George Grant and the Twilight of Justice 9781487578428

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GEORGE GRANT AND THE TWILIGHT OF JUSTICE

JOAN E. O'DONOV AN

George Grant and the Twilight of Justice

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 1984 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018

ISBN 0-8020-5637-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-6538-4 (paper)

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

O'Donovan, Joan E. (Joan Elizabeth), 1950George Grant and the twilight of justice Includes index. Bibliography: p. ISBN 0-8020-5637-7 (bound) . - ISBN 978-0-8020-6538-4 (paper) I. Grant, George, 1918- 2. Philosophy, Canadian - 20th century . I. Title. C84-098509-6 191 B995 .G74036 1984

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the University of Toronto Press.

Contents

Preface / vii

Introduction: The Unique Contribution of George Grant I 3 Background to the Problem of History: Grant's Writings from 1943 to 1959 I 9 Introduction to the phases of Grant's thought I 9 Grant's patriotic beginnings/ 11 From politics to theology I 14 The defence of philosophy against science and society / 20 Existentialism and the theology of the cross I 25 2 Philosophy in the Mass Age: A Struggle for Synthesis/ 28 Grant's Hegelian book?/ 28 Posing the problem of history: the dilemma and the promise of philosophy today I 30 The Polarity of the 'mythic' and the 'modem' I 32 Traditional natural law versus the modem ethic of freedom / 34 The roots of modernity in biblical religion I 35 Marxism, the modem philosophy / 38 The future of the progressive spirit / 39 The modem challenge: elements of an absolute morality / 41 Grant's debt to Hegel/ 43

vi Contents 3 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis: Grant's Rejection of ' History' / 47 The context of Grant's rejection of 'history'/ 47 The meaning of Grant's rejection of 'history'/ 58 The political and theological issue: What may I hope? / 60 4 The Vanishing of Tradition: Whither Political Philosophy? / 62 The public irrelevance of conservatism / 62 The Straussian option and its lacunae / 68 Simone Weil's theological reflections on nature, justice, and providence/ 80

5 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man: History as a Religious Problem / 86 Divine justice and the idea of fate / 86 Modernity as a 'unified fate ' / 87 Conclusion: recollection and philosophy/ 104 6 The Challenge of Historicism: Beyond Nietzsche and Heidegger / I06 Time as History: heart of darkness/ 106 The form and purpose of Time as History I 108 The future and the will to mastery in ' history'/ 112 Grant and Heidegger: tradition, recollection, and technique/ 115 The challenge of Nietzsche, the western seer / 119 Through Nietzsche to the height of paradox / 125 From philosophical hope to recollecting faith: revelation versus tradition / 128

7 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice I 132 Grant's work in the seventies/ 132 The structure of modem instrumentality: knowing as making / 135 The knowing and practising of justice within the modem destiny / 139 8 Summary and Criticism: The Problem of History in Theological Perspective/ 154 Recollecting the issues I 154 A theological response to the issues I I66 Bibliography/ 181 Index/ 187

Preface

George Grant's first book, Philosophy in the Mass Age, appeared in 1959, more than fifteen years after he had launched his literary career with a descriptive pamphlet on the Canadian nation. The intervening years had seen Grant's transformation from a political writer with historical interests to a philosopher with theological interests. Philosophy in the Mass Age exhibits the breadth and catholicity of Grant's philosophical interests, developed through his reading of Plato and St Augustine as well as Kant and Hegel. Its argument is structured in Hegelian fashion by the polarity of 'ancient' and 'modern' thought and experience within a historical dialectic driving towards synthesis. The 'modern' is defined by autonomous freedom rooted in the consciousness of 'history' and the 'ancient' by natural law rooted in cosmological awareness. Grant poses with guarded optimism the theoretical problem of reconciling the ' ancient' and the 'modern,' not undertaking the task himself, but clarifying its necessary terms with economy and lucidity. The terms are theological as well as philosophical , and Grant's hoped for reconciliation, in the realm of private thought as in _the realm of public principle and practice, is an inner historical possibility of the Western Christian tradition. It is a possibility inherent in liberal technological society, as heir to the Reformation and Enlightenment traditions of freedom, that it may renew itself through a free appropriation of its classical past. Grant's writings of the sixties are pervaded by the disillusion of his hope for a rational-historical synthesis in which the progressive spirit will complete itself in principles of lawful order. His essays of this period, collected in Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (1969), are distillations of his growing conviction that technological freedom will not admit of limitation, is inimical to restraint. Instructed by the perceived imperialistic violence of the Vietnam war, Grant increasingly projects an alternative future for technological liberalism: the tyrannous rule of the 'universal and homogeneous state, ' the total domination of

viii Preface man over human and non-human nature. Leo Strauss guides Grant into this alternative future by decisively setting forth the issue between the aspirations of Greek thought and action and those of the thought and action of our own age. The issue, which finds ever more explicit expression in Grant's thought, is between contemplation of the eternal things or mastery of the contingent event as the opposing ends of human rationality. Grant's pessimism about the choices made by modem 'historical' men takes a radicalizing tum in the idea of 'fate,' of historical necessity. Under the impact of his encounter with the extreme historicism of Nietzsche, and of Heidegger through Nietzsche, Grant attends to the inner logic of our unfolding fate as technological beings. His much controverted and much misunderstood book Lament for a Nation (1965) is the harbinger of a protracted meditation on our tragic destiny in the West. Here Grant explores the ironies of Canada's search for an independent political identity amidst continental forces of integration in the light of the ambiguities of the nation's historical foundations. His historicalpolitical analysis leads irresistibly to the conclusion that the Canadian fate is a particular outworking of the inexorable progress of liberalism in the modem age. This conclusion is cast as a religious problem by the very form of Grant' s reflections; for a lament 'celebrates' a passed good outside of the certainty that its passing serves a greater good. It is a profession of faith rather than sight. The paradox of faith confronting the vicissitudes of history reaches its climax in Time as History , Grant's most intricate probing of the essence of technological liberalism. It is Nietzsche who projects this essence in his incautious account of the origin, the meaning, and the destiny of the modem consciousness of 'history . ' Nietzsche lays bare for Grant the nihilistic telos of the modem consciousness , its termination in the finite will willing itself as the being , the truth, the goodness, and the justice of all things . In refusing this terminus Grant raises to the height of paradoxical tension the religious requirement of amor fati: how can we love our fate when it renders us oblivious to eternity without which the love of fate is a senseless longing? Grant's writings of the seventies are written in the shadow of modem nihilism as thought by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Their controlling theme is the character of modem knowing as making , as ' technique.' Grant unravels the implications of this civilizational paradigm of knowledge for the manifold areas of our public life: for our science, our art, our education, our morality, and our practice of justice. English-Speaking Justice (1974) portrays the ironic and tragic fate of contractual liberalism in its historical alliance with technological progress. Grant uses his theoretical confrontation with John Rawls to indicate where we have come in the West and the u .s. Supreme Court decision on abortion to indicate where we are going. As liberal society enters upon a diminished content of public

ix Preface justice Grant recalls to it the two authoritative accounts of justice contained in the the Gospels and in the Republic of Plato. This book is both the means and the fruit of my intellectual conversion from the liberalism in which I was educated. The influence of George Grant's mind on my own has been pervasive. My receptivity to his thought has grown with familiarity. Initially, I had to be exhorted by wiser friends to pay serious attention to his arguments, so little disposed was I to surrender my historicist prejudices. Among these friends I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Herbert Richardson, my doctoral advisor at St Michael's College, Toronto, for encouraging me to undertake an extensive study of Grant's writings. This does not exhaust my debt to Professor Richardson, who by example and instruction over some years prepared me for this venture. I should also like to express my thanks to Dr Frank Flinn for offering me good counsel along with a very thorough bibliography of Grant's writings and writings on Grant. In the early stages of formulating my ideas I benefited greatly by discussions of my work in an informal doctoral seminar on political theory conducted by Professor Bernard Zylstra of the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto . Further stimulus and direction to my thinking came from a scholarly symposium on Grant's work organized by Professor Larry Schmidt of Erindale College, Toronto, from which issued the articles in George Grant in Process (Toronto: Anansi Press 1978). During the various phases of producing this manuscript I have received typing assistance from Miss Clare Phillips and from my mother-inlaw, Mrs Joan O'Donovan, who generously set aside her own literary labours to offer a hand. The task of producing this manuscript was eased considerably by the services of Mrs Loma Hassell, while librarian of Wycliffe College , Toronto. Finally, I must confess my profound debt to two people without whom this study would not have come to pass: to Professor George Grant, who has suffered all my probings with unflagging good humour, and to my husband, Oliver, who has guided my thinking on the most important theological matters. J.O ' D.

Christ Church, Oxford

GEORGE GRANT AND THE TWILIGHT OF JUSTICE

Introduction: The Unique Contribution of George Grant

It is platitudinous to remark that philosophy today is not public in the Socratic manner. It has removed itself from those provinces of questioning that belong to the academically untutored but thoughtful individual. This is true even of our reviving political philosophy, despite the professed rejection of intellectual isolationism by many of its practitioners. Since the Second World War an outstanding collection of political thinkers has appeared on the scene in Europe and North America - Jurgen Habermas, Jean Hyppolite, Hannah Arendt, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, to mention only a few - whose works are both widely read and influential, but still inaccessible to the layman. Though they address themselves with theoretical breadth and profundity to the structures of our common life today, to the aspirations and ideas that unify our political experience, to the larger questions of political good and political order with which the thoughtful citizen is concerned, they are not read by most thoughtful citizens, who are unable to penetrate their densely detailed, complex, and abstract arguments. The political philosopher of merit today is all but debarred from the traditional role of public educator by the heavy burden of philosophical scholarship. All but debarred, for there still appears the occasional thinker who combines broad erudition and theoretical depth with the singular capacity to communicate across a wide spectrum of readers. Such a thinker is George Grant, whose writings are worthy of being read by political philosophers, ethicists, and theologians, yet while capable of being read by many others. They make a significant critical and constructive contribution to the understanding of central issues in political philosophy, while at the same time rendering these issues intelligible to the interested non-specialist. 1 Their intelligibility is not bought at the price of The public or 'lay' focus of Grant's work is suggested by the origination of two of his five major books in public lecture series: English-Speaking Justice as the Wood Lectures for

4 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice intellectual integrity and seriousness, but it does owe something to an astute and economical use of the thought and scholarship of others. On the theoretical plane, Grant's thought is international, yet it is also securely rooted in a particular political context - that of Canadian public life with its particular institutions, sensibilities, and controversies. The practical loyalties and exigencies to which Grant is subject as a citizen cannot be incidental to his thought, not if it is to bear some relation to the public realm, as it must to be responsible and significant. His literary life's work is a testimony to his conviction that political philosophy, always and everywhere, owes a debt to public tradition. Those thinkers who do not concede this debt may have difficulty recognizing Grant as a political philosopher. He will appear to them as a moralist, a culture critic, a political thinker, and, perhaps, even a popular philosopher.2 Consequently, they will miss not only the philosophical intention of his writings, but also the direction and meaning of his career. For as a public man Grant has continually engaged the traditions of his society in a self-consciously questioning way. 'Tradition' is, indeed, a controlling category for Grant's practical and theoretical reflection. Practically, a regard for the preservation of Canada's historical traditions has made Grant the defender of a conservative vision of Canadian public life. His hope for a distinctively conservative public realm in Canada, which has long since been disillusioned, embraced a commitment to two correlative claims: the claim of the past on the future, and the claim of social order on individual freedom. Theoretically, the notion of tradition has been indispensable to Grant's understanding of the possibility and the nature of political philosophy in the modern age. 3 In fact, we are not unjustified in viewing his corpus thus far as a meditation on the crisis of contemporary moral and political thought caused by the eclipse of the great theological and philosophical traditions of the West. This is hardly an original consideration, but it is just Grant's unoriginality that makes his thinking both serious and timely. It is serious and deserving of our attention because his struggle to comprehend the present crisis brings him face to Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, and Time as History as the Massey Lectures, ninth series, for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation . A third book, Lament for a Nation : The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism, is a widely read and controversial political statement intended (as the jacket comment of the Carleton Library reprint says) for ' thoughtful Canadians. ' A fourth publication, Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America, is a collection of Grant 's essays appearing in a variety of journals and periodicals. 2 By 'popular philosopher' I do not mean a species of philosopher, but a deceiving imitator of the philosopher, who stands in the same relation to the philosopher as the sophist of Plato's Sophist. 3 For Grant, the modem age begins with two historical developments which he views as complementary: the natural science of the later Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation.

5 Introduction face with the question of the truth of those traditions in eclipse, that is, the traditions of biblical Christianity and Greek philosophy. And what could be more serious than to confront the question of the truth of this heritage and be forced to a judgment? His thinking is timely because every serious effort to do practical philosophy today is a response to the crisis in modern reflection as a crisis. The problem of modern man's break with past traditions eventually becomes for Grant the problem of modern man's conception of 'history.' To understand this conception was the leading philosophical concern of his writings for a decade. From 1959 to 1969 Grant was explicitly engaged in ascertaining the essence and judging the truth of what modern man calls 'history.' Throughout this period the task of understanding 'history' was wedded to another task, that of thinking through what political philosophy can and should be today. These two inquiries, we propose, give a direction and focus to the greater part of Grant's writings. They constitute his most general level of questioning which permeates and organizes the various elements of his thought: for instance, his political analysis, his social criticism, and his historical interpretation. It is to these inquiries that we must attend if we are to grasp the full extent of Grant's intellectual contribution. Our primary task, then, is to understand the unity and the movement of Grant's thought in terms of his abiding concern to interpret the modern conception of 'history,' a concern arising out of his initial struggle to comprehend the break with the tradition of our (western) past that modern thought and action represents. From the beginning, Grant views this break in the light of an earlier 'tension' or discontinuity in our western heritage: between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. For Grant, this is the primal tension in the 'western tradition,' the dynamic principle of its root . In seeking to grasp philosophically the meaning of our modem conception of 'history,' he refers this conception back to our spiritual origins as western men. It is important to emphasize that Grant attempts not only to describe the modem notion of 'history,' but to understand this notion as the essence of modernity. 'History' is not for Grant merely one idea among many in current circulation, but is in a sense the idea, the central theoretical and practical idea of our age. He comes to see the idea 'history' as embodying the form of modern man's understanding of himself and his world, the form of his most fundamental desire and apprehension, the form of his unique being. In endeavouring to understand the present crisis of political and moral thought by means of the modem conception of 'history,' Grant is in good company. For numerous political thinkers today find their common starting-point in the present 'crisis' of political reflection; and in their varied undertakings to secure the theoretical basis of political action and political order, they recognize that mod-

6 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice em man's historical understanding has put this project on a new footing. The centrality of 'history' to interpreting the modem crisis is as characteristic of the influential thinkers belonging to the Frankfurt school of 'critical theory' descended from the 'Hegelian left' and of the 'hermeneutical' social and culture philosophers inspired by Heidegger, as it is of such learned interpreters of classical political philosophy as Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss and of such major Christian political thinkers as Herman Dooyeweerd and Eric Voegelin. All these different approaches to political philosophy are responses to the modem awareness of 'history,' and as responses they share a methodological dependence on 1 / criticism and 2 I historical interpretation. In the first place, they all offer uncompromising diagnoses or criticisms of modem society as a totality, conceived under the form of technological liberalism. And they all agree that the moving force of technological liberalism is the post-Enlightenment understanding of history and of man as a historical being. Where these approaches disagree is with respect to the cure for the aberrations of modernity, that is, of technological liberalism as the fulfilment of the modem 'project.' They disagree on whether the concept of 'history' has a place in this cure. In the second place, these diagnoses of liberal technological society regard the modem tradition of philosophy, especially of political philosophy (from the sixteenth or seventeeth century onward), as a central historical cause of liberal technological society, perhaps as the cause. Their criticism of modem society obliges them to criticize modem political philosophy, or certain developments within it. And this obligation requires a historical perspective. Consequently, each of these approaches to political philosophy is an interpretation of the history of modem political philosophy - a philosophical interpretation! For all these approaches, the historical perspective eventually calls forth a philosophical reading of the entire history of political philosophy, from the Greeks onward. Grant too adheres to the methods of criticism and historical interpretation. Along with these other thinkers, he sets out to understand the modem conception of history through: 1 / diagnosing the objective manifestation of this conception in liberal technological society; 2 I criticizing the philosophical systematization of this conception in modem historicism; 3 / uncovering the pre-modem roots of this conception in past traditions. For Grant, as for these other thinkers, to understand 'history' in its modem sense requires our recollecting and thinking through what has been thought in the pre-modem past of the West. This methodological requirement of recollecting and thinking through the thought of the past raises its own philosophical issues on which contemporary thinkers are in disagreement. One such issue is whether our recollection of past thought is not necessarily an interpretation, in which what was originally thought is transformed in accordance with our different historical situation and outlook.

7 Introduction Another issue is whether recovering the thought of the past and understanding our present and our future in the light of the past is intrinsic to political philosophy, belongs to political philosophy as such. The disagreement on these methodological issues among political philosophers today arises from and reflects their philosophical judgments about 'history': the ways in which they accept or reject the conception of history that prevails in our time. The selfunderstanding of the political philosopher today, then, appears to depend on where he stands in relation to the pervasive and decisive problem of 'history.' In relation to this fundamental problem for political philosophy, Grant's thinking makes three important contributions. First, it contributes catholicity. In the course of his career as a thinker and a writer, Grant has formed sympathetic acquaintances with rival philosophical interpretations of history and its implications for the task of political philosophy. He has opened himself to the conceptions of 'history' in Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, the great modern philosophers who, from Grant's point of view, have articulated the phases of the idea. He has also opened himself to the attack on the modern idea of 'history' in the work of Leo Strauss, a student of Plato and Aristotle and defender of classical political philosophy. The movement of Grant's thinking reveals his openness to the profundity of these minds and the claim of each to be thinking 'what is.' In this respect, his contribution is that of a synthetic rather than an original thinker. At the same time, his deepening reflections on history fulfil a critical and analytical function. They sharpen the philosophical disagreements in this area. They can do so because they embody significant shifts in Grant's own point of view, shifts that carry with them the anguish of intellectual struggle and spiritual self-searching. In the space of a few years, Grant moved from a cautious and qualified acceptance of Hegel's understanding of history to a radical and seemingly unqualified rejection of it. Grant rejects the idea of 'history' in favour of the opposing idea of 'eternity,' which he perceives to lie at the heart of classical philosophy. His shift focuses certain disagreements between classical and modern political philosophy in a way that spurns superficial mediation. Grant's third, and in our view, decisive contribution to thinking through the problem posed by 'history' is his Christian inspiration and erudition. His writing disregards the contemporary isolation of theological and philosophical interests. It stands apart from the modern tendency of philosophy and theology to disown each other through methodological polemics. Rather, Grant follows his intellectual and spiritual mentors - philosophers and saints such as Austin Farrer and Simone Weil, whose intellects have been illumined by faith and love - in defending the claims of philosophia. Grant is a philosophical and religious thinker, whose thought is theologically interested and informed, even though he typically confines himself to a philosophical statement of problems.

8 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice From Grant's point of view, the key philosophical issue of this age , which concerns the meaning and the truth of the modern idea of ' history,' cannot be arbitrated without recourse to the two 'primals' of western thought - biblical revelation and Greek philosophy . His struggle with this issue leads him to consider the following two relations and their interconnectedness: on the one hand, the historical relation of biblical religion to modern thought and action regulated by the idea of ' history ' and, on the other hand, the dialectical tension between Greek philosophy and biblical revelation. Grant's attempt to conceptualize these two relations is central to his thinking about 'history' in all its phases. Even more important, we would argue , Grant's enduring conviction of the truth of the Christian proclamation and its necessary implications for political thought and action is the dynamic centre of his thought , propelling it to new formulations. To the extent that Grant's Christian insights bind his thinking, they give it an unrelenting critical edge and keep it restlessly moving in the intellectual space opened up by others . They sustain the philosophical conversation in his writings by preventing him from aligning himself prematurely with one or another of his partners in conversation. Throughout Grant's struggle with the problem of 'history,' his loyalty to the Gospels above all acts as a leaven to keep his thought balancing above the abysses of historicism and the unconditional rejection of history . The tertium quid in Grant's work, between historicism and the denial of history, is the plane on which his religious and philosophical questionings intersect. It is here that Grant's philosophical formulations are theologically fruitful, open to theological appraisal and criticism.

1

Background to the Problem of History: Grant's Writings from 1943 to 1959

INTRODUCTION TO THE PHASES OF GRANT'S THOUGHT

Grant's explicit treatment of the problem of history , as we have said, covers the decade from 1959 to 1969. His corpus, however, extends over a much longer period, from 1943 to the present. We cannot, therefore, give a responsible account of the central theoretical problem of history in Grant's work without considering the writings that precede and follow his explicit discussion of the problem, for these provide the necessary interpretative framework for this discussion. Grant's writings prior to 1959 are indispensable for us because in them the elements of what will become the 'problem of history' are first thought out, to some extent separately. Here he sets forth a range of issues that he will think through together in his first formulation of the problem of history in 1959. While these early issues undergo transformation in the course of Grant's later reflections, they retain their identity at some level, and on that account remain decisive for his thought. Grant's writings subsequent to his explicit discussion of history figure as the denouement to the problem. They do not advance his thinking in the sense of enlarging the structure of the problem with new elements or altering its focus through the rearrangement of existing elements. But they do further illuminate this structure by offering detailed and precise explications of certain aspects of it. They clarify the elements of the problem, but only in the direction of confirming or reinforcing what we already know (or think we know) . For the purpose of our study, we have divided Grant's corpus into five parts. The middle three parts present phases in his explicit thinking about history. The first part precedes his discussion of history proper and the fifth and last part follows this discussion as its denouement. The phases of Grant's explicit formu-

IO George Grant and the Twilight of Justice lation of the problem of history coincide roughly with his major publications before 1970. These are: Philosophy in the Mass Age (1959) , Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (1969), and Time as History (1969). We shall devote four chapters of our study (2 , 4, 5, and 6) to an analysis of these three publications, after we take up Grant's early writings in this first chapter. Chapter 3 is a more general discussion of the transition between the first and second stages of Grant's thought on history and includes a parenthetical section on the work of Leo Strauss, without whom this transition cannot be understood. Chapter 7 examines Grant's post-1969 writings , and chapter 8, our concluding chapter, gathers up the fruit of our labour in summary and criticism . Before we examine Grant's early themes, we should briefly characterize the phases of his formulation of the problem of history. They are , in our judgment, three. I / Liberal-synthesizing phase . This phase includes Grant' s early writings and culminates in the reluctant Hegelianism of Philosophy in the Mass Age. In this phase, he accepts the truth of the modern belief in ' history' and its justification in modern political philosophy . The problem of history is the problem of reconciling the truth of ' history' with the truth of 'eternity' revealed in the non-historical thought of the past. The basis of Grant's hope for future reconciliation of 'history' and 'eternity' is his faith in the dialectical progression of reason in time. 2 I Polemical-conservative phase. In the first half of the sixties, Grant abandons his hope for a reconciliation in thought and practice of the truths of 'history' and 'eternity .' He discovers that practical conservatism implies an acceptance of the clear rightness of classical political philosophy over against modern political philosophy. Grant refonnulates the conflict between 'the ancients ' and 'the moderns' along the lines of Leo Strauss's argument, but does not endorse unreservedly Strauss's program for the restoration of classical political philosophy. His reservations point to the claim of biblical revelation, and pose in the most radical way the question of how biblical revelation is related to the modern belief in 'history.' 3 / Tragic-paradoxical phase. In the late sixties Grant returns to clarifying the 'essence' of 'history' in the modern sense, no longer as a step towards rational synthesis, but rather as a lament on the tragic fate of the West and, through the West, of mankind. 'History' as our 'fate' is the totality of modern being to which our desiring, our willing, and our thinking belong. This fate is tragic because its essence is nihilism, the will to will, the oblivion of eternity - an essence for which man as man is not fitted . Grant's philosophical lament completes itself in a prophetic confrontation with Nietzsche, the seer of modernity, in Time as History . This confrontation does not turn on the philosophical problem of selfknowledge, of knowing our fate , but on the religious problem of loving it. In the

11 Background to the Problem of History problem of loving our fate, Grant's philosophical irony passes over into religious paradox , the paradox that the end of man is to love a fate that excludes that without which he cannot love fate. His answer to this paradox is not rational hope but recollecting faith: faith in which is recollected the origin, the beginning, the root of the western fate. By means of recollecting faith Grant both affirms and overcomes the modem belief in 'history.' In order to understand the movement of Grant's thought through these three phases of deepening reflection on history, we must in the first place pay attention to his intellectual conversation with the 'great thinkers,' those enduring influences on his thought. Moreover, we must also attend to the particular details of Grant's life, to his practical, existential involvements as shaped by his personal inheritance. For it is somewhere between the urgent demands of the practical life and the compelling challenge of intellectual and spiritual mentors that Grant' s thought takes seed, germinates, and comes to fruition. Our purpose in this first chapter is to provide a backdrop for Grant's struggle with history, to show how history emerges as a theoretical problem out of certain themes in his early writings. GRANT'S PATRIOTIC BEGINNINGS

George Grant began his literary career in the last year of the Second World War at the age of twenty-six . He had just returned to Canada from service overseas with the merchant navy, which illness had forced him to abandon . Upon his return, he had taken up an appointment as secretary to the Canadian Association for Adult Education, an association that his father had been instrumental in founding . During the year 1944-5, before departing again for doctoral studies at Oxford, Grant published three patriotic papers on the Canadian nation. The first was a descriptive booklet entitled "Canada - An Introduction ,' issued by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. The second and third essays, 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' 1 and 'The Empire, Yes or No?,' 2 raised the matter of Canada's nationhood to a problem of serious political reflection. All three papers were a timely response to the climate of public concern over Canada's political identity and international future . 3 Public Affairs (1945) . For full bibliographical information on publications by Grant and those concerning his work cited in these footnotes, the reader should consult the bibliography appended to this study (p. 181). 2 Ryerson Press pamphlet (1945). 3 At the close of the war, the time was ripe for a public forum on the matter of Canada' s nationhood. The Canadian war effort had given rise to a heightened national awareness, which would soon draw a fresh impetus from the post-war quest for an international order of

12 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice It was natural that George Grant should be a public voice in the post-war political self-searching of Canadians, for he had eminent qualifications for political leadership. He was a scion of one of Canada's oldest, most distinguished, and most influential families, connected with wealth, prestige, and political power. He had been groomed in the traditional Anglo-Canadian manner for a political career: privately educated, a degree in history from Queen' s University, work towards a degree in jurisprudence from Balliol College, Oxford. Grant's choice of the teaching profession was not, however, unprecedented, for both his father and grandfather had held important posts in Canadian educational institutions: his father, William Lawson Grant, as headmaster of Upper Canada College, Toronto (which Grant himself attended), and his grandfather, George Munro Grant, as principal of Queen's University. Grant's initial political writings, then, are statesmanly pieces, expressing sentiments and judgments congruent with his education and prospects. 4 His second and third essays are thoughtful statements of progressive conservatism in which we can detect incipient philosophical questioning. In answering the first inquiry, 'Have We a Canadian Nation?,' Grant begins by defending the nation in its uniqueness as a concrete political good. According to him, the unity which we call 'the nation' is above all a unity of memory - a common memory of the past in a population together with a common inheritance of language, culture, and religion. Typically, argues Grant, national feeling matures slowly, building on the bequeathing of common traditions through generations. For Canada, however, as a young nation, the situation is different. Since this 'slow maturing' of national awareness is not available to the Canadian people, they must embrace an expedient alternative, namely, the deliberate creation of nationhood around explicit principles (p. 162). These principles, according to Grant, are the touchstone of Canadian conservatism, rooted in Canada's originating event: her historic ' refusal to break with Britain,' her repudiation of the revolutionary idea (162). The 'particular Canadian spirit' draws its life from a twofold conservative allegiance: an allegiance to the past, that it should inform the future; and an peace. The prevailing uncertainty surrounding Canada's future status in the emerging configuration of alliances and powers invited clarification on the part of Canada's statesmen and political thinkers of her national aspirations and distinctiveness. For a more detailed discussion of the post-war context of Grant's papers see Barry Cooper, 'A imperio usque ad imperium: The Political Thought of George Grant, ' in George Grant in Process, 22-39. 4 These writings also express the interest in Canada's history and political institutions evidenced in the published works of Grant's father and grandfather, both of whom were historians and chroniclers of their country's past, and biographers of significant political figures connected with it. See G.M. Grant's Joseph Howe (1904) and W.L. Grant's The Colonial Policy of Chatham (1911).

13 Background to the Problem of History allegiance to public order, that law, authority, and self-discipline should be the bulwark of individual freedom. In deciding the second question, 'The Empire, Yes or No?,' Grant places the issue of Canada's national distinctiveness within a global context of political reference. 5 He ties Canada's political future, identified with her independence from the American continental empire, to her strong membership in the British Commonwealth. And he offers as the primary justification for the British Commonwealth and Canada's role therein its contribution to an international structure of peace. In Grant's view, the Commonwealth, as a loose association of 'free and democratic' states, is the key to international organization. This is so because it presents an effective antidote to the prevailing trend towards 'continental regionalism' and 'isolationism,' which Grant considers to be the greatest threat to international community and co-operation. In addition, the British Commonwealth, with its roots in the British Empire, is the natural organ for continuing the imperial enterprise of developing 'retarded peoples,' bringing them to economic and political maturity. Countering the current objections to empires, Grant defends their indispensability to the progress of humanity, to 'the upward climb of mankind to a perfect and effective world government' (17). His claims on behalf of empires have a special reference to the British Empire, which commends itself by its traditions of responsibility and authority, law and liberty, and even more, by the historical distinction of having been the 'mainstay of western Christian civilization' (19). As conservative statements, both these essays profess loyalty to the preservation and enlivening of traditions as the foundation of political order and justice. The unity of political society, according to Grant, lies in common historical memories and inherited ideas and practices, and these, consequently, are the starting-point for thought about politics. By asserting the nation in its particularity to be a political good, Grant implicitly poses the question of how the particular and the universal political good are related. In 'The Empire, Yes or No?' he addresses this philosophical question directly, proposing that every nation, as a unity of traditions, presents a unique, though imperfect, integration of such universal political goods as freedom and authority, law and responsibility. In this light, the distinctiveness of Canada's political tradition resides in its unique balance of individual freedom and public authority, a balance in favour of the 'social good' and 'social order.' In 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' Grant conceives Canada's uniqueness in terms of a fundamental opposition to the •American way of life,' with its revolutionary 5 This context has already appeared in Grant's concluding remarks in 'Have We a Canadian Nation?'

14 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice sympathies, its dogmatic idea of freedom as individual right, its suspicion of authority, and its infatuation with the 'limitless possibilities of the human species' (163). 6 These political essays, while they only touch on philosophical questions, contain the tensions that will dominate Grant's later philosophical reflection. These are the tensions between the authority of tradition and the claims of thought, between law and freedom, between the universal good and the particular good. Grant has yet to ask the questions: What is the common good? What is freedom? - the questions that will eventually open him to the problem of history in its theological scope. FROM POLITICS TO THEOLOGY

From 1945 to 1947 Grant worked on a doctoral degree in the philosophy of religion at Oxford. According to him, his decision to 'study theology' offended the 'secular liberal' sensibilities of his family, and undid their aspirations for his future in politics. 7 His return to Oxford was a spiritual quest. 'Converted' at the worst stage of the war, he longed 'to discover what that conversion meant. ' 8 He was searching for that Christian intellectual life, that Christian mind, which had been denied him by his secular upbringing and education. With Grant, as with many others, the war experience rent apart the fabric of a liberalism that had already worn thin. 9 Grant found the Christian intellect after which he sought in two people above all, in the woman who became his wife, Sheila Veronica Allen, a student of C.S. Lewis, and in the philosopher and biblical scholar Austin Farrer, under whom he studied. In both these thinkers, he perceived 'that European intellectual clarity' which was lacking in North America.'° Farrer's introduction of Grant to 'theological rationalism' was an event of decisive importance for Grant's future thought. 6 Grant offers as an expression of American individualism the tendency to the sectarian and unorthodox in American religion. 7 Conversation, November 1978 8 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 62 9 Reviewing that period of his life in conversation, Grant says: ' I had been brought up in Toronto in a species of what I would call secular liberalism - by fine and well-educated people who found themselves in the destiny of not being able to see the Christianity of their pioneering ancestors as true ... The great experience for me was the war of 1939. The liberalism of my youth simply could not come to tenns with it.' Conversation in George Grant in Process, 62 10 Ibid.

15 Background to the Problem of History Another significant influence from his time at Oxford was James Doull, a fellow Canadian student. Doull was to be a teacher, colleague, and friend for thirteen years. Upon completing his degree, Grant joined the philosophy department at Dalhousie University, Halifax, where Doull was already teaching in classics. There he stayed until 1960. While Doull's philosophical influence on Grant was wide-ranging, its most significant aspect in the fifties was his understanding of Hegel. The impact of Grant's doctoral studies was immediately visible in his writings after his return. The scope of his questioning was no longer political, but philosophical and theological. He had retained his conservative love of tradition, but now tradition had a civilizational rather than national reference, and its importance for political action had given way to its importance for thought about the 'highest things.' This new thrust appears in Grant's 1947 paper 'Two Theological Languages,' written as an address to Reformed Clergy. 11 His purpose in this paper is to clarify 'one of the great theological questions' in the 'Reformed tradition,' in the hope of contributing to the formation of an indigenous Protestant theology in North America. This question concerns the relation between two languages in the western theological tradition: the language of rational theology (of Plato and Aristotle) and the language of the Bible. Clearly, the importance of this question for Grant derives from the seminal character of these languages for all theological thinking. Conscious of Protestant tendencies on this continent to flee from theology into 'evangelical fervour' and biblical fundamentalism, Grant opens his discussion with an argument for theology. He argues that theological clarity is the 'chief power' of the church and the prevailing form of grace within it 'because the church exists in a tradition and all traditions are at one and the same time both conditions of the good life and gates of hell.' That is, all traditions are a mixture of truth and error. While Grant never specifies the content of the church's tradition, we may suppose that it includes everything handed down from her past: the canon of Scripture, the rational theology of the Greeks, creeds and confessions, biblical commentaries and Christian theologies. All this, according to Grant's understanding of tradition, is a mixture of truth and error, which must be subjected to the purging exercise of theological reason. Since the truth is one, Grant conceives error in terms of contradiction. Thus, the task of theology in every age is to overcome the contradictions in the tradition 11 A revised version of this address was presented to the Maritime Philosophical Association in 1953.

16 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice it inherits. Contradiction, then, is the moving force of tradition; and theology and tradition are dialectically interdependent. While Grant views theology as a synthesizing activity, he does not necessarily view it as progressing in time. He says nothing about theological thought attaining more and more universal syntheses in human history. His dialectic, therefore, is 'hermeneutical' rather than 'progressivist.' It may be stated in this way: the church's remembering of past traditions requires theological reflection to overcome the contradictions therein; theological reflection requires the remembering of past traditions in order to overcome myopic 'narrowness' and gain 'catholicity.' Grant concludes this apology by pointing out that theology is necessary to society as well as to the church, especially in our 'technological era' with its specialization of roles and fragmentation of knowledge. As 'that study which teaches us of the final purpose and unity of our existence,' theology has a directive and an integrative task in society: it should enable people of all specializations 'to see their sphere in relation to others and to God.' Having set forth the purposes of theology, Grant offers his material contribution to the theological enterprise, which is to clarify the contradiction between the 'languages' of the Bible and of rational theology with regard to human freedom. 12 The root contradiction is between the Greek philosophical concept of rational freedom, inseparable from 'the idea of the highest good,' and the biblical concept of 'absolute freedom,' inseparable from 'the idea of responsibility.' These contrasting concepts call for close scrutiny. According to Grant, Greek philosophy (or 'rational theology') deduces human freedom from the relation of desire to reason in man's nature. For Plato and Aristotle, reason gives to man 'the idea of the highest good, or God' as the universal object of desire, which orders all 'particular desires' and satisfies 'that very unity which is ourselves.' Freedom, as derived from human rationality, is man's conscious acceptance of necessity, that is, of his own nature, truth, or essence. The tradition of rational theology from Plato to Duns Scotus, says Grant, regards the will as 'necessarily and perpetually' desiring 'the last end'; it regards the will as 'a natural appetite to self-perfection.' By contrast, the Bible presents a notion of freedom as irrational and, as such, absolute. With its idea of responsibility, meaning 'that I could have done at one time or another what I did not do,' the Bible posits freedom prior to good and evil, 'not ... dependent on goodness and the perfection of life.' Biblical freedom, in all its abysmal, tragic, and mysterious aspects, is only given to man 12 Grant speaks of 'two different languages' in order not 'to prejudice the issue whether these languages are really expressing the same truth or whether there is a radical difference between them.'

17 Background to the Problem of History experientially, not being deducible from his rationality. To know this freedom is to experience anguish and guilt, to encounter the 'essential seriousness of the human condition, ' an encounter that is the contingent and unpredictable fruit of the moment of decision, of ' wait[ing] upon the transcendent.' For Grant, these two languages of freedom are related in the deepest dialectical tension , which theology slackens at its peril. Theology cannot reject the Greeks without rejecting consistent and systematic speech about the truth; it cannot reject biblical language without losing the gravity of faith , dependent on our 'unfathomable freedom ' and the mysterious being of evil. It is in relation to the mystery of will that Grant takes a step which is pregnant with import: he derives the Christian doctrine of creation (ex nihilo) analogically from our experience of responsible freedom and makes this doctrine the primal affirmation of Christian belief. It is only in the light of the doctrine of creation, he proposes, which asserts the radical discontinuity between the finite and the infinite, the world and God , that sin and redemption and, above all, the cross and Jesus' words, 'Not my will, but thine, ' become luminous with meaning. Without the language of creation, Grant argues, rational theology is destined to trivialize the fact of evil in the very attempt to understand it. Failing to preserve 'the right agnosticism' about evil, rational theology ends up affirming 'that good is evil and evil is good - rather than the very different affirmation that the thing is as it is.' Similarly, without the language of creation to express the abyss between God and man, rational theology is dumb or blasphemous before the cross of Christ. It is forced to interpret Jesus' 'cry of desolation' to mean that 'Jesus was confused in his mind and ... showed an imperfect adherence to the Sovereignty of universal rational good.' Jesus ' cry, Grant reminds us , was not "'God does not exist." ' We have devoted so much space to Grant's little address on 'Two Theological Languages ' because we see it as a microcosm of his work, gathering up the permanent impulses of his thought that will weave themselves into a complete fabric over three decades. With this essay, the driving polarity or tension of his writings is established: the tension between faith and reason , between revelation and philosophy, between 'Jerusalem and Athens.' Grant sees this primal tension as driving a wedge between the traditions of western thought right up to the modem age , where rationalism and existentialism lock in combat. Grant's thought in this early phase is dominated by the aspiration of bridging the gap between the two 'languages.' His intellectual heroes, apart from the ancients, are those modem minds who have attempted to hold faith and reason together, in varying degrees of synthesis. There are the intellectual giants of modernity, Kant and Hegel, and the modem 'saint,' Simone Weil, and as well Grant's mentors and friends, Austin Farrer, Charles Cochrane, and James Doull.

18 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice

Before proceeding to Grant's writings of the fifties, we must say something more about Austin Farrer and introduce Charles Cochrane, drawing attention to a common interest of the two men. Let us start with Cochrane, the earlier of Grant's acquaintances. Grant knew Charles Norris Cochrane as a family friend while still a student at Queen's University. It was only after Cochrane's death that Grant knew him as a thinker and scholar. His philosophic-historical study Christianity and Classical Culture 13 made a great impact on Grant in the early fifties. Twenty-five years later Grant would still heap laurels on Cochrane's study, calling it 'the greatest scholarly book any Canadian ever wrote. ' 14 Throughout these years, Grant revered Cochrane as one who combined a patriot's love of the history and traditions of his country with a passionate allegiance to the western inheritance of classical Christianity. It is sufficient for us to notice that Cochrane begins and ends his historical study by setting forth the claim of the Christian faith to fulfil the legitimate aspirations of Graeco-Roman thought and practice by subjecting them to a final (that is, unsurpassable) metanoia of the will. Through this conversion, the Christian religion overcame the antinomies or polarities of the classical mind which obstructed its search for stable ideals of order. 15 According to Cochrane, the overcoming of the hiatuses and impasses of classicism is definitively accomplished in the work of St Augustine, which he views as consolidating the new account of the structure and content of experience articulated by the Trinitarian and Christological formulations of the fourth century. St Augustine's revolutionary achievement is to discover 'personality,' the 'transcendental' and 'substantial' self, in its dependence upon 'pure spirit' as the dynamic and creative principle of unity. 'Pure spirit' or God is for Augustine the 'principle of self-conscious life ... not to be apprehended in terms of any category of the discursive reason' (p. 408). The personality is nothing other than the individual will - the 'autonomous determination of the total self' towards the (natural) end of happiness (446). The will, for Augustine, is rational because its end is happiness and 13 A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (London: Oxford [c. 1940)) 14 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 67 15 Cochrane views the history of the Graeco-Roman world prior to the victory of Trinitarian Christianity (the Nicene fathers) as the working out in the political, cultural, religious, and intellectual spheres of the antinomies of the classical consciousness. Classical politics, he argues, is vitiated by the antitheses of power and justice, authority and freedom, polis and cosmos, republic and theocracy; classical religion by those of God and nature, transcendence and immanence; classical morality by those of reason and will, virtue and fortune, contemplation and action; classical thought by those of one and many, being and becoming, universal and particular, reason and necessity, eternity and time, infinite and finite, form and matter, order and motion, knowledge and perception.

19 Background to the Problem of History its object is the universal good; but it is also fallen, so that it confuses a finite and particular good with the infinite and universal good. Salvation for the reason, then, is salvation for the will: it is the integrated personality effected through the grace of Christ, in which the reason is illuminated by the love of God. According to Cochrane, Augustine's principle of Spirit (the Trinitarian principle) brings unity not only to the human mind, to human thought and action, but to the cosmos as well, to the totality of events and things in space and time. This unity is the rule of divine providence, of divine necessity, which overcomes the hiatuses of the classical universe, for instance, those between human freedom and natural necessity, between human virtue and cosmic chance, between human happiness and blind fate. The rule of divine providence establishes the unity of human history as the unity of Spirit, the creative principle of order, progressively embodied in the consciousness of mankind. This unity, however, is also a division - between true and false principles of order, between good and bad loves, embodied in opposing communities of will, the city of God and the city of man. The division within history imposed by the Spirit does not obstruct the fulfilment of virtue and attainment of happiness, but rather guarantees it. It is worthy of note that Grant's other early mentor, Austin Farrer, also placed the will at the centre of Christian theology, stressing with Cochrane its substantial, transcendent, and creative character. Farrer even proposed, in his book Finite and Infinite (1943), that the will-act, on account of its true creativity, is the proper analogy for the divine act of creation. 16 While the immediate theoretical benefits of Grant's youthful encounter with Cochrane and Farrer are difficult to determine, it can be said with certainty that these thinkers helped him shape an order of issues of lasting importance for his thought - issues that appear to have their Archimedean point in the problem of human freedom. 16 In Finite and Infinite, Farrer sets out to secure the future of natural theology, which proceeds by analogy from the finite to the infinite, against post-Kantian criticisms of metaphysics. Since, he perceives, the method of analogy depends on the Thomistic theory of substance, Farrer undertakes to provide a fresh vindication of this theory, arguing that it is the metaphysical order which substance implies, the 'real connexions' of elements interior to it, that constitutes the analogy for the finite-infinite relation . Farrer finds these real (as opposed to phenomenal) relations in the self-determining act of will and in the intentional horizon of a multiplicity of such acts which he calls 'the project.' He accepts the Thomistic-Aristotelian conception of the will as a rational appetite, which has for its generic object t:1e universal good, and maintains, in opposition to Kant's notion of rational universality, that the will, under the sway of the good, responds not only to the objective possibilities of the subject, but also to the intrinsic worth of the objects external to it. Most important with regard to Grant's thought, Farrer I / identifies 'the self' with the 'total complex of acts' of the will ' in its extension through time' (p. 171) and 2 / attributes true creativity to the will-act (on the basis of its internal causal structure) so that it is the proper analogy for divine creation (23).

