and theology followed the same path. Grant began the task in the 1950s of casting about in different directions for traditions that embodied an older and more contemplative way of knowing. This is what, of course, walked Grant to Plato and Aristotle and to the East.

The tale and drama was to heat up further, though, for Grant. Grant decided to leave the philosophy department of Dalhousie in 1959. He had been offered a position in philosophy at a new university in Toronto (York). The founding of York University was part of the birth of many new universities in Canada in the 1960s. The older universities could not accommodate all the new students. York was formed as a companion university to University of Toronto, and, in many ways, it became a counter cultural opposition to it.

Grant, as I mentioned above, was hired to provide leadership to the fledgling Philosophy Department at York. It was just a few months before problems emerged. York University was to be under the watchful eye of University of Toronto for the first few years, and this meant that George Grant was to be responsible to Fulton Anderson for how he taught courses and the text he used. Anderson strongly recommended Grant use a text written by Marcus Long (a friend and colleague of Anderson’s). The Spirit of Philosophy, by Long, had little to do with Grant’s approach to philosophy. Philosophy, for Long, was about critical reflection on arguments and issues, and Long’s notion of the philosophic spirit was more about skepticism and cynicism than anything else. Grant refused to view philosophy in such a way, he insisted such a text would not be used, and he would not bow the knee to Anderson and the University of Toronto. Grant wrote a letter to the president of York in April 1960, clearly explaining why he had to resign from York.

Grant was committed to teaching philosophy, but, throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, it became clear to him that his understanding of philosophy stood in stark opposition to the reigning paradigm of the time and the Brahmin class that protected such a worldview.

The Great Ideas Today series published in 1961 a long article by Grant. ‘The Year’s Developments in the Arts and Sciences: Philosophy and Religion’ takes a long and hard look at the failings, limitations and possibilities of both philosophy and religion. Most of the article is on the state of philosophy, but there is a significant aspect in the article on religion. It is in this article that Grant began to unpack, in a deeper and broader way, some of his thoughts on Eastern religions. These reflections on the Orient are important for two reasons; first, this signals a conscious turn by Grant to a formal interest in the East: second, Grant became the chair of the religious studies department at McMaster, and McMaster’s religious studies department became a centre in Canada at both an undergraduate and graduate levels for studies in the East and Orient. Grant was front and centre in all this work at McMaster.

Grant saw, most clearly, three trends emerging on the cultural scene in Canada and beyond in the 1960s. First, the age of Christendom and Christianity was on the wane. Second, there was a growing interest in the East (some of it naïve and shallow, some of it substantive). The interest in the East was heralded by an interest in the East as a more meditative and contemplative way of knowing. Third, the rational and empirical way of knowing that seemed to produce such objective facts and information had to be challenged at the university level. There were deeper ways of knowing and being, and Grant was doing serious sleuth work on the places and sites of such wisdom.

There were two prominent Indian thinkers that held Grant at this period of time: Gandhi and Tagore. Grant, in 1966, addressed many students that were opposed to the Vietnam War, and his article, ‘A Critique of the New Left’, holds high Gandhi as a model to heed and hear rather than naïve and idealistic protest politics that wither when the hard times come. Grant offered a solid and penetrating critique of the New Left, and handed out many accolades to Gandhi. He said, and much was said in such a compact way: ‘The central Christian platitude still holds good. The truth shall make you free. I use freedom here quite differently from those who believe that we are free when we have gained mastery over man and over nature. It is different even from the simple cry for political liberty: Freedom now. For in the long haul freedom without the knowledge of reality is empty and vacuous. The greatest figure of our era, Gandhi, was interested in public actions and in political liberty, but he knew that the right direction of that action had to be based on knowledge of reality—with all the discipline and order and study that that entailed’.

I should also mention that for Gandhi the Bhagavad Gita and the Sermon on the Mount-Beatitudes (taught by Jesus) were basic to understanding the discipline, order and study that birthed genuine freedom. Gandhi’s commitment to the Beatitudes is central to understanding his core ethical vision. George Grant’s ethical centre was also thoroughly rooted and grounded in the Beatitudes. Grant stated this quite clearly in his ‘Five Lectures on Christianity’. He had this to say in the second lecture: ‘Let’s start with the teaching from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter(s) 5 to 7 reveal a perfect account of justice or righteousness…. What is breathtaking also in the teaching is its immediate clarity and comprehensibility’. Grant and Gandhi both shared a commitment to the Beatitudes as the foundation of the inner-outer life and the pathfinder for a healthy soul and civilization.

Grant saw in Gandhi an Indian thinker and activist that had integrated, in thought, word and deed, the real meaning of philosophy and politics. This is why, for Grant, Gandhi was the ‘greatest figure of our era’. This was philosophy that had not retreated from the fray or bowed to the scientific way and modern industry. This was truly classical philosophy embodied in the modern era, and just as Gandhi felt the opposition for challenging the juggernaut of modern technology, so did Grant.

Grant was also quite fond of Rabindranath Tagore. Sheila Grant, in ‘George Grant and the Theology of the Cross’ in George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, and Education (1996) makes this quite clear. Sheila Grant had this to say about Grant’s interest in Tagore. Sheila mentioned that Grant often used this prayer by Tagore ‘when taking a service for students’:

Give me the supreme faith of love, this is my prayer; the faith of the life in death, of the victory in defeat, of the power hidden in the frailness of beauty, of the dignity of pain that accepts hurt but disdains to return it (p. 225).

There is little doubt that Grant found in Gandhi and Tagore a merging and meeting of contemplation, poetry, politics and action. This was a different approach to philosophy than Grant had encountered at universities in the west. There was something life giving and authentic about such an approach.

There was more than this, though, to Grant’s interest in Hinduism.

