Edited by Arthur Davis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002).
George Grant (1918–1988) was probably the most important
Christian High Tory philosopher, theologian, educator, political theorist and
activist in Canada in the twentieth century. The Collected Works of George Grant highlights how and why this is the
case.
Volume Two in the Collected
Works, like Volume One, is broken down into a variety of areas and
sections. Arthur Davis, true to detailed and meticulous form, has walked the
extra mile, to unpack and unfurl, the unfolding intellectual journey of George
Grant. Volume Two deals with Grant’s years at Dalhousie University (1951–1958),
and opens up for the curious and scholarly, the issues Grant was grappling with
in these important years. Grant was, even at this period of Canadian history,
front and centre on the stage and in the drama. He could not be missed as the
large and substantive issues were brought before the Canadian people.
The ‘Chronology’ and ‘Introduction to Volume 2: 1951–1958’,
by Arthur Davis, is a superb aerial overview of the times and Grant’s
engagement with the issues of the day. Grant never flinched from facing the hard and demanding
questions of the 1950s, and Davis demonstrates the subtle and nuanced way Grant
did this in his ‘Introduction’.
The essays by Grant that follow the well-crafted
‘Introduction’ by Davis are well worth the read. Grant’s controversial essay
for the Massey Commission, ‘Philosophy’, opens up this section, and there is
much on religion, theology, education, philosophy, history and politics that
follow. Grant’s mind and imagination were ever active and integrated, ever
probing and questioning, ever the honest critic of the age. Essays such as ‘Two
Theological Languages’, ‘Plato and Popper’, ‘Training for the Ministry’, ‘What
is Philosophy?’, ‘Canada: A History’, ‘Acceptance and Rebellion’, ‘The Uses of
Freedom-A Word and Our World’, ‘The Humanities in Soviet Higher Education’,
‘Fyodor Dostoevsky (with Sheila Grant’, and ‘Christ, What a Planet’ tell their
own convincing and evocative tales. Grant was persistent with his questions and
relentless with his deeper longings, and, as such, he did his education with
both head and heart fully committed and engaged.
The essays by Grant make up the largest part of Collected Works (almost 400 pages).
There is much to ponder in these challenging essays, but there is yet more to
the book.
Davis offers the reader yet two more sections: ‘Three Talks
and a Review’ and ‘Lectures at Dalhousie’. These two sections open up to the
interested the fullness and breadth of Grant’s interests and concerns. Mozart,
Plato, Augustine, Kant and the meaning of education are touched on and
examined.
Davis winds down the book, as he did in Volume One, with
many an appendix. Appendix 1 deals with ‘Comments on Hegel and on Religion and
Philosophy’, Appendix 2 with ‘Poems’, Appendix 3 with ‘List of Radio and
Television Broadcasts for CBC’ and Appendix 4 with ‘Editorial and Textual Principles
and Methods Applied in Volume 2’.
There is no doubt that University of Toronto Press has taken
on a Herculean task in publishing the Collected
Works of George Grant, and there is little doubt that Arthur Davis is the
man for the hour to shepherd this project through to the end. When this task is
finally and fully completed, serious and substantive work will, finally, be
able to be done on one of the most important Canadian intellectuals of the
twentieth century. There is no doubt that Collected
Works of George Grant: Volume 2 (1951-1959) has brought us to a larger
clearing. We await, with eager hearts, Volume Three in this labour of love and
much effort.
rsd