20 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice THE DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY AGAINST SCIENCE AND SOCIETY

After his 1947 address (revised in 1953), Grant never again made Christian theology the subject of a written paper. After 1947 he writes as a philosopher about philosophy - about its theoretical and practical sides and about its role in society. Initially, philosophy and theology appear indistinguishable in Grant' s thought. In 1951 he describes the 'conservative' and 'prophetic' aims of philosophical thought, its dependence upon faith and the tradition of Christian dogma, and its unifying social role in a way that exactly resembles his 1947 description of theology. 17 Subsequently, however, he shifts his attention to defending the jurisdiction of reason se: forth in classical philosophy against modem attempts to narrow and confine its operation. Grant sees the modern attack on philosophical reason as coming from three related quarters: modern science, modern social thought, and modern technology. In two articles (1952 and 1954) he takes up the refutation of practical reason in ' positivist' and ' nominalist' social thought which has been influenced by the aspirations and methods of the modem sciences. In both articles , one written against Bertrand Russell (1952) and the other against Karl Popper (1954), Grant argues for the necessary unity of science and morality, attempting to vindicate the rationality of ethical judgment in the face of moral scepticism. 18 Grant's 17 In his 1951 report on philosophy in Canada for the Royal Commission ('Philosophy,' Royal Commission Studies, 119-35), Grant describes the study of philosophy as ' the analysis of the traditions of our society and the judgment of those traditions against our varying intuitions of the Perfection of God . It is the contemplation of our own and others' activity, in the hope that by understanding it better we may make it less imperfect' (I 19). Philosophy's social role , says Grant , is to enable men to ' relate their particular functions to the general ends which society desires' (119), so that, for instance, 'the physicist ... can relate his activity to the fact of moral freedom , the economist see the productive capacity of his nation in relation to the Love of God ' (120). Grant does not see how western philosophy can fulfil its theoretical and practical purposes outside of its dependence on the tradition of Christian dogma. The prevailing modem philosophies of positivism and pragmatism, in trying to overcome this dependence, have succeeded in 'destroying everything and establishing nothing' (122) . In the face of the technological fragmentation of knowledge in North America, Grant calls for an ' indigenous Canadian approach' to philosophy that would combine the 'conservative' and ' prophetic' aims of 'acquainting students with ideas from our past, ' while 'showing what those ideas mean in our actual present existence' (126). 18 In his commentary on Russell ('Pursuit of an Illusion' (1952], 97-109) Grant's intent is to show the contradictions that beset moral scepticism when it remains 'ethically interested,' that is, desirous of advocating moral conduct. Moral conduct, Grant argues, can only be advocated from reason and / or authority , and Russell refuses both. The outcome of Russell ' s scepticism is that, while criticizing ethical 'irrationalism' and 'traditionalism,' he 'finally must rest his case as to .. . standards for action on a traditionalism which reason is completely impotent to criticise or improve' (101). To overcome this contradiction Russell must accept both that

21 Background to the Problem of History repudiation of Karl Popper is the more important of the two articles, for it reveals crucial aspects of Grant's understanding of Plato. It is Popper's criticism of Plato in The Open Society and Its Enemies that Grant attacks in his 1954 article, 'Plato and Popper.' Grant's repudiation focuses on Popper's interpretation of Plato as a 'Utopian social engineer' (p. 185), whose philosophical speculations are merely a dogmatic justification for his reactionary political conservatism, conditioned by social circumstance. After dealing a blow to Popper's 'sociological determinacy,' 19 Grant states his main contention: that Plato's chief interest was not 'in political means' but 'in the question of ends, and his chief point about that is that man's end cannot be found in political life. ' 2°For Plato, argues Grant, man's final end is union with the transcendent Good, and his most urgent questions in this life concern the nature and grounds of right conduct. 21 This means that 'the case for "essentialism" in Plato' rests primarily on 'an analysis of reason ... in the practical life,' and not in science (189). We should notice that throughout his explication and justification of Plato's theory of ideas, especially in the Republic, Grant affirms a fundamental accord between Plato and Kant on the nature of metaphysics (that is, of philosophy). 'Metaphysics,' says Grant, is an attempt to account 'systematically' for morality (for the role of reason in conduct) and to relate this operation of reason to the 'activities of science and art' (189). Plato's ideally good man, together with his ideally good and ideally bad states, are 'regulative ideals for conduct,' 'standards of ethical attraction and repulsion' which 'can never exist in this world.' Man's our wills are ruled by rational principles, and that these principles are embedded in inherited traditions. Grant points out that Russell's own ethics in fact depend upon 'the tradition of charity inherited from the broad line of Christian principles, the tradition of private judgment inherited from Puritanism, and the tradition of humane conduct that comes to the west from the Greeks' (101 ). It is noteworthy that Grant prefaces his brief 'statement of the case for ethical rationalism' with a reference to the comprehensive and systematic accounts of this position in Plato's Republic, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, and the nineteenth Book of Augustine's City of God, brirtging together ancient and modem sources in an alliance against moral scepticism. 19 Argues Grant: 'From Marx to Mannheim, the sociologists have been denying the possibility of metaphysical knowledge by asserting the principle of sociological determinacy. If they do not want us to accept this principle simply on faith, they need philosophy to establish it. The impossibility of philosophy is always being proved by philosophy.' (186) 20 Here Grant invokes Plotinus' identification of the 'transcendent Good of the Republic' with 'the transcendent One of the Parmenides.' (186, n. 4) 21 Grant aligns himself with a widely accepted view of Plato's thought as developing out from a Socratic starting-point. The chronological arrangement of Plato's writings reveals the following sequence of intellectual concerns: from practical and epistemological to ontological to cosmological and theological. This is the view, for example, of A.E. Taylor and F.M. Cornford.

22 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice finitude means that ' he must use analogies from time and space ... to describe the non-temporal ' ( 190). While Grant refuses Popper's •dualism of decision and fact' he, strangely enough, does not also implicate Kant in such a position, challenging as well his dualism of the noumenal and the phenomenal. Together with Kant, Grant defends the practical claims of reason against their denigration by philosophic nominalism on the one hand, and revelational theology on the other. 22 In two articles on adult education, which temporally frame Grant' s response to Popper, he turns to a defence of contemplative reason against the scientific 'mythology' of contemporary liberal society. His language discloses the growing influence of Hegel. In his earlier article, 'Philosophy and Adult Education' (1953), Grant proposes a philosophical understanding of education as 'any means that brings the human spirit to self-consciousness' (4). Science and art, religion and philosophy are 'but steps leading us to that great light' (4) , which is the presence of the individual mind to the absolute mind. He seems to have adopted Hegel's theory of the progressive perfecting of self-consciousness through successive stages of reflection . Knowing , according to Grant, involves man's infinite desire for self-transcendence, and the end of knowledge, the highest human freedom, is man's contemplation of this infinity. 23 It is contemplative freedom that is being threatened by the prevailing mythology of liberal education, the mythology of 'cultural determinism' with 'its obvious corollary, the shaping of the masses through political and economic manipulation' (3). Cultural determinism is a species of immanentism that reduces the absolute , the infinitely transcendent and free, to a 'finite and determined ' thing , with the result that education is pressed into the mould of 'social engineering' (3). In this situation, the urgency of philosophy is clear: only the restoration of a public tradition of transcendence can rescue the human spirit from its death in an immanent system of means-ends. In the spirit of Hegel's historical-existential dialectic, Grant looks forward to a revival of openness to the infinite. As the ethos of technological liberalism becomes increasingly totalitarian, the grounds for hope that it offers will appear increasingly vacuous, so that men, left with 'nothingness,' will finally be 'driven to seek reality' (8). 22 While Grant is not advocating a program of 'religion within the limits of reason ,' he is rejecting any denial by Christian theology of the power of reason to pronounce on 'the question of practical certainty.' It is just this denial , says Grant, which makes nominalism receptive to 'the arbitrary hypothesis of revelation.' As Ockham well knew, 'the will detached from the intellect ... can seek certainty only through such arbitrary hypotheses.' (192) 23 ' An analysis of [the desire to know] involves a conception of infinity, because the faculty of knowing is one of continually transcending ourselves, and there is no limit to the possibility of that self-transcendence.' (6)

23 Background to the Problem of History In his second look at adult education, 'Adult Education in the Expanding Economy' (1954), Grant restates this dialectic of hope with even greater clarity and optimism. The two poles of the dialectic, which together structure our modem experience, are now conceived as finite freedom and infinite freedom . His argument is that modem technology, in expanding our practical (finite) freedom in relation to nature , has also expanded our theoretical freedom, providing new conditions for an encounter with the infinite. While modem science, in its concentration upon ' immediate finite goals,' has 'darkened' the 'tradition of freedom' (that is, of the infinite) in an unprecedented way , its practical achievements have opened up new possibilities for contemplation and , more important, its theoretical achievements have ' pushed back the limits within which the problems of faith and freedom arise for us' (4-5) . The problem is one of rescuing modem minds for true thought from their captivity to the myths and 'illusions' of science. This is why adult education must be committed to the teaching of philosophy. Grant sums up the purpose of education in words borrowed from Simone Weil : to cultivate 'the faculty of attention, so that ultimately attention can be paid to the infinite' ( 10). Grant continues to explore the dialectic of finite and infinite freedom in two further articles: 'The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age' (1955) and 'The Uses of Freedom' (l 956) . The goal of human existence, says Grant in his 1955 article, is not freedom as the overcoming of natural necessity, for this goal remains in the world of nature. Rather it is freedom as living 'in the presence of [the] absolute,' in the 'eternal world of truth and goodness ' by which the 'world of nature' is judged (41). At the same time, finite freedom is not unrelated to infinite freedom, for nature depends on the absolute (41) . But the paradox of modem freedom is precisely that the overcoming of natural necessity entails the denial of nature ' s dependence on the absolute. Modem science has come into control of the world of space and time by representing it as an immanent system of contingent laws that is its own explanation and end. The question for Grant, then, is whether and how the dependence of nature on God will be restored to modem man. In 'The Uses of Freedom' Grant phrases the question differently: he asks whether and how the pre-modem 'tradition of freedom' in the West may be restored to modem man, for modem science has disrupted this tradition. In modem society, 'freedom has come to mean for the majority the opportunities afforded to realize an increasing number of objective desires' (517). This crudely hedonistic understanding of freedom is the fruit of a break in the tradition of freedom inherited from the Greeks and the Hebrews. Where precisely, asks Grant, does the break in the tradition come? With the Reformation, he answers, with a disconcerting absence of equivocation. Seventeenth-century Puritanism is the historical origin of today 's hedonistic society.

24 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Grant dwells on the apparent contradiction in his historical account: why is it, he asks, that 'the Puritan tradition, centred as it was on inwardness and the infinite, has been the dominant force in a society which has become so little inward and so little aware of the presence of the infinite?' (518) . The answer lies in the 'inadequate biblicism' of Puritanism. By this Grant means the Puritans' exclusive appropriation of 'certain Biblical categories' that stand in opposition to Greek theology (519). Here he has returned to the contradiction between the biblical and the Greek accounts of freedom, but now he has refocused the Bible's conception of freedom through its conception of 'history.' That is, he is considering the consequence for understanding human freedom of the biblical belief 'that God acted in history,' which renders history a 'series of meaningful unique events,' and human action in history an instrument of the Spirit's work 'to bring in God's kingdom on earth' (519). The consequence for human freedom of these beliefs about history is that they bind freedom inextricably both to the finite, contingent event, in its relative independence from the infinite, and to the impulse for reforming the actual. It is the revitalization in Protestantism of these two Hebraic interests in the contingent and in reform to the exclusion of the Greeks' concern with the infinite and with obedience to natural necessity that, Grant proposes, determines 'the relationship between Protestantism and science. ' 24 For modem science has concentrated on manipulating the contingent, justifying this manipulation by the interests of humanity (a secularized version of the coming Kingdom of God) . What remains, then, is to understand the conversion of this original altruism of science's reforming zeal into the growing 'self-centred hedonism' of today's liberal society. Grant interprets this conversion in the following way: it comes about 'as the reformist spirit loses any sense of the transcendent and begins to take the world ever more as an end in itself' (520). The upshot of this interpretation is to leave us with a nagging question concerning human history. Granting the link between Protestantism and science, is the degeneration of the 'reformist Protestant spirit' in the direction of hedonism a historical inevitability or necessity? We might, similarly, ask whether Protestantism follows from an earlier biblical faith as an unwelcome historical necessity. 24 He continues: •- a relationship vouched for in the fact that the scientific spirit has held sway above all in predominantly Protestant countries, England, Germany and the u .s.A. Catholic philosophers point out quite rightly that Catholicism has given reason a more central place than has Protestantism, and they, therefore, insist that their tradition can more adequately account for scientific reason within the whole range of reason. In saying this, however, they forget how much scientific thought is concerned with the contingent and is brought into being by an attempt to improve men's worldly lot.' (519-20)

25 Background to the Problem of History In 'The Uses of Freedom' we have the skeletal structure of Grant's argument in Philosophy in the Mass Age. For we have arrived at the problem of history with its two related aspects . One aspect is the apparent break of modern thought and practice with the 'traditions' of the West. The other is the apparent contradiction at the root of the western tradition between the Bible and Greek philosophy. In describing these two aspects we use both 'traditions' in the plural and 'tradition' in the singular to indicate the ambiguity in Grant's use of these terms . For it is precisely the degree and the kind of unity belonging to our inheritance from the past that is at stake in the problem of history. The two aspects of the problem of history converge in the Christian belief in 'history.' It is the renewed centrality of this belief in Puritanism that makes it a watershed in western thought and practice. The belief in history ties Puritanism to the aspirations of modem science, on the one hand, and to the rejection of Greek philosophy and culture, on the other. The problem of history combines within its structure the several strands of Grant's reflection on tradition, freedom, and philosophy. It is in these areas that his practical and theoretical concerns meet; they are inseparable in his life and in his writings. This is clear from the continuity of his thought in the first decade. EXISTENTIALISM AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS

There is one further element of the problem of history for Grant that appears in Philosophy in the Mass Age, but does not feature prominently until his writings of the sixties. This is his understanding of necessity as separated from the good by an infinite distance, and of self-surrendering love as the way of overcoming this separation. Grant's doctrine of necessity will be an important theological focus of the problem of history when its tragic aspects have come to the fore. He owes his understanding of necessity and love above all to the philosopher and 'saint' Simone Weil who, says Grant in 1977, 'has shown me what it is to hold Christ and Plato together. ' 25 We shall reserve a more detailed exposition of Simone Weil's thought for a later chapter, but here wish merely to show how the theme of necessity emerges initially within Grant's consideration of existentialism. We may remember that when Grant, in 'Two Theological Languages,' set forth the great divide in western thought between languages descended from the Bible and from Greek rational theology, he placed modem existentialism on the side of biblical freedom. The link between biblical faith and existential freedom 25 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 65

26 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice is further clarified in two articles of the fifties, one on Jean-Paul Sartre (1955) and the other on Fyodor Dostoevsky (1959) . While Grant's writing of these expositional commentaries on two great existentialist thinkers was, on his report, fortuitous, 26 his interest in existentialism at this time arose naturally out of his dialectic of freedom with its finite and infinite poles. For existentialism was a logical counterpart to scientific liberalism within this dialectic. It was necessary that scientific liberalism, which seeks to confonn the world of finite objects to man's finite (and increasingly hedonistic) desires, should call forth in opposition movements of the human spirit towards the infinite. Existentialism is one such movement, which approaches the infinite through subjectivity , through the selftranscendence of individual choice . For both Sartre and Dostoevsky, the selftranscendence of the individual in choice is absolute because the will is not subject to rational necessity . While Grant's discussion of Sartre's thought has some illuminating theological points, 27 it is his exposition of Dostoevsky that deserves our attention owing to its reflections on the problem of necessity. 28 Unlike Sartre, who proclaims the supremacy of the human will in God's place, Dostoevsky proclaims its supremacy before God. To Dostoevsky, says Grant, this supremacy means that an individual's choice of evil over good remains an authentic assertion of his selfhood . However, while freedom is man's individuality and his dignity , it is not man's salvation. In Grant's words: 'Dostoevsky asserts both our absolute freedom and our absolute need for redemption' (77), 26 They were both commissioned addresses for the cec radio series 'Architects of Modem Thought,' which Grant undenook apparently because of pressing finances . (Conversation, November 1978) 27 In his exposition of Sanre ('Jean-Paul Sartre ,' in Architects of Modern Thought (19551, 65-74), Grant concentrates on the 'encounter with nothingness' at the hean of freedom as absolute responsibility. Grant begins with Sanre's denial of God 's existence, showing how this is a denial of the intelligibility and goodness of being. He then links the fruit of this denial - the will 's negation of all 'objective authority' - with the mind 's conviction of the purity of evil. According to Grant, it is the 'absolute and irredeemable' character of human evil that , for Sartre, necessarily condemns reason to impotence and contemplation to futility , calling fonh in their stead unreflective 'action and social commitment' (72). Finally, Grant takes up Sanre's assenion of the ultimacy of ' negation and nothingness' on which the supremacy of the will depends for him. Speaking as a Christian, Grant repudiates the finality of 'alienation' and ' negation,' while holding on to the ' negative moment' in the mind 's freedom (73). Recognizing the identity of true freedom with faith, Grant assents to the encounter with nothingness that is 'a real presence' as the inevitable consequence of our idolatrous search for security (73). In the spirit of the Reformers Grant reminds us: 'it is after all , the truth of The Cross that the anguish of the soul must be made absolute before God can make it His own' (74). 28 'Fyodor Dostoevsky,' in Architects of Modern Thought (1959), 71-83

27 Background to the Problem of History despising the false optimisms of liberal and atheistic humanism, which he judges to be 'nihilistic' in their eventual outcome. In Grant's estimation, Dostoevsky's criticism of 'progressivist illusions' stands second only to his 'account of faith and of doubt' for truthfulness. Grant sees in 'this remarkable dialectic' the anguished struggle of the modern believer 'to reconcile the necessary with the good' (78). Grant presents the anguish of faith in Dostoevsky in terms of the conflict between necessity and goodness, and not merely as the problem of human evil, for the following reason: that 'Dostoevsky sees the necessity which is divided from the good not only as personal diremption, but as cosmic, in that great indifferent brute force, nature itself' (79). It is Christ's crucifixion that, for Dostoevsky, measures the chasm between the good and natural necessity, that is, nature's laws. Grant quotes a passage from The Idiot which epitomizes Dostoevsky's horror and contempt for the '"deaf and insensible ... machine"' of nature which "'stupidly caught, crushed, and swallowed a great Being, a Being beyond all price ... one that was worth the whole of nature and all the laws that govern it, worth the whole earth, which had perhaps been created solely for the advent of that Being!"· Grant compares Dostoevsky's anguished love of Christ as the good beyond the apparent indifference of nature with Simone Weil's anguished love of God '"through and beyond the misery of others,"' which misery, unlike one's own suffering, is not '"transfigured'" by that love (79). What Weil and Dostoevsky share, says Grant, is a refusal 'to embrace a unity [of necessity and goodness] that seems .. . to deny love itself, by saying that suffering is unreal' (79). While Dostoevsky believes in the Resurrection, and adheres passionately to the good, he falls short of thinking the unity 'between goodness and the nature of things' (80). However, Grant sees this unity made eloquent in Dostoevsky's figure of Jesus before the Grand Inquisitor: 'Here,' he says, following in Weil's footsteps, 'is the infinite weakness in which the second Person of the Trinity crosses the void of separation' (83). The full implication of this vision of Christ as 'infinite weakness' for the understanding of freedom, love, and thought, we shall leave for later discussion.

2

Philosophy in the Mass Age: A Struggle for Synthesis

GRANT'S HEGELIAN BOOK?

George Grant wrote Philosophy in the Mass Age near the end of his time at Dalhousie University. A year after its publication he would leave the Maritimes to take up a position with McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. As we have said, Philosophy in the Mass Age (hereafter abbreviated PMA) draws together the strands of Grant's early thinking. It is the culminating effort of one period of his intellectual life, which prepares the way for what is in some sense a new departure. Here Grant's progressivist optimism reaches its height. Here his hope for reconciliation is most intense. The sixties, by contrast, are a time of disappointment and retraction, in which another vision begins to dominate his thought. When PMA is read in relation to Grant's previous fifteen years of literary production, it is his synthesizing power that comes into view. All those concerns which in Grant's early thought cluster around the problems of tradition and freedom are gathered up and given new coherence and depth in the problem of history. He again addresses himself to the concerns of practical conservatism, of the contradiction at the root of the western tradition, of the break of the modem age with the past, and of that reconciliation in theory and practice which is most urgent to us. But he considers these matters in subjection to the overriding philosophical task of understanding our present society as shaped by the modem belief in 'history.' Grant approaches this task under the inspiration of Hegel, in whose thought he had become interested through the persuasions of his colleague James Doull. 1 It Reminiscing about his friendship with Doull, Grant once confessed that he never won an argument with Doull, but was always forced to concede to the superior strength of his friend's mind. (Conversation, November 1978)

29 Philosophy in the Mass Age seems that Grant had become convinced that Hegel was the philosopher of Christianity par excellence who offered the possibility of making the whole Christian tradition , with its classical past, intelligible to the modem age. At least, this is the conviction that he retrospectively confesses in his preface to the 1966 edition of PMA. Speaking of his state of mind at the time of writing PMA, he says: •At the theoretical level, I considered Hegel the greatest of all philosophers. He had partaken of all that was true and beautiful and good in the Greek world and was able to synthesize it with Christianity and with the freedom of the Enlightenment and modem science' (PMA , vii) . Later Grant will repudiate Hegel's synthesis of the western tradition , arguing that it does not do justice to the ancients. 'I came to the conclusion ,' says Grant in his 1966 reassessment of PMA , ' that Hegel was not correct in his claim to have taken the truth of antique thought and synthesized it with the modem to produce a higher (and perhaps highest) truth; that on many of the most important political matters Plato's teaching is truer than Hegel's . Particularly, I have come to the conclusion that Plato's account of what constitutes human excellence and the possibility of its realization in the world is more valid than that of Hegel' (PMA , viii) . This seemingly uncompromising repudiation of Hegel seven years after the publication of PMA makes the extent of Grant's attachment to Hegel in 1959 a central hermeneutical problem. Grant's initial formulation of history as a philosophical and theological problem owes a generous debt to Hegel , but does this debt exhaust Grant's formulation? His own retrospective assessment of PMA suggests the pervasiveness of Hegel's thought at critical points: ' It cannot be insisted too often how hard it is for anyone who believes the western Christian doctrine of providence to avoid reaching the conclusion that Hegel has understood the implications of that doctrine better than any other thinker' (PMA , vii) . And yet our answer to this question must be a cautious 'no,' cautious because of the complexities and ambiguities both of Grant's thought and of Hegel's. Our caution leads us to try to determine the limits of Hegel's influence in PMA by identifying Grant's reservations about Hegel's synthesis. These reservations indicate those elements in Grant's thought, largely non-schematized, which point to an independent vision. We are assisted by our familiarity with his earlier writings, for these manifest a range of intellectual commitments that Hegel does not encompass, but enters into as one strand or tendency. Furthermore, what has gone before PMA foreshadows what will come after it. For those tendencies of Grant's thought in the fifties which compete with his commitment to Hegel assert themselves in the next decade with a vengeance. Let us now proceed to a detailed analysis of PMA in order to arrive at Grant's first formulation of the problem of history. Our analysis divides into seven sections, each of which deals roughly with one chapter of his book.

30 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice POSING THE PROBLEM OF HISTORY : THE DILEMMA AND THE PROMISE OF PHILOSOPHY TODAY

In the first chapter of PMA Grant reveals the context and the fonn of his reflections on history by answering a twofold question: for whom and in what way is history a problem? The answer to the 'for whom ' is, pre-eminently, the moral philosopher, but it covers all those who seek, by reflection, to make true judgments about the best action. More specifically, the 'for whom ' is the moral philosopher in North America today , who is compelled by his circumstances to review the 'principles of right' (PMA, 1) on which he and his countrymen act. What are the circumstances that compel this reflection? Broadly, they are corporate capitalist society with its technological organization and ethos. Grant describes the modes of domination of men and nature characterizing 'the society of late state capitalism' : the technical manipulation of things, the rationalization of economic activity , the bureaucratic objectification of labour, the pacification of the population by art and entertainment, the functional integration of institutions by a religion of immanence, the therapeutic management of persons (PMA, ~8). All these modes of domination inhibit individuals undertaking 'that rational reassessment of life which I have called moral philosophy' (PMA, 9) because, we may sunnise, they tend to suppress moral awareness, that is, awareness of the principles of right. In making explicit the governing principles of action in North America the philosopher awakens to the problem of history, of his private history and of his country's history. He comes to realize that North American society, Canadian and American, ' is the only society that has no history of its own before the age of progress,' so that it 'incarnates more than any other the values and principles of the age of progress' (PMA, 2). Thus, its relation to the moral traditions of the past is more tenuous than that of European nations. It cannot, like them, call on pre-modern traditions to oppose dominant trends in the present because these traditions do not belong to its history . The pre-modern tradition with which Grant is chiefly concerned as being lost to North America is that of transcendent rationality, of philosophic freedom, of contemplation, which western civilization has inherited from the Greeks through Christianity. In this tradition, reason is a 'way' and not an ' instrument': it is 'the way in which we discover the meaning of our lives and make that meaning our own ' rather than a tool 'for the control of nature and the adjustment of the masses,' for 'production' and 'the maintenance of our power against rival empires' (PMA , 9). The pervasiveness of instrumental reason in North America, above all, makes moral philosophy, that is, reflection on the nature and ends of human action, a perilous task. Yet, at the same time, the unprecedented achieve-

31 Philosophy in the Mass Age ments of instrumental reason in North America provide the conditions for a resurgence of philosophic thought. Here again is the dialectic of finite and infinite freedom that appeared in Grant's writings of the fifties. In this dialectic, finite freedom serves infinite freedom in two ways: in its overcoming of natural necessity and in its extending of the boundaries of theoretical thought. In this restatement of the dialectic, Grant concentrates on drawing out the entirely new possibilities of our historical situation. Modem industrial civilization, he says, has brought about the twofold conditions of 'universal liberation' to philosophic thought. These conditions are, on the one hand, the elimination of scarcity and, on the other, the overcoming of traditional forms of thought and action . Both these conditions of modem life are historically unprecedented. In the first place, asserts Grant, it is only through the technological conquest of nature that 'human energy is [universally] liberated to attain objectives beyond those practically necessary' (PMA, 11). In explicating this claim, he follows Hegel's interpretation of the history of human freedom , as this passage indicates: Always before in history, if some few men were to be able to pursue the life of philosophy, it depended on the labour of others, who because of that labour, were themselves removed from the possibility of the philosophic life. The ideal of human freedom the philosophers held up was always denied by their dependence upon the work of others . Such a contradiction becomes increasingly unnecessary . Reason, considered as domination over nature, has freed man from his enslavement to nature so that it is open to him to pursue the life of reason as more than simply domination . The world of mass production and consumption and the idea of social equality makes [sic] this possible. (PMA, I 1)2

Technological reason , then, promises to overcome the contradiction between ideal freedom and practical unfreedom, making possible the reconciliation of theory and practice, finite and infinite aspirations . In the second place, modem 'industrial civilisation' is moving towards universally liberating man's consciousness from 'the old natural forms of human existence in which people traditionally found the meaning for their lives. ' By breaking down the traditions on which past generations were dependent, modern science and technology has forced individuals 'to seek a meaning which will be their own' (PMA, 11). It is in the modern structures of individual autonomy that emphasize the critical function of reason that Grant detects the continuity of the 2 Grant•s historical dialectic appears to draw on the progression of freedom in both Hegel•s Phenomenology of Spirit and his Philosophy of History. The prominent role of technology in the emancipation process may also reflect the influence of a Marxist reading of Hegel.

32 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice present with the past of reason - with 'the civilisation of rational theology, of the Reformation and of the Enlightenment ... which brought men a knowledge of themselves as free as had no other in the past' (PMA, 12). Indeed, it is the ongoing, if threatened, tradition of theoretical freedom in our society that makes the times right for philosophy . Philosophy, therefore, finds its present calling in the all but total negation of the past which our society is. It is in and through the fragmentation and dissolution of our age that philosophy brings the age to selfunderstanding, to the understanding of what we are and what we have created. And implicit in our self-understanding is 'an ultimate question about human nature and destiny ' (PMA , 5) . Grant accepts as authoritative Hegel's expression of the situation and the task of philosophy: 'The owl of Minerva only takes its flight at twilight.' This means, says Grant, that 'human beings only pursue philosophy, a rigorous and consistent attempt to think the meaning of existence .. . when an old system of meaning has disappeared with an old society, and when we recognize that the new society which is coming to be raises new questions which cannot be understood within the old system' (PMA, 5-6). Grant intensifies the gravity of Hegel's discovery by applying it to the situation of his own country. The old systems of meaning passing away in Canada are the Bible-centred Protestantism and traditional Catholicism that spoke to 'a pioneering, agricultural society with small commercial centres' (PMA, 6). These are the 'certainties of the past' in which present thought 'cannot rest' (PMA, 7) . In charting a direction for thought about the most important things in our age of obscurity and the (seeming) absence of God, Grant warns against 'reactionary experiments': 'the search must be for a new authentic meaning which includes within itself the new conditions which make the search necessary' (PMA, 7) . Parenthetically, we should notice Grant's clarification that it is not the truth of Christianity that has failed the test of our age, but the adequacy of a system of meaning deriving from a 'particular form ' of Christianity . In a strong declaration of the historical finality of the Christian truth, he says: ' What Jesus Christ did is not ultimately dependent on its interpretations' (PMA, 7). THE POLARITY OF THE 'MYTHIC' AND THE ' MODERN'

Grant's argument in PMA is structured by the fundamental polarity of the 'mythic' and the 'modem' consciousnesses. This polarity itself expresses the nature of philosophy's transcendence of its historical conditions. For philosophical thought is not an act of abstract self-transcendence but of concrete self-transcendence. It does not imply the freedom of individuals to 'choose to be independent' of the forces shaping 'our mass culture' in order to 'think simply about what in this culture we should accept and what reject ' (PMA, 4). Rather, it is the emergence of

33 Philosophy in the Mass Age self-understanding from our awareness of the historical newness of our situation. It is an act of reflection dependent on the recognition of differences. Thus, Grant brings the modem 'vision' to self-consciousness by differentiating it from the vision of 'traditional religious cultures.' In defining the 'radical gulf between these two visions ... we come to understand what modem man does assume, and how these assumptions have not always been necessary' (PMA, 15). Comparison, in this instance, is not merely a method of description but a way of understanding. 3 It is a way of understanding that implicates the past and its recollection in the very act of understanding, implying that the present reveals the meaning of the past as the past reveals the meaning of the present. Grant approaches the task of distinguishing the mythic from the modem consciousness in heavy dependence on the thought of Mircea Eliade. 4 According to Eliade, the essential feature of the mythic consciousness is its archetypal ordering of all meaning. That is, events and actions have meaning for the mythic consciousness only 'as repeating or participating' in the archetype - the 'original divine model' occurring 'in illo tempore' (Eliade's term) (PMA, 17-18). Human action overcomes chaos and meaninglessness by its cyclical re-enactments of the eternal (that is, the archetypes). To Grant, this archetypal assimilation of human action means chiefly the denial of human individuality, but also, significantly, the denial of any final importance to human suffering, which infinitely repeats itself, as time runs its course through an infinite series of self-regenerating cycles. Grant finds the 'most luminous justification' of the ancient world view in the philosophy of Plato, 'in which time is considered as the moving image of an unmoving eternity and in which the passing events of life only have meaning as they lead men to the unchanging reality of God' (PMA, 20). It is this view of eternity, says Grant, that forms the foundation of the world's mystical tradition, as well as the tradition of natural law theory . Plato's greatness is to have wrested from the archaic world-view a vision of philosophic freedom : 'In Plato's doctrine of the soul and of knowledge, human beings come to know themselves as free, 3

About the comparison of modem culture with those of antiquity, Grant says: 'This comparison is useful, because only as we become capable of thinking outside modem assumptions are we able to see at all what our assumptions are. In the same way, the study of the Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle is wonderfully illuminating. As we try to think with them their vision of human nature and destiny, we come to see our own.' (PMA, 26) 4 Says Grant in 'Author' s Notes' no. 3 of PMA: 'For what follows about archaic man, I must express my profound dependence on the work of Mircea Eliade. See especially his The Myth of the Eternal Return, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1955; Traite d'histoire des religions, Paris, 1953; and Images et Symboles, Paris: Gallimard, 1952. Professor Eliade seems to me unique among modem scholars of religion not only in his grasp of the facts, but also in his philosophical and theological wisdom.' (113)

34 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice and therefore as finally outside religious myths and images' (PMA , 21). Plato reveals philosophic knowledge as the means by which individuals can move 'by purification beyond the cycle of time, ' regarded as that 'vehicle through which necessity and good play out their relation over and over' (PMA, 22). Against the mythic world-view, which has its transcending fulfilment in classical philosophy, Grant sets the modem consciousness of history. The consciousness of history renders time 'a series ofunique and irreversible events .. . of supreme consequence' which men are called to shape 'by creative acts of ... will' (PMA, 22). The conscious, volitional making of history requires of men that they orient themselves to the infinite not as the 'eternal-beyond-time' but rather as 'the limitless possibilities ... for action in space and time' (PMA, 25). Men, therefore, have become the measure of the infinite in their historical self-awareness. At this point Grant leaves the ancient and the modem world-views in unmediated opposition as two disconnected historical 'wholes.' TRADITIONAL NATURAL LAW VERSUS THE MODERN ETHIC OF FREEDOM

We have observed that Grant raises the problem of history primarily as a problem for the moral philosopher. The discontinuity between the present and the past that the consciousness of 'history' reveals is chiefly a discontinuity in the basis for action. Consequently, the core issue of PMA comes to light in Grant's contrasting of traditional natural law with the modem ethic of freedom . Grant approaches natural law theory out of the pervasive crisis of ' standards and values' in modem society, convinced that this crisis 'arises above all from the fact that the doctrine of natural law no longer holds the minds of most modem men, and no alternative theory has its universal power' (PMA, 28). Grant sets out the traditional doctrine of natural law as follows: 'There is an order in the universe which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act so that it can attune itself to the universal harmony ' (PMA, 28). This doctrine, Grant points out, rests on two premises: the metaphysical premise that the universe 'is a cosmos ... held in being by reason' (PMA, 29), and the anthropological premise that there is a 'universal human nature [which] is to be a rational creature' (PMA , 32) . The cosmological premise presents the universe as a hierarchy of beings, all of which are 'moved by law and ultimately governed by the divine mind' (PMA , 30) . The anthropological premise assumes the accessibility of this order of immanent meanings to human reason, making rational selfdetermination the distinctive power of human beings. In short, the keystones of natural law doctrine, as Grant describes it, are 1 / absolute moral standards and 2 / the practical operation of reason. Grant argues that these two keystones of traditional natural law require the completion

35 Philosophy in the Mass Age of the practical life in the mystical life. 'Practice passes into adoration,' because 'man is to be perfected and brought to his highest possibility through the union of his reason with the divine reason' (PMA, 33) . This union of human and divine reason is man's highest good, the idea of which gives order to man's particular desires, and satisfies his self in its totality. From the Greek understanding of moral life ruled by the highest good , Grant passes to the classical conception of philosophy as the path to knowledge of this final good of human nature. Against classical natural law doctrine with its corresponding beliefs about man and the universe Grant pits the moral relativism and scepticism of our own age, which evidences the instrumentalization of reason. He resumes his attack on modem science and its handmaiden, modem philosophy, for restricting the efficacy of reason to the determination of the means of action and not its ends. He points to the domination of North American life by 'scientific reason' concerned exclusively with controlling 'the external' (that is, nature) in the service of ends dictated by our passions. The apparently unrestricted scope of our finite, or technological, freedom leads Grant to focus the issue between modem and traditional morality in the question of ultimate responsibility: 'are we truly and finally responsible for shaping what happens in the world,' asks Grant, 'or do we live in an order for which we are not ultimately responsible, so that the purpose of our lives is to discover and serve that order?' (PMA, 39). The issue, then, between traditional and modem morality concerns the relation of freedom to law: is freedom bound or is it not bound by the given order of the universe (whether created or etemai)? The question is a biased one at this stage in Grant's argument, as his invocation of St Augustine's words indicates: '"To be able not to sin is a great liberty; not to be able to sin is the greatest"' (PMA, 40). St Augustine's vision of perfected Christian freedom beyond choice is the challenge that Grant puts to modem humanism which makes the order of things follow from men's actions, their worth from men's desire, so that freedom is unlimited choice between 'open possibilities.' THE ROOTS OF MODERNITY IN BIBLICAL RELIGION

In chapter 4 of PMA Grant examines the historical origins of the break with natural law tradition. His treatment of history is bound to be controversial, following as it does in Hegel's footsteps. Before we find fault with it, however, we should attend to his opening remarks, which help us determine what accusations may and may not be brought against him. Grant begins by expressing humility before the complexity and the ambiguity of historical meaning and causality. He confesses his inability to provide a full historical accounting for the modem belief in history, a task which, Grant says,

36 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice would involve searching for the unity of a complex of causes spanning many centuries . Rather, he must let his argument ' rest in simple assertions' with no attempt at scholarly justification (PMA, 43). 5 However, Grant goes on to explain that this weakness of his argument is implied by its very genre. For it belongs to the philosophy of history, which uses the results of historiography and does not itself undertake this work. Finally, Grant sets out the controlling principle of his historical interpretation, upon which the validity of his generalizations depends. It is the 'necessary principle of any proper philosophy of history,' described in Hegel's "'cunning of reason"': namely, 'that the conscious intention of human actions is often different from the meaning of those acts as events in the historical process, considered philosophically' (PMA, 43). 6 With these prefacing remarks , Grant directly states his thesis: that Christianity is the most important cause of modem 'historical' man and 'has been chiefly responsible for the destruction of the old religious cultures and the coming to be of our modem secular culture' (PMA, 44). The 'modem spirit,' says Grant, 'first came to be in European culture and not in the civilizations of the East' because 'the classical spirit had taken into itself Biblical religion' (PMA, 44) . By 'Biblical religion' he means 'the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament and its culmination in the Incarnation of God, Jesus Christ' (PMA, 44). Here Grant develops more fully his 1956 discussion of biblical religion and modernity, wherein he laid out the key elements of the biblical understanding of history that underwent revitalization in Reformation Protestantism. According to Grant, biblical religion represents a radical innovation in the understanding of the interrelated theological problems of God's relation to the world, of time, and of the meaning of man's action in time (PMA, 45). The core of this innovation lies in the prophetic interpretation of particular events as 'concrete expressions of the divine Will' (PMA, 45) and in the prophetic vision of a final redemptive act of God towards which the sequence of historical events is leading. In the prophetic view of temporal events, Grant explains, God acts directly and personally, giving to every finite occurrence uniqueness and irreversibility. The unique and irreversible meaning of each event springs from the particular will of God manifested in it, which is inseparable from his purpose for the whole of history. Thus, time is finite and oriented to the future, and human action is ultimately significant, being directed to an absolute fulfilment. 5 Grant is, of course, obliged to rely on the historical scholarship of others, such as Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Allen and Unwin 1930) and Puritanism and Liberty, A.S.P. Woodhouse, ed. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 1938). 6 Grant continues: 'But to accept the difference between intended action and the meaning of event is to have insisted that historical explanation only completes itself within philosophy.' (43)

37 Philosophy in the Mass Age

For Grant, the Incarnation unconditionally establishes history as the realm in which good is overcoming evil. The Incarnation is the centre of the Christian belief that 'To God all things are possible' (PMA, 47). Grant regards this conviction of the sovereignty and creativity of the divine will in 'history' as the Bible's most radical break with the 'ancient religion of natural law' (PMA 47) and the greatest challenge to every subsequent attempt (from Augustine to Aquinas) to synthesize Christianity and Greek philosophy . 7 As a matter of historical fact, he proposes, this conviction is the ground on which all such attempts have broken down . The breakdown of the Thomistic synthesis in the late Middle Ages is, naturally enough, the backdrop against which Grant understands the relationship of the Reformers' 'biblicism' to the development of science and morality. In PMA Grant again struggles to grasp the impact of the Reformation in terms of the transitions undergone by the western belief in 'history.' He ponders how it is that 'the Christian idea of history as the divinely ordained process of salvation, culminating in the Kingdom of God, passes over into the idea of history as progress, culminating in the Kingdom of Man; how Christianity' s orienting of time to a future made by the will of God, becomes the futuristic spirit of progress in which events are shaped by the will of man' (PMA 49). Grant finds the 'mediating term between history as providence and history as progress' in the Reformation 'idea of freedom' (PMA, 49). He accepts Hegel's insight that the modem experience of freedom arises first in the religious consciousness of the Reformation. Hegel's principle is: infinite freedom before finite freedom . That is, men could only come into their power to shape historical events to their wills after they had fully appropriated Luther's iconoclastic conviction that 'no man should find his proper rest in any natural images,' in 'the finite images of thought and ritual' (PMA, 49-50) . Luther's religious negation, says Grant, is dialectically 'the affirmation that the human spirit cannot be limited by any determinations' (PMA, 50). Following Hegel, Grant regards the European Enlightenment as the systematic extension of the Reformation principle of freedom to the regulation of theory and practice in all spheres. The theoretical extension of this principle meant the rational criticism of dogma and tradition; its practical extension meant the immanence of project and reform. Grant describes how the rationalist attack on Christian doctrines of divine law and providence gave way to a secular and immanent version of these doctrines, leaving intact the essential framework of Christian ideas about time. In the Enlightenment religion of Freiheitsgeschichte ('freedom-history'), 'time is still oriented to the future, but it is a future .. . dominated by man's activity' (PMA, 51). Consonant with man's newly discovered rational 7

Whether it is the ultimate defeat of these attempts, Grant is uncertain!

38 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice autonomy, he alone is responsible for perfecting the world (for redeeming himself) by means of his powerful instruments of science and technology. This activistic immanentism receives its definitive shape in the writings of Karl Marx, for whom the actualizing of 'the Spirit' in the world means essentially the technological pacification of human need. MARXISM, THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Grant talces up Marxism as the most significant philosophical representation of the modem historical self-consciousness. It is the most significant historically, he observes, because it is the primary form in which the western spirit of progress has become universal. It is the most significant intellectually, because its systematic and eclectic thought reveals most succinctly the complex inner logic of modem progressivism. Grant's discussion of Marxism is of interest to us chiefly for its revelations about the modem consciousness of history. The following aspects of this discussion are most germane: I / Marx's interpretation of the religious self-consciousness of modernity; 2 I Marx's philosophy of history; 3 / Marx's departure from Hegel and modem liberalism. I / In Marx's thought, Grant sees clearly the biblical roots of the modem self-consciousness. 'The philosophy of history is the modem equivalent of what in olden days was known as theodicy, the vindication of the divine providence in view of the existence of evil' (PMA, 56). Marx's thought talces up the problem of evil 'in all its negativity,' particularly as we encounter it in the suffering of others, and rejects the traditional religious and philosophical solutions to this problem. It rejects the vision of reconciliation held out by Christianity and classical philosophy, which counsel men to seek meaning in the here and now - to seek God. Instead, it offers a vision of future reconciliation through work and struggle in the present. For Marx, reconciliation is not the discovery of meaning in the present, but its creation, essentially through the 'practical overcoming of .. . suffering' (PMA, 58). Grant emphasizes the continuity between Christianity and Marxism as religions of hope resting on the belief in 'salvation-history.' Marx, like his teacher, Hegel, accepts Christianity as the absolute religion, the truth of which philosophy vindicates in determining it. As for Hegel, the truth of Christianity for Marx is, supremely, the Incarnation, the 'God-man,' which 'as an ideal once achieved' needs now only to 'be made universally concrete' in theory and practice (PMA, 59). Marx's mission is to demonstrate how humanity will realize the full Incarnation of the Absolute in the historical process. 2 I According to Grant, the philosopher of history is 'one who believes he knows the meaning of the historical process as a whole and derives his view of right action therefrom' (PMA, 56). Marx is pre-eminently the practical philoso-

39 Philosophy in the Mass Age pher, concerned with the moral and political fulfilment of mankind, and believing that the truth about 'the good life' and the 'best social order' is only revealed within the historical process itself. Marx adopts Hegel's conception of history as 'the sphere in which spirit is realising itself in the world' (PMA, 59), concluding with Hegel that the shape of this movement and its completion can only be grasped from the privileged historical vantage-point of the present. For Marx, this privileged stage of the spirit's self-consciousness is late capitalist society, in which the conditions are present for the final reconciliation of the contradictions in the historical process. At this stage, philosophy has the task of conceiving the final form of historical contradiction and charting the course of its overcoming in theory and practice. 3 I Marx understands the historical process in terms of the Hegelian dialectic of spirit/nature. For Hegel, nature is the realm of immediate (static) self-identity and spirit is the realm of mediate (dynamic) self-identity, or in Grant's words: 'Nature is what it is and is not what it is not ... But man is self-conscious, and self-consciousness is divided against itself. Man can always stand above himself and make himself what he is not' (PMA, 59-60). Grant locates Marx's fundamental departure from Hegel in his narrowing of the historical dialectic, his limiting of Hegel's insight that the spirit is realizing itself always in relation to nature 'by finding the whole meaning of history in the relation of human freedom to nature. There is for him no nature without human significance; there is no significance to human freedom apart from its domination ofnature' 8 (PMA, 60). Marx's interpretation of the 'spirit/nature' dialectic has implications for his view of evil and its historical overcoming. Explains Grant: 'In the economic organisation which expresses our relation to nature, he sees the cause of human evil in the past; in the creation of a new relation he sees the overcoming of that evil' (PMA, 60). Thus, Marx projects the fulfilment of human freedom and the moral telos of history into the technological society of the future, wherein the benefits of the technological conquest of nature will be universally enjoyed. In the technological society, men will be redeemed equally from natural necessity and social inequality in order to 'give themselves over to the free play of their faculties, to the life of love and art and thought' (PMA, 62). Unlike Hegel, Marx promises a/mite reconciliation of the human spirit through the technological redemption of nature. THE FUTURE OF THE PROGRESSIVE SPIRIT

In chapter 6 Grant subjects Marxism as a philosophical account of human freedom to the judgment of Hegel's philosophy. Hegel is for Grant the great apostle 8

A major source for Grant's understanding of Marx's use of Hegel is J. Hyppolite's Etudes sur Marx et Hegel (Paris: Riviere 1955).