George Grant left McMaster in 1980, and in his letter of leaving, ‘The Battle between Teaching and Research’ (1980), he makes plain, simple and clear why and how Universities have lost their way. The older way of knowing has been abandoned for modern empirical and technical ways of knowing, and our souls have been lost in the process. Grant turned again to the Maritimes and Dalhousie to spend his last few years.

William Christian/Sheila Grant mention in The George Grant Reader (1998) that ‘Of all his colleagues at McMaster, Grant felt closest to those who studied Hinduism. His understanding of the meaning of the Gospels was informed not just by Plato but also by what he had learned from Indian religion’ p.459.

Bithika Mukerji had published a book, Neo-Vedanta and Modernity in 1983. Grant wrote an appreciative ‘Foreword’ for Mukerji’s book. There are two published ‘Forewords’ to Neo-Vedanta and Modernity. The shorter version by Grant is in The George Grant Reader. whereas the much longer ‘Foreword’ is in Neo-Vedanta and Modernity. Mukerji has this to say about Grant in her ‘Preface and Acknowledgements’ to Neo-Vedanta. ‘I learned much about the Western tradition from Prof. George P. Grant at McMaster during the years 1973-1977. Whatever is right and perceptive about the West, in this book, I have gathered from him and what is partial or wrong is my own interpretation’ (p. ii). Bithika Mukerji, also, made it clear the assistance and guidance Dr. Arapura from McMaster offered her throughout her doctoral studies.

It is essential that the reader has available the longer version of Grant’s ‘Introduction’ to Neo-Vedanta and Modernity. Much more is said and pondered in the longer version than that which is in The George Grant Reader. The meaning of modernity is probed at a deeper level, ‘and the great truths of the religions and philosophical traditions from before the age of progress’ (p. iii). Grant asks this question: ‘What happens to the apprehension of the ontology of the Vedanta in the context of modernity?’

(p. iv).

Grant makes it more than clear in the ‘Foreword’ that modernity-westernization and technology have done much to ‘obscure’ the meaning of ‘bliss’ in the older Vedantic tradition. Grant is more than drawn to Mukerji’s notion of ‘ananda’. The deeper Indian notion of Being that the West has lost by following the bread crumbs of ‘Locke and Marx, Rousseau or Darwin or Hume’ (p. v) means that the West has sought joy and bliss in areas in which such gifts cannot be offered. The Neo-Vedantic understanding of Being takes the honest pilgrim to places the West cannot go for the simple reason it has lost its way. Grant brought to an end his ‘Foreword’ by stating this: ‘Much silliness has been written in the modern world about the meeting of East and West, by both westerners and easterners. Such a meeting must not sacrifice the greatest of either side… Both westerners and easterners should read the book with close attention’ (p. vi). It is essential not only to read Neo-Vedanta and Modernity, but Grant’s longer ‘Foreword’ is a must read for those interested in his interest in the relationship between tradition and modernity, classical Indian thought and classical Christian thought. Much is brought to the fore in the longer introduction that is missing in The George Grant Reader.

George Grant turned 65 years of age in 1983. He had challenged the reigning educational, political, economic and philosophic Brahmins in Canada most of his life. A festschrift was written and given to him to celebrate many years of hard service and much turmoil. Modernity and Responsibility: Essays for George Grant (1983) has a fine essay in it by one of Grant’s dearest Indian friends from McMaster days: John G. Arapura.

Arapura’s essay, ‘Modern thought and the transcendent: Some observations based on an Eastern view’ goes straight to the heart of Sankara and Vedantic thought. Arapura makes it clear that with the rise of an empirical method, the issue of the transcendent has become a problem. How can the reality of the transcendent be verified or falsified within a rationalist and empirical method? Arapura’s article is short but to the poignant point. Arapura, like Grant, turned to Heidegger to highlight the problems with the modern understanding of thinking and reason. Heidegger, more than any other modern western philosopher, undermined and undercut the foundation of modern reason and opened older paths to knowing. These older markings and signposts pointed the way to a deeper way of knowing and understanding the meaning of thought and thinking. Kant and reason are left behind. Heidegger leads the way to Sankara and his understanding. The path is opened to the transcendent once again once the single vision and one dimensional view of empirical reason is doubted and questioned as the only way of knowing. Arapura’s use of the Upanisads and Sankara’s interpretation of them also points the way to a dialogue between Sankara and Plato. This meeting much interested Grant and Arapura. ‘Modern thought and the transcendent: Some observations based on an Eastern view’ brought Grant and Arapura together yet closer in their desire to understand how an older contemplative Hinduism and an older contemplative form of Christianity might have some important points of affinity. This is why Grant thought he had much in common with the ‘Hindu wing of Christianity’. Both Arapura and Mukerji taught Grant much about a deeper and older Indian and Hindu way, and Grant was more than eager to hear, heed and learn.

Bithika Mukerji had been both a student of George Grant and John Arapura when she studied at McMaster. Neo-Vedanta and Modernity very much embodies and reflects the deeper concerns of Grant and Arapura. The full fruit bearing of Arapura’s thinking came to the fore in his book, Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta (1986). Arapura was, like Grant, very much pondering how Heidegger had challenged the western notion of reason and thinking, and, by doing so, opened up new ways to understand thought and different levels of knowing (gnosis). Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta is divided into four sections: 1) ‘Gnosis and the scope of philosophizing in Vedanta, 2) Gnosis and philosophical thought in Rig Veda, 3) Gnosis and philosophical thought in the Upanisads, 4) Gnosis and philosophical thought in the Bhagavad-Gita, and 5) Gnosis and philosophical thought in the Brahma Sutra. It is impossible, when reading Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta, to miss the many conversations Arapura and Grant must have had while in Hamilton at McMaster University.

