George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity: Art, Philosophy, Religion, and Education

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

George Grant (1918–88) has been called “a brooding philosopher of
apparently implacable pessimism.” Educated at Queen’s and Oxford,
Grant taught philosophy, political science, classics, and religion at
several Canadian universities. His influential Lament for a Nation
(1965) prophesied the demise of Canada within an American empire of
modern liberalism.

Arthur Davis, a professor of social science at York University, credits
Grant’s influence and mystique as a political philosopher in part to
the seemingly contradictory stances he took through the years. By
opposing the Vietnam War and showing the negative side of technological
progress, Grant won support among the political left in the 1960s. In
the 1970s, however, his opposition to abortion pleased the conservatives
despite his rejection of free trade with the United States.

This collection consists of 13 essays by 11 contributors, including
Grant’s wife, Sheila. The book begins with Grant’s previously
unpublished writing on Celine, following this with essays that explore
his debt to Celine and his interest in Nietzsche, Heidegger, Weil, and
Leo Strauss (modern thinkers who inspired or provoked strong reactions
in Grant).

Davis contributes two essays, along with an introduction titled “Why
Read George Grant?” He concludes that Grant never rejected the modern
world but only abhorred the naive optimism inherent in the idea of human
progress. Grant hoped, Davis argues, that the tragedies of our century
would lead people “not into nihilism but toward a deeper religious
response, one that would unite modern and traditional insights.”

George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity makes a significant
contribution to studies

of the philosophy, political and religious, of one of Canada’s most
important thinkers.