40 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice of western liberalism, against which the truth of Marxism as a modern philosophy must be assessed. The result of Grant's assessment is his conclusion that Hegel understands better than Marx the religious and moral dimensions of human freedom: he perceives the presence of the infinite in our knowledge of freedom, and in our inexhaustible capacity to 'negate what we are in the name of what we ought to be' (PMA, 70). Precisely because human freedom involves moral reflection, Hegel knows that 'we cannot find our completeness in any finite object of desire' (PMA, 70). In standing with Hegel, Grant is forced to judge Marx's worldly reconciliation to be a subordination of the subject to the object, with the superficiality about evil that this entails. That is, Marx makes human freedom wholly dependent on the objective conditions of the world, so that obstacles to it can be progressively overcome through scientific and technological advance. Grant does not raise objections against Marxism merely to demonstrate Hegel's superiority. Rather, he wishes to explain the widespread defeat of Marxism in the West and its widespread acceptance in the East. The West, says Grant, finds fault with Marx's 'objectivism' because it has passed through the Reformation and the Enlightenment and has inherited from them a consciousness of freedom and individuality and right, which have 'not been part of the old religious cultures of the East' (PMA, 72). Owing to this lack, the East, under pressures from the West to modernize, has taken over the 'progressive spirit' in its objectivist form, and has proceeded to eliminate from Marxism 'its religious undertones,' converting it into 'a species of practical materialism' (PMA, 74). Grant agrees with Hegel that the future of the progressive spirit lies with the West, which has articulated its innermost truth. The question, therefore, towards which Grant's whole analysis of modernity moves is: how can the progressive spirit fulfil itself in the West? He poses this question in the context of the historical antithesis of law and freedom (the ancient and the modern) which he has already developed, and phrases it thus: 'Can the achievements of the age of progress be placed at the service of a human freedom which finds itself completed and not denied by a spiritual order?' (PMA, 76). This question has both a theoretical and a practical aspect, the former of which has priority for the task of philosophy today, as is clear from Grant's culminating remarks about philosophy: 'It is not the function of the philosopher to speak in detail about how ttie contradictions of the world will be overcome in the temporal process: for instance, to predict what is going to happen in North America. [It] ... is rather to think how the various sides of truth which have made themselves explicit in history may be known in their unity ... I am not saying he will find any satisfactory unity; but in so far as he does, he illuminates the meaning of existence for others and thus plays a significant role in the overcoming of those contradictions in the actuality' (PMA, 77). The 'sides' of truth that must be

41 Philosophy in the Mass Age thought in their unity are, as we have seen, the truths of natural law and of historical freedom. Says Grant: 'The truth of natural law is that man lives within an order which he did not make and to which he must subordinate his actions; the truth of the history-making spirit is that man is free to build a society which eliminates the evils of the world. Both these assertions seem true. The difficulty is to understand how they can be thought together. Yet the necessity of thinking them together is shown in the fact that when the conclusions of either are worked out in detail, they appear wholly unacceptable' (PMA, 77) . The insight, then, to which Grant's first fonnulation of the problem of history points is this: 'the necessity for limits to man's making of history' (PMA, 78) . These limits are categorical and not merely conditional - they are 'acts we should never do under any circumstances' (PMA , 79). The idea of categorical limit, of absolute standard, at which Grant's argument arrives, is the idea of God. 'The standard we have come upon is a reality we must accept, not a value we create. God is that which we cannot manipulate. He is the limit of our right to change the world. In the recognition of limit, the idea of law in some fonn must once again become real for us ... if there is no theoretical limit there is no practical limit, and any action is pennissible' (PMA, 81) . THE MODERN CHALLENGE: ELEMENTS OF AN ABSOLUTE MORALITY

In his elucidation of the notion of limit in the concluding chapter of PMA, Grant brings together two central themes of his earlier work: the dependence of freedom on law, and the distance between necessity and the good. Here, he sets forth the twofold meaning of limit as law (standard) and necessity. As necessity, limit 'is a law which carries evil within itself, a law which does not carry one wherever one wants to go, but whither one wouldest not. This is the very negation of freedom and power, the acceptance of one's own death' (PMA, 99). It is with 'necessity,' Grant reminds us, that our risen Lord comforted Peter for his denial: "'When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old ... another shall gird thee and carry thee whither thou wouldest not"' (PMA, 99). These words as consolation from the lips of Jesus express for Grant the paradoxical relation of necessity to the good. For Jesus is the good, and the acceptance of our own death on his lips 'must be understood as an act of joy' (PMA, 99). Nevertheless, death is evil, being separated from the good by an infinite distance. Grant returns to the anguished desire uttered by Simone Weil - '"To manage to love God through and beyond the misery of others"' - which also stops at the foot of the cross. Countering 'necessity' within the notion of limit is the idea of lawful order. Lawful order is implied by the concept of categorical wrong, of 'an uncondi-

42 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice tional authority of which we do not take the measure , but by which we ourselves are measured and defined' - of God (PMA, 100). The idea of God is that 'resistance ' to the 'test of the limitless' which every moral code must demonstrate: it is the unconditionality of law. Philosophy today, in Grant's view, has no less a goal than 'the systematic formulation of a categorical moral law' (PMA, 103). Grant concedes that the difficulties are rife, as he reviews the terms that must be reconciled in an adequate statement of an absolute morality. They include the following : Law and freedom . According to Grant, the dependence of the moral law on human freedom is the common ground of the Reformation and the Enlightenment which we are bound to accept. He sees modern man as condemned to moral autonomy in Kant's sense: that each individual must self-legislate the moral law, which must be meaningful to him and consistent with his freedom. Grant refuses any return to 'a morality of authority,' in which the law is externally imposed upon the wills of individuals, and yet he realizes the one-sidedness of Kant's emphasis. He calls for the completing of 'this spirit of independence proper to morality' with 'the spirit of dependence proper to adoration' (PMA, 104), and warns against the practical dangers of making the law a function of our freedom . Substance and subject. Grant, like Hegel, views the contradiction between Kantian freedom and traditional natural law as the contradiction between conceiving the absolute as subject and as substance. While he cannot advocate a simple restoration of classical substance ontology, he recognizes that the doctrine of the soul as substance stands 'the test of the limitless' in a way that the alternative conception of ' subject' does not. Moreover, he suspects Kant's selflegislated morality of making man necessary to God, and thereby of denying the biblical doctrine of creation, upon which, so Grant perceives , the concept of limit depends . Law and history. When Grant shifts to a theological statement of the moral antinomy, the terms become the ' unchangingness of God' and the 'God who works in history ' or, in other words, the eternally valid law and the 'God in whom all things are possible' and 'before whom all the present structures of the world are to be judged inadequate' (PMA, 107). While these terms may approximate more closely the Christian theological concepts of creation and eschatology than the Greek philosophical concepts of eternity and time, it is still significant that Grant does not employ the Christian concepts. This is so, we would suggest, partly because he has no way theologically to distinguish them. He tends to collapse both 'creation' and 'eschatology' into the overriding notion of Heilsgeschichte, conceived as God's continuing creation, expressing His sovereign will over all events in time . Nor does Grant clearly distinguish between God's creation of the world and the creature's fall into sin which brings evil into existence,

43 Philosophy in the Mass Age although his distinction between limit as law and as necessity points in this direction . On account of these theological shortcomings, therefore, Grant is left with the conservative-liberal antithesis between the conservative belief in unchanging law, order, and limit, which tends to reify empirical structures, and the liberal impulse to reform the world in the hope of overcoming evil, which tends to deny the reality of sin. What is required, he proposes, is a conception of limit that includes the 'unlimited hope that evil is not necessary' (PMA, 108). But Grant does not find this reconciling conception within the history of Christian thought: 'On one hand, such a reconciliation does not seem possible within the division between natural and revealed religion which underlay the old metaphysics. On the other hand, it does not seem possible within modem immanentism, which tends to eliminate the idea of eternity from the idea of God, and which either degenerates into undefined liberal platitudes or reacts into a biblicism which denies philosophy' (PMA , 109-10). Nature and history. The doctrine of limit has to do in an important respect with the proper relation of the human will to the given realm of nature, including our own bodies. In this respect, it denies what the modem understanding of historical freedom affirms: namely, that nature is 'infinitely malleable,' having 'meaning only in relation to ourselves' (PMA, 110). Against the modem historical understanding of nature as a realm of objects for manipulation and organization, Grant sets the antique conception of nature as 'a sphere for our timeless enjoyment' which has meaning apart from our purposes (PMA, 110). He does not, however, deny the freedom of the spirit to transcend nature, or the participation of nature in 'redemptive history.' Neither does he reject modem science for its domination of nature as a sphere of contingency, seeking to reinstate a purely contemplative science of nature as a 'timeless entity outside the historical process .' Rather, he calls for a science that 'overcomes the distinction between nature as the simply dominated and nature as the simply contemplated' (PMA, l l l). Having set before modem philosophy a challenge of staggering proportions, Grant dares only one word of advice: that philosophers should think these apparent contradictions 'in the light of the history of philosophy,' striving after a full understanding of the 'different imports of ancient and modem thought' (PMA, 107). GRANT ' S DEBT TO HEGEL

Grant's program for philosophy today and his concluding advice leave us wondering whether Hegel's philosophy of the absolute, which claims to have overcome the historical contradictions of thought, truly comprehends the 'differ-

44 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice ing imports' of traditional and modem thinking. We recall Grant's retrospective assessment of his stance in PMA : 'I considered Hegel the greatest of all philosophers. He had partaken of all that was true and beautiful and good in the Greek world and was able to synthesize it with Christianity and with the freedom of the Enlightenment and modem science. • Is this a correct assessment? Certainly Grant owes a great debt to Hegel in PMA, as our analysis has shown. Still, we would wish to qualify our assent to Grant's judgment by indicating his reservations about Hegel contained in PMA. These reservations fall basically into two areas. I / The first concerns the relation of philosophy to religion: granted that philosophy depends on the religious consciousness, does it also complete it by presenting the truth of religion in its absolute form? Since the religion in question is Christianity, which claims to be based on revelation,9 we must rephrase this reservation so that it concerns the relation between philosophy and revelation. Thus rephrased, it asks: does revelation require philosophy as its completion, and does philosophy comprehend the whole of revelation? Grant does not explicitly address the question concerning revelation and philosophy: he does not use the term 'revelation' or comment on Christianity's unique claim for the Scriptures. But we recall that, in criticizing the use of the Scriptures within Protestantism, he does say that he is not judging the adequacy of 'Christianity,' that 'what Jesus Christ did is not ultimately dependent on its interpretations' (PMA, 7). Is Grant here not making the person and action of Christ in history the whole truth of the Scriptures and the standard of truth for all thought, past and present? If he is, he cannot see philosophy as finally necessary to revelation, or as the irreproachable arbiter of its truth . 2 I A closely related reservation in Grant concerns the dependence of truth on history. For Hegel, history is the self-realization of the Idea (truth) in the Concept (the absolute system), which is the unification of subjective and objective truth. Hegel offers us an immanent eschatology: the concrete fulfilment of the Spirit in time, the historical actualization of the Spirit as absolute freedom. Is this Grant's understanding of the Christian doctrine of providence? We can approach this question by two routes: by way of Grant's criticism of the modem concept of 'subject,' and by way of his understanding of the relation between necessity and the good. First, we have seen Grant oppose to the modem concept of 'subject' the Christian doctrine of creation, arguing that the former makes 'man ... necessary to God,' with the consequence that modem thought is without a doctrine of limit. Hegel, of course, claims to have taken up the old 9

Christianity claims to be the final revelation of a transcendent God to man and not the immanent representation of an evolving religious consciousness.

45 Philosophy in the Mass Age notion of substance into his concept of subject, but Grant does not appear to accept Hegel's claim. For he demands an understanding of the subject as autonomous freedom which, none the less, is yoked to an absolute transcending claim, while Hegel ' s subject acknowledges no such claim. Hegel's subject respects no givens outside itself, regarding everything as dependent on its self-conscious positing of itself. Not measured by any recognized constraint, Hegel's subject knows itself as absolutely free, as capable of finally negating all finite determinations in thought and deed - even to the point of overcoming its concrete existence in the world by a self-willed death, executed in complete detachment from natural necessity. JO Such absolute freedom is emphatically denied in Grant's Christian conviction that we are not 'our own' (PMA , 40). Secondly, we recall Grant's understanding of the relation of freedom, necessity, and the good as it shines forth to him in the Gospels, in Christ's consoling of Peter, and in Christ' s death on the cross . Here is necessity that negates individual freedom and power, and is separated from the good by an infinite distance. The unity of human freedom and this necessity, of this necessity and the good, cannot be thought by the self-conscious historical subject, but only affirmed in a supernaturally given act of faith that renders the subject capable of freely surrendering himself to necessity apprehended as such. For Hegel, the intuition of the unity of freedom, necessity, and the good is arrived at through progressive reflection on the rational 'wholes' of history . The intuition , which , albeit, passes beyond discursive thought, is reached through the contemplation of history in its totality, and is identical with the recognition that the historical process is rational. But Christ's crucifixion testifies to Grant of the irrationality of human history, denying such a theodicy as Hegel proposes and pointing to the limitations of thought rather than its fulfilment . Finally, on this subject of historical necessity and the good , Hegel identifies the objective form of the Absolute Spirit with the liberal state. He regards the absolute law-state, to which civil society is subjected, as the objective fulfilment of the history of freedom, in which historical contradictions are overcome: freedom and law, necessity and the good , subject and substance are reconciled. For Hegel , the absolute state, as the absolute philosophy, has made its appearance in history. For Grant, North American society is the most complete political incarnation_ of the modem consciousness of freedom . It is the true heir of the Reformation spirit. In chapter 7 of PMA on 'American morality' Grant argues, following Max IO The centrality of willing one's own death to the consciousness of absolute freedom is emphasized by contemporary interpreters of Hegel who give special attention to his Phenomenology; e.g., Jean Hyppolite and Alexandre Kojeve.

46 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Weber, that American 'egalitarian technologism' is the extreme historical development of Calvinist Puritanism with its 'theology of revelation' that discouraged contemplation and exalted Christian freedom in its practical expression. 11 The technological ordering of nature and society, which North Americans have sought to perfect, is, to Grant's mind, the fulfilment of practical freedom in its modem conception. Correspondingly, the American philosophy of pragmatism, which judges the truth of ideas by their effectiveness in action, Grant views as the fulfilment of theoretical freedom in its modem sense. Now it is clear that Grant does not look upon North America as that political order in which freedom and law are reconciled in an ethical totality. On the contrary, he regards thought and action in America as for the most part devoid of spiritual law, of the categorical limit. Not only does the absolute morality which Grant demands lie outside of the dominant ethos of American life, the very possibility of its being thought is diminished by the force of this ethos. Whether or not an absolute morality will come to be in American thought and practice Grant does not know. PMA offers us hope, but not certainty.

11 According to Grant, Calvin's predestinarianism, his 'doctrine of the Hidden God by whose inscrutable Will men were elected to salvation or damnation ,' cut men off from the contemplation of God outside of the Scriptural revelation in Jesus Christ, forcing them to seek ' in practicality [rather than in contemplation) the assurance that they were indeed the recipients of grace.' Out of the Puritan belief in the equal accessibility of revelation to all men, combined with a confidence in the external signs of grace, came an approach to Christian education that concentrated on 'the teaching of techniques ' for 'effective' action rather than the teaching of philosophy. Grant sees the hegemony of the business world in North America, the society's worship of economic expansion, and its enthusiasm for social engineering as a further historical development of the old Protestant devotion to activism 'as serving the will of God.' (PMA , 82-8)

3

Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis: Grant's Rejection of 'History'

THE CONTEXT OF GRANT'S REJECTION OF 'HISTORY'

The political immediacies of the sixties As we have seen, Grant began his literary career as a progressive conservative, that is, a well-tempered liberal. His tempering had come from the Second World War, which, in the words of one scholar, 'instructed him more deeply about the cose de/ mondo.' 1 In the late forties and fifties Grant cautiously embraced the optimistic mood of expansion and reconstruction. The sixties were a more sobering decade for him, as he tasted the bitter fruit of earlier hopes . Grant's change of heart came about through a conjunction of practical circumstances and intellectual encounters. Practically, Grant's life was beset by three disturbances . They were: first, his move to southern Ontario; secondly, the defeat of the Conservative party in the 1963 federal election; and thirdly, North America's involvement in the Vietnam war. Let us look at these in tum. In 1961 Grant took up residence in Dundas, Ontario, a town on the outskirts of Hamilton, Canada's ' Steel City.' He had accepted an invitation from McMaster University to oversee the establishing of a department of religious studies. Dundas was until recently a gem of rural prosperity: a sedate and dignified residential cluster in a lush valley beneath the Niagara Escarpment. Now these remnants of rural beauty barely appear through the overlay of industrial ugliness - the wasteland of a superhighway . Here the rending of the physical landscape is completed by the facelessness of the technological artifice. Following the suburban sprawl to the east is Toronto, which can claim Dundas as the western edge of its progressively unfolding hinterland. Toronto, as the commercial heart of eastern Canada, also claims to be its cultural and intellectual I

Barry Cooper, 'A imperio usque ad imperium,' in George Grant in Process, 26

48 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice centre. The nearness of Toronto, with its title to excellence by North American standards, forced Grant to a new understanding of the meaning of virtue, learning, and fine art in North American society. This dense slice of the 'Great Lakes' experience drew him into the 'texture' of liberal pluralism as life in Halifax had not. The outcome for Grant was an acute awareness of the texturelessness of the liberal fabric. At the end of the decade he wearily concluded: 'As for pluralism, differences in the technological state are able to exist only in private activities: how we eat; how we mate; how we practice ceremonies. Some like pizza, some like steaks; some like girls, some like boys; some like synagogue, some like mass. But we all do it in churches, motels, restaurants indistinguishable from the Atlantic to the Pacific.' 2 It was obvious to Grant that the homogenizing forces of liberalism, which levelled significant differences within and among communities, reducing pluralism to the trivialities of private taste, were continental, and indeed, intercontinental. They were the instruments of integration into the American empire of corporate capitalist technology. Grant's awareness of this fact provoked him to a fresh consideration of the practical question of Canada's nationhood: the question of what national distinctiveness and political independence Canadians could desire or claim, given their acquiescence in the economic and technological processes of imperial integration . In the light of this question the defeat of the Conservatives under John Diefenbaker in the federal election of 1963 came as a disheartening blow to Grant. For he detected beneath the bombast rhetoric of Diefenbaker's romantic nationalism an inchoate sense of Canada's historic loyalties. The tragedy of Diefenbaker, in Grant's judgment, was that he was heir to a fragmentary conservatism which, mingled with elements of prairie populism and small-town private enterprise, proved an inconsistent and ineffective antidote to the forces of assimilation . While Diefenbaker had been blind to the economic implications of Canadian nationalism, he did grasp something of its political implications, as his intransigent stance in the defence controversy of 1962-3 testified, at great cost to himself and his party. 3 Grant's sorrow and anger over the conquests of technological imperialism at home fed his mounting outrage at the destruction abroad. By the late sixties he belonged to the rank of dissidents who were protesting, in one breath, the ecological atrocities in their own country and the military atrocities in Vietnam. For these protesters, cultural homogenization and war were two arms of the same 2 'In Defence of North America' in Technology and Empire, 26 3 This controversy in its later phase was over the issue of whether Canada, at the request of the United States government, should arm her Bomarc missiles with atomic warheads. This episode is chronicled in Grant's 1965 book Lament for a Nation .

49 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis machine of imperialist technology. Vietnam was a hideous spectre to Grant because it was a revelation: it revealed not a vile aberration of technological freedom but its innermost possibilities. Vietnam brought into focus for Grant the necessity binding technological freedom to imperialism: that of an ever-expanding conquest of human and hon-human nature in the service of freedom as the overcoming of chance. It sealed for him the belonging together of war, imperialism, liberalism, and technology in the modem age. Grant's presentation of this belonging together in his 1967 article 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism' 4 discloses the philosophical scope of the problem posed for him by the Vietnam war: The era of modem thought has been the era of western imperialism. Imperialism, like war, is coeval with human existence. But the increasingly externalised view of human life which is the very nature of the progressive spirit has given and will continue to give an enormous impetus to imperialism. As the classical philosophers said, man cannot help but imitate in action his vision of the nature of things. The dominant tendency of the western world has been to divide history from nature and to consider history as dynamic and nature controllable as extemality. Therefore, modem men have been extremely violent in their dealings with other men and with other beings. Liberal doctrine does not prepare us for this violence because of its identification of technology with evolution, and the identification of evolution with movement of the race to higher and higher morality. Such a doctrine could not understand that an expanding technological society is going to be an imperialist society even when it is run by governments who talk and sometimes act the language of welfare both domestically and internationally.

Grant refers to Vietnam as 'a glaring searchlight exposing the very structure of the imperial society. ' 5 The image of the searchlight points with uncanny metaphorical precision to his new spiritual and intellectual situation. For a searchlight casts its beams in the darkness, allowing certain things hidden there to appear. If Vietnam is a glaring searchlight, it is because Grant is the man who has passed through the twilight unaware that the light has dimmed. The searchlight is glaring, piercing to the eyes, because it reveals the present darkness as darkness. As a denizen of the darkness, Grant, in these years, draws to himself the frightened, bewildered, and angry youth who think that they have lost the world and the world them, but who yet must celebrate something. He looks upon their celebrations (of brotherly love, openness, sexual pleasure, and spontaneous affection) with compassion, while speaking honestly about the illusions in which they are veiled. 4 Technology and Empire, 72-3 5 Technology and Empire, 75

50 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice We may observe here that the Vietnam war was a searchlight for many North Americans that made apparent to them hidden dimensions of the ecological and political malaise of the day. But among the current diagnoses of the situation , Grant's was exceptional in its theoretical profundity and practical realism. It was so, we would venture, because Grant carried with him into the turbulent sixties the range of intellectual issues which in the previous decade had been encompassed by the problem of history. Grant's awakening under Leo Strauss As the sixties opened, Grant encountered the writings of Leo Strauss, who was to be the gadfly of his awakening from his liberal slumbers. For Strauss reinterpreted to Grant the immediacies of his society through a far-reaching and systematic criticism of the western liberal tradition of political thought from Hobbes to Heidegger. He dispelled the hold on Grant of the modem conception of 'history' by, in the words of a leading philosopher, '[setting] against the modem historical self-confidence the clear rightness of classical philosophy. ' 6 The interest that Strauss's writings had for Grant is understandable in view of their common concern to recover the truth of our classical past. Grant's formulation of the problem of history in PMA was a declaration of our need as modems to reclaim this heritage. Nevertheless, his declaration drives towards fulfilment on modem terms, which presumes the privileged historical position of the present: it is from within the truth of the modem that reconciliation with the past appears as a historical possibility. It is this dialectical statement of our need as susceptible of fulfilment in a new historical synthesis that Strauss rejects, demanding instead an excluding rational choice. Strauss knows that to demand such a choice is to have decided in favour of antiquity, since, on his understanding , this demand presupposes that truth is accessible to man as man, and that no age is in an essentially privileged position with regard to the possession of it. Strauss denies that history is the progressive self-disclosure of truth, or more, its progressive self-actualization. In opposition to Grant's Hegelianism in PMA, Strauss rejects modem historical progressivism in favour of a classical Greek understanding of the unchanging and eternal 'whole' to which all men everywhere are open. Strauss' s motive in demanding an excluding rational choice is the same as Grant's motive in striving for synthesis: it is concern for morality, for private virtue and public justice. Hans-Georg Gadamer's comment on Strauss's argument in Natural Right and History (1953) hits the mark: 'Strauss is motivated 6

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. Garrett Barden and John Cumming from 2nd ed . of Wahrheit und Methode (New York: Seaburn Press 1975), 482

51 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis here by his insight into the catastrophe of modern times. Such an elementary human concern as the distinction between right and wrong assumes that man is able to raise himself above his historical conditionedness. When classical philosophy inquires into justice, and puts into the foreground the unconditional nature of this distinction, it is clearly right, and a radical historicism, which historically relativises all unconditional values, cannot be right. ' 7 It is precisely the unconditional and substantive distinction between right and wrong that Grant in PMA perceives is absent to action in our age. He regards the modern understanding of freedom, developed from the Enlightenment and the Reformation, as corrosive of the very idea of law. At the same time, however, Grant accepts the truth of modern freedom - the power of the individual subject to make himself and his world - and he accepts this truth as something genuinely new in history, as something 'discovered' or even 'brought into being' by modern man. Consequently, while he urges the recovery in modern thought of the idea of law, he does not and cannot urge a return to classical natural-law thinking. For he recognizes that the experience of 'the whole' on which classical natural-law doctrine depends, the cosmological awareness of the Greeks, has been historically superseded by the modern experience of historical freedom . Thus, the only concept of law in which the modern understanding can complete itself is the non-teleological idea of categorical limit to man's history-making activity, the limit concept of 'God.' Strauss's life's work was to disabuse his contemporaries of the errors of their historicist self-understanding by subjecting it to the judgment of classical thought. How far he succeeded with Grant will emerge in our discussion of Grant's writings in the sixties. Our task now is to set forth the challenge that Strauss presented to Grant by indicating certain key aspects of his thought. These are: I / his denial of the 'experience' of history; 2 / his criticism of the premises of historicism from the viewpoint of classical political philosophy; and 3 / his interpretation of the genesis and development of historicism. We should note that Grant, in confessing his theoretical debt to Strauss in 1966, mentions two books appreciatively: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958) and What is Political Philosophy? (1959). 8 I / Strauss refuses to speak of 'history' as something given in experience. To do so, he argues in Natural Right and History (hereafter abbreviated NR), is to acquiesce in the unfounded yet widely held judgment that 'modern man's turn toward history implied the divination and eventually the discovery of a dimension of reality that had escaped classical thought, namely, of the historical dimension' (33). Rather, he asks 'whether what was hailed in the nineteenth 7 Truth and Method, 482-3 8 Preface to the 1966 edition of PMA, ix

52 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice century as a discovery was not, in fact, an invention, that is, an arbitrary interpretation of phenomena which had always been known and which had been interpreted much more adequately prior to the emergence of "the historical consciousness" than afterward' (NR, 33). History cannot belong to experience because experience is structured by certain shared perceptions and understandings universal among men in their living together. Experience is the natural awareness that precedes scientific or philosophical reflection; it is the world from which thought sets out and to which it must eventually return in giving an account of itself. 'History' is not found among the perennial phenomena of experience, but is 'an arbitrary interpretation' of particular phenomena, a product of reflection. Strauss explains the 'invention' of 'history' out of the contingent exigencies of thought. 'History,' he proposes, is 'an artificial and makeshift solution' to the crisis of political reflection that arose in the eighteenth century as the inevitable outcome of the tradition of political thought begun in the Renaissance with Machiavelli. Strauss regards the crisis of this tradition (to which we shall attend later) and its solution, to which he gives the name 'historicism,' as equally questionable. 'Historicism' as a philosophical perspective embraces several distinct philosophies that have in common certain fundamental premises. Strauss makes his philosophical program the criticism of these 'historicist' premises from the standpoint of classical thought, with the object of disclosing what the basic philosophical issues and options are. 2 / The fundamental premises of historicism as Strauss understands it, are essentially three. They are outlined in his early article 'Political Philosophy and History' (1949), reprinted in the 1959 collection What ls Political Philosophy? (hereafter abbreviated WPP) . The first is that 'the object of historical knowledge, ... [called] "History," is a "field," a "world" of its own fundamentally different from, although of course related to, that other "field," "Nature"' (WPP, 60). In Natural Right and History Strauss explicates the meaning of the 'nature/history' distinction most incisively in relation to the older 'nature/convention' distinction. In Greek conventionalism, he explains, the distinction between nature and convention 'implied that nature is of incomparably higher dignity than convention or the fiat of society, or that nature is the norm' (NR, 11). To understand political right and justice as conventional, therefore, was to understand them as having 'their ground in arbitrary decisions, explicit or implicit, of communities' (NR, 11). Strauss argues that conventionalism is a species of classical philosophy, despite its assessment of justice and right, because its fundamental distinction belongs to classical philosophy as such. That is, classical philosophy involves an ascent from the world of opinion - the political world of 'authoritative opinion or public dogma or Weltanschauung' - to private knowledge 'of the all-comprehensive truth or of

53 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis the eternal order' (NR, 12). From the standpoint of attained knowledge, the realm of opinion, of partial or inadequate understandings of eternal things, is 'accidental' or 'arbitrary': 'it owes its validity not to its intrinsic truth but to social fiat or convention' (NR, 12). Thus, says Strauss, 'the fundamental premise of conventionalism is ... nothing other than the idea of philosophy as the attempt to grasp the eternal' (NR, 12). In contrast to classical conventionalism, modem historicism 'reject[s] as mythical the premise that nature is the norm ... is of a higher dignity than any works of man,' and rather subordinates nature to the world of human action and creativity, known as 'the realm of freedom or history' (NR, ll). Accordingly, while historicists view right and justice as works of human freedom, belonging to the realm of history rather than nature, they do not regard them as accidental or arbitrary. On the contrary, they attribute rationality and necessity to the movement of human freedom, reserving pure contingency for the realm of nature, thereby exactly reversing the understanding of necessity and contingency in classical antiquity. At least this is true of Hegel's philosophy, the fountainhead of modem historicism. In its narrower sense, as a nineteenth-century phenomenon, historicism begins with the denial by the 'historical school' of Hegel's claim that thought can comprehend the historical totality that produced it, demonstrating the rational necessity of the 'whole' (of history). This denial, Strauss tells us, prevented the historical school from upholding what it wanted to uphold, namely, the objectivity of historical standards and the intelligibility of tradition. It is precisely the failure of history to provide objective standards for human action and to legitimate the works of human freedom that, in Strauss's view, has given rise to the nihilistic historicism of which we in the twentieth century are heirs. Nihilistic historicism, proclaimed first by Nietzsche and taken over by Heidegger, is erected on two premises concerning human thought, which are Strauss's second and third historicist theses. The first of these 'nihilistic' premises, Strauss's second 'historicist' thesis, asserts that human thought, as historically contingent, is subject to arbitrary and finally unknowable limitations that vary from situation to situation in an unpredictable way, so that 'restorations of earlier teachings are impossible' (WPP, 60) . According to nihilistic historicism, all past thinkers were bound absolutely by the limitations (that is, the prejudices and ignorance) of their age. They 'took things for granted which must not be taken for granted,' or were ignorant of 'certain facts or possibilities which were discovered in a later age' (NR, 20). These limitations were absolute because no thinker was 'capable of knowing what he does not know' (NR, 35). Furthermore, history is not the progressive overcoming of the limitations of thought, but rather a succession of transitions 'from one type

54 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice of limitation to another type' (NR, 21). The contingency of thought is an inference of historicism from certain historical evidence which, Strauss argues , can and should be interpreted otherwise.9 From the absolute dependence of thought on dynamic historical contexts flow two implications concerning the validity and the communicability of thought. The first is that no thought is valid beyond its historical context. No single thinker, or school of thought, can give an account of ' the whole' that is universally true, valid for all times and all places. The second is that thought is incommunicable from age to age. Historicism, says Strauss, has 'no reason to doubt that earlier thinkers had insights which are wholly inaccessible to us and which cannot become accessible to us, however carefully we might study their works, because our limitations prevent us from even suspecting the possibility of the insight in question' (NR, 21). If our thought, as all past thought, is bound by an 'horizon' that defines its fundamental possibilities and is unknowable, then we cannot ourselves think what past thinkers have thought, or know what they knew . We cannot understand the thinkers of the past as they understood themselves . Since we are fated to understand past thinkers differently from the way they understood themselves, we cannot restore their teachings . 'Every intended restoration necessarily leads to an essential modification of the restored teaching' (WPP, 60) . IO Strauss's third 'historicist' thesis answers the question left by the second thesis, namely, 'How do we understand the thinkers of the past, if not as they understood themselves?' The answer is: we understand those thinkers not just differently but better than they understood themselv.es (WPP, 68). For they understood their thought 'non-historically,' whereas we understand their thought and our own 'historically,' that is, as historically determined. And historically conscious thought is superior to thought lacking this awareness , so that present thought is necessarily an advance over past thought. Despite the repudiation by nineteenth-century historicism of eighteenth-century progressivism, it is the case, observes Strauss, that historicism is compelled to be progressivist, albeit in ever subtler forms , for the reason that it denies to any past teaching 'the possibil9 The 'observable phenomena' of history which historicists take as evidence for the contingency of thought include the appearance in succession of irreconcilable philosophies, and the apparently •close relation ... between each political philosophy and the historical situation in which it emerged' (WPP, 63). These, Strauss admits, are significant historical phenomena, but do not justify the historicist inference, for reasons that will become apparent . IO From the viewpoint of historicism, modem criticism deceives itself when it supposes that the horizons of past thinkers are accessible to description and analysis. For if indeed 'the limitations of human thought are set by fate,' then ' it makes no sense to conceive of them in terms of ... knowable or analyzable phenomena.' (NR, 21)

55 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis

ity that it is simply true' (WPP, 68). In closing himself to the unconditional truth of past thought, the historicist is committing the progressivist error of seeking the meaning of the past in its relation to what historically succeeds it, that is, to the thought of the present. Strauss is not surprised, then, that historicism should have turned nihilistic under the influence of Nietzsche, explicitly dispensing with canons of historical objectivity and exactness, for he perceives nihilism as a lurking possibility from the beginning. Strauss's objections to historicism are obvious from his exposition of it. Fundamentally, he objects to its conceiving truth and thought as finite , contingent and particular, thereby rendering impossible philosophy in its classical sense. For philosophical thought, beginning with Socrates, is absolute and universal , being knowledge of the 'completed whole,' of the nature of things in their totality. And political philosophy , in its Platonic and Aristotelian sense, is knowledge of 'the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order' (WPP, 12). Thus, philosophy in its 'full sense,' in its Platonic and Aristotelian sense, requires that man be capable not only of 'grasping the fundamental problems and therewith the fundamental alternatives' of thought, but also of solving the fundamental problems of thought in a final way (NR, 35). In political philosophy, therefore , reason arrives not only at the 'fundamental political alternatives,' but also at the answer to 'the question of what the ultimate goal of wise action is' (NR, 35). To deny either of these requirements, according to Strauss, is to deny that natural right and justice are the philosophical basis of political order. Historicism is characteristically guilty of denying either or both of these requirements of philosophy. In its later nihilistic guise, it attempts to dispel the universal problems as well as the final solutions of thought, arguing that the former are themselves historically conditioned, that is, rest on 'dogmatic ' or ' arbitrary' premises, such as, for example, that ' the whole' is 'knowable,' and that it is 'permanent' or 'unchangeable' (NR, 30-1). 11 While Strauss is convinced that this attack on the delusions of traditional philosophy is itself deluded, he does not on that account regard it as innocuous in action: the atrocities of the twentieth century bear witness to the fact that its most prominent spokesman has nothing to say about political justice. 3 I lt is decisive for Strauss' s position that he has a task, a program, for political philosophy today, signifying his conviction that philosophy is still possible in our historicist age. Historicism has not so completely pervaded our thought as to eradicate altogether the impulse to philosophy. 11 Here Strauss especially has in mind Martin Heidegger's criticism of the 'dogmatic' premises of traditional philosophy concerning 'the whole.·

56 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Strauss insists that there remain with us certain stable experiences and ideas that testify against the dominant ethos . The first and foremost are 'those simple experiences regarding right and wrong' which belief in history ' may blur,' but 'cannot extinguish,' and which call forth the 'philosophic contention that there is a natural right' (NR, 31-2). Besides these universally accessible experiences, there is the enduring notion of 'historical objectivity' as an ideal for scholarship, which, Strauss argues, is only pressed further into relief by the arbitrary treatment of past thinkers by historicists. Finally, there is the evidence of history itself that the fundamental problems of thought 'persist or retain their identity in all historical change, however much they may be obscured by the temporary denial of their relevance and however variable or provisional all human solutions to these problems may be' (NR, 23) . These persistent evidences against the 'experience of history' form the foundation, in Strauss's view, of a philosophical resistance to historicism. They permit the issue between historicist and non-historical philosophy to surface and be clarified. This crucial clarification , according to Strauss, can only come from the side of non-historical philosophy. It involves the political philosopher today in the double pursuit of I / understanding classical philosophy exactly as it understood itself, and 2 / understanding ' the genesis of historicism' (NR, 33). Let us comment briefly on this double pursuit. I / According to Strauss , the first step towards a correct understanding of the writings of classical political philosophers is to recognize that these writings form a distinct genre that poses peculiar hermeneutical problems. These problems arise principally from the relation of mutual antagonism between society and philosophical thought, that is, the antagonism between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (gnosis , scientia). For the 'element' of society is authoritative opinion or public dogma, while the element of philosophy is the intellectual ascent to the light of truth. This inevitable conflict between the philosopher and society introduces two concerns into philosophical writings: to protect society from 'impious' thought and to protect oneself from society's wrath . The philosopher desires to protect society as the necessary form of human existence in the ' inbetween'; he desires to protect himself as the servant of transcendent truth and justice. From these two concerns Strauss derives the basic styles and strategies of philosophical writing, which the interpreter can ignore at his peril. 12 The most basic strategy employed by the philosopher is that of not writing the truth as he knows it but of propounding 'noble lies.' He propounds 'noble lies' as 12 See Strauss's discussion of the difference between 'esoteric' and 'exoteric ' texts corresponding to their different intentions, in the Introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing (Westport, Conn .: Greenwood Press 1952).

57 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis a way of adapting his thought to the social element, precisely because his thought is not bound by it. To recognize this strategy is to open oneself to the first principle of the classical philosopher's self-understanding: namely , that the truth he attains is universal - for all men and for all times. It is to open oneself to the philosopher's implicit claim that the future cannot bring unlimited possibilities, unknown to him, that will surpass the truth that is his. For if the natures of things do not change, then the limits of all future possibilities are known to the past as to the present. Thus, Strauss can uphold the finality of past judgments concerning the nature of political things and the best political order for all times, including our own . 2 / If a true understanding of the non-historical thought of the past arrives at the self-understanding of past thinkers, a true understanding of historicism begins with the self-understanding of its proponents. According to Strauss, historicism's own theses compel us to ask the historical question concerning 'the essential relation of historicism to modem man' (WPP, 73). We must inquire into 'what specific need , characteristic of modem man, as distinguished from premodem man, underlies his passionate tum to history' (WPP, 73) . Strauss's answer, which we shall now briefly sketch, is the need for a solution to the theoretical crisis of modem natural right. According to Strauss, the crisis in which the modem doctrine of natural right finds itself is a consequence of the peculiar character of modem political thought its dependence on a tradition of political ideas. The modem formulation of natural right is problematic because it has lost its conceptual moorings. The political ideas that originally anchored it have become opaque and confused. Its foundations in the western political tradition have been covered up in the course of transmission as a result both of unreflective reception of the tradition and of deliberate reinterpretation of it. There is for Strauss a critical juncture in the history of the western political tradition where a self-conscious break with, or reinterpretation of, past ideas occurred. Modem political philosophy, Strauss claims, begins with Machiavelli, who consciously set out to found 'new modes and orders' which were not those of Christianity or classical philosophy. 13 Machiavelli's program for the political future of his own country, and of his 'times' more generally, rests, Strauss argues, on a single comprehensive strategy: that of lowering the goal or standards of political action in order to increase the probability of realizing an intended political order. Machiavelli attempted to construct a science of society that would overcome the power of chance - an enterprise that required overcoming the 13 See Strauss's exposition of the unified intention of Machiavelli's Prince and Discourses in his 1958 publication Thoughts on Machiavelli (Seattle: University of Washington Press) .

58 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Christian conceptions of providence and charity as well as the classical Greek conceptions of science and virtue. In Strauss's judgment, all subsequent political thought is influenced by Machiavelli's program, whether or not it explicitly disavows it, or professes allegiance to Christian and classical ideals. He sees the crisis of natural right in the eighteenth century, to which 'history' is the solution, as the outcome of the continuous deflection from the classical doctrine of natural right in the writings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke. These thinkers, according to Strauss, abandoned the classical basis of natural right, namely, the teleological understanding of human nature as essentially and finally oriented to the trans-political perfecting of reason through contemplation of the 'eternal things. ' As a result, they lost, in various ways and degrees, the classical conception of virtue as the end of political action. Instead, they looked to man's pre-political origins and his 'lower' passions as a sure foundation for social right and justice. Only justice as equal protection of every individual's rights to life or property could be guaranteed in its realization by inevitable processes. The •discovery of history' was the form taken by the rebellion against this •corrupted' and •degraded' understanding of men and society by such men as Rousseau and Burke. Despite their differing motivations, these thinkers shared a Jove for classical virtue in its practical aspect, combined with a suspicion of its intellectual part (of theoria). Therefore, they sought to restore political virtue on a basis other than the transcendent rationality of man in the theological sense. This new basis was the transcendent rationality of an inevitable process which subsequent thinkers (for instance, Kant and Hegel) identified as 'history.' Increasingly, this inevitable process was believed to guarantee the actualization (in society) of man's true nature and of the right political order. At the same time, however, the essence of man and the basis of political right or justice had become something other than classical virtue: it had become, says Strauss, 'freedom,' understood as the self-legislation of the autonomous individual. So runs Strauss's non-historical account of the history of historicism. THE MEANING OF GRANT'S REJECTION OF 'HISTORY'

Grant's rejection of 'history' is first and foremost his abandoning of hope in the attainment by the modem public of a new level of morality and piety on the basis of technological liberation. After 1960 Grant no longer awaits 'the dawn of the age of reason in North America' (PMA, 13), no longer celebrates the unique historical possibility of North America as the land of unparalleled technological achievement and the inheritor of Europe's traditions of charity and rationality. Rather he has come to see that modem society cannot 'have within itself all that

59 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis was good in the antique world and yet keep all the benefits of technology,' as if technology were 'simply a matter of means.' For technology, he is now convinced, operates as an end in itself that 'inhibits the pursuit of other ends in the society it controls' (PMA, vii), with the consequence that 'unlimited technological development presents an undoubted threat to the possibility of human excellence' (PMA, viii). On the one hand, we may say that Grant despairs of synthesis; on the other, that he puts away the desire for synthesis as a false desire. He comes to realize not only that the union of modem freedom and antique freedom will not be, but that it cannot be. It cannot be because reason is not dynamic, progressive, in the Hegelian sense. It does not create for itself ever greater historical possibilities, incarnating itself ever more completely in successive transformations of mankind and human society. It does not overcome the tragedy and evil of the past in future reconciliation. In short, reason is not historical and history is not rational - or, in theological terms, divine providence is not scrutable. Therefore, historical hope (that is, hope in the future as superseding and fulfilling the past) is false hope; it is hope resting on false grounds, and these false grounds are the supposed identity of necessity and goodness. 14 If necessity and goodness are not one in this world, if their unity cannot be thought, then modem political life discloses its tragedy. Grant's writings of the sixties dwell increasingly on the tragedy of the modem public ruled by the habitual ideas and practices of technological liberalism. The modem public is tragic, in his view, because its regulative ideas and practices are destructive of human excellence, of human good. They are thus destructive because they contradict what man has been given to know of his highest good, that for which he is truly fitted. Justice is man's highest good, Grant holds; justice is what man as man is fitted for. And what is given us to know of justice is given in the two 14 The abandonment of historical hope in Grant's writings of the sixties is a movement that has been noted or charted by all his serious interpreters and critics. However various their descriptions of this movement according to their different interests and approaches, a common thread remains - the note of historical pessimism . In the essays of George Grant in Process, this movement is variously conceived as Grant's withdrawing of a ' political vision' (A.J. Reimer, 'George Grant: Liberal, Socialist or Conservative?'), or despairing of practical conservatism (J . Muggeridge, 'George Grant's Anguished Conservatism' ), or seeking to dispel false grounds for hope (E.B. and D.R. Heaven, 'Some Influences of Simone Weil on George Grant's Silence'), or removing truth and philosophical thought from the modem public (L. Lampert, 'The Uses of Philosophy in George Grant'). However, what is apparent to all these interpreters is the progressive diminishment in Grant's writings of the sixties of grounds for hope in the renewal of modem political life upon definite principles. That is, the conditions of the modem public, as Grant describes them, are perceived to be increasingly inimical to the appearance of justice in political speech and action.

60 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice seminal traditions of western civilization: the traditions of Christianity and of Greek philosophy. In so far as Grant can think technological liberal society, he thinks it as unjust, because of the account of the human good it embodies. Technological freedom , according to Grant, is the rule of modem society, its central good; and this central good contradicts what is revealed of the human good in the Bible and in Greek philosophy . The tragedy of modem society is the paradox of modem freedom. And Grant's writings of the early sixties formulate this paradox as follows. Freedom, as a practical and theoretical ideal, is the modern tradition. The modem tradition of freedom, with its roots in the religious consciousness of the Reformation, is the dissolvent of all traditions outside itself and the negation of tradition as such. The hegemony of technological freedom in modem society is, therefore , implied by the tradition-negating logic of the modem tradition. 15 The modem tradition is the last tradition: it is the overcoming of tradition as a vehicle of truth and justice. Grant's rejection of 'history' is his recognition of this loss. THE POLITICAL AND THEOLOGICAL ISSUE: WHAT MAY I HOPE?

In his 1968 preface to Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America (hereafter abbreviated TE), Grant's collection of essays from this period, he dissociates his work of the sixties from the art of comedy, 'the purpose of which ... is to bring together justice and felicity .' This purpose lies beyond Grant because he is modem man writing about himself, and as such he is the unhappy perpetrator and the unhappy victim of injustice. As Grant awakens to the tragedy of modem political life, suffering comes to the fore as the principal action of modem man. For the majority of men in liberal technological society suffering is blind deprivation; for some few it is an anguished awareness of what has been lost. For Grant this awareness is the beginning of wisdom. Grant's adherence to the art of tragedy in the sixties raises in an acute way the political and the theological question: what may I hope? His writing in this period is devoted above all to the perennial therapeutic task of philosophy, that of dispelling false grounds of hope, which are the work of thought's own dissembling. In seeking to dispel the illusions of contemporary political thought, whether 'liberal' or 'conservative,' which finds the ground of its hope in the tradition of political philosophy that has come down to us, Grant raises the problem of the true ground of hope for political thought. He questions not only 15 The theme that technology is the end or completion of modem thought is one that undergoes a major development in Grant's writings of the sixties and seventies, particularly as a result of his reading Heidegger.

61 Dissolution of the Liberal Synthesis the ground of hope but the substance of hope and its role as a political virtue and a condition of philosophical reflection on politics. His writings testify to the connection between the religious vision of tragedy and that hope which may be properly called 'philosophical' in the classical sense: the hope that (as Plato says in the Timaeus) necessity is under the wise persuasion of the good. Or, as Simone Weil expresses it, the hope 'that the universe in all its totality is in conformity to the will of God. ' 16 This connection forces us to ask how philosophical hope stands to biblical hope, grounded in the divine comedy of Christ's incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and eschatological rule. Are Christian hope and philosophical hope one hope? Grant's answer to this question is bound up with his rejection of 'history' as an orientation to the future that involves expectations about the possibilities of mankind. As Grant attains to clarity about these possibilities, he becomes convinced of their inconsistency with what he knows of man's highest good, of that for which man is truly fitted. He recognizes, however, that biblical hope is also bound up with expectations about the future of the human community. An ongoing concern in his writings of this decade is how biblical expectations are related to modem historical expectations. The deeper theological issue implied in Grant's concern is whether or not Christian hope is rightly conceived to be 'historical,' that is, tied to belief in 'history.' Is 'history,' as he increasingly appears to suggest, a western prejudice that stands outside the saving truth of the Bible? Can there be a Christian proclamation that renounces belief in 'history'? We shall address these questions directly in our concluding chapter when we discuss the ground and the substance of Christian hope.

16 The Need for Roots, trans. A.F. Wills with preface by T.S. Eliot (London: Routledge and K. Paul 1952)

4

The Vanishing of Tradition: Whither Political Philosophy?