John Arapura’s book, Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta was published in 1986. Arapura sent Grant a copy of the book, and Grant replied to Arapura in a letter (12 November 1987). Grant says. ‘Your book is wonderfully illuminating’. The rest of the short letter goes on to explain how and why Gnosis and the Question of Thought in Vedanta is illuminating. Grant had less than a year to live, but he was always willing to be led and taught about the depths of Sankara and Neo-Vedantic thought, and how such an ancient line and lineage might assist Christians in both going deeper in their own journey and, equally important, challenging the narrow approach to knowing of modernity.

There is one more thinker we need to ponder as Grant engaged Hinduism. This is Nietzsche. Both John Arapura in ‘Modern thought and the transcendent: Some observations based on an Eastern view’ and, interestingly enough, Ronald Beiner in ‘George Grant, Nietzsche, and the Problem of a Post-Christian Theism’ in George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity (1996) deal with Grant, Nietzsche and Hinduism.

The 19^th century witnessed two important events; Science replaced Christianity as the new religion and source of authority; this is an aspect of modernity. As Christianity was marginalized and science rose to the throne, a spiritual thirst still existed that science could not slake. There was a turn to the East to make sense of such a thirst and hunger. Western modernity had marginalized Christianity, but the spiritual void was filled by an increasing interest by westerners in the Orient. Germany was front and centre in this turn to the East, and Nietzsche had apart to play in the drama.

Nietzsche’s oft quoted ‘God is dead’ obscures his deeper ponderings on the meaning and significance of Christianity, religion, spirituality and the Orient and Ancient Near East. Nietzsche, like Grant, had serious doubts about the spirit and forms of modernity, and he looked to the Classical past for insight

and guidance. Nietzsche makes it quite clear in books such as Will to Power, Genealogy of Morals, The Antichrist, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols where his commitments were and why. Nietzsche preferred Roman Catholic Christianity to Protestant Christianity, he preferred Hinduism to Buddhism, the warrior gods of Homer and the Jewish warrior God to Christianity and Buddhism. He was quite drawn to the Hindu caste system, but his view of hierarchy and caste was based on nobility, risk, energy, courage and effort rather than an inherited Brahmin class. Nietzsche countered the leveling of values that modernity brought, and he thought Christianity and the Enlightenment were to blame for the problem. Christianity was as much part of modernity as was the Enlightenment for Nietzsche, and Nietzsche wanted little of either. Grant and Nietzsche both shared deep suspicions of the modern project, and both turned to the wisdom of the past to counter the modern ethos and mood. Both had an interest in Hinduism, although they were interested in different parts of Hinduism. The Lawbook of Manu spoke to him of aristocracy and heroism, of those who overcome for a higher ideal. Beiner’s ‘Grant, Nietzsche, and Post-Christian Theism’ highlights how both Grant and Nietzsche turned to the Classics in opposition to modernity, but their interpretation of the Greek and Indian Classics went in different directions. It is essential, though, that most thinkers that opposed modernity (like Grant and Nietzsche) turned to both the Occidental and Oriental past as a means to both counter modernity and offer an older and deeper way of knowing and being. There was, therefore, a convergence for many in their turn to the ancient past in the West and East.

The question was this, though: what and whose interpretation of the Classical Western and Eastern should be heeded and why? There can be no doubt, though, that both the more ancient Greek and Indian traditions had a certain charm and appeal for those that saw through the pretensions and limitations of liberalism and modernity.

Many of the more thoughtful Germans in the 19^th century were quite keen on pondering how the Orient could and would walk them beyond the failing and faults of both Christianity and Science. Arapura’s article, ‘Modern thought and the transcendent: Some observations based on an eastern view’ discussed Nietzsche and Paul Deussen (the German Vedantic scholar).

Deussen and Nietzsche were friends and both had an interest in India as a way of transcending both a faltering Christianity and the limitations of science. Deussen argued that Parmenides, Kant and Sankara had much in common. Nietzsche read Deussen’s Das System des Vedanta and some of the Upanisads, and he opposed both. The Dionysian spirit did not live with an energetic passion in such texts. Apollo was too present.

Grant thought that Nietzsche and Heidegger had done more than most thinkers to make ‘the modern western project conscious of itself’. Both men turned to the Classical way (both interpreting it selectively and bringing many modern assumptions with them). Nietzsche, like Grant, had an interest in Hinduism, but their interest and interpretation took them down different paths and trails.

Grant lived, moved and had his being in the ‘Hindu wing of Christianity’. This means Grant’s interest was much more in the contemplative wing of Hinduism. There was no doubt that Grant was drawn to Nietzsche and Heidegger. Both men, in their different ways, showed Grant how modernity could be challenged, the flaws and fallacies within it, and, following Heidegger, the problems with empiricism and rationalism as a way of knowing. But, Grant did not follow Heidegger or Nietzsche in their interpretation and turn to the Classical Eastern and Western traditions. This is where Simone Weil entered the drama for Grant.

George Grant, in many ways, saw Simone Weil as his Diotima. Grant thought that Weil’s read of the Classical Greeks in Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks was much sounder, saner and comprehensive than Nietzsche and Heidegger. The same sensitivity that Weil applied to the Greeks she applied to reading Oriental and Indian texts. Simone Weil had a contemplative understanding of the philosophic journey that threaded together the inner and the outer journey, contemplation and justice. This is what brought Grant and Weil close to Gandhi and Tagore.

There is little doubt that Nietzsche and Heidegger did much to assist Grant in his analysis of the modern project, and that John Arapura and Bithika Mukerji did much to walk Grant deeper into the world of the Vedanta and Sankara. But, Gandhi, Tagore and Simone Weil did even more to guide Grant into a more integrated understanding of the Classical Greek and Indian way of integrating contemplation and politics. Grant, to his reflective and activist credit, embraced such wise sages and lived forth such an integrative way within the Canadian context.

