Christianity seems in a certain way closer to Hinduism than
it does to its fellow religions that arose in the 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
Modern scientists, like the modern thinkers in Swift’s Battle of the Books, explain nature, human and non-human, the idea of soul, and not
surprisingly they have produced a world where it is difficult to think what it
means to be open to the whole. Ancient thinkers are compared to the bee which
goes around collecting honey from the flowers; modern thinkers are compared to
the spider which spins webs out of itself and then catches its food in that
web.
George Grant in Dennis Lee, Poetry and Philosophy (1982)
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.
The differences between Grant and Anderson-Bacon did not abate.
Anderson took a persistent pro-Baconian position and, in 1960, his The New Organon and Related Writings was
published. Anderson edited and wrote a lengthy introduction to the book that,
by 1978, went into ten printings. Grant knew the difference, in an acute way,
between Bacon, the spider, and the ways and means of the more classical bee.
There could be no doubt that Bacon had taken to the philosophic throne and many
were the acolytes that fawned, genuflected and defended his right to rule.
Grant dared to challenge the reigning monarch, Anderson was an apologist for
Bacon—the differences between the spider and the bee could not be more obvious.
The fact that Bacon’s approach to nature was so questionable meant that those
who followed in his footsteps became those who colonized, imprisoned and justified
abuse of the natural world for profit. Grant realized, decades before the
ecological ethos came to the fore, that Bacon (and his minions) had to be
confronted by an older, deeper and more contemplative way of being and
knowing.
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 breadcrumbs
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 19th 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 19th
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