THE PUBLIC IRRELEVANCE OF CONSERVATISM

The paradox of the modem tradition of freedom as the final tradition , the negation of tradition as such, first comes to light in Grant's 1963 article 'Religion and the State.' This article examines the relation between philosophy and tradition, or otherwise put, between philosophy and social practice, since 'tradition' for Grant refers pre-eminently to those inherited beliefs or principles that govern conduct in the public realm. It shows why conservatism as a political stance requires grounding in philosophical principles, and argues that these principles belong to classical political philosophy. Grant's argument is ironic, however, because his clarification of the underlying principles of conservatism demonstrates their irrelevance to the modem public. Consequently, he reveals the futility of conservatism in practice, its superfluousness as a political tradition in Canada. The political issue that Grant addresses in this essay is whether formal religious instruction should be given in the public schools of Ontario. The prevailing climate of opinion was divided between the liberal refusal of religious education in defence of religious freedom for individuals and minorities and the separation of church and state, and the conservative advocacy of religious instruction in defence of 'the place of Christianity in our national life ' (TE, 45) . Grant intends his philosophical analysis to be a criticism of both positions. He introduces his analysis by defining 'religion,' starting from the original Latin verb religere, meaning 'to bind together.' 'Religion,' says Grant, is 'that system of belief (whether true or false) which binds together the life of individuals and gives to those lives whatever consistency of purpose they may have' (TE, 46). He then proceeds to raise two objections against the liberal argument that the state 'should eschew any involvement in the religious opinion of its members'

63 The Vanishing of Tradition because it is 'committed to pluralism of opinion' (TE, 47). Grant's initial objection is an objection in principle: the constitutional state has a legitimate interest in limiting the pluralism of belief among its members in so far as their free allegiance to it depends on the acceptance of certain beliefs. The proper question, he says, concerns 'what beliefs are necessary to that minimum public morality' (TE, 48). His second objection concerns the de facto consent of liberal opinion to religious education in the public schools . His argument here is that the 'virtues of democracy' are taught in Canada's schools as religion (that is, as public dogma, to be accepted on faith), and not as political philosophy (rationally demonstrable truths). The de facto issue, then, is whether the 'religion of democracy' or some other religion (for instance, Christianity) should be taught in state schools. Decisive for this issue is the consideration of what beliefs are necessary to constitutional government. With this clarification of the practical question, Grant turns to a clarification of the answer, still in dependence on classical political thought. His purpose is to show the philosophical principles upon which the conservative answer depends . The first principle asserts the necessity to minimum public morality of belief in 'a higher divine power' (in God); it asserts the necessity of 'piety' to patriotism, to allegiance to the common good. On the basis of this principle, conservatism is right to reject the democratic faith as Canada's civil religion; for, according to Grant, this 'worldly faith' teaches that the public good requires not the practice of piety, but 'the inculcation of socially useful passions' (TE, 50). Let us observe in passing that Grant's characterization of the democratic faith agrees with Leo Strauss's and with many other presentations of modern liberal doctrine. 1 Grant's first 'conservative' principle, the dependence of patriotism on piety, remains within the ambit of modem conservatism, which continues to recognize this traditional truth. With his next theoretical move, however, Grant leaves this ambit, showing the philosophical inadequacy of today's conservative formulations. He recalls that 'in the older tradition' (of Plato, the Jewish Aristotelians, or Aquinas), the principle concerning piety and the public good received an essential qualification, regarding the limitations of 'unassisted reason' - namely, that while unassisted reason could perceive the dependence of society upon religious beliefs and actions, it could not 'determine what the religious beliefs and practices should specifically be' (TE, 51). 2 Only by 'revelation' could men know with As for instance, in the writings of such diverse political philosophers as Hannah Arendt, Eric Voegelin, Jiirgen Haberrnas, and Sheldon Wolin. 2 Grant assures us that by 'unassisted reason' he intends what the term 'has meant generally in the western tradition up to about 1700,' thereby excusing himself from a lengthy discussion of it. (TE, 5))

64 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice certainty 'what should be the public religion' (TE, 51). 3 Grant draws out two implications of this theoretical qualification that are necessary to understanding society. The first is the distinction between 'the true religion' and 'the public religion.' This distinction follows logically from the fact that 'some men have believed that they could know that there is such a thing as the true religion and that most societies (if not all) have not been entirely pluralistic' (TE, 51). The second and concomitant implication is the principle that 'the right of a religion to public status is ... a right of tradition': that is, it derives from the adherence of 'a large percentage of the dominant classes' in society to that religion as 'the true religion' (TE, 51). It is with this theoretical clarification supplied by the 'older' (pre-modem) tradition of political thought that Grant examines the conservative position on the issue of whether Christianity should be taught in our public schools. 4 In terms of the principles that Grant has laid out, the decisive question is this: Does Christianity have the right of tradition in our society? To have the right of tradition Christianity must be 'the true religion' for the majority of Canadian citizens and political leaders. Grant argues that this is emphatically not so. Outside of the Roman Catholic constituency, 5 he maintains, the Christian religion has a right to public status only in the rural areas of Ontario and the country, and not in the 'more highly technologized' urban, industrial parts. In so far as the 'dominant classes' and political leadership belong to the urban, industrial sector, where pluralism reigns, the province does not have Christianity for its public religion. The question remains, then, what religion has the right of public status in Ontario? To answer this question Grant looks at the religious loyalties of our dominant classes and political leaders, bringing to bear the distinction between 'public religion' and 'true religion,' and the prior qualification concerning unassisted reason. For the conservatives among the powerful majority, it is self-evident (that is, a principle of reason) that public morality requires the practice of piety. As to what the content of that piety should be they are uncertain, being without 3 It was the certainty among the political majority and their leaders 'that divine revelation had been granted to the Christian Church,' Grant goes on to say, that resulted in Christianity becoming 'the public religion' in Europe. This certainty, we may infer, is what separates European Christians from the Greek philosophers. We understand Grant as agreeing with Leo Strauss that philosophy in the classical sense depends on scepticism about the possibility, not to mention the fact, of divine revelation. 4 See Strauss's article 'The Law of Reason in the Kuzari' in Persecution and the Art of Writing for his examination of the use made of these principles in the political thought of the Jewish Aristotelian Halevi. 5 This constituency is legally entitled to a tax-subsidized 'separate' school system up to grade eleven.

65 The Vanishing of Tradition serious belief in the Christian revelation . Their loyalty to tradition , however, leads them to 'accept Christianity as the best tradition,' although 'not as true' (TE, 54) . They are, therefore , nominal Protestants. When it comes to the true religion, most of these conservatives share with the prevailing liberal ethos 'the religion of humanity and progress' (TE, 57). They part from liberalism, Grant argues, only in clinging to the conviction that piety is necessary to the public good. Unlike the conservatives, the liberal majority in Canadian society advocates the religion of progress as the public religion, while also believing it to be true. Here Grant arrives at the practical futility and theoretical irrelevance of conservatism in Canadian society today. Practically, the conservative advocacy of Christian education in Ontario public schools amounts to the preservation of ' a fa~ade of tradition, ' which barely glosses the deeper 'cement' of the educational ethos - 'the religion of humanity and progress' (TE, 57). While this gloss of tradition serves the temporary need of a secularized state, it belongs in the long run to our ' wasting assets' (TE, 56). More important, this public distortion of Christianity prevents its truth from appearing to the young within the nonCatholic Christian community by its 'implication that the demand of supernatural truth upon their intellects is limited to a few thin platitudes' (TE, 57). Theoretically, conservatism is also a wasting asset, because its principles, inherited from the pre-modern past, are systematically denied by the majoritarian religion of liberal democracy. The religion of progress, by presenting itself as ' a product of reason alone,' negates the distinction that was fundamental to the older tradition of political thought, between religion and philosophy according to their different roles in the lives of individuals and in the life of the community. The negation of this distinction is the tyranny of the modern tradition, which constitutes the false unification of theoretical and practical ends, of science and morality. In preaching that the highest truth is self-evident ' to all men of good will ' (TE, 57) , the religion of progress suppresses the one insight most necessary to understanding our predicament: namely, 'that not many men will become philosophers; but that all men are inevitably religious, ' the implication being that 'religion has a more direct relation to the public sphere than has philosophy' (TE, 59). This insight is most necessary, in Grant's view, to understanding the practical dilemma of modem conservatism: its recognition, on the one hand, that modem society stands in need of a public religion other than the religion of progress; its realization, on the other hand, that no particular religion outside of the religion of progress can claim an unequivocal 'right of tradition' in our public realm. If we consider Grant's argument in ' Religion and the State' in the light of his position of four years previously (in PMA), we shall detect a rather dramatic shift.

66 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice He is no longer seeking to recover the truth of past thought from within the truth of the modem tradition. In the footsteps of Leo Strauss, he has placed himself outside of modem political thought in order to refute it. His argument is precisely that of Leo Strauss (who is, however, not mentioned in this essay): namely, that modem political theory cannot understand modem society. This is so because political reflection today is bound to a body of political doctrine ('the religion of democracy,' 'the religion of progress, mastery and power') which has abandoned the principles and distinctions without which no public, including the modem public, can be understood. Thus Grant can clarify the practical dilemma of modem conservatism only by bringing to light and applying to the present its underlying principles which are denied by the prevailing civil religion, by 'the publicly received tradition of our society' (TE, 59). Grant's statement of conservative principles makes it clear why the modem tradition of technological liberalism is tradition-negating, and as such tyrannous . It does this by pointing to the complex relations of tradition to religious belief, the authority of the past, and the regulation of the practical life of individuals in communities. It is only within these relations that the significance of tradition for both social order and philosophical thought can be grasped. (Recall Grant's 1951 article 'Philosophy.') Conversely, it is only in the light of these relations that the modem religion of progress (that is, of history-making, of scientific and technological freedom) can be perceived to be anti-traditional both in what it separates and in what it unites: in its abstract opposition of reason to authority, of science to religion, of the future to the past, and in its unification of theoretical and practical universals (of science and religion, philosophy and morality) in the 'science' of society. These two aspects of the modem attack on tradition are, of course, interrelated. It is because liberal doctrine has abandoned the distinction between practical and theoretical truth that it subjects religion to scientific criticism and declares it false. When classical philosophy opposed reason and authority, science (knowledge) and religion (public dogma), what is handed down from the past (tradition) and the transcendent, eternal measures of all things (the ideas), it did so in full recognition of the practical truth of the public religion. Unlike classical philosophy, the modem science of society denies the practical rationality of religion, with the consequence that it sets itself up as the sole theoretical and practical universal. Judged by classical standards, it is the false universal of unlimited mastery and control. Precisely because the religion of progress attempts an immanent unification of the goals of theory and practice, it is no longer evident that tradition, authority, and religion are the necessary element of society, of our common life. The failure of the modem tradition appears, in the final analysis, to be its overcoming, in theory and fact, of the right role of

67 The Vanishing of Tradition tradition in public life. Grant takes his understanding of this role from the classical past where tradition ('public dogma') and philosophy receive their meaning as correlative concepts. The loss of one, therefore, in the modem public, means the loss of the other. When viewed in the context of his earlier work, Grant's argument in 'Religion and the State' leaves certain questions unresolved. The first unresolved question concerns the role that philosophy can and should play in the modem public. It asks how the relation of philosophy to the modem tradition is properly conceived. Grant's argument makes clear that the classical conception of the relationship of philosophy to the public tradition no longer holds under the changed conditions of today. At the same time, he leaves no doubt that the modem conception of this relationship is no longer acceptable to him. He has discarded the progressivist understanding of the role of philosophy in the modem public - its critical and synthesizing task of completing the prevailing 'tradition of freedom' with the truth of the pre-modem 'tradition of law.' It would seem that the only role left to philosophy in our society is a subversive and radically critical one. It appears to have the task of repudiating the modem tradition, of disowning the modem public. It is important to note that Grant's implied answer to this unresolved question is required in part by his continued adherence to Hegel's acount of modem society. In describing the religion of progress as a false totality (of religion and philosophy), Grant still accepts Hegel's understanding of liberal technological society as the creation or incarnation of modem political philosophy. In PMA Grant agreed with Hegel that liberal society (unified by the religion of progress) embodies the truth of modem political philosophy. Now Grant no longer admits the truth of modem political philosophy, so he must perceive the universal of technological freedom as the 'false universal.' A second unresolved question that follows from Grant's argument concerns the relation of biblical revelation to political philosophy, both its true relation and its historical relation. Concerning its true relation, the issue is whether Grant accepts the claim of biblical revelation to be an authority for thought as well as practice. It is evident that the classical Greek distinction between philosophy and the public religion does not accommodate the Christian understanding of revelation in its claim over thought. However, Grant does distinguish between the true religion and the public religion, and implies that he accepts Christianity as the true religion. For instance, he argues that the public perversion of Christianity ought not to be taught in Ontario schools, because such teaching prevents the demands of Christianity's 'supernatural truth' from appearing to the young. Nevertheless, he leaves the claim of 'supernatural truth' over philosophical thought unexplored.

68 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Equally urgent is the question of how biblical revelation is related to the history of political philosophy. For if, as Strauss maintains, modern political philosophy is dependent on a tradition of political ideas, we are bound to inquire whether that inherited tradition has been shaped by the claim and the content of biblical revelation. We have already encountered some of the complexities of Hegel's answer to this question in PMA, and shall, perhaps, soon catch sight of the obscurities in which Strauss's answer is shrouded . Now we must turn to Grant's more direct consideration of these two questions in his 1964 essay 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' also included in Technology and Empire. THE STRAUSSIAN OPTION AND ITS LACUNAE

'Tyranny and Wisdom' is Grant's exposition of and commentary on an exchange between Leo Strauss and Alexandre Kojeve, France's great interpreter of Hegel. The subject of this exchange is the central issue raised by Leo Strauss's book On Tyranny-An Interpretation of Xenophon's Hiero (1948), namely, whether Xenophon has adequately understood tyranny, and especially, the relation between the tyrant and the wise man. Grant's purpose in reviewing the controversial positions of Strauss and Kojeve is, he says, to explore what appear to be fundamental alternatives in political theory. Accordingly, he prefaces his commentary proper with a selective exposition of the statements of Strauss and Kojeve that sets out what he considers the fundamental 'propositions and arguments.' Grant finds these statements in Strauss's original lengthy interpretative essay 'On Tyranny,' in Kojeve's critical response to Strauss's argument entitled 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' and in Strauss's rejoinder to Kojeve entitled 'Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero. ' 6 Let us begin by examining Grant's exposition of the exchange, which warrants careful attention because it sets the context for the decisive considerations raised in his commentary . Grant opens his exposition by indicating the theoretical scope of the disagreement between Strauss and Kojeve . He does this initially by lining up the contending parties as Xenophon-Strauss and Hegel-Kojeve, on the understanding that Strauss and Kojeve are writing as conscientious interpreters and not as original philosophers . This alliance implies that the disagreement between Strauss and Kojeve relates most generally to 'the object and method of philosophy' (TE, 6 These three essays first appeared together in a French translation of Strauss' s original work entitled De La Tyrannie , Les Essais LXIX (Paris: Gallimard 1954). Strauss included his rejoinder to Kojeve in his 1959 collection What ls Political Philosophy? (Glencoe , Ill .: Free Press 1959). In 1%3, a revised and enlarged edition of On Tyranny (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press) appeared which included a translation of Kojeve' s essay and Strauss' s rejoinder.

69 The Vanishing of Tradition 86). Grant does not engage the debate directly at this level of philosophical generality, but instead 'plunge[s] into the controversy at the point of a concrete political teaching' (TE, 86). The 'concrete political teaching' by which he enters the debate is Alexandre Kojeve's twofold affirmation 'that the universal and homogeneous state is the best social order and that mankind advances to the establishment of such an order' (TE, 86). Why Grant chooses to enter the debate here becomes clear in the course of his exposition, but is already hinted at in his introductory remarks, which at one and the same time indicate the scope of the debate and unfold the inner logic of Strauss's position over against the 'modem' point of view. Grant's statement of Kojeve's thesis is determined, we would argue, by the logic of Strauss's (that is, the classical) point of view. Let us see how this is so. Grant perceives Strauss's position in his commentary on Xenophon's ' Hiero' to hinge on two propositions: l / 'that classical social science can understand tyranny in a way that modem social science cannot' (TE, 83); 2 / that modem tyranny differs from 'antique' tyranny in respect of its unique (that is, historically unprecedented) conditions, namely '"the unlimited progress in the 'conquest of nature' ... made possible by modem science"' and "'the popularization or diffusion of philosophic or scientific knowledge"' (TE, 83; quoting from WPP, 96). Accordin_g to Grant, a correct understanding of Strauss's position entails a correct understanding of the relationship between these two propositions. Such an understanding, Grant warns us, comes with difficulty to the modem mind, because of the appearance of inconsistency which these propositions have for us. We ask: 'How could the ancients understand something which did not exist in their day?' (TE, 85). Grant leaves no doubt that our question is the 'historicist' question. 7 And Strauss' s answer to the historicist question is, as we indicated in our last chapter: the ancients knew as theoretical possibilities (as opposed to empirical actualities) the conditions or presuppositions of modem tyranny that distinguish it from ancient tyranny, but they '"rejected them as 'unnatural,' i.e., as destructive of humanity"' and so •"turned their imaginations in entirely different directions"' (TE, 85; quoting from WPP, 96). Lest anyone remain uncertain as to the theoretical option that Strauss presents, Grant adds, 'Strauss is obviously asserting the classical view that tyranny is a form of government common to all ages and that the political philosopher can have knowledge of what is common to these governments of disparate ages so that he can correctly call each of them 7

He follows the question with the parenthetical comment: 'Such a question will be particularly pressing for those social scientists whose intellectual outlook may be briefly described as "historicism." Indeed historicism may prevent such scholars from even reading Strauss's arguments.'

70 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice tyrannies' (TE, 85) . In other words, the classical writers propose that the political philosopher can have universal knowledge of political things that is independent of historical circumstance. It is, evidently, to accord with the classical view of political philosophy that Grant formulates Kojeve's argument in terms of a universal proposition: 'that the universal and homogeneous state is the best social order.' For this formulation implies what Kojeve himself denies, that the political philosopher can make propositions that hold for all times and all places. Kojeve's own presentation of his argument proceeds not from universal philosophical principles (that is, from propositions about the nature of things), but from the experiences of history and their authoritative interpretation by Hegel, the implication being that philosophical knowledge has its source in the historical process. In converting Kojeve's argument, Grant imitates Strauss, who makes the same conversation in his criticism of Kojeve. Grant himself draws our attention to Strauss's method. Says Grant, Strauss criticizes Hegel-Kojeve's interpretation of western history on the basis of those propositions which it assumes, namely, that 'the universal and homogeneous state is the best social order' and 'this social order will be built by man' (TE, 91). Further, Grant explains that the form of Strauss' s criticism follows from the principle that philosophy can discover truths that are 'independent of changing historical epochs and which therefore cannot be deduced from any philosophy of history' (TE, 91). Here Grant incisively summarizes the 'historicist' account of philosophy which Strauss implicitly denies. 'For Hegel-Kojeve the truth about the best social order is not prior to an interpretation of history and could not be known except at a certain epoch. This truth is reached by an argument which appeals to an interpretation of the sum of historical epochs which in totality, for the Hegelian, constitutes eternity' (TE, 91) . Thus, in presenting Kojeve's argument, Grant first states its axiomatic propositions and then describes the philosophical account of history (taken from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit) which, according to Grant, Kojeve produces as proof of these propositions. 8 Lest we despair that the ostensible issue of the controversy, the relation between tyranny and wisdom, has been swallowed up by philosophical generalities, Grant assures us that this relation emerges within Hegel's interpretation of western history. Briefly, western history, as interpreted by Hegel-Kojeve, advances dialectically in three stages towards the 'universal and homogeneous state.' In the first 8

In fact, Kojeve's argument draws on the first part of Phenomenology of Spirit, which lays out the structural stages in the transformation of consciousness and is not philosophy of history per se, but Grant passes over this material, concentrating on Kojeve's historical interpretation.

71 The Vanishing of Tradition stage, the Greek stage, the 'universal state' comes into being in which membership is according to participation in a common 'immanent essence, ' that is, the culture of reason. This 'universal state' is not 'homogeneous, ' because the essentialist basis of membership cannot overcome class distinction. In the second stage, the Christian transcendental stage, a universal and homogeneous community comes into being on the basis of common faith in a transcendent God. The Christian community is homogeneous and not merely universal because its unity of faith overcomes all distinctions of 'essence,' of 'nature, ' of 'class .' Faith, according to Hegel-Kojeve, is a negating act, an act of 'becoming, ' by which individuals negate the essential qualities that divide them, and in negating these qualities synthesize them into "'a homogeneous unity not innate or given but (freely) created by 'conversion"'' (TE, 87) .9 In the final stage, the modem secular stage, the universal and homogeneous state comes into being through the secularization of the political ideal realized by the Christian community. This secularization, accomplished by modem philosophy (from Hobbes to Hegel), is the negation of Christian theism (the negation of the negation) and the reinterpretation of the Christian eschatological hope for a perfect human community into a historically realizable goal. Grant points out that this historical-political dialectic entails for Hegel-Kojeve the view that tyranny and wisdom , the political tyrant and the philosopher, are mutually dependent. That is, the philosopher, in discursive reflection , grasps the historical present, including the contradictions between the actual and the ideal that inhere in it. Under the guidance of the philosopher, the political tyrant overcomes the contradictions of the historical present through struggle and work, thereby creating a new situation for philosophical thought. Thus, philosophy and political action are each the RA TIO of the other. This can only be, Grant impresses upon us, because for Hegel-Kojeve philosophy does not take its bearings from 'an ahistorical eternal order,' but from eternity as ' the totality of all historical epochs ' (TE, 90). Grant concludes his exposition of Kojeve ' s argument by drawing out his fundamental Hegelian insight: the relationship between atheism and historical freedom and progress. Only if God does not exist is man free 'to make the world (history),' and to see this making as progress, as having an 'over-all direction' (TE, 90). In presenting Strauss's rejoinder to Kojeve, Grant is chiefly concerned to make clear its double purpose. According to Grant, Strauss's primary intention is to demonstrate the necessary relation (or internal consistency) between the classical account of tyranny and wisdom and its understanding of philosophy, in order to oppose the Hegelian judgment that classical political philosophy is ' a first phase 9 Quoting Kojeve's essay 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' trans. Michael Gold.

72 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice of the subject, which has been left behind as mankind has progressed' (TE, 92). Strauss' s secondary purpose is ' to show that the universal and homogeneous state, far from being the best social order, will be (if realised) a tyranny, and therefore within classical assumptions destructive of humanity' (TE , 92). That these purposes are inseparable is clear from the premise that Grant places at the heart of Strauss's argument - the classical premise that man finds his fulfilment in the thinking that leads to wisdom and not , by implication , in the 'recognition' available to the citizens of Hegel's 'universal and homogeneous state.' Only the classical account of wisdom as man's highest good shows why the goal of Hegel's state, 'universal happiness ,' is impossible, and , concomitantly, why any striving towards that political goal will end in tyranny. For the classics knew that not all men (indeed, very few) will be philosophers , attaining the highest good for man qua man, and this because of the weakness of human nature, the limitations of man ' s power, and his dependence on chance. Even ' "the actualisation of the best regime,"' Grant quotes Strauss , "'depends on chance"' (TE, 94; quoting from WPP, 131-2), and this regime aims not at universal happiness, but at cultivating virtue in its citizens to the highest degree that human nature allows. Here Grant arrives at Strauss's understanding of modem political philosophy as a theoretical attempt to overcome the role of chance in ' the actualisation of the best social order' by lowering the goal of political action. Strauss sees the universal state of free and equal men , subject alike to the tyranny of unwisdom, as the inevitable terminus of such a program. He agrees with Hegel-Kojeve that philosophy (the love of wisdom) will disappear in such a state, but not because wisdom has become social reality; rather, because wisdom has been removed forever from a social totality that engulfs thought and action through the wedding of technology and ideology . 10 Thus, for Strauss, history does not present us with the dialectical reconciliation of tyranny and wisdom; if anything, it provides increasingly lucid evidence of their eternal dividedness, therein witnessing to the truth known by classical philosophy . When we come to Grant's commentary on the debate, we are not surprised that it takes the form of two sets of inquiries put to Strauss rather than to Kojeve . For Grant's exposition leaves no uncertainty that Strauss and not Kojeve is defining the terms of the discussion . In the foreground of Grant's commentary is the challenge posed by Strauss's program, which is nothing less than the restoration of classical political philosophy. The questions raised by Grant's commentary probe the possibility and the desirability of such a restoration. In doing so they confront directly those unre10 ' Ideology ,' for Strauss , is the popularized amalgam of science and philosophy.

73 The Vanishing of Tradition solved problems of tradition , philosophy, and revelation left by 'Religion and the State.' The first set of inquiries that Grant puts to Strauss concerns his claim 'that the classical political philosophers considered the possibility of a science that issues in the conquest of nature as "'unnatural,' i.e. as destructive of humanity"' (TE , 97). In view of the vast implications of this claim for modem theory and practice, Grant demands a consideration of two questions: the 'quaestio facti,' 'Is this a true statement about the writings of the classical philosophers?' and the 'quaestio juris,' 'If it be true, were they right in so thinking?' (TE, 97) . These two questions address themselves respectively to the possibility and the desirability of restoring classical political philosophy. Grant's quaestio facti presupposes that objective knowledge of past thought is, in principle, available , and that every statement about a past thinker can be tested against objective evidence. Further, it presupposes that true statements about the recorded thought of a past thinker are those that correspond to his conscious intention, to his self-understanding, which can, in principle, be known by us . If correct knowledge of past thought is a necessary condition of our accepting it as true, then Grant's quaestio facti entertains the restoration of past thought as a theoretical possibility. Against the argument of historicism that no contemporary thinker can overcome his historical prejudices (those pre-understandings that form an obscure part of his historical situation) in pursuit of a true understanding of past thought, Grant affirms with Strauss that such an understanding of the past is both possible and necessary to political philosophy today . Philosophy in our age can and must detach itself from the prevailing tradition of political philosophy and the sentiments of the modem public in order to rethink past thought and confront afresh the possibility of its truth . It is such detachment, then, that pre-eminently characterizes the posture of the philosopher in the present. This detachment constitutes his proper relation to the tradition. Grant is fully aware that Strauss' s own •doctrine of hermeneutics' is at stake in his first question to Strauss . 11 Grant himself raises the problem of historical prejudice in speaking of the 'difficulty' we have in 'distinguishing the "quaestio 11 Says Grant in a footnote: 'The question here must be related to Strauss's doctrine of hermeneutics: read the works of any great philosopher with the cenainty that one is not in a position to understand better what the philosopher is saying than he is himself. "I do not know of any historian who grasped fully a fundamental presupposition of a great thinker which the great thinker did not grasp." See What ls Political Philosophy? , 228 . This remark of Strauss is made in answer to Professor G.H. Sabine's criticism of him which includes the following statement: "There are presuppositions implicit in . .. 'the climate of opinion' of any age that no contemporary ever fully grasps ."' (TE , 99-100)

74 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice facti" (did the classical philosophers think thus?) from the "quaestio juris" (were they right to think so?)' (TE, 99). His account of our difficulty reveals the grounds for the credibility of historicism. Says Grant: The fundamental nature of the presuppositions involved for a contemporary commentator in examining the 'quaestio juris' may so dominate the mind as to make difficult the objective scrutiny of the ' quaestio facti.' On the one hand, it has been possible for modern scholars to believe that there could be no cogent reasons for turning one's back on so obvious a good as the conquest of nature, and so to read the Greek political philosophers as if they were a preparation for the greater wisdom of the age of progress . On the other hand, it would be possible to say that Strauss is reading into these references from the Greeks a clarity about their rejection of the conquest of nature which is not present in their writings, and that he does so because of his concern to show a consistent alternative to the modern conception of the science of nature. (TE, 99)

The historicists would say that Strauss's 'concern' arises out of the historical fact of modem science, and that it necessarily and decisively shapes his understanding of the Greeks; it opens him to a real historical possibility of their writings, of which his interpretation is itself the actualization. Grant does not accept the historicist notion that Strauss's prejudices are the source of his singular understanding of the Greeks, but he does admit the possibility that Strauss's claims about Greek science may be exaggerated, and so calls for substantiating evidence. According to Grant, substantiating evidence for Strauss's contention that Greek science was essentially a theoretical pursuit that excluded application to invention would involve some discussion of Greek geometry in relation to Greek philosophy and religion. While Grant admits the inadequacy of Strauss's discussion, he refers us (in a footnote) to Simone Weil's essay Intuitions PreChretiennes, A propos de la doctrine pythagoricienne (Paris 1951), leaving provocatively open the matter of whether she supplies the substantiating evidence for Strauss's claim. There is, however, much in Grant's article to indicate his agreement with Strauss's interpretation, in which case he must regard Strauss as an exceptional thinker who has emancipated himself from the inherited presuppositions of modem thought. It may well be that most political thinkers today are dependent on those presuppositions, but the 'great thinker' can extricate himself from the prevailing tradition to gain a correct understanding of pre-modem political thought. When Grant turns to the quaestio juris, he forsakes the role of arbiter and remains content with raising considerations and questions. The direction of these

75 The Vanishing of Tradition considerations and questions is given in his preliminary remarks: 'My difficulty in comprehending Strauss's position lies not then in giving some meaning to the idea that the dominant leaders of our society are committed to unlimited technological progress but rather in understanding what it meant to the classical political philosophers not to be so committed, and even more in understanding what it would mean not to be so committed in the contemporary world' (TE, IOI). Concerning these queries, Grant raises four points, all of which are consequential for his later thought as well as developing earlier themes in his writings . The first three are gathered from his reading of Strauss . The first point takes up Strauss' s argument that "'the classics"' were "'distrustful of technological change,"' and so demanded "'the strict moral-political supervision of inventions"' (TE, 101). 12 Since, Grant observes, the criteria by which the classics judged inventions are given in their account of virtue and piety, we cannot assess the validity of their judgments on technology without assessing the 'completeness, adequacy and concreteness' of their teaching about virtue and piety. This, then, is a task for political philosophy today . Grant's second point pursues further the problem of technology in Strauss's interpretation of the classics, by presenting the Greek view of 'natural cataclysms,' as Strauss understands it. Grant simply notes Strauss's proposal that '"the classics"' regarded natural cataclysms '"as a manifestation of the beneficence of nature ... or of the primacy of the Good,"' in that their periodic occurrences were believed to prevent " 'an excessive development of technology,"' thereby averting the danger that "'man's inventions might become his masters and his destroyers"' (TE, 102). 13 Grant's third point addresses the dilemma of the philosopher in a society in which the majoritarian ideal is 'unlimited technological progress.' Grant quotes the concluding sentence of Strauss's rejoinder to Kojeve as evidence of Strauss's refusal to endorse philosophical escapism 'into anti-social dreams': 'Nous avons vu que ceux qui manquent de courage pour braver Jes consequences de la tyrannie ... etaient forces de s'evader tout autant des consequences de l'Etre precisement parcequ'ils ne faisaient rien d'autre que parler de l'Etre' (TE, 102). 14 The practical obligations belonging to the 'consequences de l' Etre' lead Grant to his fourth point, an 'argument on the modem side' (TE, 103) concerning the demand of charity that we relieve suffering wherever we find it, a demand which appears to modems to justify technological progress, and to challenge 'the rightness of imposing limits upon it' (TE, 103). Grant places before us (and before 12 Quoting Thoughts on Machiavelli, 298 13 Ibid. , 299 14 Quoting De La Tyrannie, Les essais, 344

76 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Strauss) the representatively modem character of the claim that "'compassion is before thought" ' (quoted from Feuerbach) and draws our attention to its biblical origin (TE, 103). The primacy of charity as a modem claim brings Grant to his second area of questioning, which pertains to 'the relationship between the history of philosophy and Biblical religion' (TE, 103). Here he takes up the twofold inquiry bequeathed by his 1963 essay, the first part of which concerns the meaning of biblical religion for the course of western political philosophy, and the second part of which concerns the authority of biblical revelation over the philosopher. Let us see how both parts of this inquiry are clarified for Grant by the StraussKojeve debate. In Hegel-Kojeve's view, modem liberalism - that is , the religion of freedom and progress - is a secularization of Reformation Protestantism. This secularization is a product of the overcoming of Christian theism by modem political philosophy. As such, it is a complex form of experience in which scientific and philosophical abstractions enter as elements. According to Hegel , the modem experience, which is pervaded by reflexivity, is an advance (of Truth itself) over historically earlier forms of experience (for instance, of early Christianity or Greek philosophy) . In fact, as Kojeve points out, the objective form of the modem experience, the 'universal and homogeneous state,' is the synthesis of the two earlier forms, namely, the universal church and the universal empire, just as the subjective form of the modem experience, the absolute morality of universal recognition, is the synthesis of biblical theistic morality and Greek aristocratic morality. Strauss's reply to Hegel-Kojeve's interpretation of the modem experience is a subtle and complicated one. As we have seen in our last chapter, Strauss agrees with Hegel's interpretation in one respect: he also views the modem 'experience' (the 'experience of history') as permeated by abstractions, being the product of the wide dissemination and popularization of modem scientific and philosophical ideas . At the same time, Strauss denies Hegel's claim that this 'experience' represents an advance in truth over the experience of the Greeks reflected in classical philosophy. For the Greeks, experience is that 'natural awareness,' that grasp of the phenomenal world, which testifies to man's fundamental situation within the whole. It is the eternal whole implied in the 'natural awareness,' the natures of all things in their totality, that Greek philosophy attempts to think. For Strauss, as for Plato and Aristotle, neither the phenomenal world, the givens of experience, nor the eternal things, the objects of contemplation, change or evolve. Being and truth are unchanging and self-identical. They do not dialectically complete themselves through successive 'historical' stages so that the structure and content of experience and thought change from stage to stage. The

77 The Vanishing of Tradition situation of thought is a permanent one; it is not fundamentally trans/ormed by political action or religious 'revelations'. Thus , as Strauss replies to his critics , Voegelin and Kojeve, neither the historical 'triumph of the Biblical orientation' (TE, 104; quoting from WPP, 96) nor the arrival of the 'universal and homogeneous state' renders the classics 'obsolete.' On the contrary, by the standard of classical political philosophy, political philosophy today is pseudo-philosophy, because it starts with an inherited fund of abstractions and tries to attain the 'concrete.' And further, Strauss denies Hegel-Kojeve's claim that the modern experience synthesizes the historically preceding forms of experience. Rather, he argues that 'Hegel's moral-political teaching,' far from synthesizing Greek and biblical morality, is 'founded on Machiavellian or Hobbesian teaching,' which is irreconcilable with Socratic politics because it proceeds from the assumption that '"man as man is thinkable as a being that lacks awareness of sacred restraints or as a being that is guided by nothing but a desire for recognition"' (TE, 104; quoting from WPP, 111). While concurring in Strauss's judgment about Hegel, Grant complains, nevertheless, that Strauss leaves untouched the foremost historical issue as to 'whether the Machiavellian and Hobbesian politics are at least in part a result of the Biblical orientation of western society' (TE, 105). Grant suggests that this issue is central to Strauss's writings, despite his 'remarkable reticence' to confront it directly. As evidence, he draws attention to Strauss's reading of Machiavelli and Hobbes as thinkers who lowered the goal of 'the best social order' in order to guarantee the actualization of that order; who emancipated the passions in the service of overcoming chance. At the heart of their break with the classics, then, was a new conception of nature and virtue. The question for Grant concerns the source of this new conception. Indeed, Grant proposes that the historical appearance of modern science and modern political philosophy forces us to inquire into the fundamental nature of Christianity. It forces us to ask: 'Is Christianity fundamentally oriented to history or to eternity?' And, further, '[what is] the relation of the Biblical doctrine of the Fall to the classical doctrine of the beneficence of nature?' (TE, 107). Grant puts these questions as a challenge to Strauss's writings, arguing that 'the effort to understand Biblical religion is as much a philosophical task as to understand its relation to the pursuit of wisdom' (TE, 107). Understanding biblical religion, according to Grant, includes a consideration of the Bible's claim to be an authority of revelation over all men, philosophers not excepted. Grant charges Strauss with obscurity on this point, but goes on to explain his 'reticence' in a way that suggests his true position. He proposes that Strauss refrains from open criticism of biblical religion out of a conservative conception of society as depending on piety and virtue. (Recall Strauss's thought on the

78 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice strategies of philosophical writing.) Since, he argues, Strauss perceives that ' what remnants of sacred restraints still linger in the minds of men are most often connected with the practice of ... Judaism and Christianity, ' he does not think it wise to pronounce explicitly upon the matter of the Bible' s responsibility for the 'false and therefore dangerous conception of nature among modern philosophers' (TE, 109). Here Grant is correctly presenting Strauss as the classical philosopher who views religion, with its revelatory claims, as of practical and not theoretical truth . Religious belief may regulate practice but it has no authority over thought. Grant is, therefore, recognizing the finality for Strauss of the 'either-or': either revelation or philosophy, tertium non datur . He is also recognizing the inseparability of this either-or from the other either-or developed in Strauss's writings: either historicist thought or non-historicist thought. Let us now consider the extent of Strauss's influence on Grant in the early sixties in the light of Grant's strategic questioning of him. First, the preceding articles suggest Grant's acceptance of two Straussian arguments: the argument that modern political philosophy is unable to understand the modern public as classical political philosophy can, and the argument that the modern public is a tyranny, in the sense that its ruling tradition of universal technological mastery embodies a false unification of theoretical and practical ends. For Grant as for Strauss, the technological universal is the 'historicist' universal, the universal of unlimited freedom beyond the bounds of law and necessity. Grant, therefore, appears to accept both Strauss's interpretation of 'historicism' and his interpretation of classical political philosophy. In the course of his exposition of the Strauss-Kojeve debate, we come to expect from Grant a strong endorsement of Strauss's program for the restoration of classical political philosophy. He does not, however, give that endorsement, perhaps out of humility in the first instance. It is not that Grant refuses the theoretical possibility of such a restoration on historicist grounds. On the contrary, he agrees with Strauss against historicism that we can arrive at objective knowledge of what the classical political philosophers thought - at least the great minds among us can. Grant views the historical task of recovering Greek thought, of mining the documents for their meaning, as a clear imperative for political philosophy today. Rather, it is before the quaestio juris that Grant hesitates: were the Greeks right to reject as 'unnatural' knowledge that is oriented to the control or mastery of nature? Of the reasons for Grant's hesitation, the most weighty is the representatively modern claim that 'compassion is before thought, ' for it points most clearly to the problem of the authority of biblical revelation over the philosopher, because of the biblical source imputed to this claim. Inasmuch as Grant no longer accepts Hegel's

79 The Vanishing of Tradition philosophical reconciliation of philosophy and revelation in the dialectic of history, the question arises as to whether he accepts the finality of Strauss' s eitheror: either philosophy or revelation as the knowledge that is most necessary to man as man. On this matter we cannot clear the atmosphere of ambiguity, for Grant makes his primary concern to exact from Strauss the implications of his 'either-or' for interpreting the history of political philosophy in relation to biblical religion. The issue is whether 'biblical religion' is responsible for the appearance of a 'false' and 'dangerous' conception of nature in the West, and Grant's implied answer is yes. But that Grant's implied 'yes' does not discredit the authority of biblical revelation over western man is still to become apparent. Here he merely points to future developments in his thought by insisting on the fundamental ambiguities in Christianity itself. What precisely these ambiguities are is given in certain key remarks about Christianity and Gnosticism made by Grant in 1961. Reviewing a book by R.M. Grant entitled Gnosticism and Early Christianity, he says: Grant takes the official position of Christianity that the early Church was right to spurn Gnosticism as heretical because its other-worldliness did not allow it to give an adequate answer to the problems of human existence: true Christianity must take world history more seriously than Gnosticism did, and this requires the apocalyptic vision. Grant emphasizes the difference between Gnosticism and Christianity, and is inclined to dismiss any thought that Christianity might have originally had deeply Gnostic elements . This, of course, raises questions which are theological rather than scientific. How much is Christianity a worldly religion and how much an other-worldly religion? Did the official Church, by spurning Gnosticism and its recrudescences through the ages, maintain the true faith, or was something essential to the original Gospel lost? The discussion in the first century illumines our discussion in the twentieth: What value should the religious believer put upon the events of time and history? Whether one is a believer or not, Semitic religion has exerted such an enormous influence that one must understand it if one is to understand the Western world. For those who are believers, the importance of these discoveries is even greater. They must rethink in terms of indubitable evidence what it is in which they believe. (367-8)

It would seem, then, that the tertium quid to overcome Strauss's either-or may reside for Grant in a neglected Christian Gnosticism. This is consistent with Grant's devotion to the writings of Simone Weil, whose theology is profoundly Gnostic, as she herself declares. An interpreter of Plato and a disciple of Christ, Weil illumines for Grant all the most pressing and important relationships of thought: between revelation and philosophy, eternity and time, necessity and

80 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice goodness, charity and contemplation. She, and not Strauss, is the primary theological inspiration of Grant's criticism of historicism, being at once his 'highest authority' for Plato's idea of God 15 and an authoritative exponent of the Greek account of science. If Christianity, in Grant's view, can vindicate itself in the face of Strauss's attack on historicism, the way of this vindication is largely shown him by the thought of Simone Weil. For this reason a brief encounter with Weil's writing follows naturally our consideration of Strauss's influence. Before we engage in this encounter we must, finally, observe where Grant's rejection of the belief in 'history' and its justification in the modem tradition of political thought leaves political philosophers today. Certainly, outside the prevailing discourse of the modem public. Political philosophers today, says Grant in his 1964 article 'Value and Technology,' must stand (with Plato and Aristotle) as 'spectators of all time and all existence,' questioning 'the fundamental assumption of our civilisation,' namely, 'that a science issuing in the masterful control of nature serves good' (21). At least, that is their theoretical responsibility. As practical men they must, in Strauss's words, ' braver !es consequences de la tyrannie'; they must, says Grant, 'make the best of the world that proceeds from that assumption' (21), attempting to 'incarnate meaning in those very structures which ... inhibit or even negate its very possibility' (26). SIMONE WEIL'S THEOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON NATURE , JUSTICE, AND PROVIDENCE

Simone Weil's reading of Plato is, in important respects, far removed from Strauss's. For Weil, Plato is pre-eminently a theologian who draws his inspiration from the mystical and revelatory traditions of ancient Greece, from Orphism, the Mysteries of Eleusis, and, above all, the Pythagorean tradition, which is ' the mother of Greek civilisation. ' And the unifying insight of these 'secret Greek traditions,' proposes Weil in an essay collected in Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks (hereafter abbreviated IC), 16 is a religious insight concerning 'the wretchedness of man, the distance and transcendence of God' (IC, 74), and the mediation of this distance. Indeed, says Weil, this is the seminal tradition for 'all Greek civilisation,' the whole of which 'is a search for bridges to relate human misery and divine perfection. Their art, ... their poetry, their philosophy, the sciences which they invented (geometry, astronomy, mechanics, 15 Conversation, November 1978 16 Ed. and trans. E.C. Geissbuhler (Boston: Beacon Press 1958), from La Source Grecque (Librairie Gallimard 1952), and Les Intuitions pre-chretiennes (Les Editions de la Colombe 1951). For convenience of reference, all quotations are from the English edition .