Ron Dart

Was Grant a 'genteel anti-Semistist?' [excerpt from Grant in Process]

2010-03-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

Again in response to Alan Mendelson, was Grant a genteel anti-Semitist? It depends on what we mean with that broad brush label. Here he speaks for himself in this interview in Larry Schmidt (ed.), "George Grant in Process," 1978 (102-3).

QUESTION: You often speak about your dependence on the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem. Obviously the tradition of Athens, and of Plato in particular, is present in everything you say. But what is less obvious is what you incorporate from the tradition of Jerusalem. I can see the New Testament there -- but I wonder to what extent the Old Testament, the so-called Hebrew Bible, and the whole Hebraic background of Christian faith, is of vital importance in your thought?

GRANT: "Let me say first that I do not like talking in public these days of the differences between Judaism and Christianity. I don't think any political good is served by talking of such differences, because it would be taken in the bases and most vulgar way. But that does not mean there aren't grave intellectual differences between Christianity and Judaism. Clearly, for myself, I'm on the side of Christianity that is farthest away from Judaism, and nearest to the account of Christianity that is close to Hinduism in its philosophic expression. I would accept what Clement of Alexandria said: some were led to the Gospel by the Old Testament, many were led by Greek philosophy.

This same applies today when there are many ways into the apprehension of what is universal about Christ. What I object to in many modern theologians (particularly the Germans) is that they make Christianity depend on the religious history of a particular people, as told in the Old Testament. They make Christianity such an 'historical' religion that its universal teaching about perfection and affliction is lost.

QUESTION: It seems to me your use of the term 'tradition of Jerusalem' is really an empty use. If you take the Hebrew element out of the religion, what you have left is a pale Hellenism.

GRANT: Obviously there are wonderful and true things in the Old Testament. There are also exclusivist parts. What I want to insist is that the universal truth of Christ is not tied too clearly to the religious life of a particular nation, and that Christianity is not tied to an account of God's dynamic activity in the world, which appears to me to be unthinkable and to lead directly to atheism. Both western accounts of Christianity -- Protestant and Catholic -- have emphasized the arbitrary power of God in a way which seems to me fundamentally wrong and which has produced a picture of a God whom one should not worship. I think those emphases on the power of God are related to that exclusivity and dynamism which have led to some of the worst sides of western civilization. We in the West are called to rethink all this which started somewhere close to St. Augustine. What seems to me sad is that just when this rethinking is so necessary, many theologians are reemphasizing this God of dynamism in the name of the Bible.

George Grant's "Lament for a Nation: the Defeat of Canadian Nationalism" - Review by Ron Dart

2010-03-26T17:53:00.000-07:00

"Lament for a Nation should be respected as a masterpiece of political meditation."

Peter Emberley

"Masterpiece is not a word to use lightly, but Lament for a Nation merits it."

William Christian

It is forty years this year (1965-2005) since George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism took wings and left the press. It is most appropriate, therefore, to reflect on this timely text and meditate on its perennial relevance for Canadian thought and political life.

There is no doubt that Lament for a Nation is a compact and succinct masterpiece. It says much in a few pages. It is very much a tract for the times. Alex Colville, the well known Canadian painter, called Lament for a Nation, a political novel. When this missive was published, the arguments in it awoke and stirred many in the New Left and Counter Culture in Canada to fight for what Grant seemed to think was passing away. Lament for a Nation has appealed to many audiences for many different reasons, but the truths in it are as relevant today in an age of globalization and an 9-11 imperial world as they were in 1965.

What, then, are the ideas and arguments in Lament for a Nation, and what can they still speak and say to us?

The 1963 Federal election in Canada set the stage for Lament for a Nation.Tommy Douglas (NDP) joined ranks with Lester Pearson (Liberals) to defeat John Diefenbaker (Progressive Conservatives). Grant had pleaded with Douglas not to side with Pearson. President Kennedy had backed Pearson, and Grant knew that if Douglas tipped his cap to Pearson, this signaled a green light to Kennedy’s brand of American imperialism and the defeat of Canadian nationalism. Kennedy despised Diefenbaker, and although Grant was no uncritical fan of Diefenbaker, he did stand by his nationalism against American imperialism.

Chapter I of Lament for a Nation is a rapid overview of the liberal pack of wolves (academics, journalists, politicians, business leaders) who turned on Diefenbaker. The opening lines begin like this: “Never has such a torrent of abuse been poured on any Canadian figure as that during the years from 1960 to 1965. Never have the wealthy and the clever been so united as they were in their joint attack on Mr. John Diefenbaker”. The turn from Diefenbaker to Pearson-Kennedy was a turn from a unique and indigenous Canadian nationalist way to the American liberal and imperial way. Grant laments this choice by Canadians. He laments this fact as a parent would the death of a child that was most loved Life will go on, of course, but something is lost in the passing of what was loved and cared for, something that offered life and hope. Diefenbaker offered such a nationalist hope, but Canadians would have none of it. Most preferred Kennedy’s Camelot to the True North. A vision was being lost, also, and Chapter I ends with the opening lines of Hooker’s (16th century Anglican theologian) Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity: “Posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream”. There is more to Grant’s lament than merely the passing away of Canadian nationalism, but in the early chapters of Lament for a Nation this is the main motif. Grant did not want things to pass away as in a dream.

Chapter II takes Diefenbaker to task. Grant was no uncritical fan of Diefenbaker, and in Chapter II of Lament for a Nation he clearly and succinctly summarizes many and most of Diefenbaker’s foibles and failings, and they were many. Grant does point out, though, Diefenbaker had inherited a Canada from William Lyon Mckenzie King-C.D. Howe and Louis St. Laurent that had become a colony and branch plant of the USA. Diefenbaker had to do battle both with those in the Progressive Conservative party that longed for integration with the USA and with the Liberal party. In short, he had a rather significant battle to fight on a variety of fronts. “How did Diefenbaker conceive Canada?

