George Grant and the Future of Canada

R. Douglas Francis is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

The title of this collection, taken from the proceedings of a conference
held at Mount Royal College in Calgary in 1990, is a misnomer. Not one
of the essayists uses George Grant to predict, or even to reflect upon,
“the future of Canada.” Instead, what they do is to analyze
Grant’s views on a number of topics that interested him, from
nationalism to the philosophies of liberalism and conservatism to
abortion and the role of religion. A few of the essays, like Christopher
Manfredi’s “Constitutional Adjudication and the Crisis of Modern
Liberalism” and R.C. Davidson’s “Military Integration and George
Grant’s Lament for a Nation” make only passing reference to Grant,
and hardly seem appropriate in a collection of essays dealing with Grant
and his ideas. Others, like A.J. Parel’s “Multiculturalism and
Nationhood” and Barry Cooper’s “Did George Grant’s Canada Ever
Exist?” use Grant as a springboard for their own pressing concerns.

The remaining essays each deal with aspects of Grant’s thought. The
most insightful, Zdravko Planinc’s “Paradox and Polyphony in
Grant’s Critique of Modernity,” outlines clearly and succinctly the
various “voices” that spoke to Grant and the conflicting role that
each played. Yusuf Umar’s essay does much the same, although it
restricts its analysis to the influence of Leo Strauss and Alexandre
Kojиve on Grant’s political philosophy. William Christian examines
Grant’s views on religion as “a social organization.” In
“Rights, Power-Knowledge and Social Technology,” Rainer Knopff uses
Grant’s views on technology, liberalism, and justice to speculate on
the role of the intellectual in the modern world of social technology,
where the philosophy of behaviorism dominates. Finally, Samuel Ajzenstat
examines Grant’s views on abortion (in later years Grant came to see
the pernicious influence of liberalism on Western thought).

This collection of essays will certainly not be the last word on Grant,
but it does provide “food for thought” for those wanting an
introduction to Grant’s ideas on Canadian thought in particular and
Western thought in general.