81 The Vanishing of Tradition physics, biology) are nothing but bridges,' nothing but embodiments of mediation (IC, 75). Plato's writings, too, are unified by the mystical search for mediation - of cosmic necessity and divine goodness. The compelling problem for Plato, as for his Stoic and Pythagorean ancestors, is amor fati, the question of Grant's later writings. And Plato's answer to this problem, upon which, in Weil's view , the rest of his thought hinges, is his understanding of divine justice as one with divine love. Plato's answer, according to Weil, anticipates the cross of Christ; it calls forth the divine passion. For Plato in the Republic, the Gorgias, and especially the Phaedo 11 conceives divine justice as the divine revelation of truth in the moment of man's nakedness and death: the judgment of God which is also the deliverance of man. And this justice, says Weil, requires 'that during this life one be naked and dead' (IC, 83). But nakedness and death lie outside the possibilities of human nature: they must, therefore, be given supernaturally, they must be revealed. And the form of this revelation, according to the logic of Plato's argument from perfection, must be 'the suffering of the perfectly just man' (IC, 143). The 'suffering of the perfectly just man,' then, is one aspect of divine justice in Plato. But according to Weil, there is a prior aspect, on which the efficaciousness of the divine model depends. The work of supernatural grace, says Weil, presupposes the presence of love in the soul: 'love is the disposition of the soul to which grace is given, which alone is able to receive grace, love and none other than love' (IC, 88). As the disposition of the soul that receives grace, love is not merely a passive potency. Rather it is already awakened, called forth, brought into action by 'the beauty of the world.' Thus, the beauty of the world is the prior mediation of the divine in Plato. For Weil, salvation by the beauty of the world is the heart of the Greek understanding of divine providence as we have inherited it in the thought of Plato, the Pythagoreans, and the Greek Stoics. Let us see how Weil draws together this theme from her Greek sources. Says Weil in her essay 'God's Quest for Man': 'The only beauty which can be an object of love for itself, which can be its own object, is the divine beauty' (IC, 3). In 'God in Plato,' Weil offers as the fundamental meaning of Plato's assertion that "'nothing imperfect is the measure of anything"' (Republic 6. 504a), or that "'God is the measure of all things"' (laws 4. 716c), the following: 'Love, oriented toward itself, as object that is to say, perfection, makes contact with the only absolutely real reality' (IC, 88). Taken together, these insights lead us to conclude that if the beauty of the world is truly lovable, it must be one with divine perfection (as object) and divine love (as subject). 17 Rep. 2.360c, 367b; Gorgias 523a; Phaedo 64a-67d

82 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Indeed, this is what Weil sees Plato saying in the Timaeus when he describes the world as 'the most beautiful of works,' and God as 'the most perfect of causes' (Timaeus 28c). In her essay 'Divine Love in Creation,' Weil affirms Plato's analogy between the world and the work of art, for she says: 'One can never find enough visible finality in the world to prove that it is analogous to an object made with a view to a certain end,' whereas 'the analogy between the world and the work of art has its experimental verification in the very feeling itself of the beauty of the world' (IC, 90). On this analogy, Weil tells us: 'It is not only the act of creation but Providence itself which is found to be assimilated in the artistic inspiration' (IC, 90). By this Weil means that ' in the world, as in the work of art, there is completion without any imaginable end' (IC, 90) . On the one hand, 'the end is nothing but the very arrangement, the assembling itself of the means employed,' while on the other, 'the end is completely transcendent ... is God Himself' (IC, 90). God, as the Incarnate Logos - the 'Soul of the World' in Plato's language - is at once the transcendent end and the immanent completion of creation . God in the Second Person, the first begotten Son, is Beauty itself, Love itself, manifest in the order of the universe. Weil finds in Plato's Timaeus not only an account of the divine Trinity and the incarnation but also and chiefly an account of the divine passion. For, she argues, God's creation and providential ordering of the world as understood by Plato is the passion. It is not, says Weil, in 'the Pythagorean Doctrine,' that God, in creating the world, 'has produced something outside Himself, but that He has withdrawn Himself, permitting a part of being to be other than God' (IC, 193). The divine renunciation, as thought by Plato and by the Pythagoreans before him, is the divine act of limiting, of setting limits, which bounds the divine infinity. God, for Plato and the Pythagoreans, is not the unlimited but 'that which limits,' which brings into being necessity, order, limit, justice. In establishing limit by the act of renunciation, of abdication, God calls forth the perfect mediation: 'the union of that which limits [God] and that which is limitless [matter]' (IC, 168). The perfect mediator is the Son of God, is Beauty itself, Love itself, which has two faces: on the side of matter it has the face of necessity , of inexorable and pitiless law; on the 'other side,' it has the face of absolute Good. The 'infinite distance' between necessity and the Good is spanned by the Good itself in the Person of the Incarnate Son. This is the cosmic suffering of the Mediator: 'the whole universe ... has been created as the Cross of Christ' (IC, 198). It is the crucified Christ that Weil recognizes in Plato's description in the Timaeus (47e) of the relation of mind to necessity in creation: 'For the creation of this world took place by a combination composed partly of necessity and partly of mind. But the mind reigns over necessity by persuasion. Mind persuades

83 The Vanishing of Tradition necessity to move the greater part of created things toward improvement. It is in this manner, according to this law, by means of a necessity vanquished by wise persuasion, it is thus that from the beginning this universe was created' (IC, 96). Mind does not rule the 'blind mechanism of necessity' by force, by constraint; for necessity is force, is constraint. Rather, mind rules by 'the wise persuasion of love,' which conquers necessity by suffering it. And, says Weil, in concluding her reflections on divine love in creation, 'this submission without constraint on the part of necessity to loving wisdom is beauty' (IC, 104). To understand divine providence as love, as justice, is for Weil to understand it as mediation: mediation that unites contrary things without mingling or confusion. Weil views Greek science erected on Greek mathematics as an inspired search for an adequate concept of divine mediation. The apex of this search, according to Weil, is the Pythagorean concept of mean proportion, conceived geometrically. It is of geometrical proportion 18 that Plato speaks in the Timaeus (3lc) when he remarks: 'The most beautiful of bonds is that which brings perfect unity to itself and the parts linked' (IC, 157). To this Weil adds: 'This condition is truly realised when not only the first term but also the bond itself is ... God' (IC, 160). Thus it is, says Weil, that 'the Christ recognised Himself [not only] as Isaiah's man of sorrows, and the Messiah of all the prophets of Israel, ... [but] also as being that mean proportion of which the Greeks had for centuries been thinking so intensely' (IC, 161). As the 'mean proportion,' Christ is the 'unity of incommensurables'; he is 'the unique principle of harmony' between creator and creation, God and man 19 (IC, 176). The divine, holds Weil, is essentially mediation; God mediates all those relationships subsumed by the word friendship: that is, between himself and himself (the Trinity), between himself and man (Incarnation), between man and man (justice, charity) and between himself and 'inert matter' (necessity, beauty). From the viewpoint of mankind, these mediations form a hierarchy of participation in divine friendship. The lowest rung of the hierarchy is the mediation of necessity. For all men, as finite beings, are subject to necessity (to limit), and all men are sensible of the beauty of the world. The beauty of the world, says Weil, is a divine 'snare for the soul' which takes the soul captive against its will. Furthermore, there is embedded in the fabric of necessity a natural justice, between man and man (an equality of need) and between man and nature (an equilibrium of forces that makes possible organization, work, technology). All men participate in natural justice, but not all men (the 'elected' as opposed to the 18 For instance, the mathematical equation 1/3 = 3/9 19 The statement of proportion is: God the Father God the Son God the Son creation, man

84 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice 'called' ) participate in 'supernatural' justice, 'supernatural' friendship . To participate in supernatural justice is to pass over from the fulness of joy, which is the feeling of beauty, to the fulness of sorrow, which is the love of beauty, in the sense of the full consent to necessity, to fate (amor fati) . Weil regards amor fati as the fundamental structure of virtue in 'the Greek tradition,' the tradition of Homeric epic, Aeschylean tragedy, pre-Socratic philosophy, Socrates, and Plato. It is the application of geometry in 'the apprenticeship of virtue.' For virtue is free acceptance of the limits of one 's power enforced by chance (that is, by necessity , fate, destiny). The virtuous man knows the world as an 'empire of might,' an 'equilibrium of inequal power' ruled by chance, to which the soul is subject (IC, 34). He knows that all temporal goods of the soul fall under the vicissitudes of blind necessity , and yet cherishes these frail and relative goods in the light of the goodness of the whole , in the light of that transcendent good which is time itself (the Incarnate Logos). It is by grace that the virtuous man desires or loves the transcendent good, and this desire or love is the very presence of God in the soul, limiting the jurisdiction of force, of the finite passions. The love of God in the ' supernatural' or 'uncreated' part of the soul illumines the intellect so that it can know the strictest necessity as divine beauty. Weil calls this infinite desire or love of the soul 'attention,' and it is to attention she refers when she says: 'the intelligence functions only in joy' (IC, 123). That is, only within the desire for Good itself, which is identical with its possession (with joy), does the intelligence contact reality rather than illusion. True knowing is loving contemplation, is adoration of the Good in what is illumined by it. Loving contemplation is assimilation to God through the mediation of the Logos who, on different planes, is necessity, beauty, and love. It is knowledge of necessity (science in its Greek sense) wedded to consent to necessity (love), a consent that imitates cosmic necessity as the pure obedience of matter to God. Just as cosmic necessity is the cross of Christ, the work of God's renunciation in creating the universe , so it is our cross on which , by participation in the crucified Christ, we surrender our wills, our individual selfhood . Consent to necessity does not, therefore , express our freedom of choice (that is, our free will), but rather freedom beyond choice and will - the freedom of invariable obedience to the will of God in creating the world. Perfect consent to necessity is perfect justice, and perfect justice belongs to Christ alone . Hence, ' our consent can only be a reflection of that of Christ' (IC, 195). 20 20 According to Weil, Plato's argument from perfection for the Incarnation runs as follows: 'Just (or righteous) men are simply very close to justice itself, they have a large share of it. But in order that man "in no way differs from justice itself, " should be the same in all respects as justice, "divine justice, from beyond the skies, must descend upon earth" ' (IC , 140)

85 The Vanishing of Tradition From the love of God which takes the fonn of consent to necessity, amor fati, flows love of the neighbour. For to consent to necessity is to recognize the equality of all men in their subjection to it, in their suffering, and in their openness to Good beyond necessity, in their capacity for attention. To consent to necessity is first of all to respect the universality of human suffering. Says Weil in her commentary on the Iliad: 'Whoever does not know just how far necessity and a fickle fortune hold the human soul under their domination cannot treat as his equals; nor love as himself, those whom chance has separated from him by an abyss' (IC, 53). But human beings are equal in their suffering only because they are equal in two prior respects, in their 'longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good' and in 'the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it. ' 21 To recognize the link that attaches every man to the Good is to incur the obligation of treating each human being as something 'sacred,' worthy of love. There is no love for the neighbour, however, which neglects the neighbour's suffering, his bondage to 'the misery of need.' For to care for the earthly needs of the soul and of the body is to honour indirectly that part of the neighbour's soul that transcends this world in its adherence to the Good. Consent to necessity is not, then, in conflict with compassion. On the contrary, Weil argues, perfect consent to necessity, which is perfect obedience to the Good, expresses itself in the universal indifference of compassion, which is 'the visible presence of God here below, ' 22 reuniting creature and creator. It is this unity of obedience and compassion in Weil's life and writings that shines through in Grant's testimony: 'She has shown me what it is to hold Christ and Plato together. She has shown me how sanctity and philosophy can be at one. ' 23

21 From 'Selected Pensees,' in Gateway to God, ed. and trans. David Raper (London: Collins 1974), 39 22 'Selected Pensees,' 48 23 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 65

5

The Tragic Fate of Modem Man: History as a Religious Problem

DIVINE JUSTICE AND THE IDEA OF FATE

Over Grant's writings of the later sixties, as we have said, is cast the shadow of 'gorgon's face. ' The Vietnam war had become daily a cause of public outrage and dissent. Grant's writings are his own prophetic dissent, his meditation on the 'meaning of the English-speaking world's part' in the war (TE, 11). The locus of this meaning for Grant is the idea of technological necessity: the necessity that binds technological freedom to imperialism and war. Technological necessity is at once an external and an internal necessity: it is a law of relation between external events and actions, but also and more important, it is a law of relation between thought and action and between desire and thought. It is a necessity to which our desiring and our thinking as well as our acting is subject. 'As the classical philosophers said,' Grant reminds us in 1969, 'man cannot help but imitate in action his vision of the nature of things' (TE, 72). It is Leo Strauss who, above all, opens up for Grant in the early sixties the inner logic of technological freedom, the vision to which modem practice conforms, bringing upon this vision the whole weight of the classics' judgment. Yet, while Strauss speaks of necessity when he speaks of the coherent logic of historicism, its inner law, he does not speak, as Grant does, about the technological/ate of modem man, about the tragedy of this fate, and the necessity of loving it. When Grant speaks of these things, he speaks out of a vision of divine justice that is fulfilled in the crucified Christ. He speaks out of faith in the transcendent Good, which, though separated by an infinite distance from the rule of necessity in the world, spans the gulf in the infinite act of love. He speaks out of the apprehension that perfect justice and perfect joy are united in the Divine, even as their union lies beyond his thinking.

87 The Tragic Fate of Modern Man It is the revelation of divine justice in Plato and the Gospels, in which Simone Weil too participates, that presses Grant (or, perhaps, releases him) to speak of these things about which Leo Strauss is free (or, perhaps, constrained) to keep silent. From this revelation Grant has the assurance that justice is not only that by which we are measured (the eternal and unchanging law), but also that by which we are redeemed and sanctified (the power of suffering love) . He is given to know that divine justice touches us not only in the necessity of the world but in the forceless yet irresistible persuasion of divine grace. The redemptive pole of divine justice is not something to which Grant comes only late in his thinking; indeed, it is present in his thought from the beginning. In the fifties Grant's reflections on justice as the relation of freedom , law, and necessity led him to the foot of the cross, to Christ crucified. In this decade as in the next the problem of justice is ultimately for Grant the religious problem of amor fati: how can we love fate? Weil's supernatural solution to the problem we already know: namely, the love of Christ, the work of grace in the soul. It is the theological dimension of Grant' s thinking about justice that charges it with the qualities of lyricism, drama, and compassion. The prevailing force of these qualities in Grant's later writings witnesses to their religious orientation. These writings lack the systematic and programmatic character of Strauss' s work even though they engage in the same activities of philosophical criticism and interpretation. Increasingly, Grant disowns the title of political philosopher, in part out of a sense of modesty , an awareness of his own intellectual limitations. But there is more - a philosophical uncertainty or ambiguity on the one hand, and on the other a religious faith that removes Grant from Strauss's response to the crisis of historicism. MODERNITY AS A 'UNIFIED FATE'

What then are the themes out of which are woven Grant's understanding of modernity as a unified fate? The first is the unity of the historicist and the technological universal in modern man; that is, the unity of modem man ' s self-understanding as creative freedom and his practical striving to overcome necessity and chance. With the detailed argument of Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society Grant augments his Straussian understanding of the reciprocity of thought and practice that leads to the universal and homogeneous state . The second theme is an instance of the first, while having an independent thrust. It explores the irony of Canada's national-political existence in the North American empire. Grant uncovers the ambiguity at the heart of Canada's political traditions, which is the nemesis of her aspirations to nationhood, to unique political

88 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice being. It is through the particular details of Canada's tragedy that Grant brings us to understand history as fate. This understanding refocuses the compelling problem of the relationship between necessity and the good. The third theme enlarges the horizon of the term 'fate' to embrace that coming to be which we call western civilization. Grant seeks to understand western fate in terms of the unfolding in interpenetration of two 'primals': philosophy and revelation. He follows the thread of civilizational meaning through European Christendom, the Renaissance, and the Reformation, to the originating events of North America, as a form of spiritual ascesis, a meditation on our being as North Americans, on the leading edge of the modern. Grant's last theme, which is the completion of the preceding three, addresses the dilemma of thought within the modern fate. It reflects on the nature and the possibility of thought today in the light of its dependencies and necessary lacunae. Grant's assertion of dependence of thought on 'remembering' and 'loving' casts its dilemma as a moral and religious one, inseparable from that of faith, in the absence of historical grounds for hope. The persisting issue of 'whither political philosophy?' is enveloped in a heightened urgency and a heightened obscurity . Our exposition of these themes will rely primarily on the later essays of Technology and Empire (which include 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism,' 1967, pp. 67-78; 'The University Curriculum,' 1967-8, pp. 111-33; 'In Defence of North America,' 1968, pp. 13-40; and 'A Platitude,' 1968-9, pp. 135-43), in conjunction with Grant's 1965 book, lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism .

The historicist and the technological universal Grant's understanding of the unity of historicism and technology in the modern age is perfectly expressed in those lines about North American imperialism already quoted from his 1967 article 'Canadian Fate and Imperialism .' 'Imperialism, like war, is coeval with human existence. But the increasingly externalised view of human life which is the very nature of the progressive spirit has given and will continue to give an enormous impetus to imperialism . .. the dominant tendency of the western world has been to divide history from nature and to consider history as dynamic and nature controllable as externality' (TE, 72). The imperialism of the sixties is for Grant merely a further phase of the universalizing movement of technology that was well under way a century earlier. In the same article, he describes nineteenth-century imperialism as 'modern man (man as Hobbes has said he is) realising his potentialities' (TE, 69). Hobbesian man, as we know from 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' is 'a being that lacks awareness of sacred restraints' (TE, 104) - Strauss's account, which Grant accepts.

89 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man Grant takes over Strauss's interpretation of the history of modem political philosophy from Hobbes to Rousseau, or better, from Machiavelli to Hegel. 1 At the heart of this history, as Strauss understands it, is the acceptance of the scientific account of nature as pure contingency and arbitrariness. The progression of political thought from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is the progressive extension of the non-teleological view of nature to include human nature, to which earlier thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke had still clung as something permanently given. The doctrine of history that emerges in the eighteenth century is, as we already know, an attempt to restore a transcendent purpose to human thought and action in the absence of metaphysical givens, that is, in the absence of natural law. But the only purpose, the only good, that remains to man as essentially his is freedom - the self-legislation of the autonomous individual - which is also the condition and the goal of the true political order. A major portion of Grant's thought in the second half of the sixties is given over to exploring the totalistic and nihilistic directions of the modem principle of freedom, which is, at one and the same time, the historicist and the technological universal. In 1968 he will offer as platitudinous the observation that 'technique is ourselves': '[it] comes forth from and is sustained in our vision of ourselves as creative freedom, making ourselves, and conquering the chances of an indifferent world' (TE, 137). It is the loss of purpose in 'the nature of things' (TE, 128) that bestows the awful burden of creative autonomy on human freedom. From 1964 onward Grant examines the two horns of the dilemma of autonomous freedom: on the one hand, existential despair, and on the other, immersion in the objectified world. In his 1964 article, 'Value and Technology,' Grant argues that when man becomes a 'subject,' that is, a sovereign self which is the source of its own order, then he succumbs to the arbitrariness and contingency of his existence. He lives his freedom outside of a common moral world, which is present only where men recognize and accept their dependence on certain non-objectifiable conditions. His self-understanding as absolute freedom is a 'pseudo-myth,' a false universal - false because it invalidates man's allegiance to particular goods, such as friendship, 'natural' institutions like the family, society 'as a natural entity,' and its distinctive traditions. Sovereignty, self-determination, as the element in which man moves, dissolves the meaning, the weightiness, the claim of all otherness. Grant professes adherence on at least two occasions to Strauss's theory of the two waves of modernity (which Strauss later develops into a theory of three waves) . See 'Value and Technology' (1964), 21 ; and Lament/or a Nation (1965), 67.

90 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice At the same time, man as 'subject' encounters only and everywhere otherness - as recalcitrance, as external necessity to be overcome through manipulation and control. Modem man no longer participates in the meaning of otherness, of the world, by suffering it; rather, he bestows meaning on a meaningless otherness by subjecting it to the determination of his will. Technique is just this determination of the other as object by the human subject. 2 It is, therefore, a mode of being and of knowing as well as of acting. For this reason, Grant describes technology as the faith (the religion) and the morality of modem man. 3 In the later sixties Grant investigates this relation of subject and object in terms of the 'fact-value' distinction , which characterizes the modem in all its aspects. This analysis illuminates most fully the monism of the technological universal. According to Grant, our 'common world' is increasingly a totality of 'facts,' that is, of abstracted objects, scientifically conceived. In so far as 'man cannot help but imitate in action his vision of the nature of things,' the very objectivity of the world has become the standard for our practice. The only universally recognized goal for action in modem society is mastery - determining and controlling the object. In Grant's view, the modem notion of 'fact' is not silent about what is good: it intends mastery as the only good . All other perceived goals lack the 'objectivity' of mastery and, therefore, cannot establish themselves universally . They are, by contrast, subjective dependent upon the variable and inconsistent judgments of men. Modem man calls these subjective goods, or private preferences, 'values. ' Says Grant in his 1968 article 'In Defence of North America,' 'values' are what men will in the ' spontaneity of freedom' when they have conquered 'the spontaneity of nature' (TE, 31). They are not natural or 'given' goods, which, as given, make a universal claim on men's wills. Rather, they are particular creations of arbitrary wills of individuals and communities. The very pluralism or manifoldness of values testifies to their lack of universality. The single universal for today's practice is absolute freedom: 'an Archimedean freedom outside nature' (TE , 32), which has for its only substantive content in its political expression 'the actualising of freedom for all men ' (TE , 33) . It would seem that the goal of political action in the modem world is just what Strauss and Kojeve agree it is: 'the building of the universal and homogeneous state - the society in which all men are free and equal and increasingly able to realize their 2 Thus Grant agrees with Ellul that while the machine, designed solely to use or harness natural necessities, is exclusively technique, is 'pure technique,' technique is not synonymous with the machine, but is more universal, more encompassing, in scope. (See The Technological Society , trans. John Wilkinson [New York: Knopf 1964], 3-7.) 3 E.g., Lament for a Nation, ix, 55--6, 58 , 73; 'The University Curriculum' in TE , 113, I 19ff.; ' In Defence of North America' in TE, 32, 35, 40.

91 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man concrete individuality' (TE, 33). In the later sixties Grant unequivocally endorses Strauss's claim that this society will be a tyranny: the pursuit of universal freedom requires it. For, as Strauss has seen, the attainment of universal freedom presupposes the rigorous overcoming of chance , especially as it prevails in human relationships; it presupposes the total domination of human and nonhuman nature. In other words, absolute freedom and absolute detenninism call forth each other. This becomes for Grant the 'tightening circle' of technological progress . Following Ellul, he perceives technology to be an ever-expanding and everintensifying web of necessity in which nature, including human nature, is absorbed. He summarizes the scope of technological necessity with respect to man's being in this negative statement: It may perhaps be said negatively that what has been absent for us is the affinnation of a possible apprehension of the world beyond that as a field of objects considered as pragmata - an apprehension present not only in its height as 'theory' but as the undergirding of our loves and friendships , of our arts and reverences, and indeed as the setting for our dealing with the objects of the human and non-human world . Perhaps we are lacking the recognition that our response to the whole should not most deeply be that of doing , nor even of terror and anguish , but that of wondering or marvelling at what it is, being amazed or astonished by it , or perhaps best, in a discarded English usage, admiring it; and that such a stance , as beyond all bargains and conveniences, is the only source from which purposes may be manifest to us for our necessary calculating. (TE, 35; my italics)

The loss of this stance, that Grant calls 'contemplative,' is the loss of all human pursuits that transcend the technological. Thus Grant can say, along with Ellul, that technology is our science, our morality, and our religion.4 It is our way of detennining what is as well as what is to be done. 5 As a method or procedure of knowing and doing, it separates modem men from the traditional human excellences, from contemplation and charity (TE, 121, 128). In the technological/historicist universal , universality is separated from 'the whole,' from man's highest good, and made dependent upon human willing. History as fate : the case of North America A crucial insight of Ellul's into the homogenizing and universalizing power of 'technique,' which Grant accepts, is that technique tends to reproduce in every milieu it penetrates specific features of those fortuitous circumstances that sur4 See Lament for a Nation , ix, 55-6, 58; 'Comments on the Great Society' (1967), 73; 'The University Curriculum' in TE, I 13, 120-3; ' In Defence of North America' in TE, 32, 35, 40. 5 See The Technological Society, the sections entitled 'Historical Development,' 23-60, 'Characteristics of Modem Technique,' 79-147.

92 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice rounded its original development. Says Ellul, 'It reproduces those features which it is possible and necessary to reproduce'; 'social plasticity and a clear technical consciousness are the general terms which it forcibly imposes in every area of the world. ' 6 Now the circumstances surrounding the original development of technology 7 to which Ellul is referring are those of English-speaking peoples in the nineteenth century, of which 'social plasticity' and 'a clear technical consciousness' 8 are aspects. However, it is clear from Ellul' s sketch of the modem history of technique (that is, from the fifteenth century) that those determining conditions of technological development are present to a lesser degree in earlier times - for instance, in seventeenth-century England under the sway of Puritanism. Grant would have it that way. For he considers Reformed Calvinism, especially in its appropriation by the English Puritans, to be the hotbed of modernity: of modem freedom, equality, and the will to technology . We cannot understand the fate of this continent, Grant argues in 1967, unless we understand the spiritual ' primal' from which it springs; and this 'primal' is the English Protestantism of the seventeenth century which wedded Calvinism to the secular spirit of the Renaissance , exemplified 'in the new physical science whose origins we identify with Galileo, and in the new moral science of Machiavelli ' (TE, 65). It is this amalgam of Calvinism and Renaissance secularism that has shaped the destiny of North America by being its indigenous tradition. In so far as North America's indigenous tradition embodies the necessary conditions of technological development, Grant is justified in claiming that our history is enveloped by technology in an unprecedented and unique way. We recall his early remark (in Philosophy in the Mass Age) that ' North America is the only society that has no history of its own before the age of progress. ' 9 That all English-speaking North Americans share the same fate follows in the first instance from the unity of their spiritual beginnings, in a 'non-Mediterranean Europeanness ' which ' was itself a break in Europe' (TE, 19). We have just suggested that, for Grant, the key to understanding this 'non-Mediterranean Europeanness' lies in the special openness of Calvinist Protestantism to the new The Technological Society, 126. Ellul continues: ' It dissociates the sociological fonns , destroys the moral framework, desacralizes man and things , explodes social and religious taboos, and reduces the body social to a collection of individuals.' 7 The 'development of technology' includes for Ellul not merely the proliferation and complexification of ' technique' but a transfonned relation of technique to society. See The Technological Society, 61-79. 8 Ellul subsumes under this phrase the following: 'a precise view of technical possibilities, the will to attain certain ends, application in all areas, and adherence of the whole of society to a conspicuous technical objective.' (The Technological Society, 52) 9 This remark is repeated in his 1968 essay 'In Defence of North America,' TE, 17.

6

93 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man physical and moral sciences of the Renaissance. This affinity is the central historical question of Grant's 1968 article 'In Defence of North America. ' 10 He clarifies the form of the question: it concerns the openness of Reformed Protestantism to the new science and philosophy and not the openness of the new scientists and philosophers to Protestant Christianity. 11 Grant asks, indeed, why it was that 'Protestant theologians ... espoused so immediately the Baconian account of science,' and why Protestants 'over the centuries' have found 'so congenial' the 'political and epistemological ideas' of John Locke, a philosopher who 'may well be interpreted as contemptuous of Christian revelation and even of theism itself' (TE, 22). Grant wonders at Locke's triumph among Christians: 'that by the marvellous caution and indirectness of his rhetoric and by some changes of emphasis at the political level, he could make Hobbes's view of nature acceptable to a still pious bourgeoisie' (TE, 22). In this article Grant mentions three aspects of the relation between Protestant theology and the emerging physical and moral sciences. First is the mutual attack of theologians and scientists on the mediaeval teleological doctrine of nature with its substantial forms . Reminiscent of his early argument in 'Two Theological Languages,' Grant proposes that the Protestant rejection of natural theology (which argued final purpose from the world) stemmed from a desire to uphold 'the surd mystery of evil' and 'the only true illumination of that mystery' by 'the crucifixion apprehended in faith as the divine humiliation' (TE, 20-21). 12 He pro10 In criticism of the Weberian and Marxist lines of historical interpretation, Grant contends that 'more fundamental than the practical connections between capitalism, the parliamentary party and Protestantism, lies the fact that the refugee Protestant theologians from the continent espoused so immediately the Baconian account of science and worked to make it influential in England.' (TE, 20) 11 Grant is perfectly clear about the direction of influence: 'It was not that the new philosophers were held by the truth of Christianity. Protestantism was merely a presence in the public world they inhabited which was more compatible with their espousings than Catholicism. Rather the connection was from the side of the Protestants who found something acceptable in the new ideas so that often they were the instruments for these ideas in the world, almost without knowing the results for their faith . At the least, Calvinist Christianity did not provide a public brake upon the dissemination of the new ideas as did Catholicism and even sometimes Anglicanism.' (TE, 22) 12 Here, significantly, Grant does not refer us to Calvin but to Luther, quoting the following of Luther's Theses from 1518: 'Thesis 19. He is not worthy to be called a theologian who sees the invisible things of God as understood through the things that are made. (Romans 1, 20) Thesis 20. But only he who understands the visible and further things of God through the sufferings and the Cross. Thesis 21. The theologian of glory says that evil is good and good evil; the theologian of the Cross says that the thing is as ii is' (Luther, Werke [Weimar edition], 1, 354) . Adds Grant: 'It is surely possible to see the relation of such a theological statement to later German philosophy .' (TE, 21)

94 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice ceeds from this negative agreement of theologians and scientists to the positive proclivity of ·Calvinism for 'empiricism and utilitarianism,' quoting Troeltsch's account: 13 Calvinism, with its abolition of the absolute goodness and rationality of the Divine activity into mere separate will-acts, connected by no inner necessity and no metaphysical unity of substance, essentially tends to the emphasising of the individual and empirical, the renunciation of the conceptions of absolute causality and unity, the practically free and utilitarian individual judgment of all things. The influence of this spirit is quite unmistakably the most important cause of the empirical and positivist tendencies of the AngloSaxon spirit, which today find themselves in it as compatible with strong religious feeling, ethical discipline and keen intellectuality as they formerly did in Calvinism itself. (TE, 21 ; my italics)

We cannot help but notice the resemblance between Troeltsch's interpretation of the Calvinist doctrine of divine sovereignty and Grant' s interpretation in the fifties of the biblical understanding of freedom and history , that is, of creation and providence. Grant's third point, which follows from the second, addresses directly the theological conception of freedom in Calvinism. At its core, he argues, is 'the soul's ambiguous encounter' with the 'transcendent (and therefore elusive) will of God,' a will which, as transcendent, 'had to be sought and served not through our contemplations but directly through our practice' (TE, 23). From this conception of human freedom as solitary and uncertain obedience to the divine will flows 'the responsibility which could find no rest,' the 'unappeasable responsibility' for which the 'external world [including our bodies] was unimportant and indeterminate stuff' (TE, 23). The very radicality of this freedom coram Deo brought forth those same 'uncontemplative and unflinching wills' (TE, 25) that found expression in the driving practicality of science. It is, above all, these wills that, in Grant's view, have sustained the technological project that is modem life. If all English-speaking North Americans are united in one spiritual primal, then all North Americans (whether English, French, or Spanish) are united in one 'practical primal,' that of crossing the ocean and conquering the new land. In leaving behind 'the old and the settled,' North Americans also left behind 'autochthonous' roots (TE, 17), the continuous belonging to the land throughout the remembered past. All North American communities, Grant claims, possess 'some consciousness of making the land our own' - an appropriation which, 13 Quoting E. Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 162-3

95 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man owing to 'the very intractability, immensity , and extremes of the new land,' was necessarily 'a battle of subjugation' (TE, 17). If uprootedness (what Ellul calls ' plasticity') is an essential condition of technological development, then that condition is present to North Americans as their primal. If the will to mastery is the animating power of technological conquest (of what Ellul calls ' a clear technical consciousness'), then, as Grant says, 'our wills were burnished in that battle with the land' (TE, 18). 'Homelessness,' he observes, is at the core ofour being as North Americans; it is the measure of our distance from the autochthonous, from 'living undivided from one's own earth' (TE , 18). 'There can be nothing immemorial for us,' says Grant, 'except the environment as object' (TE, 17). In recalling the primals of North American life , we understand the immediacy of our faith in technological reconciliation. A single thread connects our initial response to biblical revelation , that of governing ourselves beyond natural rhythms, with our technological self-determining in the present. It ties together our original practical assurance of salvation and the persisting hope in technological liberation, in the building of 'the rationalised kingdom of man ' (TE, 25), unifying the challenge of the environment through our successive forms of conquest. This single thread of historical experience is the unified fate of North Americans as modem men. It is in the light of this fate that the irony of Canada's political being, of her nationhood, becomes apparent to Grant. The irony is that Canada's political realization required the consolidation of certain political traditions which, for the most part, lay outside of her spiritual primal. These traditions, as Grant has always known, 14 are conservative: reverence for the past, a sense of the common good and the priority of public order over individual freedom . They are the traditions which North Americans who remained loyal to Britain believed were being denied in the American Revolution . In keeping faith with these traditions through their enduring allegiance to Britain, English-speaking North Americans were blind to the ambiguity at the heart of their inheritance. For in their ' Britishness,' Loyalists inherited not only Hooker and Swift but Locke and Adam Smith; and the latter were the greater part of their inheritance which, moreover, they shared with their dissenting American brothers. It is true, Grant admits in Lament for a Nation (l 965), that some Loyalists saw their opposition to the revolution as a rejection of Lockean liberalism in favour of Hooker's conservatism (p. 63). However, the influential majority, 'the educated among the Loyalists,' he emphasizes in 1967, ' were that extraordinary concoction, straight Locke with a dash of Anglicanism' (TE, 68) . Most American Tories 14 Recall 'Have We a Canadian Nation?' and The Empire: Yes or No?

96 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice and early Canadian settlers differed from their revolutionary neighbours, not in their refusal of liberalism, for they were, on the whole, Lockean liberals. If anything, they refused a liberalism that mixed Locke 'with elements of Rousseau' (TE, 68). They belonged to what Strauss calls the first wave of liberal modernity, and looked with suspicion on the crest of the second wave, which would rise to Hegel's 'universal and homogeneous state. ' 15 Canadian conservatism, Grant suggests in his Lament, amounted to what British conservatism arrived at in the writings of Edmund Burke: namely 'an appeal to an ill-defined past' and a 'greater sense of order and restraint' (70): traditionalism and propriety without a principled understanding of the public good . Not that this was a negligible achievement in the face of the 'emancipation of the passions' that proceeded from the American 'ethic of freedom.' In addition, there were some vestigial traces of the public good at work, detectable, for instance, in the more orderly opening up of the west by Canadians as compared with Americans. Nevertheless, what is most striking about Canadian conservatism is its defencelessness against the encroaching forces of modernity, the source of which was inseparable from its own, that is, the British empire . Thus Grant's Lament for a Nation (hereafter abbreviated LN) is a meditative lament on the passing of Canada as a sovereign state, on her passing into the American technological empire. Possibly his most richly variegated piece of writing, Lament moves deftly between the levels of political interpretation, philosophical reflection, and religious ascesis. 16 While its precise focus of political comment is the defeat of Diefenbaker's conservatism in 1963, as a historicalphilosophical meditation it ranges over the history of conservatism's defeat in Canada during three centuries, exploring the interrelated fates of British and North American conservatism. All levels of thought and expression in this work converge on the idea of necessity, the idea that Canada's political demise was and is a historical necessity or inevitability. This convergence, sensed by Grant's readers, was misinterpreted in more than one instance as evidence of his 'nostal15 The first wave of modernity, says Grant, recalling Strauss, 'criticized the classical view of nature and natural law, but ... still maintained some conception of what was natural.' The second wave of modernity, by contrast, proclaimed that 'man's essence was his freedom' and 'advocated the progressive mastery through that freedom of human and non-human nature.' (lament for a Nation, 61) 16 Among the scholarly commentators on Grant's Lament, M. Darrol Bryant in his article 'The Barren Twilight: History and Faith in Grant's Lament' has most adequately discerned the controlling structure and genre of this book as a species of •meditative prophecy .' (George Grant in Process, 110-19)

97 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man gia' for 'the British empire and old fashioned Canada. ' 17 That nothing could be further from the truth is plain from Grant's reply to his critics in his introduction to the 1970 edition of LN, which indulges in a piece of ironic self-criticism: 'I emphasise this failure in irony,' says Grant, referring to the Lament, 'because many simple people (particularly journalists and professors) took it to be a lament for the passing of a British dream of Canada. It was rather a lament for the romanticism of the original dream' (LN, xi) . Canada's fate (which is Britain's fate also) - to surrender to the 'technological Moloch of war and peace' (LN, x) - is her history understood as necessity. Historical necessity for Grant is pre-eminently necessity in the human soul, necessity for thought about human good. It is, therefore, chiefly concerned with political philosophy, which involves such 'judgments about goodness' as when 'apprehended and acted upon by practical men, ... become the unfolding of fate .' A principal purpose of Grant's Lament is to show how such 'judgments about goodness,' made by the Canadian people and its leaders after 1940, have determined Canada's present possibilities. According to Grant, Liberal governments after 1940 have engineered Canada's smooth absorption into the continental empire of liberal technology on the basis of a mandate from the Canadian people, for whom, he says elsewhere, 'the central cause of motion in their souls is the belief in progress through technique ... identified with the power and leadership of the English-speaking empire in the world' (TE, 64). Grant's lamenting of what has been lost to his country in the triumph of liberal technology is his witness to the distance between historical necessity and the good. He realizes that a political lament contradicts the historicist mood of the age, which identifies necessity and goodness. This identification, under 'the rubric of providence,' Grant once proposed, is Hegel's supreme philosophical achievement. He continues to see Hegel's vision, 'Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht,' as the highest philosophical expression of the Judaeo-Christian understanding of providence as developed in the West. In his conclusion to LN, he recapitulates this development which culminated in the philosophical conflation of the doctrines of progress and providence: 'From the assumption that God's purposes are unfolded in historical events, one may be led to view history as an ever-fuller manifestation of good. Since the tenth century of the Christian era, some Western theologians have tended to interpret the fallen sparrow as if 17 E.g., R.K. Crook, ' Modernization and Nostalgia: a Note on the Sociology of Pessimism,' Queen's Quarterly 73 (1966), 269-84; R. Blumstock, 'Anglo-Saxon Lament,' Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 3 (1966), 98--105; F.H. Underhill, 'Conservatism = Socialism = Anti-Americanism,' Journal of Liberal Thought I (1965), 101-5

98 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice particular events could be apprehended by faith as good. ' Against historical theodicy, Grant objects that 'if history is the final court of appeal, force is the final argument ... To take a progressive view of providence is to come close to worshipping force' (LN, 89). Here Grant has brought us to the central thought of Simone Weil's writings: the rule of force in the world, and the strict opposition of this immanent principle to the perfection of transcendent love which is divine. According to Weil, it is the very perfection, the purity of God that sustains the separation of necessity and goodness, so that the creature' s way to God is through loving (not worshipping!) necessity as that which is absolutely other than God (and yet is God himself). It is the passivity at the heart of perfection (the crucified Christ) which reconciles the Good and the finality of human misery, the finality of tragedy on the plane of human affairs. Mindful of this, we can grasp the appropriateness of Lament, as an expression of Grant's insight in 1965: on the one hand, it acknowledges the fact of evil, of necessity, of tragedy; on the other, it testifies to the goodness of all that is by its 'celebration of passed good' (LN, 3). Indeed, as he says, a lament springs from the common condition of men 'situated between despair and absolute certainty' (LN, 3). It is not the language of the ' saints who know that the destruction of good serves the supernatural end ' ; but neither does it belong to the desperate man - 'he does not write; he commits suicide' (LN, 3). 18 The two primals: philosophy and revelation The fate of North Americans at the leading edge of modernity is contained within a larger fate, the fate of European man. Standing behind our North American inheritance, enshrouded by remoteness, are the ' first presences' of European civilization: Greek philosophy and 'Christianity.' Says Grant in 1967, these are 'the two great accounts of human excellence in the light of which western men had understood the purpose of existence' (TE, 128). According to Grant, these accounts have stood in tension, as affirming the same and different things, and this tension is the thread of Europe's destiny. What these accounts share, what they mutually affirm, is the 'idea of human existence having a given highest purpose, and therefore an excellence which could be known and in terms of which all our activities could be brought into some order' (TE, 128). Where these accounts part is in naming the highest purpose. The Greeks, as represented by 18 To this self-interpretation of Grant, M. Darrol Bryant rightly responds that his lament expresses a particular orientation of men within their common condition - namely , that of faith in the specifically Christian sense. Bryant, therefore, calls upon Grant to provide a more explicit articulation of the relation of faith to 'history,' to 'political community.'

99 The Tragic Fate of Modem Man Plato and Aristotle, laid down 'contemplation as the height for man'; the Christian revelation laid down 'charity [as] the height' (TE, 35). The dynamic relation of these two claims has given European life its very form. 'Indeed the meeting of these two in men's lives, the manifold attempts to see them as one, to bring together contemplation and charity, the fact that they were seen by some to be antithetical and so either one or the other condemned, the way that each was interpreted and misinterpreted in terms of the other and each used against the other in the building of a civilisation which was new and which was neither, these inter-relations formed the chief tension out of which Europe was shaped' (TE , 18).

Here, under the concept of fate in its broadest civilizational reference , Grant is recapitulating the most formative and enduring theme of his work: namely, the contradiction at the root of the western tradition. It is just this contradiction which makes the unity of tradition his original problem. As the problem of 'history' emerges , this initial concern becomes intimately linked with Grant's attempt to conceive modernity's break with the past. In this attempt he comes to rely heavily on Leo Strauss 's interpretation of the movement of modem thought. According to Strauss, successive modem thinkers appealed to their Greek inheritance over against their Christian past, each claiming to have discovered a more authentic understanding of the Greeks than his predecessors. Yet, Grant summarizes Strauss's argument, in claiming 'to be returning behind Christianity to the classics,' these modems 'laid out a fundamental criticism of the classical accounts of science, art, politics, etc.' (TE, 19). Throughout the sixties Grant shows a consistent willingness to go beyond Strauss' s silence about the source of the modem criticism of the classics, openly admitting that this criticism 'seems to have been influenced by the hidden depths of Biblical religion' (TE , 19). What are these 'hidden depths of Biblical religion ' that modem political thinkers before and after the Reformation could use against the Greeks? In his earliest days Grant had tried to grasp these depths in the biblical understanding of human freedom as absolute, prior to rationality and goodness . By 1957 ('The Uses of Freedom') he had shifted his focus to the moral dialectic of 'Heilsgeschichte,' and in 1959 (PMA) emphasized the challenge to classical natural law posed by the biblical proclamation of divine sovereignty in creation and in the events of time, its testimony that 'to God all things are possible' - a testimony which , Grant proposed, raised potentiality above actuality and the future above the present. In the future hope of the Bible he found the embryonic lineaments of modem historical theodicy - the infinite spirit creating its own order in the historical process. In the early sixties Grant redirected his attention from the material contradiction between the truths of Christianity and Greek philosophy to the formal

100 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice contradiction between the claims to truth of 'revelation' and 'philosophy.' He confronted Strauss's implicit claim that philosophy (that is, thought about the whole) and biblical revelation are mutually exclusive - either one or the other comprises that knowledge which is most needful to man - and continued to ask about what authority revelation has over the philosopher (for instance, 'Tyranny and Wisdom,' 1964). This is also the problem of how charity is related to contemplation. Grant's statement of this relationship in the late sixties is fraught with ambiguity. But then, he regards this ambiguity as the stuff of our fate in the West. On the one hand, he says, European Christianity inherited contemplation 'under the magistery of revelation,' practising it as a means to charity, to 'that obedient giving oneself away ' (TE, 35) . On the other hand , Europeans also inherited from their forebears' 'continual tasting of the Greeks' an aspiration 'to thought not determined by revelation, and ... contemplation not subservient to charity, but understood as itself the highest' (TE, 35). Finally, from European Christianity came a movement (Calvinism) to free both revelation and charity from the activity of contemplation. Says Grant: 'For the Calvinist, theology was a prophetic and legal expounding of a positively conceived revelation, the purpose of which was to make its practical appeal to men' (TE, 35). This account shows us that contemplation is an activity and a way to knowledge that has been considered compatible and incompatible with the truth given in revelation and the activity of charity which it calls forth. The question remains, however: Does Grant regard contemplation as compatible or incompatible with revelation and charity? Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate contemplation and charity in Grant's writings, as when he speaks of the 'fruits of contemplation' vestigially present in European Christianity: for instance, ' public and private virtues having their point beyond what can in any sense be called socially useful; commitments to love and to friendship which lie rooted in a realm outside the calculable; a partaking in the beautiful not seen as the product of human creativity' (TE, 36) . Are these not also fruits of charity understood as 'that obedient giving of oneself away ' ? Is that apprehension of the world, which Grant earlier called 'contemplative' - that ' stance .. . beyond all bargains and conveniences' not fulfilled in obedient self-surrender? More often Grant's writings suggest an antagonism between contemplation and charity, which appears to centre on the appreciation of nature. For Grant, following the Greeks, contemplation is a way of surrender to natural necessity; it finds meaning in the constraints of what is given. It, therefore, orders human desire towards the highest good which transcends the finite objects of our passions. Charity, by contrast, Grant connects frequently with man ' s striving to liberate himself 'for happiness' from the necessities of nature, for instance, 'the

101 The Tragic Fate of Modern Man old necessities of hunger and disease and overwork, and the consequent oppressions and repressions' (TE, 28) . 'Compassion before thought ,' as the battle cry of the modern pursuit of justice, increasingly means the pursuit of equal participation in the benefits of the technological conquest of nature. In the modern world, the relief of human suffering wrought by necessity (an expression of compassion) is inseparably bound to the 'emancipation of the passions' made possible by harnessing the otherness of nature. It is just this quest of emancipation for all men that is unthinkable to Grant outside of the biblical inheritance of western man. In his 1967 article, 'The University Curriculum,' he states the relation between revelation and equality thus: 'The centre of these religions [that is , Judaism and Christianity) lay in revelation which was a kind of knowledge concerning the most important matters, and which made all men in some sense equal by their potential openness to it. It was similar to the philosophical contemplation of the classical philosophers in that it dealt with the most important matters; it was different in that openness to it depended on faith. Can the modern belief in equality be understood apart from the change of emphasis (concerning man's highest activity) from contemplation to charity, which came with the dominance of Christianity?' (TE, 129-30). It is clear to Grant, therefore, that our technological fate, which takes the form of the universal overcoming of chance, has roots in biblical revelation. The pressing question for Grant then is whether Christianity can offer an account of charity that is an antidote to technological striving. The way of recollection Technology as our fate is the web of necessity under which we live. Technology is necessity, above all, for thought about the human good . Says Grant in his concluding 'Platitude' to Technology and Empire: 'We can hold in our minds the enormous benefits of technological society, but we cannot so easily hold the ways it may have deprived us, because technique is ourselves .. . Technique comes forth from and is sustained in our vision of ourselves as creative freedom, making ourselves, and conquering the chances of an indifferent world' (TE , 137). This vision of technological freedom enfolds us, cutting us off from 'those systems of meaning' that would mitigate ' both our freedom and the indifference of the world, and in so doing put limits .. . on our interference with chance and the possibilities of its conquest' (TE, 137). Alas, however, 'the enchantment of our souls by myth, philosophy or revelation has been replaced by a more immediate meaning - the building of the society of free and equal men' (TE , 138). It is the immediacy of our vision, of the historicist vision , that Grant dwells on in the late sixties. For us, this vision is not primarily the outcome of self-conscious and critical reflection; in this sense it is not theological or philosophical - although for some of us it is that too. Rather, it is given immediately as experience, as

102 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice apprehension, as pre-critical understanding of ourselves and our world. It is given, says Grant, with our language: 'All coherent languages beyond those which serve the drive to unlimited freedom through technique have been broken up in the coming to be what we are' (TE, 139). He stresses again and again the pervasiveness of those certainties upon which technique depends and the difficulty, insuperable for most of us , of thinking outside them. Grant perceives that his own destiny is to be caught in these certainties. He regards his writing of a political lament in 1965 as his confession of the brokenness of his experience and the lacunae of his thinking. The traditions of his country's past within which his ancestors lived are present to him largely as something absent: as habits of perceiving, thinking, and acting that do not belong to public life as he knows it. They are for him the impressions of memory rather than the certainties of thought. While Grant may borrow from 'the great thinkers ' (for instance, Leo Strauss and Simone Weil), he cannot like them think consistently about 'the whole.' Lament only is open to Grant because the ambiguities of his thought are final. He cannot finally decide 'the question as to whether it is good that Canada should disappear' because, as he says, he cannot settle the 'central issue' upon which this judgment hangs, namely, whether 'the universal and homogeneous state' is the 'best social order' (LN, 96) . Grant's confession may cause some astonishment in the wake of 'Tyranny and Wisdom, ' in which his acceptance of Leo Strauss's stand on this issue is implied throughout. Certainly, he regards Strauss as having thought through the nature of modern tyranny as no one else has - and persuasively . Yet the cogency of Strauss's thought does not reduce to nothing Grant' s encounter with truths of the present which contradict, or at least qualify, Strauss's judgments. It is precisely because he cannot think these truths together with what seems evidently true in Strauss' s account that he has recourse to the political lament based not 'on philosophy but on tradition.' Says Grant, justifying this course: 'If one cannot be sure about the answer to the most important questions , then tradition is the best basis for the practical life. Those who loved the older traditions of Canada may be allowed to lament what has been lost, even though they do not know whether or not that loss will lead to some greater political good' (LN, 96). The lament is an expression of love for a finite and particular good which is no more. As such, it belongs to the practical rather than the theoretical realm . Only what is remembered can be lamented. In answer to the paradoxical question, 'But how can one lament necessity - or, if you will, fate?' Grant replies, 'I lament it as a celebration of memory' (LN, 5) . Is memory, we may ask, always and only of the finite and particular good that is 'one's own'? What does memory have to do with the infinite and universal good to which thought is directed? Grant's answer is suggested by his reflection on the right ordering of

103 The Tragic Fate of Modern Man our loves: 'In human life there must always be place for love of the good and Jove of one's own. Love of the good is man's highest end, but it is of the nature of things that we come to know and to Jove what is good by first meeting it in that which is our own - this particular body, this family, these friends, this woman, this part of the world, this set of traditions, this country, this civilisation . At the simplest level of one's own body, it is clear that one has to love it yet pass beyond concentration on it' (TE, 73). Love of the particular good is, then, ordered to Jove of the universal good . There is an ascent of Jove from particular goods to the universal good. From this ascent we may infer that, as bound to one's own past, memory of the particular, private good is for the individual what tradition is for the collective: the action of the particular past on the present and the future. It shares with tradition this insufficiency: that without thought the good that it holds cannot find full expression. Grant makes this point with respect to political memory (that is, tradition): 'But a nation [in this case, Canada] does not remain a nation only because it has roots in the past. Memory is never enough to guarantee that a nation can articulate itself in the present. There must be a thrust of intention into the future' (LN, 12). This articulation, this thrust of intention, requires that memory complete itself in thought about the good. As Grant has shown, conservatism that cannot call to mind its principles is lost. The particular must bring to light the universal as universal if it is to persist in 'intention.' But what is memory when its particular good has no possible articulation in the present? If it is to be more than sentimentality, then the good remembered must, in an important sense, cease to be 'one's own .' We would suggest that, for Grant, remembering what has been irreparably Jost is a kind of thinking which, by making present the particular good as other than one's own, brings to light its universality. This is why historical recollection for Grant is pre-eminently recollection of the 'losers of history' (TE, 67) who are manifestly not 'our own,' who stand for that which is radically denied by 'our own' in the present. To remember what the losers stood for, he says, is to gain knowledge about the world which the winners have made, that is, about our world (TE, 67). In the losers of history, we encounter the claim of what is 'not our own,' which opens us to those universal standards by which to judge 'our own.' This is why historical recollection is for Grant a way to knowledge of the eternal and unchanging good. This way of knowing the good, the way of memory, is characteristically portrayed by Grant as an elusive and episodic thing. Recollection is a 'chance' event resulting from the 'accidents of existence.' 19 It is intimately connected with 19 See 'In Defence of North America,' 36; 'The University Curriculum,' 131; 'A Platitude,' 142.