Why did the men who run the country come to dislike and then fear his conception? The answers demonstrate much about Canada and its collapse”. It is these sorts of questions and answers to them that Grant probes. Chapter II makes it clear that the questions raised about the fate and future of Canada are complex, and Diefenbaker, in an imperfect way attempted to answer such questions in a nationalist way that challenged Kennedy, the USA and the Canadian colonialism of Pearson and Douglas.

If Chapter II in Lament for a Nation highlights the fumbling, errors and blunders of Diefenbaker, then Chapter III clearly articulates that Diefenbaker was a man of principle, and he was toppled for such nationalist principles. The 1963 election was fought on the issue of whether Canada would take warheads for Bomarc missiles. Pearson, following Kennedy, said we should and would. Diefenbaker, much to the anger and chagrin of many in his party, said a defiant and firm No to Kennedy’s orders. This was just the tip of the iceberg, though. Diebenbaker had, again and again, opposed and thwarted Kennedy’s plans for Canada. Diefenbaker had questioned the way Kennedy had handled the Cuban missile crises, he had initiated trade ties with Cuba and China when Kennedy had put a trade embargo on them, and he refused to join the Organization of American States (a front for American interests in Latin America). In short, Diefenbaker, as a conservative, locked horns with Kennedy’s liberalism each step of the way. Grant makes all this quite clear. If Diefenbaker had merely wanted power, he would, like Pearson, have dutifully genuflected to Kennedy. He didn’t, and he paid the price for doing so. “The defence crises of 1962 and 1963 revealed the depth of Diefenbaker’s nationalism”. It was in these years that Canadian nationalism was tested and found wanting. Canadians turned to the USA as their great good place, and Diefenbaker did his best to warn Canadians that such a Trojan horse could and would overwhelm the Canadian way. Chapter III is a spirited and animated defence of Howard Green (who Grant has much affinity with) and Diefenbaker. Diefenbaker was a tragic hero, but he was a hero nonetheless. Grant walks the extra mile to make this quite clear for those who only can see Diefenbaker in a negative way.

Chapter IV opens with these words: “in the light of Diefenbaker, I would like to turn to the Canadian establishment and its political instrument, the Liberal party”. The rest of the chapter tells the tale of how the liberal vision of Canada, at essence and at core, is one with the liberal vision of the USA. The Liberal party sees itself as the bearer of such a liberal and progressive vision, and most liberals see the future and fate of Canada as being one and the same (on most major issues) as the USA. Grant makes clear how this annexationist and continentalist vision has been brokered and furthered by the Liberal Party of Pearson-St. Laurent-King-Laurier and tribe. This, in short, is the Canadian establishment, and these are their aims and goals for Canada. A quote from E.P. Taylor sums things up quite nicely: “Canadian nationalism! How old-fashioned can you get?”

Grant points out that there were two ways of opposing the liberal integrationist vision with the USA: Castro and Cuba and De Gualle and France. Canada was not likely to follow Cuba, but the Gaullist tradition had some affinities with Sir J.A. Macdonald’s idea for the True North. But, since the capitalist class in Canada are more American than Canadian nationalist, the Gaullist tradition has as much chance of taking the lead in Canada as does Castro’s experiment in Cuba. It is the Liberal party that has assumed liberalism is the only political philosophy worth bending the knee to, and it is this creed and dogma that liberals see themselves as making sure all Canadians live by. Is there any option to liberalism and the sheer power of the Liberal party to make sure Canadians this is the fate they must accept? Are we indeed at the end of both history and ideology?

Chapter V moves the discussion from the many actors and actresses who play their roles on the stage of history to the ideas and ideologies that are the script and cue for such political thespians. Chapter V moves Lament for a Nation to a deeper, more demanding place. “The confused strivings of politicians, businessmen, and civil servants cannot alone account for Canada’s collapse. This stems from the very character of the modern era”. It is at this point that we can see that there is much more at work in Grant’s argument than merely a lament for Canadian nationalism. The lament goes much deeper.

Grant sees the modern era and ethos as dominated by liberalism. This liberal creed and dogma emerged in the Reformation (as Grant made clear in his earlier book, Philosophy and the Mass Age). The deeper lament is about the passing away of the tradition of the Ancients and the coming to be of the Moderns. Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Hooker, Swift and Coleridge had notions of the self and society, of human nature and the good life that stood in opposition to those like Locke and Hobbes, Paine and Jefferson. Grant makes plain the aim of this chapter: “I must turn away from Canadian history to the more important questions of political theory”. It is in this pivotal chapter that Grant makes clear why he sides with the Ancients rather than the Modern way, and why he sees the individualist and 1st generation liberalism of Locke, Hobbes, Hume and Smith and the social and 2nd generation liberalism of Rousseau, Kant and Hegel as kissing cousins. 1st and 2nd generation liberals do disagree about the role of the state in bringing about the good of the individual and society, but both agree that liberty, equality, choice, and freedom are the core of the liberal way. The debate between 1st and 2nd generation liberals is not so much about the principles and premises of liberalism but more about the accessibility and implementation of such principles for one and all. Grant makes it clear that such principles are problematic, and, if unquestioned, lead to serious problems. Grant, more than any other modern Canadian political philosopher, has dared to ask questions about the matrix of liberalism. Chapter V in Lament for a Nation is a sustained reflection on the inadequacy of liberal principles. If liberalism is flawed at the core and centre, what is the Tory alternate?

Chapter VI takes a long and hard look at the roots of Canadian conservatism. Grant makes it quite clear that the problem with a great deal of Canadian English speaking political thought is that it has been shaped by English liberalism. Canada was formed by many who came from England who had affinties with Locke and Smith, Hume and Hobbes. The older and more organic tradition of Hooker and Coleridge was waning at the time in England when Canada was being founded. This means Canada, like the USA, shares a certain liberal ethos. But, Canada, unlike the USA, still had a memory of an older, more ordered tradition with an abiding concern for the commonweal. It is this tension in the DNA and genetic code of English speaking Canada that makes Canada quite different from the liberty loving Yankees to the south. Canada, also, unlike the USA, walked the extra mile to preserve the French way of life. Many of the French who settled in Quebec (and elsewhere in Canada) had opposed the French Revolution of 1789. This meant that they, like the older English High Tories, shared a certain view of the good and just life. The English Tories and French Conservatives may have differed on some points, but both agreed that they did not want to be liberals or Americans. The conservative tradition in Canadian, therefore, brought together the French and English, to oppose American liberal ideals and American imperialism. Grant makes it clear in Chapter VI that the English in Canada, for the most part, have forgotten their older Tory ties. He does suggest, though, that the French are much closer to an older notion of conservatism. The roots of Canadian conservatism (English and French) are much older and go much deeper into the Classical Tradition of English liberalism (that finds its fullest expression and embodiment in the USA). Grant is ready to concede that there can be some protest to bourgeois liberalism, but even this can be co-opted by those in power. Grant had, in the 1960s, supported many in the New Left and Counter Culture. He stood by the side of the New Left and the Counter culture in their criticisms of the Canadian and American liberal bourgeois ethos. But, he had this to say as a form of warning: “The enormity of the break from the past will arouse in the dispossessed youth intense forms of beatness. But, after all, the United States supports a large Beat fringe. Joan Baez and Pete Seeger titillate the status quo rather than threaten it. Dissent is built into the fabric of the modern system. We bureaucratize it as much as anything else. Is there any reason to believe French Canada will be any different? A majority of the young is patterned for its place in the bureaucracies. Those who resist such shaping will retreat into a fringe world of pseudo-revolt”. The Beats, therefore, might seem to be questioning the status quo, but it is their anarchist fringe world and pseudo-revolt mentality (grounded and rooted in liberal notions of liberty and individualism) that makes them most American and easily co-opted. This is why Grant, at day’s end, speaks a firm and solid No to the USA in either its liberal bourgeois or Beat protest form: he saw them as different sides of the same liberal coin. At a fundamental level, therefore, Grant disagreed with the political philosophy of liberalism, and he thought the USA incarnated such a liberal tradition more than any other state in the world. In short, Grant recognized that there are those who think we have come to the end of history and ideology, but he still can envision another way.

Grant is only too well aware, though, that the forces and ideology of liberalism (as embodied in the USA and bowed before by Canadian colonials and compradors) seems to be the necessary fate we must all, whether we like it or not, live with. Is this, then, our fate? Are we doomed and fated to be liberals, and is history (in terms of ideological battles) over and done? How are we to live if liberalism is both our necessity and determined fate?

Chapter VII concludes this tract for the times. Chapters I-IV dealt with Canadian history, political actors and party politics. Chapters V-VI walked the reader into the area of political philosophy and theory. It is from the realm of theory that the script is given to the actors who merely read their parts in time. Grant questions, in these chapters, whether the script, itself, might have some problems. Could the lines of liberalism, the play and drama be written differently? Many don’t think so, and most oppose any fiddling or altering with the script and text of liberalism. Chapter VII has a more theological bent and orientation to it than the other chapters. Grant makes it clear in Chapter VII that Hegel and his notion of history is the crown jewel and centre piece of liberalism. Hegel had argued that liberalism fulfilled the deepest longing of the human intellectual and political journey. God and liberalism are ONE. Liberalism is, almost, in Hegel, divinely inspired and ordained. If this is the case, and liberalism is the creed of the day that cannot be questioned or doubted, then it is our fate that we must work within the matrix of the liberal framework. But, Grant asks, is fate and necessity the same as the GOOD? The Classical Tradition of the GOOD stands in a questioning and interrogating opposition to liberalism. Chapter VII ends with this question, therefore. “Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order. Today it is the voice of the establishment”. Grant set himself the task of questioning both liberal ideology and the establishment class that defined and defended it. This made him, in some ways, an uncomfortable prophet, and Lament for a Nation a tract with many a parallel to the Jewish prophet Jeremiah who wroteLamentations. Grant attempts to evoke notions of the GOOD, he points the way to such places and he wonders, while doing so, whether there will ever be a turn to such a way? If liberalism is our fate, then the GOOD might just be eclipsed.

Is Grant a cynic and skeptic, therefore? Does he see no possibility of opposing and resisting the Moloch, establishment and matrix of liberalism? Grant was asked in 1970 to write an Introduction to Lament for a Nation; he did so. It is in this Introduction that he attempted to state his case against apathy, cynicism, indifference and skepticism. It is interesting to note that in the Introduction he refers twice to the Moloch of the USA. This was a term that was used by Allen Ginsberg in his classic poem, Howl (1956). There are close connections between Ginsberg and Grant in what they are protesting against. Ginsberg’s Howl and Grant’s Lament do share some important affinities, and these do need to be explored. Lament for a Nation is, in many ways, the Canadian version of Howl.The fact that Grant uses the image and metaphor of Molech as a way of depicting the American empire in his Introduction to Lament for a Nationhighlighted his affinity with the New Left and the Counter Culture of the 1960s and the 1970s, but, as I noted above, Grant was somewhat wary of the fringe world and pseudo-revolt of the Counter Culture. Those like Ginsberg and clan used and furthered the very principles of liberalism in their legitimate criticisms of liberal bourgeois culture that the dominant classes in the USA sought to defend.