104 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice experiences of 'deprival' in the present which cannot be thought 'directly' because of the disintegration of all language of the good that is 'necessary to man as man' (TE, 139-41). Torememberthegoodofwhich we 'sense the dispossession' is to grasp what is 'essential' (as opposed to accidental, idiosyncratic , or personal) in our deprival. It is to think our deprival. But this thinking is not guaranteed to us as individuals living in 'the dynamo .' Not to be able to think our deprival is madness, and madness may be the fate of any one of us . Can madness, however, be the fate of modem man, or is thinking his deprivation, recollecting the good, guaranteed to man? This is the final ambiguity in Grant's later thought. That the good and its language will continue to be recollected is a matter of faith, not certainty, for Grant. And he makes it clear that faith in the primacy of the good does not exclude natural catastrophes, 'signs of revolts in nature' (TE, 142), as the occasions of recollection. 'We know,' says Grant, 'that this re-collection will take place in a world where only catastrophe can slow the unfolding of the potentialities of technique' (TE, 142). Therefore, 'who is to recount how and when and where private anguish and public catastrophe may lead men to renew their vision of excellence?' (TE, 132). This is, indeed, a sobering faith which affirms necessity and chance as the face of the good in the world. Nevertheless, it is this faith upon which remembering the good depends and in which it issues. It is this faith alone (in the absence of certainty) that opens men to loving necessity, to loving what is presently suffered by them. CONCLUSION: RECOLLECTION AND PHILOSOPHY

We have now laid out the diverse phases and elements of the concept of 'fate' which comes to centrality in Grant's thought of the late sixties . These interrelated themes measure for us Grant's distance from Strauss's philosophical program of restoration. For they constitute a comprehensive comment on the two questions that undergird Strauss' s thought: namely, 'Is restoration of classical political philosophy possible?' and 'Is it desirable?' In the early sixties, Grant admitted the theoretical possibility of restoration but hesitated to pronounce on its desirability . Now, with the thematized notion of 'fate,' he seems to cast doubt on this very possibility . First, with regard to the possibility of restoring classical political philosophy, Grant appears to be denying the condition on which the task of restoration depends. This condition, as we have said, is the persistence in the present of certain stable experiences and ideas that testify against the 'experience of history' and make the meaning of the classics accessible to us: such experiences as 'regarding right and wrong,' and the identity through time of the 'fundamental

105 The Tragic Fate of Modern Man problems of thought.' According to Strauss, these experiences grasp the permanently given 'whole,' the 'whole' given in pre-reflective awareness and thought. It is Strauss's certainty that there are truths accessible to man as man, truths concerning man ' s place in 'the whole,' that grounds his hope for restoration, making it a rational hope. Grant's unfolding of modernity as a ' unified fate ' calls into question this certainty of the enduring presence of ' the whole' to human awareness and thought. In contrast to Strauss's ' natural law' certainty, Grant emphasizes the certainties of technological freedom: the pervasiveness, comprehensiveness, and coherence of the technological vision, of the 'false universal' detached from 'the whole' and dependent on human willing. So total is the bondage of our desiring and thinking to technological necessity that 'loving' and 'thinking ' the good are contingent on 'recollection,' which is a 'chance event. ' Or better, it is a gift of supernatural grace in the soul, which alone transcends the immanent necessities of history. We remember that in the thought of Simone Weil the operation of grace in the supernatural order resembles the operation of chance in the natural order, or rather the second is a pale reflection of the first. But why does our transcendence of technological necessity, our original possession of the good, take the form of recollection? Recollection is not the form of transcendence, of desire for the good, in Weil's thought. On the contrary , she regards memory with the utmost suspicion as the source of illusion and deception. Recollection has this place in Grant's later writings because of the continuing importance of tradition as a vehicle of transcendent truth. To recollect the good is, for Grant, to recollect the accounts of goodness, the languages of goodness, that have come down to us in the western tradition, the two most fundamental of which are the Bible and Greek philosophy. But here is the paradox: the tradition that is a vehicle of truth has become a prison of bondage. Grant is forced by his historical logic to see the 'unified fate' of modernity as the 'unified fate' of the western tradition, which springs from the 'primals' of revelation and philosophy. Thus, the western tradition is itself the structure of historical necessity: it is the intelligible meaning of history. And in so far as the meaning of history is its truth, modernity must have a unique truth, a unique meaning which, however, is connected with the truth of our 'primals,' our beginnings. This is Grant's historicism, which reaches its climax in Time as History, where the paradox of modernity is pressed to its outer limits and a way beyond historicism comes into view.

6

The Challenge of Historicism: Beyond Nietzsche and Reidegger

TIME AS HISTORY: HEART OF DARKNESS

In the same year as Grant finished his concluding 'Platitude' to Technology and Empire, namely 1969, he prepared five radio broadcasts for cac's annual series entitled 'Massey Lectures.' These lectures were subsequently published in 1971 under the title Time as History. 1 They are marked by the same tone of sadness and longing as Grant's 'Platitude.' After almost twenty-five years of passionate thought about 'the most important things,' Grant has arrived at an uncertain and sorrowful wisdom. The five lectures of Time as History (hereafter abbreviated TH) continue Grant's distinguished career as a public educator. The wide readership to which his previous books (and the majority of his articles) were directed is guaranteed to Time as History by the circumstances of its writing. These essays remind us that throughout his life Grant's primary political activity is that of educating, of persuading through argumentation. He never abandons the classical, and he would say Christian,2 understanding of philosophy as starting from and, in a qualified sense, returning to the 'public things.' The truth about the common good, holds Grant, can only make its appearance in and through what is present to us, even if it appears as that which is absent. In Time as History Grant is still obedient to the Socratic challenge to 'Know thyself!' As a decade before, he remains dedicated to the task of bringing his age to self-awareness as the appropriate (and appropriating) response to the novelty The text of Time as History is prefaced by this description of the Massey Lectures: 'Begun by the c .e .c . in 1961 to enable distinguished authorities in fields of general interest and importance to present the results of original study or research.' 2 In so far as communicating the truth in speech is an important exercise of charity, Grant sees the apologetic use of philosophy as an important Christian activity .

107 The Challenge of Historicism of our present situation. More than once in 1969 we find him repeating his clarion call of 1959 to 'think what we [that is, we modems, but especiatly we North Americans] have become' (TH, 3). 3 But this thinking is no longer prolegomenous to the heroic work of synthesis to which he exhorts those who are able in PMA . He has abandoned the hope of our thinking an absolute morality that would reconcile the contradictory truths revealed in history . He has abandoned the hope that we might systematically and comprehensively think what we are in relation to what we ought to be. During the sixties the vision of what we ought to be has dimmed and receded in Grant's writings before the spectre of what we are. He has come to perceive the actualities of the present as a darkness fallen on the matter of 'ought.' This darkness is thickest, is most impenetrable, in Time as History, because here Grant is most deeply within modernity; he has taken on those minds that have thought modernity most lucidly and most powerfully. These are the minds of Nietzsche and Heidegger, who have a mingled presence in Time as History . Actually, Heidegger's presence is always implicit, covert, for it is Nietzsche whom Grant explicitly takes upon himself. However, it is Nietzsche the metaphysician on whom Heidegger also meditates.4 Time as History is Grant's final, most detailed and comprehensive penetration of the meaning of 'history' in the modem sense, and Nietzsche is the seer who reveals this meaning. Nietzsche's revelations are prepared for by Grant's themes of the late sixties, which bring us back from the judgment of the classics to the meaning of the modem as it is given in the immediacy of experience . During this period, the mounting tension between the meaning for thought of present actualities and the constraints on thinking recollected from the past finds expression in the ironic, ambiguous, and indirect poses that Grant adopts. In Time as History this tension is pushed to its extreme limit, to the point where Grant's greatest 'openness' to modernity coincides with his 'great refusal.' This is the point where tragedy and comedy meet for Grant, where his transcendent faith makes its strongest profession. If it is true that Grant's essays of the later sixties prepare for the revelations of Time as History, it is equally true that these revelations reflect back on the preceding essays, uncovering a deeper dimension of their meaning, of their intention. For the pervasiveness of Nietzsche and :-Ieidegger in this book points to an earlier presence of these thinkers in his writings, which remained implicit. 3 Also in 'Horowitz and Grant Talk,' Canadian Dimension 6 (1969-70) , 18 4 Heidegger's most extensive treatment of Nietzsche is in his two-volume work Nietzsche, parts of which are available in English translation under the titles The Will to Power as Art, vol. 1, trans. 0.F. Krell (New York: Harper and Row 1979), and Nihilism, vol. IV, trans. F. Capuzzi (1982).

108 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Reflecting back from Time as History to the later essays of Technology and Empire (for instance, 'The University Curriculum, ' 'In Defence of North America,' and ' A Platitude'), we seem to detect another influence on Grant beside the confessed influence of Leo Strauss and Jacques Ellul. This influence appears to us in the manifold aspects of Grant's conceiving of modernity as a 'unified fate,' in the language as well as the ideas that are involved. It appears in his criticism of the modem notion of 'value,' in his ontological understanding of technology, in his close association of 'tradition' and 'fate,' in his stress on the presence of truth as absence for 'homeless' man, on the ideal of 'openness' in the present situation, and on the need for 'recollection' with its episodic and elusive character, and, finally, in his grasp of the power of language to liberate or imprison thought. All these themes are re-collected in Time as History. To understand the significance of Grant's encounter with Nietzsche and Heidegger is perhaps the most challenging and rewarding task that his writings place upon us. This is not least because of the ambiguous relationship of Nietzsche and Heidegger to, on the one hand, Christianity and, on the other, early (preSocratic) Greek thought, which makes the question of their influence a crucial one for understanding the final interpenetration of philosophical and theological problems in Grant's thinking about history. That Simone Weil draws upon these same sources - Homer, Aeschylus, and Pythagoras on the one hand, Plato and the Gospels on the other - in her synthesis suggests a convergence on a single terrain of the points of view reflected in Grant's last formulation of the problem of history. How to assess this terrain from a Christian theological stance will be one aspect of our concluding remarks in this study . Now let us examine the details of Grant's argument in Time as History. THE FORM AND PURPOSE OF TIME AS HISTORY

Time as History is, formally speaking, a rather unorthodox book, having more the appearance of a long essay or series of meditations . Its fifty-three pages fall into five sections of approximately equal length, bearing no titles and having no internal divisions. It appears to be simply the polished transcript of Grant's radio broadcasts with no additions except six short footnotes .5 While the form of this book seems explicable by purely external considerations, it is, nevertheless, singularly appropriate to Grant's purpose, as he lays it out in the opening chapter: namely, to 'enucleate ... the conception of time as history' (TH, 8). His method is contained in his purpose. Says Grant: 'To enucle5 These are probably material transferred from the body of the spoken text in all but one case, which refers to Technology and Empire .

l 09 The Challenge of Historicism ate means to extract the kernel of a nut, the seed of a tree. In the present case, there appears around us and in us the presence which western men have made - modem technical society. It has been made by men who did what they did out of a vision of what was important to do. In that vision is the conception of time as history. The word "enucleation" implies that I am not simply interested in describing the manifestations of that vision, for example the mastery of movement through space or the control of heredity . Rather I try to partake in the seed from which the tree of manifestation has come forth' (TH, 8). The five chapters of Time as History are a continuous probing of the kernel of modernity that exposes more and more of its surface to the light of the understanding. Or perhaps we should think of the kernel as having integuments that are being pulled away in a gradual uncovering of the innermost recesses. If this is indeed the most apt metaphor, then it is noteworthy that Nietzsche occupies the last three chapters of this work. Grant's description of his purpose makes it clear that enucleation is a way of self-understanding. The 'presence' which is 'modem technical society' is 'in us ' (as well as 'around us'); we are that presence. And that presence which we are has as its source and sustaining centre 'the conception of time as history.' This conception is the 'soul of modernity,' the 'animator of our existence' as modems, from which 'proceeds' all that 'is immediately present to all ofus' (TH, 9). To enucleate 'time as history' is, therefore, to 'partake in the soul of modernity.' In seeking to uncover the essence of modernity, the unity (oneness) of the 'manifestations,' Grant places himself squarely in the metaphysical tradition from Parmenides to Heidegger. In inquiring how Grant grasps this essence, that is, in asking about the form of his partaking in the soul of modernity, we encounter the Heideggerian overtones of the term 'enucleation.' For the form of Grant's partaking is his reflection on words, on words that appear to knit together our language . 'History' is one such word, perhaps the word: its special significance is given by its unique prevalence and usage in our time. Says Grant, 'History . .. is one of those words which is present for us and was not present in any similar sense in the languages of other civilisations - including those from which ours sprang' (TH, l). Grant's beginning with language is not inconsequential or arbitrary. As a justification of this starting-point he offers an appreciation of language which resembles that of Heidegger. For Heidegger, language is the power of Being that structures our relationship to everything that is; it is the disclosure of 'the whole,' the totality of being, within which individual beings are present to us. This disclosure is prior to self-consciousness and reflection, which are derivative. The particularity of Being's self-revelation in language is what determines human existence as radically finite, temporal, historical. The finality of the trans-subjec-

110 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice tive mediation of language is at the core of Heidegger's understanding of history as 'fate.' It is language that gives the thought of individuals their destinies; words are 'fateful' above all else. The fatefulness of words is acknowledged by Grant's opening remarks to Time as History: 'Whatever may be, it is clear that human beings take much of what they are and what their world is through the way that words bring forth that world and themselves to themselves' (TH, 1). Grant proceeds to touch on the particularity of this 'bringing forth': 'It is not in language in general, but in the words of one collective that the world and ourselves are opened to us. In all groups of languages, for example the European or the lndic, certain languages such as Sanskrit or Greek appear marvellously to transcend limitation, and so have been thought of as called forth for a universal destiny. However, the very liberation through language takes place by the moulding of particular forms. Like food language not only makes human existence possible, but can also confine it.' (TH, 2). It follows that the present crisis of western civilization, with its 'inward' and 'outward' manifestations, is pre-eminently a crisis of language, which 'itself transcends the distinction between inward and outward' (TH, 2). Our thoughtful response to this crisis will, therefore, involve thinking 'what we are summing up to ourselves' in 'the very language that encloses us' (TH, 3) . What we are summing up to ourselves before all else is spoken in the word 'history.' Grant's first task, then, is to give an account of the word's meaning. His account illuminates at one and the same time the relation of universality and particularity in language and the historical vicissitudes of language. Grant begins his account with the meaning of 'history' that is the most immediate and universal, namely, 'the study of the past' (TH, 3). The most general component of this meaning, the idea of 'human inquiry' (study), is present in 'the Greek original "historie."' 6 He shows how the meaning of 'history' as 'the study of human affairs' proceeds from the original 'human inquiry. ' 7 For us modems, he argues, the realm of human affairs has a particular ontological status (which, by implication, it did not have for the Greeks). We regard human existing in time as a 'kind' or 'dimension' or 'sphere' of existence to be 'distinguished from other kinds of existing,' and apply the term 'history' to that unique totality of past, present, and future which human existing is (TH, 3). Thus, both uses of the word 'history' are bound together for us in a particular way: we 6 That 'human inquiry' is the most general component is our inference from the logic of Grant's analysis. 7 Grant explains the development thus: 'If you wanted to enquire about an event far away in time or space, you went and asked an old person or somebody from another country. Thereby, a general word for inqu1,y came to be used for what had happened in human affairs.'

l l l The Challenge of Historicism engage assiduously in the study of mankind's past because we believe 'that man is essentially an historical being and that ... the riddle of what he is may be unfolded in those studies' (TH, 4). 8 That is, we believe that man is 'finally understandable' in terms of ' his genesis and development' (TH, 4). Grant brings out a further historical complication of our use of ' history': our inheritance from modem science of the idea of 'evolution,' which attributes 'history' to everything, to the earth itself as well as to species. Here he recapitulates Leo Strauss's argument, according to which modem philosophical thought has extended the scientific concept of universal process to include human reason (for instance, Rousseau and Kant) and even God (Hegel and Whitehead). This extension has brought forth an additional complication: how to accommodate the reality of human freedom within a non-teleological notion of process dependent on the mechanistic physics of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The modem solution to this dilemma, according to Grant and Strauss, has been to conceive the realm of history as the realm of 'freedom' over against the realm of ' nature. ' 'History,' after Rousseau, denoted the unique ' human situation in which we are not only made but make.' Grant describes this solution in its atheistic and pantheistic forms : 'The two languages come together as man is seen not only as a part of evolution, but as its spearhead who can consciously direct the very process from which he came forth . In such speaking, man is either conceived as the creator, who arose from an accidental evolution, or if evolution is itself conceived within a terminology about the divine, man is then viewed as a co-operator, a co-creator with God' (TH, 7). We should observe the way in which Grant has moved from the most unreflected and universal meaning of 'history' to its most reflected and abstract meaning. Yet all the time he has remained within the self-understanding of modem man. For it is the peculiar characteristic of modem men that their conscious relation to themselves and their world is permeated by philosophical and scientific ideas, which are received in an undifferentiated and uncritical way, as objects of belief. And so for modem men even the most abstract meanings of the word 'history' have, in Grant's view, gained explicitness, or immediacy. Grant sees the language of ' history' - of 'freedom,' 'value,' 'creativity,' 'process' - as comprising the liberal ideology of technological society. This concise thematic statement of the concept of ' history ,' while containing nothing new, sets the stage for Grant's important discussion to follow concerning the role of the future in our historical self-understanding, and the relationship 8 Grant identifies these two uses of 'history' - as a 'realm of being' and as a ' scientific study of the past' - with the German Geschichte!Historie , while drawing attention to their inseparability suggested by the single English word ' history.'

112 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice between our orientation to the future and our will to mastery . Throughout this discussion he is attempting to think the meaning of central ideas in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger in order to arrive at a critical assessment of the insights of historicism. THE FUTURE AND THE WILL TO MASTERY IN 'HISTORY'

Grant's opening reflection traverses the distance between past and present meanings of 'history .' He says: 'Those who study hii;tory are concerned with the occurrences of passed times; those who conceive time as history are turned to what will happen in the future' (TH, 10). We modems pursue the past as earnestly as our forebears, if not more earnestly, but our pursuit takes a different form, being dominated by an imagined and/or desired future. 9 We recollect the past just as we 'gather together the intricacies of the present,' for the purpose of 'calculat[ing] what we must be resolute in doing to bring about the future we desire' (TH, 10). For us modems, study of the past is a vehicle of our specific accomplishment as moderns, that is, the bringing about of novel events. And, according to Grant, our making of novelty is dependent on 'our mastery through prediction over human and non-human nature' (TH, 10). The presence of the past in our remembering is, therefore , determined by 'the presence of the future in our imagining,' and this latter presence lies behind our efficadous doing . We recognize as longstanding Grant's association of 'history' with orientation to the future and effectiveness in doing. As early as 1956 he perceived progressivism and activism to be the fruits of the Reformed (Calvinist) belief in historical providence. At that time, he pressed the relationship between the theocratic history of Puritanism and the spread of modem science, but without discussing directly the role of the future in the project of modem science. Nor did he in 1956 connect the Puritan conception of history as a realm of action (human and divine) with the supremacy of the will in the biblical notion of freedom described in his 1947 essay 'Two Theological Languages.' Here, in Time as History, Grant tries 'to think our orientation to the future together with the will to mastery' (TH, H~l l) in the hope of understanding the scientific project within which we live. The concept 'history' now as always has two poles of reference for him: the first pole is our self-understanding as modems; the second is the reality of our action, which means principally the degree to which we 'control the results of chance. ' Thus it is that Grant can say, 'in the last centuries, western men have been more historical than the other civilizations still present, and than those civilizations we 9 Strauss holds Heidegger responsible, above all thinkers of this century, for the 'fururistic' historical srudy that prevails in our time.

113 The Challenge of Historicism superseded geographically' (TH, 13). Western men are more historical not only because they understand themselves historically but because they have more power to 'make happen novel events which come forth in the potential future' (TH, 13). Our historical self-understanding and our 'dynamism of doing' feed on each other. It is, therefore, in response to our feats of 'masterful doing' that Grant thinks about 'the language of willing.' In 'the language of willing' he finds the mediating term of our future orientation and our potential mastery. This mediation, he argues, is suggested by the word 'will' itself, in its double use as 'an auxiliary for the future tense' and as 'the word which expresses our determination to do' (TH, 11). It is imperative that Grant circumscribe as closely as possible the reality 'summoned up' by this language. This reality, Grant proposes, is human doing in respect of the 'determination' necessary to it and the 'resoluteness through time' about this determination (TH, 14). 'Willing,' says Grant, 'is that power of determining by which we put our stamp on events (including ourselves) and in which we do some violence to the world' (TH, 15). It is, we may say, tied up with individuality and contingency. In a most crucial passage Grant distinguishes willing from thinking: 'In willing to do or not to do we close down on the openness of deliberation and decide that as far as we are concerned, this will happen rather than that. Indeed, one strange ambiguity among human beings is that what seems required for the greatest thought is opposite to what is required for the greatest doing. If our thinking is not to be procrustean, we will require an uncertain and continous openness to all that is; certainty in closing down issues by decision is necessary for great deeds.' (TH, 15). As the power of action, willing is distinguished from thinking by its cognitive relation to its object, which is that of certainty. To will, according to Grant, is to 'close down;' on one possible action among all those given to thought; willing, therefore, is an act of excluding given possibilities. Grant also distinguishes willing from desiring by its relation to object as means. This relation is the legislating aspect of willing, its power of making. 10 'The language of desire,' says Grant, 'is always the language of dependence': it expresses 'our dependence on that which we need - be it food, another person, or God' (TH, 16). By contrast, willing as legislating is 'the assertion of the power of the self over something other than the self, and indeed of the self over its own dependencies' (TH, 16). In our willing of means, 'the dependence of desire passes over into the mastery,' so that willing is 'the expression of the responsible 10 In legislating, says Grant, our willing 'makes something positive happen or prevents something from happening.' (TH, 16)

114 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice and independent self, distinguished from the dependent self who desires' (TH, 16). Grant's distinguishing of 'willing' from 'desiring' and 'thinking' suggests that the 'language of willing' is a universal language describing a universal aspect of man's experience, yet we know that for Grant this language describes a peculiar feature of modem man's experience. In this respect, the language of 'willing' parallels that of 'history,' which also has a universal meaning and a particular meaning for modems. The decisive question for both languages is whether, in their particular reference to modem man's experience, they are true languages, that is, they describe 'what is.' In its universal reference, 'willing' indicates something universally bound up with human action: namely, the 'determination' necessary to doing. Says Grant: 'Greek heroes were summoned to be resolute for noble doing' (TH, 16), implying that resoluteness belongs as much to the action of the Greeks as of the modems. 'But,' he continues, speaking of the Greeks, 'their deeds were not thought of as changing the very structure of what is, but as done rather for the sake of bringing into immediacy the beauty of a trusted order, always there to be appropriated through whatever perils' (TH, 16). Grant seems to be saying that the peculiar meaning of 'willing' for us modems attaches to the way we think about our deeds. Whereas the Greeks regarded their deeds, and that determination necessary to them, as obedient to 'the very structure of what is,' we regard our doing and our willing as creative, as originating structure. According to Grant, we no longer understand ourselves as part of the natural order of agents, but rather as 'standing above' this order; our 'willing' does not serve the good but makes it. Nevertheless, it is not the case that the peculiar meaning of willing among us pertains exclusively to our self-understanding. It also pertains to the unique character of our action, directed to the continual creation of novelty. Says Grant: 'In the modem call, human wills are summoned to a much more staggering challenge. It is our destiny to bring about something novel; to conquer an indifferent nature and make it good for us' (TH, 16-17). The language of 'willing,' like the language of 'history,' refers not only to a concept of our reflection but to an immediate apprehension, for what is more immediate to us than the creation of novelty? In fact, Grant shows the inseparability of the two languages: 'History is that dimension in which men in their freedom have tried to "create" greater and greater goodness in the morally indifferent world they inhabit. As we actualize meaning, we bring forth a world in which living will be known to be good for all, not simply in a general sense, but in the very details we will be able more and more to control' (TH, 17; my italics). The immediate reality to which both our language of 'history' and 'willing' refer is the scope of our making. This is the peculiarity of modem man:

115 The Challenge of Historicism the degree to which his relationship to himself and his world is one of making. Even our knowing has become making in the development of scientific and experimental method. 11 Thus, the language of 'willing,' like that of 'history,' has three levels of reference for Grant. It refers to a universal aspect of human action, to a specifically modern interpretation of human action, and to a peculiar reality of modern action. These strands of meaning are correlative or interdependent: each must be thought along with and in terms of the others. This is so because the word 'willing,' like the word 'history,' makes present a historical and experiential totality proceeding from 'some central source,' from an animating principle, which, however, is not distinct from the manifold aspects or 'expressions' of the totality. It follows that thinking this animating principle should be a movement among its manifold expressions that grasps their interpenetration, the refraction of each on the others. This movement is what Grant means by 'enucleation.' He has, therefore, tried to enucleate the modern conception of 'history' by enucleating the modern language of 'willing' through which this single totality expresses itself. The movement of thought called 'enucleation' takes place within language, so that, in describing what is present to us in the language of 'history' and of 'willing,' Grant must eventually return to that language. GRANT AND HEIDEGGER: TRADITION, RECOLLECTION , AND TECHNIQUE

We have already said that for Grant, as for Heidegger, thought is fated because of its dependence on a prior totality- of language or 'tradition.' It is this notion of 'fatedness,' of historical necessity, which Grant has developed thematically in the late essays of Technology and Empire . This same notion determines Grant's argument in Time as History, being presupposed by his method of 'enucleation.' For both Grant and Heidegger, conceiving tradition as a structure of necessity requires an understanding of thinking as recollecting. Recollecting means returning to the beginnings where the truth of the tradition makes its appearance. Both men attempt such a recollecting in order to understand where we (in the West) have come. In the light of our beginnings, both men think the present in terms of the supremacy of willing, the rule of 'technique.' Much of Grant's thinking through of this rule under the explicit influence of Heidegger comes, as we shall see, in the seventies after his struggle with 'history' has terminated. At the time of his writing Time as History his serious 11 This observation, while not expanded here , is developed extensively in Grant's 1974 essay ' Knowing and Making. '

116 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice interest in Heidegger is still in early flowering. 12 Nevertheless, there are enough signs of Heidegger's impact to justify our briefest mention of his treatment of the themes of tradition, recollection, and technique. For Heidegger, the tradition which is our destiny is not the western tradition as Grant thinks it, rooted in biblical revelation and Greek philosophy, but the metaphysical tradition of the West exclusively, originating in pre-Socratic philosophy. Heidegger views the metaphysical tradition as the history of Being in its (Being's) dissimulation 13 as the Being of Beings (meta ta physika) 14 According to Heidegger, the early Greek thinkers (Anaximander, Heracleitus, Parmenides) raised the problem of Being as such but failed to think the truth of Being. Their failure was consequential for all future thinking of Being. The history of this thinking, from Plato to Hegel, is a successive Seinsvergessenheit, a successive wandering from the truth of Being in search of the Being ('Grund') of beings. 15 Hegel's positing of the absolute subject, the self-creating Spirit, as the 'Grund' consummates the metaphysical quest. His 'system' which expresses the unconditioned will of the absolute is, in Heidegger's view, the beginning of the end of the tradition; it issues in Nietzsche's destruction of metaphysics through the affirmation of individual subjective will (Wille zum Willen) as immanent Grund. By rendering impossible metaphysics as the quest for the Being of beings, Nietzsche fulfils the 'outermost possibility' of the tradition - namely, its free negation of itself. 16 Standing at the end of the tradition, Nietzsche's thought is a return to the beginning, but a negative return. Nietzsche exposes the tradition as dissimulation without bringing to light that which is dissimulated, the truth of Being. Heidegger's own 'destructive recollection' of the metaphysical tradition follows in Nietzsche's footsteps, but 'surpasses' his accomplishment by attaining to the truth of the beginnings, to the originating revelation of Being. While Nietzsche only 'projected' the absence of Being, he, Heidegger, thinks the essence of this absence. And the essence of this absence, the Truth of Being, is 12 By 1968 Grant was familiar with Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics and was reading Der Satz vom Grund, the latter of which develops the peninent themes in more detail. 13 'Vergessenheit,' translated 'forgetting' 14 Literally, 'the beyond of beings' 15 For Heidegger's discussion of the history of metaphysics, see An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press 1959), from the German edition of 1953; essays in Holzwege (1950) and Vortriige and Augsiitze (1954), some of which are in translation (e.g., in Early Greek Thinking, trans. D. Krell and F. Capuzzi [New York: Harper and Row 1975], and The Question Concerning Technology, trans. W. Lovitt [New York: Harper and Row 1977)); Der Satz vom Grund (1957); and Nietzsche, I and 11 (1967). 16 In Hegel, free negation of the self is also the unsurpassable negative fulfilment of human freedom.

117 The Challenge of Historicism Time, that is, temporality , historicity, finitude. For Heidegger, Being and Truth are one with Fate, with tradition, with the movement of language, with the temporal horizon of the appearance of beings. Being, as radically finite and contingent, is the showing forth , the 'unveiling' (aletheia) of the things that are, such that the veiling (Lethe) is never overcome . Thus, the western tradition, with dissimulation at its heart, is itself the obscure self-destining of Being, is its eschatological revelation in which the end fulfils the beginning. Heidegger' s concept of 'technique' arises out of his 'destructive recollection' of the metaphysical tradition. 'Technique' is Heidegger's name for the essence of modem technology, which is one with the essence of modem science and the essence of the metaphysical tradition after Descartes. And this essence, thought first by Leibniz, is the revelation of the Being of beings as will. 17 It is the revelation of the will willing itself as the being, the truth, the justice of whatever is. All our ' technology' (in the usual sense) - our machines for making and computing, our methods of utilizing, procuring, and organizing, our instruments of manipulating and controlling - are manifestations of this essence (that is, presence). 'Technique,' therefore, is nothing other than the 'rule' of modem thinking and acting: what Heidegger calls 'the challenging revealing,' which belongs to the final epoch of the 'Seinsvergessenheit' - the forgetting of Being. Returning to Grant, we can detect approximations to Heidegger' s thought not only in his use of the concepts ' tradition' and 'recollection,' but also in his specific understanding of Nietzsche 's role in revealing our western destiny and in his grasp of our unique being as modem men. With regard to this last approximation , Grant, like Heidegger, arrives at the supremacy of the will in modem thought and action . It is this supremacy that he sees expressed in our self-understanding as creative freedom, in our positing of 'values,' in our calculating and manipulative knowing by means of representation and experiment, in our ceaseless striving to make events, to bring forth novelty , to realize possibilities - all ideas that are not foreign to Heidegger. Further, in choosing to distinguish willing (from thinking and desiring) through the characteristics of 'certainty' and 'legislating,' Grant is in complete accord with Heidegger, for whom subiectum in the modem sense means self-certainty: the self securing itself by securing its representing. For both Grant and Heidegger, 'willing' refers to the relationship that binds modem man to himself and to his world. Grant and Heidegger also share in a rejection of that relationship, that ' being' which they call 'willing.' Grant rejects willing as the essence of ' history,' of 17 A detailed discussion of Leibniz by Heidegger is found in Der Satz vom Grund and Nietzsche, I, two books which have occupied Grant during the seventies. A passing summary of his interpretation of Leibniz is found in Heidegger's 1943 article 'Nietzsches Won "Gott ist tot,"' trans. W. Lovin, in The Question Concerning Technology 53-112.

118 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice 'freedom,' of technology, arguing that man as man is not fitted for it. Heidegger also rejects willing, in the sense that he sees its overcoming as necessary to restoring Being to .nan. In taking the being of all that is as will, man, in Heidegger's view, is caught in the most extreme Seinsvergessenheit; he is most estranged from his essence - his being destined by Being. It is out of the eschaton of Being's revealing, out of the night of Being that Heidegger speaks, prophetically summoning man to the recollecting of Being, which means the ' surpassing' of the metaphysical tradition and the 'rule' of technique . This recollecting, this surpassing, occurs when man grasps 'the tradition' that enthralls him as destining, as fate; when he grasps the truth of the absence of Being in the rule of will. This truth is man's essence as 'Need' (Not) of Being, as originating Need, as the originating source of truth . In recollecting Being as Fate, man possesses, at one and the same time, his own essence as finite freedom and the truth of finite Being - in their oneness. He discovers his necessary and proper involvement in the being (the 'presencing') of all things as that of 'letting be' - of protecting, enhancing, gathering, and not of determining , mastering, reducing. Like Grant, then , Heidegger appears to conceive man's proper relation to himself and his world as receptive rather than wilful. But here is the crux of Grant's disagreement with Heidegger: it is that Heidegger identifies man 's receptivity to beings with his self-possession as finite freedom. For Heidegger, man's 'letting be' of the ' things that are' is his (Dasein's) creative act, his authentic resolve , his resolute projection of his own future, of his innermost possibilities. According to Heidegger, man, as self-constitutive freedom, is the opening, the unveiling of things: Dasein is the being, the truth, the possibility, the meaning of beings. The resoluteness to which Heidegger calls us is the resolute projecting (the willing) of our full range of possibilities as finite, upon which projecting depends the being of the world. Now Grant does not admit that man's essence is his freedom, in Heidegger's sense . This is not the revelation given in Grant's recollection of the western tradition, nor is it implied for him in his understanding of the tradition as fate. From his point of view , Heidegger may have 'surpassed' the nihilism of Nietzsche, but not the nihilism of the modern tradition. It is the genius and the tragedy of Heidegger, Grant has remarked, 18 to have thought the meaning of the modem project from within a fundamental acceptance of its assumptions. And what are these assumptions? That man creates himself; that he takes responsibility for his essence; that there is no eternal, transcendent, and unchangeable good for which man is fitted; that there is no justice in things to which man must conform; that there is no eternal law by which man is measured; that all is 18 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 67

119 The Challenge of Historicism radically contingent; that the meaning of beings is exhausted by their finite (historical) possibilities. Grant himself 'refuses' these assumptions, yet he holds on to a certain language, to certain ideas, which in Heidegger are inseparable from them. This, we shall see, propels Grant's thinking about 'history' into radical paradox . THE CHALLENGE OF NIETZSCHE, THE WESTERN SEER

Despite Grant's debt to Heidegger, it is Nietzsche and not Heidegger whom Grant places at the centre of his 'enucleation.' In 1969 Grant justifies his choice with the judgment that Nietzsche has 'thought the conception of time as history more comprehensively than any other modem thinker before or since' (TH, 22). It is for this reason that Nietzsche appears so late in Time as History. For to understand the truth about ourselves that Nietzsche announces, we must already have attained some knowledge of ourselves. Grant's first two meditations offer us this knowledge, preparing us to receive Nietzsche as the seer and conscience of the age who tells us where we have been and where we are going. Nietzsche is the first, says Grant, to have 'accepted "en pleine conscience de cause" that temporality enfolds human beings and that they experience that temporality as history' (TH, 22) . Grant will say almost a decade later, 'It is unthinkable that Heidegger would have been without Nietzsche. ' 19 Since we cannot be indifferent to Nietzsche without scorning knowledge of ourselves, Grant has a sharp reproach for English-speaking despisers of Nietzsche. Indeed it might have been better for humanity if Nietzsche's works of high genius had never been written, or if written, published. But to raise this possibility implies that it is better, at least for most men, not to be told where they are. Nietzsche's words raise to an intensely full light of explicitness what it is to live in Jhis era ... His thought does not invent the situation of our contemporary existence, it unfolds it. He carries the crisis of modern thought further only in the sense that by the accuracy and explicitness of his unfolding, he makes it more possible for others to understand the situation of which they are the inheritors ... Therefore, to say that it would have been better for Nietzsche's words not to have been published, implies that some men can live better, if they know less where they are. From whom should some knowledge be hidden? (TH, 24-5)

This last question Grant poses as a serious question of political philosophy. It concerns the extent to which man's life in society places truth-telling under the yoke of discretion. The 'immoderate rhetoric' with which Nietzsche unmasked 19 Conversation in George Grant in Process, 66

120 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice the dissembling of European thought for all to see was his answer to this question, perhaps even his denial of its validity. Yet Nietzsche, we would expect Grant to say, knew what was at stake in the question, whereas his critics, in all likelihood, do not. Moreover, Grant points out that we who live a century after Nietzsche have less right to indignation at his thought than did his contemporaries, because we are already the complacent heirs of so much of it. His opinions are the popular platitudes of our times, 'the platitudes of such schools as positivism and existentialism, psychiatry and behavioural social science' (TH, 25) . We have rashly welcomed Nietzsche's 'more obvious teachings' without contemplating 'the subtler consequences of extremity he draws necessarily from them' (TH, 25). It is to the 'last men' of our generation that Grant directs the barbed reflection: 'Most men want it both ways in thought and in practice; the nobility of Nietzsche is that he did not' (TH, 25). Most men want, at one and the same time, the freedom of historicism and the consolation of the non-historical past. Nietzsche's relation to our past, to the 'seed bed' of our western destiny, is of crucial importance for Grant. We cannot grasp our destiny in Nietzsche without grasping its two sources in the Greeks and the Bible. Nietzsche's thought is, therefore, another way back to our 'primals'; it is another way of laying hold on our beginnings as our destiny. In this final laying hold on our beginnings, it is Christianity that bears the burden of our destiny. Grant no longer speaks, as in 1959, of 'the classical spirit having taken into itself Biblical religion.' Now he sets forth Christianity as 'the majoritarian locus' in which the 'intermingling' of biblical religion and the 'universal understanding' of the Greeks occurred (TH, 22). Consequently, it is Christianity that we must plumb in order to 'recognize ourselves today .' We must understand 'how it was that Christianity so opened men to a particular consciousness of time by opening them to anxiety and charity; how willing was exalted through the stamping proclamations of the creating Will; how time was raised up by redemption in time, and the future by the exaltation of the "eschaton"' (TH, 22). In this passage we can detect Grant's reciprocal illumination of our Christian beginnings and our inheritance from Nietzsche. This same reciprocity is conveyed in Grant's justification for studying Nietzsche: 'In looking at the flowering tree at the height of its wildest blooming, we are not far from its seed and its seed bed' (TH , 23). Nietzsche, in Grant's view, belongs to the modem project, which Strauss has clarified, of stepping behind our Christian past to recover Greekness (albeit an earlier stratum). For Nietzsche propounds a criticism of the classical Christian heritage of the West from a vantage-point that shows some resemblance to pre-Socratic thought. But, Grant would want to say, the alternative to the Platonic Christian tradition that Nietzsche offers contains a fundamental criticism of

121 The Challenge of Historicism Greekness out of the inheritance of biblical religion. Thus, to understand Nietzsche's thought as our fate is to understand the triumph of Christianity in the West. Let us keep this in mind as we look at Grant's exposition of Nietzsche: of his conception of modernity in terms of the 'historical sense,' of his interpretation of the historical roots and the coming to be of this 'sense,' of his analysis of the crisis in the modem public as a crisis of will, of his hoped-for resolution of this crisis, and of the manner and the instrument of this resolution. I / The 'historical sense.' Grant begins with Nietzsche's statement in Human, All Too Human: "'Lack of historical sense is the inherited defect of all philosophers"' (TH, 25); that is, philosophers have traditionally refused to believe that, in Nietzsche's words, 'becoming is the rule even in the spiritual things' (TH, 25-6). Out of their conviction of 'something permanent in human beings,' philosophers have 'proceeded ... to make generalizations about the meaning of human life, and even about the whole of which man is a part' (TH, 26) . Historical sense, then, is sense of the 'finality of becoming' that undercuts all philosophical definition and generalization. For the latter depends upon the affirmation of some 'permanence in terms of which change can be measured or limited or defined,' but, says Grant, this affirmation runs counter to Nietzsche's apprehension that 'in the shortest moment we are never the same, nor are we ever in the presence of the same' (TH, 27). Such venerable concepts as 'unity,' 'purpose,' and 'truth' are deceptions, arising out of our desire to mitigate 'whether through practical or contemplative ordering' our 'awareness of primal chaos' (TH, 27) . Indeed, Nietzsche proposes, the idea of 'truth' represents western man's 'most disciplined attempt to sedate consciousness against the terror and pain of becoming' (TH, 27). The language of 'truth,' then, has no ground outside ourselves; it is 'an assertion of value' rooted in our willing. In drawing out these implications of the historical sense, Nietzsche, Grant tells us, self-consciously rent the whole fabric of progressive liberalism in Europe. He showed the shallowness and stupidity of historical hope and liberal morality liberated from its moorings in Christian faith . He denied any justification for viewing history teleologically, as manifesting 'the growing power of rationality in the race,' or indeed for believing rationality to be good, in the sense of man's 'given purpose' (TH, 28). These remnants of 'Christian Platonism,' Nietzsche argued, must be put away with the Christian god. 20 20 Says Grant: 'In the light of the historical sense men have to give up belief not only in the transcendent ground of permanence (God is dead), but also in the moral valuations which accompanied the former, particularly the idea that our existing has its crowning purpose in rationality.' (TH, 28)

122 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice The 'values' of 'rationality' and 'purpose' are intelligible only within a 'horizon' which the historical sense has shown to be a •horizon. ' The term •horizon,' in Nietzsche's usage, denotes the 'absolute presuppositions within which individuals and indeed whole civilizations do their living.' These presuppositions are the 'limits' within which 'everything which appears, appears' (TH, 29) . They are the conditions of human action in that they establish the ends of action. The discovery belonging to the historical sense is that horizons 'are man-made perspectives' rather than apprehensions 'about the nature of things'; they are 'creations' of 'our tortured instincts,' instruments by which 'the charismatic impose their will to power' (TH, 29). In unveiling our horizons as horizons, Nietzsche is fully aware of the crisis into which he is plunging human willing, for how can man be resolute in his action when he knows that his purposes are arbitrary inventions and 'not ingrained in the nature of things' (TH, 30)? 2 I The history of the historical sense. According to Nietzsche, the historical sense is the outcome of centuries of Christianity . It is the outcome of the pursuit of truth by modem science which itself blossomed from 'the long history of disciplined truth-seeking in Christianity' (TH, 28). Nietzsche, says Grant, viewed Christianity as •"Platonism for the people."' He saw Christianity as having taken over the Platonic 'identification of rationality, virtue, and happiness' (TH, 32) which had its ground 'in the primacy of the idea of the Good' (TH, 28). But in taking over this 'optimistic' identification, he argued, Christianity transformed it from the preserve of the few to the property of the masses . Christianity united Plato's triad with the 'idea of equality,' converting it into something that could be attained by all 'through trust in the creating and redeeming Triune God' (TH, 32). In binding rationality, virtue, and happiness to equality, Christianity did not leave them unchanged. Grant does not specify the nature of this change, but instead points to the further transformation of the triad that Nietzsche percieves to have occurred in the modem era, when 'it came to be believed that this uniting of reason and virtue and happiness was not grounded beyond the world in the Kingdom of God, but was coming to be here on earth, in history' (TH, 32). Nietzsche regards this secularized Christianity of modem liberalism as 'the height of optimism,' and the height of contradiction as well. For liberalism wants equality, moral progress, and happiness for all, but it has at the heart of its destiny modem science which 'in the very name of"truthfulness" - itself a moral value -' has made plain that 'reason is only an instrument and cannot teach us how it is best to live' (TH, 32-3). Eventually, he prophesies, liberalism must give way to widespread public nihilism and despair, but that it should have persisted so tenaciously under the burden of its manifold contradictions testifies to the debased, banal, petty view of happiness it propounds. The liberals who coexist

123 The Challenge of Historicism with the nihilists Nietzsche calls 'the last men ': those whose conception of human happiness has been 'shrunk to fit what can be realized by all ' (TH , 33) . Their fatuous complacency, devoid of ' all potentialities for nobility and greatness ,' is their innoculation against despair, against 'the abyss of existing' (TH, 33). In Nietzsche's ' last men ' we recognize those paragons of technological freedom that Grant so eloquently describes , who, having conquered the spontaneity of nature, have dried up 'the streams of spontaneity' in themselves. We recognize also those citizens of 'the universal and homogeneous state' who, to Strauss's horror, find their fulfilment in 'mutual recognition. ' 3 / The crisis of the historical sense. The historical sense, Nietzsche perceives, casts a blight upon living. In exposing the horizons as horizons , the historical sense causes the highest values of the past to depreciate. This devaluation of the highest value is what Nietzsche means by ' nihilism. ' The nihilists, explains Grant, know that 'men have no given content for their willing,' but that 'because men are wills, the strong cannot give up willing' (TH, 34) . Consequently, they 'would rather will nothing than have nothing to will' (TH , 34) . The nihilists' portion in human greatness is to have risen above 'the debased vision of happiness' that pacifies the 'last men'; they fall short, however, of the height of greatness - to will something out of the heart of chaos recognized as chaos. It is the nihilists and not the 'last men ' who participate fully in the 'heritage of rationalism,' the practical heritage of which is the technological conquest of nature, the theoretical heritage of which is the devaluation of the highest values. While the last men 'use the fruits of technique for the bored pursuit of their trivial vision of happiness ' (TH , 35), the nihilists place technique in the service of violent and cataclysmic ends; they are 'resolute in their will to mastery,' without knowing 'what the mastery is for' (TH, 34) . Thus, the nihilists are the truly apocalyptic figures before whom Nietzsche poses the anguished question: 'Who deserve to be masters of the earth?' His answer is that only those men deserve to be masters who, while knowing 'that they are the creators of their own values ... bring forth from that creation in the face of chaos a joy in their willing ' (TH, 35). 4 I The self-overcoming of the historical sense . Those men in whom the crisis of the will that is the legacy of rationalism has been overcome Nietzsche calls •Ubermensch .' The Ubermensch have overcome the heritage of rationalism from out of that heritage. In overcoming rationalism they have recovered the past of human greatness which rationalism destroyed; they have recovered 'the highest vision of what men have yet been ... unfolded in the early Greek tragedies' (TH, 35). ' Here, ' says Grant, 'was laid forth publicly and in ordered form the ecstasy of the suffering and knowing encounter of the noblest men and women with the chaos of existing' (TH , 35). In the Ubermensch Nietzsche projects 'a new height

124 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice which talces into itself not only the ecstasy of a noble encounter with chaos, but also the results of the long history of rationalism' (TH, 35). It is important for Grant that Nietzsche holds to the Ubermensch as his 'highest hope' outside of any 'net' of inevitable success, outside of the 'comforting illusion' of historical necessity; that he remains faithful to the radical contingency of the present and the future, to the 'absence of all nets,' which, says Grant parenthetically, 'is a truth that those of us who trust in God must affirm.' In Nietzsche's view, what divides the nihilists from the Ubermensch, what robs the nihilists of the possibility of 'ecstatic nobility,' is 'the spirit of revenge' (TH, 37) .21 For Nietzsche, the 'spirit of revenge' is 'the very curse of mankind' (TH, 37), the nemesis of human history, which springs from the condition of time itself. It springs from the chaos of man's temporal existence, with 'all its accidents, its terrors and its purposelessness,' experienced 'as anguish' (TH, 38). 'On the wheel of the chaos which is the world,' says Grant, 'our instincts are thwarted and twisted' and 'our wills are continually broken,' so that we must concede Nietzsche's verdict: "'It is the body which has despaired of the body"' (TH, 38). Out of that despair comes the desire for revenge - against others, against ourselves, against time. 'The more botched and bungled our instincts become in the vicissitudes of existing,' Nietzsche believes, 'the greater our will to revenge on what has been done us' (TH, 38). Thus the greatest will to revenge belongs to those of the weakest instinct, who are unable to express their will to power in the world. According to Nietzsche, man's elemental will to power is instinctual drive, but, in the vicissitudes of time, the elemental in man is transmuted into 'higher forms' of the will to power, all of which have the character of revenge. Morality, justice, religious self-denial, philosophic contemplation - these all express the will to power as the desire for revenge, against the self, against the vigorous instincts of others, against time's captivity. Says Grant: 'For Nietzsche the very idea of transcendence - that time is enfolded in eternity - is produced out of the spirit of revenge by those who because of their broken instincts are impotent to live in the world, and in their self-pity extrapolate to a non-existent perfection in which their failures will be made good' (TH, 39). No matter how transcendence is conceived, whether as Ideas (the eternal things), the eternal God (creator and redeemer of the world), historical progress (the transcendence of temporal necessity}, it amounts to the same thing: the will to overcome 'time's thrall,' to overcome the offence to our deepest desires of "'it was," ' "'it is," ' "'it will be" ' (TH, 40). Nietzsche sees the greatest affront to our desires in the 'it was' of time, in the past of individual and communal memory: 'In Zarathustra Nietzsche 21 Grant quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra: 'That man may be delivered from revenge: that is for me the bridge to the highest hope.'