Grant was neither a cynic nor pessimist, though. He insisted and argued in his Introduction that action was better than apathy, and political paralysis is not the answer. Liberalism might dominate (in a variety of guises and appearances), but if history teaches nothing else it is that all ideologies have their day. When such a day will come is beyond the ken of most, but to sit down and fold the hands is not the answer. Grant ever pointed to the GOOD, and encouraged one and all to look where his finger was pointing. The language of optimism and pessimism must be set within a much larger and longer historic context. When this is done, and the end of the journey is seen, there is reason for hope and Grant was ever hopeful.

Sheila Grant (George Grant’s wife) was asked to write an Afterword to Lament for a Nation in 1997. She made it clear that if Lament for a Nation is ever going to be properly understood, a better reading and understanding of Chapter VII is much needed. Sheila further unpacked Grant’s discussion about necessity and the good, and argued that Grant was not a pessimist. He believed in acting even when the odds seemed overwhelming, and he lived from a source that went much deeper and was much older than liberalism. The final few paragraphs in Chapter VII highlight what this source was and why Grant turned to such a well to dip his bucket.

There is no doubt Lament for a Nation is a political masterpiece and a missive of prophetic vigour and depth. This tract for the times moves from the Federal election of 1963, to Canadian-American relations, to political philosophy, to theology and back, in the 1970 Introduction, to Canadian-American relations and the need for Canadians to be ever vigilant about American intentions and the colonial class in Canada that would make Americans of Canadians.

Lament for a Nation has many affinities with Ginsberg’s Howl, but even though Grant might lament and Ginsberg howl at the imperial nature of the USA and the liberal bourgeois ethos that underwrites such military industrial complex, Grant would see Ginsberg, the New Left, the Beats and the Counter Culture of the 1960s and 1970s as more subtle agents of the liberal ideology that he sought to question and interrogate. In fact, a close reading of life and writings of Allen Ginsberg and George Grant would highlight how and why the Canadian High Tory way shares some affinities with the Anarchist Left, , but, on substantive issues, they part company on both the issues of philosophic principles and political means. George Grant gives Canadians a uniquely Canadian way (both in a philosophical and political way) of opposing the varieties of liberalism that are smuggled into Canada, like a Trojan horse, by Americans. Beware, indeed, of Americans when they come bringing gifts of either the imperial, liberal bourgeois or protest type. To quote another Canadian, by way of conclusion, “even the dissidents speak as members of the empire”(John Newlove).

Ron S. Dart

Ron Dart is a professor in the Religious Studies and Political Science departments at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, BC. He has authored numerous books and articles on Grant, including his latest text, George Grant: Spiders and Bees (Fresh Wind Press, 2008).

The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil and Exiles from Nowhere: Reviews by Brad Jersak

2010-03-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

Book Reviews by Brad Jersak

E. Jane Doering and Eric O. Springsted, The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil (Notre Dame: UND Press, 2004.

Alan Mendelson, Exiles from Nowhere: The Jews and the Canadian Elite (Montreal: Robin Brass Studio, 2008).

In reviewing these two scholarly gems, I read them from a particular perspective. I am at the fledgling stage of George P. Grant research, with a special interest in enucleating the animating core of his life as a contemplative theologian and Canadian ‘prophet.’ One cannot hope to understand Grant’s work as a philosopher, political scientist and activist apart from the context of his Weilian Christian Platonism, for in his spiritual journey out of the dark cave of modernity (think Plato), Simone Weil was truly his ‘Diotima.’[1] Further, Grant’s emergence as one of Canada’s preeminent thinkers must be understood in light of his progressivist liberal pedigree. From that point of view, a book of essays on Weil’s Christian Platonism and a history that situates him among Canada’s intellectual elite are must-reads.

Doering and Springsted’s collection of essays on The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil provide a great service on a number of important fronts. The ongoing assessment and appropriation of the life and thought of Simone Weil into North American scholarship is important, but this seems an understatement. George Grant, who effectively introduced her to Canada in a 1951 review of Waiting on God for the CBC,[2] regarded her as a genuine modern saint, divinely inspired, possessed by Christ! After thirty years of meditating on her journals he testified, “her thought is next to the Gospels the highest authority for me.”[3]

Why? One must “take and read” her for oneself—a difficult task given Weil’s eclectic interests; the variety and depth of her expertise; her radical-creative speculations—rational and mystical—all scattered throughout apparently random journal entries. One must not replace a reading of Weil with books about her. Indeed, the reader should probably pick up a biography of her life and a few of her works (e.g. Gravity and Grace, Waiting for God) before starting this collection (as they require some familiarity with her) … but the essays in The Christian Platonism of SW do bring together her scattered thoughts and themes into a measure of cohesion, something I am grateful for.

The essays in the book are as follows:

1. Simone Weil and Platonism: an Introductory Reading / Louis Dupre

2. The Limits and Significance of Simone Weil's Platonism / Michel Narcy

3. Transcendence, Immanence, and Practical Deliberation in Simone Weil's Early and Middle years / Michael Ross

4. Simone Weil: Completing Platonism through a Consistent Materialism / Robert Chenavier

5. The Christian Materialism of Simone Weil / Patrick Patterson and Lawrence E. Schmidt

6. Simone Weil and the Divine Poetry of Mathematics / Vance G. Morgan

7. To On: a Nameless Something over which the Mind Stumbles / Florence de Lussy

8. Reconstructing Platonism: the Trinitarian Metaxology of Simone Weil / Emmanuel Gabellieri

9. Freedom / Martin Andic

10. Countermimesis and Simone Weil's Christian Platonism / Cyril O'Regan

11. "I dreamed I saw St. Augustine ..." / Eric O. Springsted

12. Simone Weil: the Impossible / David Tracy

I mentioned other important fronts where these essays gain significant territory as they lead us to thinkwith Weil (as Grant did), not only about her:

(i) Thinking with Weil and engaging with her startling mind is a marvelous corrective for those who’ve dismissed Plato and his idea of the Good and God as archaic and passé. Weil’s Plato is a mystic whose intellect is enlightened by love, a lover of God whose noetic knowledge is validated by a love ethic for a just society. Having lived in an era where the brutal facts of history had discredited modernity’s so-called enlightenment as morally bankrupt, both Weil and Grant look back in time. They see Plato’s Good fulfilled in the Cross, providing an intersection between the goodness of God and the affliction of humanity.