I 25 The Challenge of Historicism writes: "To transfonn every 'it was' into 'this is what I wanted' - that alone I could call redemption"' (TH, 41). 'The height' for Nietzsche, says Grant, is 'amor fati': 'And that love must come out of having grasped into one's consciousness the worst that can be remembered or imagined - the torturing of children and the screams of the innocent' (TH, 41). The Ubermensch are those in whom time will be redeemed because they will 'have overcome the spirit of revenge and ... [will] be able to will and create in joy' (TH, 41). It belongs to the Ubermensch 'to live on the earth, to be masters of the earth, to desrve to be masters,' because they will have attained a new height of nobility in 'the act of amor fati, held outside any assertion of timelessness' (TH, 41). It is the time-boundedness of Nietzsche's amor fati that distinguishes it from all past acts: says Grant, 'the love of fate has been asserted in the Greek tragedies, in Plato, and by certain Christians. But this fate was enfolded in a timeless eternity, in an ultimate perfection' (TH, 41). By contrast, Nietzsche's amor fati 'must be willed in a world where there is no possibility of either an infinite or finite transcendence of becoming or of willing' (TH, 41). In recovering the 'tragic sense' of the Greeks, then, Nietzsche, in the language of Heidegger, 'surpasses' this sense, through a fundamental criticism of the notion of transcendence. To the implied question 'How is the love of fate possible within the finality of becoming?' Grant responds with Nietzsche's "'discovery'" of "'the eternal recurrence of the identical."' Explains Grant, Nietzsche discovered that: 'as the number of possible combinations of what exists is finite, yet time is infinite; there has already been and will be again an endless recurrence of the present state of affairs and of every other state possible' (TH, 41). It was in the thoughtful 'endurance' of this 'discovery,' Grant tells us, that Nietzsche moved towards 'the realization of amor fati' through the overcoming of revenge (TH, 42). He saw his 'discovery' as taking him beyond nihilism, beyond 'the violence of an undirected willing of novelty' (TH, 42), to a beginning of willing novelty in joy. Grant concludes his exposition of Nietzsche: 'In the recognition of the dominance of time in which no past is past and no future has yet been and yet in which there is openness to the immediate future - the conception of time as history reaches its height and yet is not hypostasized into a comforting horizon' (TH, 42-3). In Nietzsche's doctrine of 'the eternal recurrence,' historicism finds a way of affinning both past and future, both necessity and freedom, together with the reality and the illusion of novelty. THROUGH NIETZSCHE TO THE HEIGHT OF PARADOX

When Grant in his concluding meditation describes the purpose of Nietzsche's writings, he might well be describing his own purpose of ten years earlier in

126 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice

Philosophy and the Mass Age. 'In thinking the modern project, he [Nietzsche] did not turn away from it ... Rather, he expressed the contradictions and difficulties in the thought and life of western civilization, not for the sake of turning men away from that enterprise, but so that they could overcome its difficulties and fulfil its potential heights' (TH, 44) . In Nietzsche ' s struggle to bring 'the modern project' to its completion in thought, Grant sees expressed 'the fate of our whole living' as moderns (TH, 45). In the early sixties Grant turned away from 'the modern project' as thought by Hegel; now he turns away from 'the modern project as thought by Nietzsche. 'The conception of time as history,' he asserts, 'is not one in which I think life can be lived properly. It is not a conception we are fitted for' (TH, 45) . Yet, immediately, Grant qualifies his turning away and says: 'One must affirm the language one shares with him, even as one negates his use of it' (TH, 45). Our language, Grant has said, is both a universal and a particular destiny. It belongs to 'the tradition in its eternal truth' even as its particular usage among us denies this truth (TH, 45). By ' the tradition,' he means the two sources of the western tradition: the Bible and Greek philosophy. The language that Nietzsche has in common with 'the tradition' is the language of amor fati, but this language is Nietzsche' s ' guarantee that dynamic willing shall be carried on by lovers of the earth, and not by those twisted by hatred and hysteria against existing' (TH,-43). For only those who have overcome the will to revenge against 'time's thrall' are worthy of 'dynamic political doing, ' (TH, 46). Amor fati, then, is not the overcoming of 'dynamic willing' but its purification from 'the marks of hysteria and hatred' (TH, 46). Grant must negate Nietzsche' s use of amor fati as a perverse mystification of the tradition, to which he can only respond with 'simple incomprehension.' He explains his perplexity in a way that precisely and exhaustively poses the issue between himself and Nietzsche: I do not understand how anyone could love fate, unless within the details of our fates there could appear, however rarely, intimations that they are illumined; intimations, that is, of perfection (call it if you will God) in which our desires for good find their rest and their fulfillment. I do not say anything about the relation of that perfection to the necessities of existing, except that there must be some relation; nor do I state how or when the light of that perfection could break into the ambiguities and afflictions of any particular person. I simply state the argument for perfection (sometimes called the ontological argument): namely that human beings are not beyond good and evil , and that the desire for good is a broken hope without perfection, because only the desire to become perfect does in fact make us less imperfect. This means that the absurdities of time - its joys as well as its diremptions - are to be taken not simply as history, but as enfolded in an unchanging meaning, which is untouched by potentiality or change. So when Nietzsche affirms that

127 The Challenge of Historicism amor fati comes forth from the contemplation of the eternity (not timelessness, but endless

time) of the creating and destroying powers of man and the rest of nature, I do not understand how that could be a light which would free us from the spirit of revenge. It seems to me a vision that would drive men mad - not in the sense of divine madness, but a madness destructive of good. (TH, 46-7) What is incomprehensible to Grant, if we may dare to add to the fulness of his own statement, is Nietzsche's use of the word 'love' in a sense other than 'desire of perfection.' Love, for Grant, denotes the desiring relation of beings to the universal good, the eternal and unchanging perfection which is their ground and their end. The fulfilment of love is assimilation to the Good, to God, through adoring contemplation. Grant does not see how the contemplation of 'endless time,' of endless cycles of creation and destruction, can issue in amor fati. This is because he does not see how motion rather than rest, 'dynamism rather than peace,' could be 'the height.' But this is just what Nietzsche affirms, that motion is the height, and so calls men to a desiring which seeks no 'rest' or 'fulfilment.' To love, for Nietzsche, is to mitigate in no way the incessant restlessness of subjective existence. Men are wills, and the highest thing is that which enhances willing - the eternal recurrence of the same. In negating Nietzsche's use of the tradition, Grant places himself in an ironic relation to Nietzsche's thought. For he accepts Nietzsche's account of modernity as true, while refusing to embrace Nietzsche's thought as 'the best or highest word about what is' (TH, 24). In 'the tradition' we find a higher word about 'what is' than Nietzsche's word . And so, Grant brings upon himself the terrible paradox of our modem fate. He says: Indeed ... there is a further tum of the screw for anybody who would assert that amorJati is the height, yet cannot understand how that height could be achievable outside the vision of our fate as enfolded in a timeless eternity. The destruction of the idea of such an eternity has been at the centre of the modem project in the very scientific and technical mastery of chance. As a great contemporary, Leo Strauss, has written in What is Political Philosophy: 'Oblivion of eternity, or, in other words, estrangement from man's deepest desire and therefore from the primary issues, is the price which modem man has to pay, from the very beginning, for attempting to be absolutely sovereign, to become the master and owner of nature, to conquer chance.' And the tum of the screw is that to love fate must include loving the fate that makes us part of the modem project; it must include loving that which has made us oblivious of eternity - that eternity without which I cannot understand how it would be possible to love fate . (TH, 48) In this 'further tum of the screw,' Grant sets his tragic vision of human history at the extreme of paradox. It is paradoxical beyond the early Greek tragedies and

128 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice beyond Nietzsche. For the early Greeks attained through the suffering and chaos of existing to an intuition of transcendent justice, but the modern fate is 'oblivion' to such an illumination. And Nietzsche can embrace the modern 'oblivion' as preparing the ground for a still nobler vision only because he believes that men are 'beyond good and evil.' The light in the darkness for both Nietzsche and Heidegger is the conviction that "'Man is the as yet undetermined animal''' (TH, 34); that he may yet enter into a fuller creativity and freedom out of his own immanent potentialities. Grant, of course, stands outside of this hope for the future. FROM PHILOSOPHICAL HOPE TO RECOLLECTING FAITH: REVELATION VERSUS TRADITION

Has Grant then abandoned hope for our future as modern men? Certainly he has abandoned immanent grounds for hope. About our future he is simply agnostic. He does not know whether North American public life will again take upon itself the yoke of justice, virtue, and piety. He does not know whether western man in the future will be able to •think of "morality" as a desiring attention to perfection' (TH, 48). He does not know whether individuals in the future will know themselves as other than wills, whether nature will be for them a realm of comtemplation and enjoyment as well as of manipulation. All Grant permits himself where the future is concerned is 'perhaps.' 'Perhaps,' he says, 'reverence belongs to man qua man and is indeed the matrix of human nobility' (TH, 50). And: 'It may be that at any time or place, human beings can be opened to the whole in their loving and thinking, even as its complete intelligibility eludes them. If this be true of any time or place, then one is not, after all, trapped in historicism' (TH, 52). In Grant's 'perhaps' we hear an echo of the philosophical hope of Leo Strauss. But there is something more and other than this 'perhaps' in Grant: there is the 'call to remembering,' inseparable from the call 'to loving and to thinking' (TH, 49). Remembering for him is the way of making present that truth which is absent from our daily living in the technological 'dynamo,' the truth concerning 'the unfathomable goodness of the whole,' which comes to us out of a 'tradition of reverence' (TH, 50). This truth about 'the whole' is surrendered (traditum) to us, in our remembering, from our 'fortune .. . in having lived within a remembered reverence' (a traditio) (TH, 50). The very manner of its surrendering means that we encounter this truth by chance. 'Perhaps,' says Grant, 'reverence belongs to man qua man ... But,' he adds, 'those several conceptions, being denied in our present public thought, can themselves only be asserted after they have been sought for through the remembrance of the thought of those who once thought them' (TH, 50).

129 The Challenge of Historicism We are not really 'opened to the whole' in 'our loving and thinking, ' if such openness requires articulation. For in our very language that truth which comes to us out of 'tradition' is denied. We remember Grant's assertion that recollecting the good and thinking our deprival are one. The ' whole' that is absent from our experience is recollected as absent. There may be an apprehension of the good, an immediate intuition, which never comes to speech. But to speak the truth that is apprehended requires recollection - recollection of what is handed over to us, of the traditum . If there is to be philosophy in our age, therefore, it must speak (think) out of 'the remembering of a negated tradition' (TH, 50). Thinking, in so far as it is communicable, depends on recollection . And where were those 'conceptions' that are 'denied in our present public' once thought? In the Bible and in Greek philosophy. Remembering that is efficacious in the present must make present 'the deepest roots of western fate' (TH , 51). Says Grant: 'Wherever else we tum , we cannot tum away from our own fate, which came from our original openings to comedy and tragedy, to thought and charity, to anxiety and shame' (TH, 31). Should he, then, use the expression 'once thought' ? Should he not speak of the.first and.final thinking of these conceptions in the Bible and Greek philosophy? He is, after all, referring to the beginnings, the origins, of the western tradition, which would logically have for him a different status from everything that follows from them. Is not all that follows derivative and dependent? Here we are confronting the central ambiguity in Grant's use of the term 'tradition .' For he speaks both of 'the modem tradition ' and of ' the tradition(s) of Athens and Jerusalem.' But 'the modem tradition' he comes to conceive as a structure of error, a blanket of darkness upon 'the primary issues,' a 'false universal' to which our thought and action is enslaved. Our only way of transcending this false universal is to recover our origins, but in Grant's later writings there appear to be no grounds for this recovering in the tradition that 'enfolds' us. Even our language, although it belongs also to ' the tradition,' is not an avenue of recovery in itself. For its meaning has been so perverted that it is now 'incomprehensible' in its denial of the truths that were once affirmed through it. Thus our emancipation must come from without. In concluding Time as History, Grant repeats his earliest understanding of tradition as ' a confusion of truth and falsity' (for instance, in 'Two Theological Languages' (1947) and 'Philosophy' (1951)). This repetition strikes us as somewhat incongruous, since neither the modem tradition, as a blanket of darkness, nor the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem, as our 'original openings,' conform to Grant's original dialectic of tradition and thought. Indeed, his early dialectic has collapsed, leaving him with a need which only revelation can fill. Our beginnings, therefore, must be that place where the light pierces through the darkness. They must stand above the deflection and error of the tradition , judging

130 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice the tradition and pronouncing on whatever truth it may contain. Does Grant not recognize such a measure in our beginnings? We would say that he does, in Plato and the Gospels, which are revelation in a way that all other tradition, everything else handed down to us, is not. It is Plato and the Gospels that we must recollect, and not the rest of tradition which is 'at best' a 'confusion of truth and falsity. ' Plato and the Gospels are our true primals, our beginnings, for in these writings the eternal truth is revealed. But if Plato and the Gospels are revelation, they cannot stand in contradition or conflict. The antithesis of philosophy-revelation cannot hold. Yet Grant continually returns to the tension at the root of the western tradition between the traditions of Jerusalem and Athens. How, then, can we justify our claim that Plato and the Gospels are revelation for him? We can make good our claim only by distinguishing Plato and the Gospels from the 'traditions of Athens and Jerusalem.' For these traditions, which are our originating traditions in the historical sense, contain much besides the writings of Plato and the Gospels: they contain the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers , the tragedians, Aristotle, the Old Testament, the early church. It is between 'Biblical religion' and 'Greek philosophy,' we would argue, that Grant perceives contradiction. In these traditions reside irreconcilable accounts of human freedom; from them emerges the tension between contemplation and charity . Further, the seeds of modem liberalism lie in 'Biblical religion ,' by which Grant means the religion of Israel, of early Christianity , and the western church. Grant says of Christianity that it 'opened men to a particular consciousness of time , by opening them to anxiety and charity ,' that it 'exalted ... willing,' and 'raised up ... time ... by redemption in time, and the future by the exaltation of the "eschaton." ' Not surprisingly, Grant views Nietzsche as the culmination of the tradition that has its beginnings in 'Biblical religion. ' For, on Grant's view, Nietzsche' s historicism espouses most fundamentally a criticism of the Greeks out of the Christian tradition. It espouses a criticism of the Greek conception of eternity and of contemplation as the height that is more fundamental than Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity as perpetuating and transforming Greek thought, certain aspects of which Grant himself appears to accept. Grant perceives that Nietzsche's fundamental criticism of the Greeks is simply the other side of what he positively appropriates of Christianity: namely , the centrality of anxiety and willing in human life, redemption in time, the eternal weight of the contingent, the divine creativity of human action. Nietzsche 's 'ecstatic nobility ' may be for many modems the only alternative to technological violence; nevertheless, these alternatives belong within the same nihilistic tradition that has its source, Grant repeatedly suggests, in the Christian view of nature - in Christianity's overcoming of natural necessity.

131 The Challenge of Historicism In the light of the ambiguities in Grant's understanding of 'tradition,' his concluding exhortation in Time as History is intelligible. He places before us the task not only of remembering the tradition, but 'of appropriating from it, by means of loving and thinking, that which it has carried to us' - its truth (TH, 51). And not only that! Because the truth of the tradition concerns 'the unfathomable goodness of the whole,' which must unfathomably embrace our present darkness, we must not use what is remembered simply to 'negate what may have been given us of truth and goodness in this age' (TH, 51). Modernity may be an impenetrable blanket of darkness for thought about the highest things, yet it must have its own truth and goodness as that destiny which comes forth from our beginnings. Says Grant: 'We must not forget that new potentialities of reasoning and making happen have been actualized (and not simply contemplated as mistrusted potentialities, as for example in Plato) and therefore must be thought as having been actualized, in relation to what is remembered. The conception of time as history is not to be discarded as if it had never been' (TH, 52). Our present darkness must have meaning even as darkness . 22

22 We are not alone in perceiving ironic import and theoretical significance in Grant's insistence that 'the conception of time as history is not to be discarded as if it had never been. ' Larry Schmidt, in his article 'George Grant and the Problem of History' (George Grant in Process, 130-8), interprets this remark, as we do, to mean that Grant, though he reject the modem conception of 'history,' cannot altogether abandon the task of understanding history. In sympathy with Grant' s criticisms of 'history,' Schmidt undertakes to clarify further this modem conception and to suggest briefly a more adequate theoretical alternative. By 'thinking through the philosophical implications of the critical historical method,' Schmidt arrives at an understanding of history indebted chiefly to Eric Voegelin. In our judgment, this understanding owes too much to the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition of Hegel and Heidegger to answer adequately Grant's criticisms of ' history.'

7

Denouement: The Twilight of Justice

GRANT'S WORK IN THE SEVENTIES

Within the progression of Grant's thought about 'history,' Time as History has the force of a climax. This slim volume, a masterpiece of economy and penetration, sets forth with unparalleled succinctness the unity and meaning of the modem experience gathered into the prism of 'history. ' It compels us again and again to attend to the uniqueness and novelty of what is present to us in the word 'history.' With Time as History Grant's explicit struggle with the problem of 'history' ends, but the structure of the problem remains to dominate his work of the seventies. In the wake of Time as History, Grant's latest writings have the aura of a denouement, in the sense that they accept, for the most part, the settled conceptual structure bequeathed by the previous decade of thought. Their contribution to the problem of history is not, broadly speaking, constructive, but analytical: they offer rich and provocative elaborations of existing ideas, increasing the weight of established arguments and insights with detail and precision of presentation. Indeed, we are not unwarranted in judging Grant's chief publication of the seventies, English-Speaking Justice, to be his most scholarly book. There is, however, one significant qualification to the generalization that Grant's writings of the seventies do not markedly alter the philosophical shape of his thought. It is this - that these writings do give more explicit recognition than previously to two fundamental ideas: to the unity of Plato and the Gospels as the authoritative vehicles of truth, and the primacy of the Gospels within this unity; and to the enduring presence of the 'whole' to man, even modem man, especially in the distinctions of his moral life. While Grant's greater recognition of these ideas may be viewed as a step in the direction of overcoming the historicist

133 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice elements of his thought, the evidence for this overcoming is not such as would justify our speaking of a structural modification of his argument, or treating the seventies as a further phase in his thinking about history. On the contrary, the weight of the evidence falls on the side of securing the historicist tendencies in Grant's writings . Perhaps these tendencies are sustained by defeat and disillusionment in the public sphere. The seventies are the decade of Grant's most concerted public involvement, along with his wife, Sheila, in the opposition to legalized abortion. At the end of the decade the impact of such dissenting voices on behalf of the defenceless unborn appears minimal. It is uncertain whether the Grants have even been heard above the strains of liberal voluntarism in their own church. 1 The seventies offer little to relieve Grant's pessimism about the future of his country. The evolving constitutional crisis around Quebec' s national-political aspirations, which climaxes in the 1980 referendum, is for Grant the inexorable working out of those historic choices of English-speaking Canadians examined in Lament for a Nation . It testifies to the continuing refusal by English Canadians to think what is implied in the will to an independent political existence in North America. For what is centrally implied is recognition of the distinct claims and purposes of the two founding communities of Canada - the English and the French. The demand for a 'separate' Quebec is, in Grant's view, the justified outcome of the unbroken suppression of these distinct claims by an Englishspeaking majority bent on continental integration. 2 Finally, the decade closes for Grant with a dramatic upheaval in his professional life as a university teacher. In April 1980 he terminates his association of twenty years with McMaster University by resigning his teaching post. His resignation is provoked by a protracted and bitter battle waged with his colleagues and the university administration over fundamental policy issues affecting the fabric of university life. These issues concern the aspirations and orientation of his own department - the department of religion - and of the larger university, as reThe Anglican Church of Canada found itself, from 1977 to 1980, embroiled in debate over an ill-conceived repon on 'dying' which had wide-ranging implications for ethical issues concerning the medical protection of human life. This church-commissioned repon (which underwent a major revision in the course of the controversy) removed cenain moral and theological scruples about the protection of specific categories of lives: e.g., the lives of badly defective newborns and of permanently comatose patients. Many of its ' liberal' arguments could be, and have been used to justify abonion. Grant was among the strong dissenters from the repon who tried unsuccessfully to get a formal hearing for an alternative point of view. 2 This is Grant's interpretation of the constitutional crisis in his article 'On National Unity' (1977). The same interpretation appears in Grant's conversation on Canadian politics in George Grant in Process, 13-21 .

134 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice fleeted in decisions about cuniculum content, procedures and criteria of evaluation, academic priorities, and staffing. The direction of past decisions has been, in Grant's judgment, unequivocally towards the 'Americanisation' of McMaster. That is, these decisions have all conspired to the entrenchment within the university of 'technique' (to use Heidegger's term) - that ethos and paradigm of knowledge which has gained control of American education and scholarship. The issue of hiring policy is cardinal, as Grant attributes the Americanization of his university most directly to the influx of u .s. professors into its teaching ranks. These scholars, he perceives, have brought with them an unthought commitment to the progressive scientific account of knowledge and its method of 'research,' to the exclusion of that account of knowledge and that method which belongs to the highest intellectual pursuits - namely, the 'erotic' account and the method of 'dialectic. ' 3 McMaster, he proposes, has so readily succumbed to this ethos because as a 'new' university it lacks the advantage belonging to older academic institutions of an established tradition of dialectical education on the earlier English model. Grant's practical defeat on this critical issue of American influence in Canadian higher education is foreshadowed in the seventies by his theoretical preoccupation with our 'fateful' civilizational paradigm of knowledge . His lengthy reflections on this paradigm, running throughout and knitting together his writings of this decade, extend his fundamental insight into 'history' in Time as History: that the essence of the modem 'experience' is the supremacy of the will, expressed in the scope of our making, in our insatiable desire to create novelty . Still under the tutelage of Heidegger's genius, Grant attempts to unravel the manifold aspects and implications of his discovery that knowing, in its prevailing modem form, is a species of willing. All Grant's major writings of this period participate in this unravelling. He devotes two substantial articles, 'Knowing and Making' (1975) and "'The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used"' (l 974-5) , to clarifying the unique structure of modem technological reason as it operates in science and morality. His book English-Speaking Justice (1974) explores the implications of the modem paradigm for our knowledge and practice of justice. It investigates the historical interdependence of technological advance and the formation of liberal principles and institutions of justice in the English-speaking world, and calls into question the future of that interdependence. Finally, his article 'Faith and the Multiversity' (l 977) subjects technological knowledge to the criticisms of religious faith to reveal the full tragedy of education in our society. This last 3 Grant argues his case thus in an editorial statement printed in the Globe and Mail (Toronto, 28 April 1980, p.7) shortly after his public announcement of his resignation.

135 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice article, Grant's clearest, most precise profession of faith, prepares us for the dramatic personal decision that will follow in 1980. THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN INSTRUMENTALITY: KNOWING AS MAKING

In Time as History Grant described the unity of knowing and making in our historical self-consciousness . Historical men, we may remember, 'actualize meaning' by 'bring[ing] forth a world in which living will be known to be good for all ... in the very details we will be able more and more to control.' To 'actualize meaning' is not to apprehend the being and goodness of things, nor is it to imitate in conduct that transcendent justice upon which the being and goodness of things depends. Rather, to 'actualize meaning' is to establish, to represent the being and goodness of things, to set them forth out of the self-determining of one's own will. To 'actualize meaning' is to 'control' the 'details' of our existence, so that goodness may become apparent to us in our wilful manipulation of things . It is to know the use of things, to know their 'value' for us. Knowing, then, is our instrumental ordering of objects as means to ends that lie beyond them in our wills. It is man realizing his potential for making, for production, for work. These fundamental insights into modem instrumentality, already present in Time as History, are recapitulated in Grant's articles 'Knowing and Making' and '"The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used,"' but recapitulated in the context of a more rigorous formal analysis of the structure of technology informed by Heidegger's detailed reflections on the subject. Heidegger's influence is again detectable in Grant's semantic approach to his analysis, which continues the meditation on words and their vicissitudes begun in Time as History. Grant opens his investigation into the structure of technological knowledge in 'Knowing and Making' by defining the generic term 'paradigm of knowledge.' Says Grant, 'paradigm of knowledge' refers to 'the relation between an aspiration of human thought and the effective conditions for its realization.' (p. 59). He proposes that the relation between aspiration and effective conditions which dominates our civilization is given in natural science, in physics pre-eminently (59). And the formative aspiration of physics is that of making, the effective conditions for its realization being the mathematical representation of the world. Grant is constrained by his lack of intimate first-hand acquaintance with physics to pose his thesis in the form of a question: 'What is it in modem mathematical physics which brought into the world a new relation between making and knowing?' (64). His question, which is also implicitly Heidegger's, is provoked by the

136 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice historical observation that technologies now exist which could not have existed prior to the appearance of modem mathematical physics.4 It is the dependence of technologies on modem physics that reveals to Grant the formative aspiration of physics as that of making . According to Grant, the unique , historically unprecedented structure of modem technology is its ' intimate copenetration' of art and science, reflected in the semantic components 'techno-' (from techne) and '-logy' (from logos) . To demonstrate the uniqueness of this 'copenetration,' he turns to the original Greek meaning of techne in its distinction from theoretike episteme Says Grant, techne (for which the Latin equivalent is ars, whence comes our word 'art') 'was a kind of poiesis ,' and poiesis may be translated by the English word 'production' in its literal sense of 'leading forth' (61). The Greek word 'poiesis' covered the 'leading forth' that occurs in nature as well as in human art, so that, says Grant, 'The fish hawk in the Atlantic storm would be for the Greeks a poiesis - a veritable production - as much as this desk has been led forth' (61). However, only the desk and not the fish hawk would be a techne, because 'the chief cause of the desk's production is external to itself, in an artist, in this case a carpenter' (61). Techne, therefore, 'is the leading forth of something which requires the work of human beings' (61). 5 Techne, Grant continues, ' was indeed one kind of knowledge,' for it required of the artist that he ' be able to give his reasons for what he was doing' (61). Nevertheless, as knowledge, techne was 'strictly distinguished' from theoretike episteme ('which through Latin was the origin of our word "science"') according to the 'different entities' with which 'they were concerned,' techne being concerned with 'what might or might not be - ... with entities that were acciden4

Heidegger poses the question slightly differently, in accordance with his tendency to reverse anticipated relationships. In his essay 'The Question Concerning Technology' ('Die Frage nach der Technik') , Heidegger asks: 'Of what essence is modem technology that it happens to think of putting exact science to use?' (The Question Concerning Technology, 14). His answer, partially given in our last chapter, is that 'the revealing that rules in modem technology is a challenging [Herausfordern] which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such' ( 14). This 'challenging-revealing' as the essence of technology expresses itself 'in the rise of modem physics' which, by means of mathematical representation, 'pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces .' (21)

5

It is of utmost importance for Heidegger that physis as well as techne is ' a bringing-forth , poiesis,' indeed, that physis is 'poiesis in the highest sense' (The Question Concerning Technology, 10) - a bursting forth out of itself. For poiesis is always 'revealing, ' a 'com[ing) into unconcealment' of the 'concealed' (11), and 'revealing' (aletheia) is the original Greek sense of 'truth.' Thus, techne and physis commonly belong to the realm of truth , come to pass where truth 'happens.'

137 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice tally' and episteme 'with what must be - ... with entities that were necessarily' (62). It is this distinction between art and science according to their different objects that has been eroded by the modern paradigm of knowledge. For today we divide the arts into 'applied arts ' and 'fine arts,' that is, 'into those which are copenetrated with science (and called technologies) and those arts to which this has not happened' (62) . It is not sufficiently precise - it is even misleading - to define technology as ' "the scientific study of the practical arts"' (as does the Oxford dictionary), or even as 'the scientific study of the mechanical arts' (its original seventeenth-century meaning) (62), for these designations '[do] not make clear that technologies arise not from a scientific study of the arts which leaves them systematized but essentially unchanged, but rather by the penetration of the arts by discoveries of science which changes those arts in their very essence' (63) . Grant offers as examples of arts that have been transformed by their copenetration with modern sciences the art of medicine, transformed by the science of chemistry, and the art of producing energy, transformed by the science of quantum physics. In these 'new ways of making ,' says Grant, 'the giving of reasons ... comes from modern science' (63), implying that science and art are no longer concerned with distinct realms of being . Both, we may say, are concerned with contingent events - with the realm of chance. The appearance of nature as blind contingency is surely the answer demanded by Grant's question: 'What is it in the very discoveries of physics which makes the world available to us in a new way, so that the very nature of the knowledge leads to the new technologies?' (64). The very structure of technology, therefore, its 'copenetration' of knowing and making, has opened a moral chasm before our civilization; for in this copenetration converge 'vast new powers of making' with 'the absence of any clear knowledge of what it is good to make or unmake ' - the heyday of nihilism prophesied by Nietzsche (65)! Grant puts it succinctly: 'As the scientists' discoveries have made possible the new arts, so also the paradigmatic authority of their account of nature has put in radical question the original Western teaching concerning the frontiers and limitations of making' (65). The substance of Grant's prophetic pronouncement has not changed over fifteen years: it still concerns 'the necessity for limits to our making of history' (PMA, 78). And his pronouncement still reverberates within a tragic historicist vision: 'Our paradigm of knowledge,' he concludes, 'is the very heart of this civilization's destiny, and such destinies have a way of working themselves out - that is, of bringing forth from their principle everything which is implied in that principle' (67). It is improbable, then, that the gross irony of Grant's title "'The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used"' should escape us. The author of the assertion, 'a man who works at making and using computers' (119), is

138 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice clearly innocent of its moral-philosophical ambiguities. His words exemplify to Grant the well-intentioned response of many sensitive and educated people in our society to the felt imperative of being 'beyond industrial growth.' He, no more than they, perceives industrial growth as a fate, a destiny within which thought turns - endlessly on the concepts of 'freedom,' 'creating of history,' 'values,' 'ideals,' 'persons,' 'ascent of life' (118-19). By analysing this statement as a complex expression of what it means to be within industrial growth Grant shows how the phrase 'beyond industrial growth' on the lips of many similarly situated people 'fades away into an unthought givenness' (119). Simply, Grant's analysis of this statement demonstrates how its two parts, "'The computer does not impose on us"' and '"the ways it should be used,"' belie each other. For the first part, both in what it expresses and in what it suppresses about computers and their users, discredits the moral intention of the 'should' in the second part. What then is expressed in the phrase: "'The computer does not impose on us"'? Says Grant, the 'does not impose' expresses the extemality and neutrality of the computer as an instrument, an object subject to our control, the meaning and use of which is dependent on 'potential decisions of human beings' (120). It 'holds before us a view of the world with neutral instruments on one side and human autonomy on the other' - precisely the view 'that needs to be thought' if we are to think 'beyond industrial growth' (121). Conversely, what is suppressed in this phrase, which focuses on the instrumental capacities of the computer, is the historical totality to which the computer belongs, the civilizational requirements implied in the computer's existence. Grant dwells at length on these requirements: [The computer's] existence has required generations of sustained effort by chemists, metallurgists, and workers in mines and factories. It has required a highly developed electronics industry and what lies behind that industry in the history of science and technique and their novel reciprocal relation. It has required that men wanted to understand nature, and thought the way to do so was by putting it to the question as object so that it would reveal itself. It has required the discovery of modem algebra and the development of complex institutions for developing and applying algebra .. . The computer's existence has required that the clever of our society be trained within the massive assumptions about knowing and being and making which have made algebra actual. (120)

The computer's existence, then, is not merely a technological fact, but a historical fact, and even, Grant concedes to Heidegger, an 'ontological' fact (128). As a historical fact, the computer expresses the novelty of 'modem instrumentality,' which, Grant tells us, lies chiefly in its homogenizing thrust. To charac-

139 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice terize the computer as a 'neutral instrument' is to suppress the homogenizing direction of its capabilities, for these capabilities are such that the computer can only be used in homogenizing ways. This is entailed in the very logic of classification, which reduces differences to sameness. Furthermore, homogenization distinguishes not only modem instrumentality, but modem political life as well, the homogenizing instrumentality of modem technology reinforcing the homogenizing drive in society. It is the seemingly unified striving of our epoch that sustains Grant's adherence to a unifying principle of 'the modem.' This principle he now finds in 'a particular experience of reason' (125) in which knowing and making are interpenetrated. The use of 'should' in the phrase '"the ways it should be used"' shows the author's sublime innocence of this 'root' experience of reason; for no 'shouldness' can issue forth from it. 'Shouldness' in its traditional sense, says Grant, implies 'owing,' and the modem experience of reason has involved an apprehension of 'goodness' that 'excludes from it all "owingness"' (127). Goodness is no longer for us, as it was for our ancestors, 'that which meets us with an excluding claim and persuades us that in obedience to that claim we will find what we are fitted for' ( 127). Rather, goodness is for us that which our creative desiring posits as 'advantageous' to us, in the absence of any 'non-provisory owing' (127). It is to creative desiring, to 'resolute mastery,' that 'we are summoned in "does not impose"'; hence, the subsequent use of 'should' 'has only a masquerading resonance when ... asked to provide positive moral content to the actions we are summoned to concerning computers' (127). No, Grant is unrelenting, 'the residual and unresonant constant' appealed to in the word 'should' (128) cannot shield us from our fate, which is to take goodness, beings, even time, in a certain way. But then, our hope does not lie in such deceptive shielding as our moral glosses may provide. It lies alone in knowing the technological universal to be a 'masquerading of the universal' (130). Only from within such knowledge, says Grant, can we truthfully raise the question of 'goodness' and behold what we have made in the light of that question. THE KNOWING AND PRACTISING OF JUSTICE WITHIN THE MODERN DESTINY

English-Speaking Justice, written two years before '"The computer does not impose on us the ways it should be used," ' 6 establishes the structure of Grant's 6 The substance of English-Speaking Justice was originally delivered in 1974 as the Josiah Wood Lectures for Mount Allison University. A revised, expanded, and documented text was subsequently published in 1977 by Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick.

140 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice argument in the later article. For it already undertakes the Nietzschean task of showing that the modem experience of reason cannot indefinitely sustain the force of 'should' in practice. The practice in question is political practice, and the 'should' that is losing its force is the 'should' of public justice as it has been conceived in the English-speaking world. Since the conception of public justice that has dominated the English-speaking world in the last four centuries is that of progressive liberalism, English-Speaking Justice is Grant's inquiry into the fate of progressive liberalism in view of its dependence on the modem experience of reason. Grant opens English-Speaking Justice (hereafter abbreviated ESJ) by describing once again this novel experience of reason in the familiar words 'wedding of knowing and production' (ESJ, I). It is in the womb of this experience, Grant reminds us, that both our natural and our moral science, both technology and political liberalism, have taken flesh. Thus he affirms the historical interdependence of technological advance and political liberalism, as is widely recognized, without, however, affirming their 'necessary interdependence,' as liberal progressivist dogma would have us believe. Indeed, it is just the necessity of this interdependence, as distinct from its historical occurrence, that Grant challenges. English-Speaking Justice is his foray into the ominous possibility 'that modem liberalism and technology, although they have been interdependent, may not necessarily be mutually sustaining, and that their identity may not be given in the nature of reason itself' (ESJ, 5-6). It follows that if their identity is not given in the nature of reason, we are called upon to question the authority of that reason which 'conceived' them in interdependence. Grant's inquiry demands the attention of even the most philosophically disinclined among us, for it concerns the substance of those freedoms that are the air we breathe as citizens of the liberal constitutional state. The practical question that Grant poses is 'whether a society in which technology must be oriented to cybernetics can maintain the institutions of free politics and the protection by law of the rights of the individuals' (ESJ, IO). Out of his sense of the place of the practical, Grant reserves his answer to this question to the final chapter of his study, giving precedence to the central theoretical question: 'What is being spoken about human and non-human beings in [the] liberal tradition?' (ESJ, 13). As with all his theoretical questions, or so he asserts, this one too is provoked by an experience distinctively belonging to the present of North Americans: namely, the experience of 'widespread concentration ... on private life' and 'retreat from the public realm as something that is other' (ESJ, II). This experience, says Grant, is all the more striking because it flagrantly contradicts 'the intentions of the early founders of modem liberalism' (ESJ, 12). These men believed in the institutionalized right of individuals to influence the governing of society through

141 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice their choices, and at the same time professed 'that justice was neither a natural nor supernatural virtue, but arose from the calculations necessary to our acceptance of the social contract' (ESJ, 11). Apparently, the fathers of liberalism, in establishing the political realm as the sphere of contract, did not fully foresee the effect of this contractualism on political involvement. For, asks Grant, 'Is not the present retreat into the private realm not only a recognition of the impotence of the individual, but also a desire to leave the aridity of a realm where all relations are contractual, and to seek the comfort of the private where the supercontractual is possible?' (ESJ, 12). It is, then, the failure ofour contractual polity to fulfil the aspirations of the early liberal thinkers that initially fixes Grant's attention on the theoretical issue: whether 'the affirmation by those founders that justice is based on contract [was] ever sufficient to support a politics of consent and justice?' (ESJ, 12-13). Grant devotes the second, and longest, section of ESJ to a consideration of the theoretical issue, concluding that what is spoken about human and non-human beings in the liberal tradition is insufficient ground for liberal political institutions and practice. His conclusion opens up the historical investigation of his third section, by leaving unresolved the problem of why it is that liberalism which 'is so little sustained by any foundational affirmations' has remained 'the dominating political morality of the English-speaking world' (51). According to Grant, the historical problem requires for its solution an understanding of the historical interdependences of liberalism, Protestantism, and technological progress in the English-speaking world. But this understanding pertains only to the past of liberalism and not to its present and future. That these relations no longer hold is manifest to him in the current assault on liberal rights and liberal justice in English-speaking societies. He recognizes as the paradigmatic instance of this assault the legalized practice of abortion among English-speaking peoples. His concluding remarks on the fate of liberal justice are overshadowed, therefore, by the historic decision of the u.s. Supreme Court for the rights of the mother against those of the state legislature to prohibit abortion. These reflections are one further attempt to comprehend the theoretical and practical crisis of modern liberalism as a civilizational crisis rooted in the contradictions of the western tradition. Here again Nietzsche is Grant's forerunner; and here again Grant's reflections come to rest in a familiar challenge and a. familiar hope. The theoretical progression of English-speaking liberalism The structure of Grant's second section is implied in its opening question: 'What is being spoken about human beings in our contemporary liberalism now that technology is not simply a dreamed hope but a realising actuality?' (ESJ, 14). This question encompasses as Grant's field of inquiry the whole liberal tradition

142 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice from its inception to the present, by bringing into relation the thought of those men for whom technology was 'a dreamed hope' and those for whom it is 'a realising actuality. ' In the theoretical differences between these early and late generations of liberals Grant uncovers the theoretical progression of the liberal tradition. At the same time, the question makes clear that he finds his locus in the assertions of contemporary liberalism, which provide the vantage-point for viewing the past and grasping the hidden implications of what was thought. Grant chooses as the mouthpiece for contemporary liberal assertions the 1972 work entitled A Theory of Justice by Harvard philosopher John Rawls . To be 'within contemporary liberal assumptions ' means for Grant to have narrowed the theoretical possibilities within liberalism to those encompassed by the dominant stream of Anglo-American liberalism issuing from the fountain of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Grant early points out the myopic narrowing evidenced in Rawls's benign (or not so benign) neglect of 'those theoretical positions about morals and politics which in the western world have stood as alternatives to our liberalism, ' the foremost being 'the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and the modification of that teaching worked out by their Christian and Jewish followers' (ESJ, note 4 , 101). Rawls imitates such liberal standard-bearers as Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell in his 'procrustean affirmation of the selfsufficiency of English liberalism' (ESJ , note I, 97-8), 7 which allows him to discount 'the classical teaching about moral and political good [as] simply a dead alternative of only antiquarian interest' (ESJ, note 4, 101). Rawls shows equal disregard ' for the great contemporary alternatives to our liberalism,' choosing to ignore Marx and to accord Nietzsche only casual mention. There is, Grant ruefully admits, one intellectual advantage in Rawls's 'procrustean stance,' namely , that it permits him 'to hold English-speaking liberalism before us for our undivided attention' (ESJ, note 4, 102). Nevertheless, Grant launches his exposition of A Theory of Justice with an appreciative statement of Rawls's intent. According to Grant, Rawls offers us an apology for the contractarian tradition of thought about justice over against the utilitarian tradition, its chief competitor in the English-speaking world. It is an apology that grasps the principle on which contractarianism can claim superiority over utilitarianism as a political philosophy: the principle of rational consent 7 Grant takes the opportunity to give Popper another verbal thrashing in his illuminating comparison: 'It is obviously the proper work of political philosophy to argue , as Montesquieu does so brilliantly in "The Spirit of the Laws," that the modem English polity is a higher regime than the Athenian polis, and that modem philosophers understand the good of liberty in a fuller way than the ancients ... But to argue, as Popper does, that Plato and Hegel denied that political liberty was a central human good, and were indeed progenitors of modem totalitarianism, must have required such a casual reading of these two writers that his book can only !)(' considered trivial propaganda.' (ESJ, note I , 97)