(ii) Thinking with Weil carves out a little space to bring “God” back into the semantic range of philosophy. University philosophers may roll their eyes at talk of God; or variously mock or scream bloody murder at Christianity; or recount the litany of horrors perpetrated by the Church throughout history (with a great measure of warrant) … but their students are writing poems to Simone Weil. She gives us permission to remember a time when we could seriously wrestle with ultimate reality, goodness, beauty and justice, and the great question of theodicy. She, like George Grant, explored the relationship of rational and noetic knowledge, reason and revelation, “Athens and Jerusalem”—a marriage our culture has attempted to divorce in our hearts for a number of centuries.

(iii) Thinking with Simone Weil provides a healthy balance for those who have sought to make early Christianity exclusively the child of Judaism. They do well to remind us that Jesus and his early followers were Jewish practitioners of the Torah and that anti-Semitism in Christ’s name is as ridiculous as it is evil. And yet … Simone Weil, a secular Jew who recoiled at the violence of God in her people’s own Scriptures, reminds us of the intimations of Greek thought and Platonic theology to be found in the early Christian writings (esp. John and Paul). She sees Socrates as every bit the forerunner of the Gospel that we have traditionally in Isaiah or John the Baptist, something the reader may want to see firsthand in herIntimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks.

* * * * *

Exiles from Nowhere by Alan Mendelson is of course written in a completely different genre. For the most part, this is a careful and fair work of Canadian history through a particular lens: anti-Semitism—ranging from vulgar to genteel—across 150 years of Canadian history. Mendelson examines the relationship of Canada’s political and intellectual elite with the Jewish community, and some interesting connections emerge with specific reference to George P. Grant’s place in Canadian history.

Although the book’s subtitle names Canada’s elite, Mendelson really focuses on English-speaking Ontario and one thread that he brings to a climax in George Parkin Grant, his colleague at McMaster University in the late seventies. First, the Exiles from Nowhere covers the relationship between Grant’s political and familial forerunners (Goldwin Smith, Henri Bourassa, Mackenzie King, George M. Grant, George Parkin, and Vincent Massey) with the Jews. And second, it examines some of Grant’s influences (his “intellectual pantheon”: Arnold Toynbee, Martin Heidegger, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and Simone Weil) and their relationship with the Jews.

One cannot help but be impressed with the sheer magnitude of research that stands behind this work. The diligence is manifest in the sixty pages of notes that show us Mendelson's digging through primary sources, including scores of personal letters between the characters involved. Considering Mendelson’s scholarship, his personal acquaintance with Grant, and the importance of this book to a Canadian historian’s library, I’m loathe to presume a critique of it. Nevertheless …

When one dons lenses in search of anti-Semitism, a historian may become vulnerable to distortions in their read of people, intentions, and events … even their alleged silence (e.g. Grant’s silence [!?] re: Heidegger and the Nazis, p. 227). In Mendelson’s case, the distortion should not be exaggerated, but at times, manifests as unfortunate understatements and overstatements. For example, minimizing Grant’s self-acknowledged “great debt” to Jewish scholar Leo Strauss as a “brief flirtation” or exalting Oxford’s Arnold Toynbee into a place in Grant’s “intellectual pantheon” are bizarre and obvious errors that should be impossible for such a careful scholar. Such missteps occur when one’s critical eye has come too close to the magnifying glass.

Mendelson’s brilliance truly shines in setting a contextual stage on which to analyze particular statements or acts of anti-Semitism (e.g. Grant vs. Leonard Cohen, p. 288ff). But certain small-p prejudices also surface when he moves from explicit acts of anti-Semitic negligence or exclusion (e.g. by Grant’s uncle Vincent Massey, p. 136ff) into what he calls “genteel anti-Semitism” (p. 2-3) as distinguished from “vulgar” anti-Semitism. The former entails an intellectual disagreement with Judaism (i.e. a critique of Jewish non-acceptance of Christianity or oppression of non-Jews) while the latter proposes vulgar hatred and violence towards Jews.

The trouble I have with the label “genteel anti-Semitism” is that it paints virtually anyone who does not promote Zionism with the same brush as Hitler, admitting only that they take a subtler form. It stirs ideological, political, and theological disagreement into the same bowl as holocausts and atrocities. Just a few examples suffice: (i) Do Grant and Weil’s abhorrence of God-commanded genocides in the Hebrew Scriptures constitute hatred of the Jews? (ii) Does Grant and Weil’s conviction that the Cross of Christ is the supreme expression of God’s love and justice amount to anti-Semitism? (iii) Is Weil an anti-Semite because she is unwilling to be excluded from the teaching profession due to her Jewish bloodline, in spite of the fact that she was a non-practicing, secular French Jew? (iv) Does Grant and Weil’s pacifism; their hatred of the carnage of two World Wars; their hopes for peaceful solutions (however naïve), make them silent assenters to the holocaust? Mendelson might not say as much. But by his own standards of implication, I would have to conclude that disagreement and critique, whether on theological or political grounds (their own prophets notwithstanding!), makes one anti-Semitic in its most subtle—and perhaps most dangerous—form.

Brad Jersak is working at Ph.D. studies related to George Grant through Bangor University (Wales). He co-edites Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Justice

[1] Larry Schmidt (ed.), George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations, (Toronto: Anansi Press, 1998), 199.

[2] William Christian, George Grant: A Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 157.

[3] William Christian and Sheila Grant (eds.), The George Grant Reader (Toronto, London, Buffalo: The University of Toronto Press, 1998), 237.