143 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice - the rational consent of individuals to the restriction of their freedom in society. The structure of rational consent in contractarian theory is the social contract, the agreement entered into by free individuals that binds their wills to the order of justice. Because Rawls views the notion of social contract as essential to 'the idea of justice implicit in social cooperation' (ESJ, 17), he devotes his book on justice to a clarification of 'the nature of that social contract' in the context of two developments, those of advanced technological society and modern analytical philosophy. In explicating Rawls's theory of the social contract, Grant is chiefly concerned to determine 'whether it provides a foundation for the principles of justice he builds on it' (ESJ, 17). To determine this, he finds it 'necessary to compare Rawls's account with those of his avowed masters, Locke and Kant' (ESJ, 17). 8 What this comparison reveals is that Rawls, in appropriating these earlier theories of the social contract, has made substitutions on primary points of doctrine that relate fundamentally to the scope of reason. For instance, Rawls accepts Locke's understanding of the social contract as derived from 'an act of individualist calculation' concerning 'those good things which lead to comfortable self-preservation,' (ESJ, 22). But he abandons Locke's understanding of this calculation as based on knowledge 'of the way things are in the state of nature' (ESJ, 17). Grant considers Rawls's departure unfortunate, whatever may be the deficiencies of Locke's teaching about the state of nature when compared with the Christian-Aristotelian teaching. 9 It is still significant that Locke, while rooting justice in 'contract' rather than 'nature,' preserves the dependence of contract on some knowledge of nature, of the way things are. This Rawls does not do when, to satisfy the anti-metaphysical strictures of analytical philosophy, he substitutes 'the original position' for 'the state of nature' as that content of reason from which all rational calculation of self-interest is derived. 10 8 Reflecting on Rawls's debt to the past, Grant questions his choice of forebears. 'Why Locke rather than Hobbes?' asks Grant; and even more germane, 'Why Kant rather than Rousseau?' considering Rousseau's place in the history of contractarian theory. Complains Grant: 'Rousseau was after all the thinker who reformulated contractarian doctrine in the light of his profound criticism of Hobbes' and Locke's account of the origins of human beings' (ESJ, note 5, 102). Albeit, Grant finds a deeper appropriateness in Rawls's choice of Kant as his mentor: it is that Kant's three 'critiques' are an 'attempt to lay before us modem liberalism and technological science as unified in his account of reason.' (ESJ, note 5, 103) 9 Says Grant, Locke taught that men in the state of nature are oriented by their 'knowledge of the greatest evil' rather than by their 'conception of a highest good' (ESJ, 19). Grant is surely indebted for this and other insights to Leo Strauss's expositions of Locke's political and theological thought. 10 The analytical tradition, of which Rawls is a professed student, has for its central 'negative principle' in the 'sphere of morals and politics' the "'naturalistic fallacy,"' which asserts that 'propositions concerning how human beings ought to act cannot be derived solely from factual propositions about nature.' (ESJ, 23)

144 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Rawls's 'original position,' explains Grant, involves no universal knowledge of nature, but rather involves a suspension of knowledge of circumstantial particulars. It describes 'an imagined situation in which an individual ... choose[s] principles of justice for his society under a "veil of ignorance" ... [which] conceals from him his particular circumstances, and therefore eliminates from his choosing those motives of self-interest which otherwise would corrupt the fairness of his judgment' (ESJ, 20). According to Rawls, choosing fairly requires that we abstract ourselves from the particular 'facts' of our situation which, as the bearers of 'interests,' would bias our choices . From his abstracted 'original position,' then, Rawls claims to 'derive universal principles of justice acceptable to all rational human beings' (ESJ, 21). These principles arise, as in Locke, from calculations of self-interest concerned with '"the primary goods,"' but now these calculations are rationally perfected by being perfonned in the original position, wherein, evidently, we know only that we have self-interests and that they pertain to certain general 'goods.' Rawls's departure from Kant is of more historical and theoretical moment for Grant than his departure from Locke, owing to the signal role Kant's writings have played in transmitting 'continental liberalism' to the English-speaking intellectual world of the last century. Rawls's deflections from Kant, therefore, reveal to Grant the filtering of continental thought that has occurred in the course of its reception by English-speaking peoples. It is these deflections, he proposes, that above all alert us to the inadequacy of Rawls's theory of justice to support his substantive principles of justice, and thereby expose us to the slippery slope of North American liberalism. In his understanding of the structure and content of justice, Rawls is Kant' s disciple on two fundamental points: l I that justice is rooted in a contract, a binding agreement of wills, the tenns of which are not dictated by 'nature'; and 2 I that the substantive principles of justice pertain not only to the legal freedoms of individuals but also to their material welfare, to their access to 'goods' and 'powers' within the community. Says Grant: Rawls' notion of justice as fairness seems on first view to take us into the political world of rational choice which was wonderfully explicated by Kant. The free power of human reasoning is seen not only as overcoming the deficiencies of nature by developing the arts and sciences (technology), but also as showing us, in its impartial universalising power, why these arbitrary and deficient allocations of nature ought not to be allowed to continue [my italics] ... At the simplest level of interpretation, the greatness of Kant's account of justice lies in his assertion that it is irrational for human beings to make favourable exceptions of themselves. It is irrational to ask for goods from our communities that we do not will for other people. Rawls' account of justice as fairness is obviously close to that Kantian assertion . (ESJ, 25-6)

145 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice Yet, according to Grant, Rawls's discipleship of Kant masks an even more fundamental betrayal of his teacher. He betrays Kant on the meaning of 'ought,' on the act by which reason gives us the form and content of justice. For Rawls this act is one of relative calculation, the calculation of self-interest in the hypothesized original position. For Kant this act is one of unqualified command: in the categorical imperative reason gives to us unconditionally 'the very form of justice for all our actions' (ESJ, 27). Says Grant: 'As justice is present to our wills in the mood of command, reason commands us to the faith that justice is what we are finally fitted for. 11 Here then is what divides Rawls from his teacher: the idea of 'being fitted,' of 'highest good' contained in Kant's 'ought.' Rawls's 'ought' requires no such idea. Indeed, he argues for the superiority of his 'first principle' of justice precisely on the ground that it is determined independent of 'any knowledge of what human beings are fitted for' (ESJ, 38). He is in fact convinced that 'it is not possible to have knowledge of the highest good' (ESJ, 39). Grant's criticism of Rawls's deflection from Kant does not, of course, imply unguarded approval of Kant. On the contrary, Grant objects strenuously to Kant's historicism. In Kant's understanding of history as that realm in which mankind brings about more and more justice, Grant perceives the fateful binding of morality to technology. Nevertheless, he insists that the historicizing element in Kant's morality is held in check by his assertion of the will' s timeless rationality. When Rawls emancipates the social contract from its ontological moorings in the autonomous will, conceived as the highest end of human life, he is left with what in Grant's view is the more dubious portion of Kant's liberalism - the doctrine of the morally neutral state. For Kant, the moral neutrality of the state, enshrined in the social contract, is implied in the moral ground of the contract. The purpose of the state is to uphold 'the rights of man,' to give the broadest possible protection to the external freedoms of individuals so that they may have maximal opportunity for moral self-legislation. On Kant's view, says Grant, 'the state is transgressing its proper limits when it attempts to impose on us our moral duties. Our autonomous choices of timeless good cannot be so imposed' (ESJ, 30). Conse9uently, the state's proper order of jurisdiction is the order of contracts concerning 'the relativities of nature understood by Kant within the nonteleological and non-substantialised view of nature given us in modern science' (ESJ, 30). It is only as 'concerned with those relativities,' Grant stresses, 'that the ability to calculate is an adequate account of reason' for Kant (ESJ, 30) . For Rawls, by contrast, the morally neutral state requires no moral justification. That it is the best state he appears to infer from the fact of a plurality of 11 Grant continues: •All the uncertainties about whether we are fitted for anything which arise for us from our sense of nature's arbitrariness, our knowledge of its mechanism and the relativities of our desires, are overcome in the command, beyond all bargaining, to be just.' (ESJ, 28)

146 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice interests and moralities in society (the 'naturalistic fallacy'!). He cannot ground this claim in the ontological reality of rational freedom, for he has reduced rational freedom to a paltry 'analytical instrumentality' (ESJ, 34). Albeit, observes Grant, Rawls clings to the word 'person, ' as if to conjure up that moral individuality of human beings which might be the basis of the liberal state, but Rawls ' s conjuring is transparent in the absence of any philosophical affirmations about 'persons.' How then, Grant asks (and it is an extended question), can the morally neutral state embody principles of justice? Grant's answer is given in his review of Rawls's principles of justice. From 'disinterested' calculations in 'the original position,' Rawls claims to arrive at the principles of: l / equal freedom for persons (the basic political right) 12 and 2 I equal access for persons to the 'primary goods,' that is, to the benefits and opportunities of society (the basic social right). 13 Grant astutely describes Rawls 's first two principles as uniting 'welfare egalitarianism ... with the individualist pluralism of the constitution in an advanced technological society' (ESJ, 42). Against Rawls's statement of these principles Grant brings two objections. The less damaging objection, theoretically speaking, is that Rawls's principles abstract from those present realities that determine the manner and extent of their realization: for instance, the realities of private and public corporate power, of war and imperialism. Grant questions whether these realities permit calculating individuals to be free and equal citizens. The more damaging objection is that Rawls's principles are not conclusively derivable from 'calculation about selfinterest in general.' From such calculation, it does not necessarily follow that freedom and social equality are due to all human beings, even the 'poorer calculators' (who, on the contrary, should be disadvantaged!). Such calculation cannot explain why men as 'beings who ... cannot avoid choices [are] worthy of equal inalienable rights' (ESJ, 35). Grant is, therefore, justified in doubting whether 'the complex apparatus necessary to preserving and extending liberty and equality in the midst of the technological society can be known as necessary to the best regime simply by thinking through the calculation of self-interest in general' (ESJ, 46-7). His doubt is justified, as we shall see, as long as the calculation of self-interest spurns 'knowledge of .. . what we are fitted for and what the consequences are 12 'Rawls' first principle of justice,' Grant remarks, 'is identical with J.S. Mill 's sole principle': '"Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others." ' (ESJ, 37) 13 Rawls' s second principle of justice runs: '"Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged ... and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity ." ' (ESJ, 41-2)

147 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice for our actions in being so fitted ' (ESJ, 47). But if our calculation should depend on this latter knowledge , then the principles of justice would not flow from it, but would be presupposed by it: they would not most fundamentally concern the external order of action but the internal order of the soul , ' in terms of which [men] are alone able to calculate their self-interest properly' (ESJ, 47) . When our calculation of self-interest is cast off from knowledge of the whole to float among Rawls's 'primary goods,' then Grant may well observe that the edge of contractualism over utilitarianism is very narrow indeed. The historical ascendancy of English-speaking liberalism In this third section Grant undertakes to explain why a political doctrine with as little intellectual bite as modem liberalism has held sway with such monolithic force in the English-speaking world. Here his previous accounts of the rise of liberalism in the English-speaking world are embellished with more historical detail but no significantly new insights. He directs his attention first to England and then to the United States. Suffice it to say that Grant identifies the fortunes of liberalism in England, as later in America, with the fortunes of the 'bourgeois' class . The expansion and political ascendancy of the bourgeois, accompanying the industrial , commercial, and technological growth of English society after 1715, guaranteed widespread loyalty to the 'Whig constitution' and 'Whig assumptions' which had undergirded this growth (ESJ, 52) . Says Grant, generations of unbroken ' bourgeois dominance' of English society, with its climate of 'comfort, utility, and mastery,' rendered these assumptions irreproachable . Consequently, Grant proposes , English political philosophy ' since Hobbes and Locke ... has been little more than the working out in detail of variations on utilitarianism and contractualism, their possible conflicts and their possible internal unclarities' (ESJ, 52). These preoccupations of bourgeois liberalism have shown themselves steadfastly impervious to political ideas falling outside them, whatever their source, whether they have arisen within English conservatism or have grown on continental soil . Neither the great continental contractarian thinkers, who grounded politics in the philosophy of freedom, nor the assaults on their 'liberalism of freedom' led by Nietzsche and Marx, have made much impress on the English mind. Even today, Grant contends , the strength d the bourgeois consensus sets its stamp on the writings and the deeds of England's great intellectuals and statesmen. He wonders, for example, that Winston Churchill, in his History of the English-speaking Peoples, offers no apology for, or defence of English-speaking liberalism, but rather contents himself with glorifying English-speaking institutions in his 'description of deeds,' without giving us ' the substance of those deeds which made them both great and loveable, other

148 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice than that they just happen to have been our own' (ESJ, 58) Whatever this omission may suggest of itself, Grant insists that Churchill is guilty of no 'appeal to pure racial will,' but only of such 'confidence ... in the obvious truth of the superiority of constitutional liberalism ... that there is no need to articulate what is good and great in the deeds he is describing' (ESJ, 59) . The Americans, by contrast, have always adhered to a more overtly principled liberalism, influenced by English political thought via continental enlightenment thinkers. They have developed 'legal and political forms ... more purely founded on constitutional contractualism' than those of their mother country (ESJ, 59), with the historical result that 'private pluralism' has won the day , despite the potential for egalitarianism offered by 'pioneering expansion into an unexploited continent' (ESJ, 59). According to Grant, America's potential for egalitarianism has been offset by two coinciding interests, those of industrial capitalism and of a large non-English immigrant population, for both of whose ' long term public needs' political contractualism seemed best 'fitted' (ESJ , 60) . In this century, the 'domestic and foreign successes' of contractual liberalism have made Americans even less inclined to question the political wisdom of expressing 'the substance of the common good .. . only as contractual reason' (ESJ, 60). Despite the theoretical weaknesses of contractualism, the Americans have until recently , Grant points out, sustained 'decent legal justice' in their regime. Grant attributes this lingering political decency to 'the intimate and yet ambiguous co-penetration between contractual liberalism and Protestantism in the minds of generations of our people' (ESJ, 61-2). ' Intimate' and 'ambiguous' have, throughout Grant' s writings, characterized the relation of Protestantism to the corresponding developments of political liberalism and technological science. Here again, it is the theoretical affinity between Calvinist theology and these developments that is at stake. As before, Grant draws attention to the transformation of Protestantism in newworld Puritanism - its 'more unflinching , more immoderate and less thoughtful' character as compared with English Protestantism (ESJ, 64). At the same time, he discloses the political benefits of a Protestantism controlled by the 'will to righteousness' : namely, that it could give 'a firmer and more unyielding account of justice to its country's constitutionalism than would have been forthcoming from any simply contractual account' (ESJ, 64-5). Nevertheless, the strength of American Protestantism is, paradoxically, its weakness: the 'moral cement' it has lent to the liberal public has concealed the intellectual vacuum at the latter' s centre, which Protestantism is impotent to criticize. American Protestants have shown themselves as either unlikely to reflect on the theoretical foundations of liberalism, or, when overtaken by such reflection, susceptible of losing those theological convictions which had enabled them 'to support justice in a more

149 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice than contractual way' (ESJ, 66). The explicitness of secular liberalism are, dialectic which has formed American on American terrain Grant concludes speaking liberalism.

waning of Protestantism and the growing therefore, the two poles of that historical political life . With this historical dialectic his account of the ascendancy of English-

Abortion: the waning of liberal justice Are we in the eschaton, in the beginning of the end of the western tradition of justice, wherein the fulfilment of its meaning is coming to pass in our living as well as in our thinking? Grant is surely telling us that this is so in his final section of English-Speaking Justice. 'English-speaking contractualism,' he says, 'lies before us in the majority decision of the u.s. Supreme Court in "Roe vs. Wade"' (1974), which denied any state the right to pass legislation outlawing abortion during the first six months of pregnancy (ESJ, 74). Grant's words 'lies before us' must be taken to mean 'lies conclusively exposed' or 'lies revealed in its essence. ' Abortion is for Grant in the seventies what the Vietnam war was in the sixties, a searchlight thrown across our public darkness . If the Vietnam war revealed the shadowy contours of liberal justice at the outposts of the American empire, then abortion reveals these same contours in its heartland. The u.s. Supreme Court ruling, Grant tells us, expresses liberalism 'in its pure contractual form: right prior to good' (ESJ, 75). Says Grant, 'Mr. Justice Blackmun begins his majority decision from the principle that the allocation of rights from within the constitution cannot be decided in terms of any knowledge of what is good. Under the constitution, rights are prior to any account of good.' Blackmun regards constitutional rights 'as concerned with the ordering of conflicting claims between "persons" and legislatures' (ESJ, 74-5), to the adjudication of which the basis of legislation - its underlying 'conception[s] of goodness' - is not germane . Thus Blackmun 'adjudicates that the particular law infringes the prior right of the mother to control her own body in the first six months of pregnancy,' on the grounds that the foetus in question is not a 'person' and, therefore, not 'a party to the litigation' (ESJ, 75). On his contractualist reading of the conflict, the mother and the legislature disagree about moral 'values,' and the court must adjudicate rights fairly while preserving neutrality towards the moral disagreement. The judge's decision , says Grant with pungent rhetoric, ' raises a cup of poison to the lips of liberalism' (ESJ, 75). The poison is the 'unthought ontology' in the liberal account of justice which is enfeebling the practical content of liberal justice. For, argues Grant, the decision involves Blackmun in making 'an ontological distinction [that is, a non-scientific distinction] between members of the

150 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice same species. The mother is a person; the foetus is not. In deciding what is due in justice to beings of the same species, he bases such differing dueness on ontology' (ESJ, 76). But such an ontological distinction, publicly affirmed, is the theoretical undoing of liberalism, for 'once ontological affirmation is made the basis for denying the most elementary right of traditional justice to members of our species, ontological questioning cannot be silenced at this point ... The judge unwittingly looses the terrible question: has the long tradition of liberal right any support in what human beings in fact are?' (ESJ, 76) 14 In the decision that the foetus is a 'non-person,' the theoretical inadequacy of Rawls's 'original position' comes home to us. Grant pointedly asks: 'Is the decision saying that what makes an individual a person, and therefore the possessor of rights, is the ability to calculate and assent to contracts?' (ESJ, 77). The decision certainly accords with the exclusion implied in Rawls's theoretical starting-point. If the right to exist of the inarticulate and non-calculators is not to be sacrificed to the 'convenience' of the articulate and calculators, then a more universal basis for justice in the human species must be publicly recognized. But here the 'civilisational contradiction' that enfolds us rears its head: the concept of 'species' required by universal justice runs contrary to the concept of 'species' given us in modem science. 'To put the matter simply,' says Grant, 'if "species" is an historical concept and we are a species whose origin and existence can be explained in terms of mechanical necessity and chance, living on a planet which also can be explained in such terms, what requires us to live together according to the principles of equal justice?' (ESJ, 78). The staggering naivete of modem liberals, of which Nietzsche was so contemptuous, is their simple trust that our changing views of man and the cosmos need not affect 'the basic content of justice in our societies' (ESJ, 79). The erosion of the foundations of western justice need not sift up to the level of day-to-day practice. It is precisely the desire to have it both ways, to keep the discoveries of modem science and the practical benefits of the older traditions of justice, that has characterized liberal contractualism from Locke to Rawls . The foolishness of this aspiration, so apparent to Nietzsche, is now apparent to many more as the older practices of justice are known to be inconvenient in the light of 14 William Christian, in reviewing ESJ (Queen's Quarterly 85 (1978), 485-91), charges Grant with confusing distinct orders of discourse when he 'accuses Blackrnun of raising ontological questions which threaten the basis of our justice.' Christian points out that judges raise and deal with 'legal' and not 'ontological' questions, in language determined by the realm of legal discourse. Hence, Blackrnun's use of the term 'person' with regard to the status of the foetus is a 'legal' and not an 'ontological' use. While admitting the distinction of discourses, we would still argue, along with Grant, that judgments expressed within the framework of legal discourse imply ontological judgments, which are at least logically prior.

151 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice technological reasons. Kant's delaying trick appears to be losing its efficaciousness: moved by our technological possibilities, we are increasingly reluctant to admit any binding of our autonomy. Grant summons us to confront directly Nietzsche's challenge to modem man to overcome his civilizational contradiction by bringing legal justice into line with his technological possibilities. For Nietzsche's challenge is being met, and not 'en plein conscience,' by many who perceive that 'the production of quality of life require[s] a legal system which gives new range to the rights of the creative and the dynamic' (ESJ, 85), who cannot specify why that range should be 'limited by the rights of the weak, the uncreative and the immature' (ESJ, 85). To such progressive liberals, it is incomprehensible that 'the liberation of women to quality of life [should] be limited by restraints on abortion,' especially when they know that 'foetuses are only the product of necessity and chance' (ESJ, 86). The consequence of the liberal failure to defend inclusive justice in speech and action is that our justice has shifted to 'a lowered content of equal liberty' (ESJ, 88). What Nietzsche called for is coming to pass: we are remaking our justice according to our vision of nature as 'potential raw material, at the disposal of our "creative" wills' (ESJ, 88). The double-edged sword of prophecy, wherein warning and prediction are one metal in the single blow of truth, is never sharper than in the concluding paragraphs of English-Speaking Justice. On the one hand, Grant lays before us that 'comprehensive destiny' within which 'our justice is being played out ... But clearly that technological destiny has its own dynamic conveniences, which easily sweep away our tradition of justice, if the latter gets in the way. The "creative" in their corporations have been told for many generations that justice is only a convenience. In carrying out the dynamic conveniences of technology, why should they not seek a "justice" which is congruent with those conveniences, and gradually sacrifice the principles of liberty and equality whe[n] they conflict with the greater conveniences?' (ESJ, 88-9). Why should they not indeed when the majority of the rest of us 'see in the very technological endeavour the hope for [our] realisation of "the primary goods," and therefore will often not stand up for the traditional justice when it is inconvenient to that technological endeavour?' (ESJ, 89). Grant's 'will' becomes more implacable: 'In such a situation, equality in "primary goods" for a majority in the heartlands of the empire is likely; but it will be an equality which excludes liberal justice for those who are inconvenient to the "creative." It will exclude liberal justice from those who are too weak to enforce contracts - the imprisoned, the mentally unstable, the unborn, the aged, the defeated and sometimes even the morally unconforming ... It will be a kind of massive "equality" in "primary goods," outside a concern for justice' (ESJ, 89). The injustices of advanced technological society will not be

152 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice recognized by the majority, for whom justice is 'the external convenience of contract' vouched for by reason as the instrument of our 'obvious' interests. On the other hand, Grant again lays before us the revelations about justice belonging to our western inheritance: the revelation that 'justice is to render each human being their due' and that what is due to all human beings is '"beyond all bargains and without an alternative"' (ESJ, 93); the revelation that 'the acting out of justice in human relationships [is] the essential way in which human beings are opened to eternity,' 'the inward openness to eternity depend[ing] on just practice, and just practice depend[ing] on that inward openness to eternity' (ESJ, 90-1). These revelations about justice, says Grant, are 'written down most carefully and most beautifully in "The Republic" of Plato' and their 'perfect living out ... is unfolded in the Gospels' (ESJ, 93). In recalling to us our inheritance, Grant is surely calling us to repent of our latter-day error. And moreover, to those who have repented, who 'somehow have been told that ... justice is due to all human beings and that its living out is, above all, what we are fitted for,' Grant issues the further call 'to understand how justice can be thought together with what has been discovered of truth in the coming to be of technology' (ESJ, 92). Grant's summons is not less enigmatic for being repeated from Time as History, for how are we to think the truth of that historical totality, modem technology, which Grant has shown to contradict the historical totality of traditional justice? It may be, as he proposes, that 'the undoubtable core of truth which has come out of technology' is the 'theoretical achievements' of 'quantum physics, the biology of evolutionism, and modem logic,' and that these theoretical achievements 'cry out to be thought in harmony with the conception of justice as what we are fitted for' (ESJ, 93). But the very form of Grant's analysis has meant that this theoretical core of truth is not detachable from the historical totality to which it belongs. If it were, he would not have despaired of reconciling the contradictions in the western tradition. And further, it is not certain that the terms of the task to which he summons us are properly conceived. For Grant has not shown us why the formative theories of our age are true; he has shown us only that they are formative. We would argue that the truth of all theories, however formative and efficacious in action, can be finally determined only by subjecting them to authoritative transhistorical standards. Thus Grant would have framed his summons more adequately if he had called us to think these formative theories 'in relation to the eternal fire which flames forth in the Gospels and blazes even in the presence of that determining power' (ESJ, l).

A concluding platitude We can know justice only as we love justice. This, above all, comes to Grant out of Plato and the Gospels. The experience that this is so is faith: 'Faith,' says

153 Denouement: The Twilight of Justice Grant approaching the end of the decade, 'is the experience that the intelligence is illuminated by love.' Simone Weil is, of course, Grant's authority, next to Plato and the Gospels. And, continues Grant in his article 'Faith and the Multiversity' (1977), '"love" is attention to otherness, receptivity of otherness, consent to otherness [as good]' (183). Finally, knowledge, the gift of the intelligence, always concerns 'the order of necessity' (192). Thus to make contact with the necessities of justice, we must attend to them and receive them as good. But where is the need for attention, receptivity, and consent pointed to in our faithless civilization? When oblivion to this need is the essence of that paradigm of knowledge which enfolds us, even and especially in our institutions of learning, what can we know of justice, and what knowledge of justice can we bequeath to those who follow us? This is Grant's question as he contemplates the modem university.

8

Summary and Criticism: The Problem of History in Theological Perspective

RECOLLECTING THE ISSUES

We have now traced the problem of history in Grant's writings through three phases of its formulation over a period of three decades. It now remains for us to recollect the issues contained in this problem so as to open them to theological criticism. First, let us summarize the structure of the problem of history in Grant. This structure is twofold, as may be indicated by the following twofold designation of the problem as the problem of history and the problem of 'history. ' The problem of history for George Grant is the problem presented by western history, the essence of which is 'the western tradition.' The western tradition is a problem for him because it is discontinuous: the modem tradition, of which liberal technological society is the most complete embodiment, has broken with the past of the tradition. By the 'modem tradition' he means primarily the tradition of modem natural science and of modem moral science (that is, of modem political philosophy). This tradition, according to Grant, is a unified account of nature and human conduct, of the 'is' and the 'ought,' of reality and goodness . And this account contradicts the account given in the originating traditions of the West, those of biblical religion and Greek philosophy. At the heart of the modem tradition is the concept of 'history,' which has dominated moral and scientific thinking since the eighteenth century. Thus, the problem of history, of understanding the break in the western tradition, is also the problem of 'history,' of understanding the modem concept of 'history,' especially in its meaning for political thought and practice. But 'history' is not chiefly for us today an idea that regulates scientific and moral reflection within our community. Rather, it is an idea that orders and expresses our immediate, pre-reflective apprehension of ourselves and our world. For most of us, Grant argues, the language of 'history' expresses the

155 Summary and Criticism unexamined beliefs that detennine our thinking and acting from day to day: as, for instance, that the greatest good for men is unlimited choice, that we create ourselves, that all goodness comes from our willing, that the meaning of nature is exhausted by our uses for it - in short, that man is the measure of all things , the measure that is constantly changing as it brings forth new possibilities of mastery. Thus, Grant views 'history' as the central religious and moral idea of our age. The 'modern tradition,' therefore, as regards ourselves, is the civil religion of our society, in tenns of which the complex activities of our public realm are ordered and justified, and the private religion of individuals, which gives their lives meaning and purpose. The modern tradition as our religion is a problem for Grant because it denies the fundamental apprehensions of things in their totality articulated in the tradition of Christian belief and practice and reflected in the tradition of Greek philosophy. Does this mean that Christianity and Greek philosophy depend on a common apprehension, that they articulate the same truth in belief and action and thought? Grant speaks not only of the 'modern tradition' and the 'premodern tradition,' but of the 'tradition of Christianity' and the 'tradition of Greek philosophy,' suggesting two sets of discontinuities. The western tradition is a problem for him because of the apparent disunity at its root , between the 'first presences' of Christianity and Greek philosophy , which original disunity, he increasingly implies, is presupposed by the later break. The crisis of theoretical and practical thought today is, then, the outcome of these two sets of discontinuities: it is the direct outcome of the break of the modern tradition with the pre-modern traditions of the West, and the indirect outcome of the apparent contradictions between Christianity and Greek philosophy. Here we have the enduring structure of the problem of history-'history' in Grant's writings. Yet this structure is dynamic, allowing for a major shift in Grant's point of view concerning his judgment as to whether the problem of history, of the western tradition, is susceptible of rational resolution. The phases of transition in Grant' s thinking about history-'history' mark his movement from confidence in the power of reason to overcome the contradictions in the tradition to scepticism about this power. He moves, therefore, from a progressive to a tragic understanding of both tradition and reason, for the two concepts are always correlative in his writings. Grant's shift has obvious implications for the possibility and the task of political philosophy today . It points sharply to the dependencies of our thinking and acting in the modern world , and raises in an acute way the question of our relation to truth and justice. In the course of his struggle with the problem of history- 'history ,' it passes over from a philosophical to a religious problem. The

156 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice challenge for Grant becomes, not to think the western tradition in its unity, but to accept it as a totality that is broken. This passage focuses certain theoretical issues in a way that invites theological clarification and response . These issues concern the relation between revelation and tradition, freedom and necessity, faith and philosophy. We shall allow them to emerge in our summary presentation of the two controlling understandings of history (of the western tradition) in Grant's writings: history as the dialectic of human freedom, and history as tragic necessity.

History as the dialectic of freedom From his earliest political writings in 1945 to his rejection of ' history ' in the early sixties, Grant views western history as the progress of human freedom towards perfection. He never conceives this progress in separation from law , from structures of justice. This is so even in his 'patriotic' essays where he has not yet raised 'the common good ' and 'human freedom ' as philosophical problems. When he raises the philosophical problems, it is out of the conviction that the most important traditions of freedom in the West are the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem. Grant's 1947 paper 'Two Theological Languages' sets forth the contradiction between the two originating traditions of freedom, between the language of the Bible and that of Greek philosophy, as the dynamic principle of the western tradition of thought and practice, which challenges every age to a unique synthesis, to a new realization of freedom . Here Grant thinks the contradiction between the two traditions in a way that proves to be decisive for his subsequent thinking . Biblical freedom, he asserts , is 'existential' or 'absolute' freedom, freedom contingently given, prior to good and evil and independent of the idea of perfection. It is irrational , creative, 'responsible' freedom - an 'open possibility' - by means of which we comprehend analogically God 's creation of the world and are opened to the mystery of human sin and our redemption in the cross of Christ. By contrast, philosophical freedom is rational freedom in which is posited a necessary relation between desire and the idea of 'the highest good,' of perfection. The contradiction then is between freedom conceived of as outside natural necessity and freedom conceived of as the 'superior ... determination' of nature, and this contradiction rests for Grant on the contradiction between the finite conceived of as discontinuous with (independent of) the infinite and the finite conceived of as continuous with (dependent on) the infinite. In making this contradiction the dynamic principle of western history, Grant assents to the truth of both sides of the contradiction. The perfecting of freedom is the practical and theoretical synthesis of these contradictory truths. The perfection of freedom is, therefore, Christian in a civilizational sense; for it is in the

157 Summary and Criticism Christian soul and in Christian society that the contradictory truths of the Bible and Greek philosophy are reconciled . The great Christian thinkers for Grant in the fifties are St Augustine and Hegel: these are the great synthesizers who have given direction to Christian civilization. Under the influence of Hegel, the dialectical logic of the progress of freedom comes to the fore in Grant' s writing . The terms of the dialectic are not precisely those of the original contradiction: they are not 'absolute freedom ' and ' rational freedom,' but ' finite freedom' and 'infinite freedom.' This shift is significant as signalling the disappearance of Grant's earlier concept of natural necessity . Nature is now the realm of contingency, of non-teleological necessity, which lacks an intelligible relation to the good. The dependence of 'finite freedom' on the contingency of nature links it to 'absolute freedom,' to biblical freedom . Finite freedom is freedom from natural necessity: it is the practical mastery of natural necessity, the subjection of contingency to human willing. Grant agrees with Hegel that finite freedom is not man's highest freedom, because its goal remains in the natural world, conceived as an immanent system of contingent laws. Rather, man 's highest freedom is 'infinite freedom': living in the presence of the absolute, of the 'eternal world of truth and goodness,' as a moral, a religious, and, above all , a contemplative being . But what is contemplation when the eternal things of nature have disappeared? In 1953 Grant suggests that the end of human knowledge, the highest human freedom, is to contemplate the infinity of our desire for self-transcendence. He does not tell us how nature as pure contingency is dependent on the absolute; he only poses this dependence as a problem. In the mid-fifties, Grant concentrates on the three phases of the dialectic of freedom that constitute the modem epoch. The first phase is the infinite subjectivity of the Reformation religious consciousness. The second is the extemality and determinism of technological conquest. The third is the future reconciliation of technological determinism and infinite subjectivity in a new age of contemplation. The mediating term between the first and second stages of the dialectic, between the inwardness of Reformation freedom and the extemality of technological mastery, is the centrality of the contingent, finite event. For, Grant argues, Protestantism revitalized two biblical interests that are also interests of modem science: interests in the contingent occurrence and in reforming the actual. Through the biblical idea of salvation history, Protestantism bound the infinite to the finite; modem science has completed this movement by letting go of the infinite and making the finite an end in itself. The movement from Protestantism to technology appears inevitable in Grant because of the missing link in Protestantism between God and human freedom: namely , the eternity of nature. By denying this eternity Protestantism prepared

158 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice the way for a science that denies that any natural restraint on human freedom is good. At the same time, Grant admits the irrevocable truth in the Reformation understanding of man as infinite freedom - as freedom that transcends every finite determination. In the fifties he seems uncertain whether admitting this Reformation truth commits him to viewing the natural world as pure contingency, meaningless in itself and indifferent to goodness. His uncertainty makes him sympathetic to the radical dialectic of faith and doubt in Dostoevsky, which he construes as the anguished struggle of the believer to reconcile necessity with the good. Yet, in his culminating work of this period, Philosophy in the Mass Age, Grant shows himself not to be contented with Christian existentialism as an answer to technological despair, placing his hope instead in rational reconciliation. PMA is Grant's fullest and most confident presentation of the western tradition as the history of freedom. In PMA the western tradition is the dialectical progression of a totality of theoretical and practical freedom. The modem tradition of freedom is, therefore, both continuous and discontinuous with the pre-modem traditions of the West. In its theoretical and practical aspects, modem freedom is the tradition (that is, the history) of freedom overcoming the limitations of its past, producing new possibilities of reconciliation. The limitations from which the modem tradition has emancipated us are those of natural necessity and the external authority of tradition. While modem technology has emancipated us from the necessities of scarcity and labour and the 'natural' social structures they enforced, the modem tradition of rational criticism has emancipated us from slavish adherence to traditional beliefs and practices that sustained the natural forms of existence. It is, Grant argues, within the 'modem structures of autonomy' that a more universal synthesis of theory and practice can be realized. Integral to this synthesis is the recollection of the past of the tradition and the free appropriation of its truth. In PMA, understanding ourselves and recollecting our past are two aspects of the same work: we must know where we have been to know where we have come and where we are going. The meaning of the present is revealed in the backward glance that comprehends the historical totality to which we belong. This comprehension opens up to us our future possibility, which is a unique and privileged possibility, for it is a fuller realization of the truth. In the dialectical totality that is the western tradition, philosophical thought and political practice are dependent on the religious consciousness. Just as classical philosophy was dependent upon the cosmological consciousness of the ancient Greeks so modem philosophy is dependent upon the biblical consciousness of freedom heightened at the Reformation. The priority of the religious consciousness in PMA has two important implications. It implies that the dynamic

159 Summary and Criticism tension in the western tradition is between two religious consciousnesses: between the Greek and the Hebrew religious consciousness. And it implies that the modem 'experience' of 'history' is originally and still today a religious experience articulated in beliefs and practices that come out of Protestant Christianity, the scientific enterprise, and modem political philosophy. It is unclear, in our judgment, whether Grant in 1959 perceives the modem tradition as preserving or collapsing the tension between the biblical and the Greek poles of the western tradition . For on the one hand , he acknowledges the continuity between our modem tradition of rational autonomy and the Greek philosophical tradition. On the other hand, he ties the modem principle of freedom as a religious principle to the 'Biblicism' of Reformation Protestantism which has discarded the 'Greek' elements of Christianity. We would say, however, that Grant' s predominant tendency in PMA is to view the western tradition not as a successive unification of the biblical and the Greek poles but as a progressive overcoming of the Greek pole by the biblical pole, each stage presenting a further extension of one side of the contradiction - the biblical side . So that the pressing question of PMA is whether the victory of the biblical vision in the West has prepared the way for a new reconciliation. To speak of the victory of the biblical vision is not to deny the discontinuities between the biblical tradition and the traditions that historically succeed it. The liberal historicism of today is not the Heilsgeschichte of the Bible. Grant regards the modem tradition as an overcoming as well as a continuation of the biblical vision . Nevertheless, the disagreement between liberal historicism and Heilsgeschichte is not as finally decisive for him as the disagreement between Heilsgeschichte and classical natural law. Consequently, what we modems must recover from our past if we are to 'complete' our tradition of freedom is Greekness , is the Greek awareness of restraint in the nature of things. Grant sees liberal historicism and Heilsgeschichte as sharing above all a common understanding of time as a finite, irreversible process in which individual events have ultimate and unique importance . They both portray events as actions, springing from the will of a universal agent (God or Mankind), of which individual agents are instruments, to carry out a plan, purpose, or program for the world. This absolutely ordained program is the perfecting of the world, the eliminating of evil through the recreating of the actual. The central truth o( Heilsgeschichte that liberal historicism recognizes is the 'god-man,' interpreted as the power of man to create himself and his world in the likeness of absolute ideals which he wills. Both Heilsgeschichte and liberal historicism recognize history as the realm of a sovereign will to whom all things are possible, because the end of history springs from it, so that evil (negativity) is not finally necessary.

160 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice Grant is convinced that what is lacking to liberal historicism is what is present in classical natural law: a concept of limit as law and necessity. As law, limit is the eternal measure, the ' unconditional authority of which we do not take the measure, but by which we ourselves are measured and defined. ' It is the categorical limit to our freedom to make history - it is God. As necessity , limit is the 'law which canies evil within itself,' ' the very negation of freedom and power.' It is , if we may interpret Grant, the law of contingent things and the order of contingent events, expressed in the idea of chance. Liberal historicism, according to Grant, denies that our freedom is limited by God or by necessity-chance: just as we have become the measure of all things (our historical self-confidence) , so we have overcome necessity (our technological mastery) . There is another aspect of classical natural law that Grant in 1959 does not hold up as something that must be restored to us. This is the concept of natural law as rational necessity, as specifiable good - that for which something is fitted. The only understanding of law that Grant retains for modem freedom is that implied in the concept of categorical wrong - the limit idea of God. He appears to have accepted Kant's criticism of natural teleology. Yet at the same time he appears sceptical as to whether any alternative to the classical notion of ' substance' will stand 'the test of the limitless. ' Further, he wants to preserve for modem freedom the contemplation of nature, recovering the idea of nature as 'a sphere for our timeless enjoyment' that has 'meaning apart from our ends. ' But what meaning apart from our ends can nature have if it stands in no specifiable relation to goodness? The meaning of the work of art? We are left wondering. And finally , we are led to ask whether biblical 'history' itself contains a doctrine of limit as law and necessity . Does it reveal God as the unchanging measure or uphold necessity as something to which we must consent? According to Grant, Heilsgeschichte is the realm in which evil is progressively overcome, the historical overcoming of evil being also the overcoming of necessity . He sees the dialectic of history as rooted in God's creation of the world according to his sovereign will: all things are possible to God because he is the sovereign creator. If the doctrine of creation is, to Grant's mind, the greatest challenge to natural law, this can only be because it denies the eternity and self-sufficiency of nature , on which the idea of natural necessity depends in classical natural law. At the same time, the belief that all things are possible to God also appears to overcome the rule of necessity as chance (as pure contingency) . On this evidence there would not seem to be any ground for a notion of limit as necessity in Heilsgeschichte. And yet, as Grant points out, following Simone Weil, Christ himself gives us to know that our acceptance of necessity is our obedience to the Good. Grant does not tell us how Christ's words are reconcilable with the sovereignty of God in creation and history. The hope of PMA, however, is that such a reconcilia-

161 Summary and Criticism tion may even now be thought and lived. Thus, in Grant's final presentation of the antinomies of moral philosophy today, we perceive a three-way tension: between the Bible, liberal historicism, and classical natural law . For the terms that must be reconciled in Grant's absolute morality are law and freedom (obedience and self-legislation), substance and subject (the boundedness and the infinity of human transcendence), nature and history (nature as the object of contemplation and of manipulation) . And this reconciliation, says Grant, must take place within a 'conception of limit which includes the unlimited hope that evil is not necessary.' History as tragic fate In the sixties Grant despairs of history: he despairs of the fulfilment and vindication of the dialectic of freedom in an absolute morality . He despairs of a historical synthesis of the truth of antiquity and the truth of modernity in a more universal truth, a more universal freedom . His despairing of history is also his repudiation of Hegel's understanding of history as the dialectical progress of human freedom; it is his turning away from the hope for synthesis as a false hope. A historical synthesis not only will not be but cannot be. Through the writings of Leo Strauss, Grant comes to a more pessimistic understanding of the western tradition, one that does not presume the truth of ' history. ' For Strauss's attack on historicism goes right to its jugular vein: he denies to present thought a privileged position grounded in the evolution of 'the whole,' insisting rather that the situation of thought does not change, that the truth is accessible to man as man, because 'the whole' is unchanging and eternal. From Strauss's point of view , the western tradition of thought and practice presents a progressive obscuring of 'the whole,' of 'the eternal things, ' in the light of which alone man truly understands himself. According to him, it is modem man's dependence on an erroneous tradition of political philosophy that prevents him from laying hold of the true nature of political things and the right or good political order. The modern tradition stands between political thinkers and the fundamental issues of justice, chiefly because its foundations embody a self-conscious break with the earlier foundations of the Bible and classical political philosophy, wherein are articulated the constant (that is, universal) political experiences and ideas. For Strauss, the western tradition is not a tradition of freedom, since man ' s highest freedom is to contemplate the eternal things, the eternal laws of nature to which man belongs as a part, and the western tradition has made men oblivious to these things . The heart of the erring of the western tradition, from Strauss's point of view, is the understanding of necessity and contingency that has gained hold within it. Necessity and contingency are rightly understood by classical philosophy, in

162 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice which 'nature' and 'necessity' are regarded as one, as that which is eternally and unchangeably, and 'contingency' has to do with the events of time, which are 'accidentally' or 'by chance.' It is this understanding of necessity as 'the eternal' that has been suppressed in the western tradition of philosophical thought since the shifting of the foundations with Machiavelli. 'Historicism,' in Strauss's use of the term, designates the course of this suppression since Rousseau. Grant's writings of the early sixties - 'Religion and the State' and 'Tyranny and Wisdom ' - show the extent of his agreement with Strauss's interpretation of the western tradition since Machiavelli. These writings call into question both the substance of the modern tradition, that is, freedom as a practical and theoretical ideal, and the modern principle of tradition, that is, the concept of a dialectically progressing totality to which thinking and acting belong. The modern ideal of freedom, according to Strauss and Grant, is that of creative self-determination through unlimited choice, and this ideal implies the mastery of human and non-human nature. For to increase the possibilities for human action one must overcome natural restraints on it. The greater the possibilities, the greater the conquest of necessity and chance. Grant agrees with Strauss that the goal of modern science after Bacon, and of political thought after Machiavelli, has been the overcoming of chance through manipulation of the 'stuff' of nature (human and non-human) according to contingent laws of action or motion. The guiding purpose of scientific and political thinking over the last five hundred years has resulted in the coming to be of liberal technological society. In this society the majority of men hold to no other objective and universal good except unlimited freedom, and at the same time are subjected to the tightening constraints of human control. In Strauss's judgment, the end of modern man's striving, the 'universal and homogeneous state,' is the universal tyranny of unwisdom, the most complete human bondage to ignorance and error. Grant's writings of the later sixties imply his concurrence in this judgment. In 'Religion and the State,' Grant presents the liberal ideal of freedom as the false unification of theoretical and practical ends, of science and morality, of philosophy and religion . He argues that the 'religion of progress,' which articulates this ideal, identifies the highest knowledge with the best action, and makes the best action available to all members of liberal society. This false identification of the end of thought with the end of action, and the false equalitarianism with regard to this end, is for Grant inseparable from the modern understanding of the western tradition as the dialectical progression of human freedom. Only within this Hegelian account of tradition do the differences between philosophy, religion, and political practice finally disappear in 'the universal and homogeneous state.' Here, the truth of the religious consciousness that has been thought by the philosopher is incarnated by the work of science and politics. The 'universal

163 Summary and Criticism and homogeneous state' is, therefore, a 'synthesis' in two respects. First, it is the outcome of a dynamic totality in which religion, philosophy, and political action are the ratio of one another. And secondly, within it philosophical and scientific knowledge have become public dogma and the highest morality has become social practice. In rejecting the modem concept of tradition, Grant is rejecting the truth and justice of such a 'synthesis.' Grant perceives that such a synthesis negates the right role of tradition in society, that of regulating common practice in the public realm. For it negates the distinction between public and private, between communal belief and individual thought, between religion and philosophy. As a philosophical world-view that unifies modem society, that is, as an ideology, liberalism negates both tradition (dogma, belief, habit) as the fonn of society and thinking as the fonn of the individual's transcendence of society . In rejecting tradition as social ideology, Grant brings into sharp relief the difference between public religion and private philosophical thought. He does not, however, bring out as sharply the difference between the 'public religion' and the 'true religion,' which is the difference between tradition and revelation. And he says nothing in this regard about the church as the community of revelation, and the transcendence of society by the people of God unified through their common faith in Christ. This lacuna in Grant's thinking perhaps points to a residual Hegelian tendency, the tendency to subsume revelation under the historical totality of tradition. For while he may reject the understanding of tradition as a dialectically progressing totality, he still finds the concept of dynamic historical totality indispensable for describing what has happened in the West. He may no longer accept Hegel's optimistic interpretation of the western tradition as a dialectic of freedom; nevertheless, he does not give up the concept of 'western tradition ' as his controlling idea. In the sixties, when Grant has become disillusioned with the future of the West, he still struggles to understand the dynamic totality from which we have come forth. Revelation for Grant is one pole of this totality. Hence, he never flags in his attempt to relate biblical revelation dynamically to what historically follows it, to draw out its consequences for the subsequent movement of thought and action in the West. These consequences fonn an intelligible sequence, a process that is susceptible of being thought as process. It is in this sense that the western tradition, with its dynamic primals of biblical revelation and Greek philosophy, remains a meaningful structure of necessity for Grant, even when this necessity ceases to be the fulfilment of human freedom . Grant is especially concerned to relate biblical revelation to modem political ideas, asking whether 'biblical categories' are not 'in part responsible' for the understanding of 'nature' and 'virtue' in the modem tradition of political philosophy. He unequivocally affinns that 'Biblical categories' are implicated in the

164 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice modem understanding of nature as indefinitely malleable and virtue as, supremely, compassion before thought. In this way, biblical categories enter into the structure of necessity that binds thinking and acting in the present. They belong to the historical totality that is our fate, our destiny. Grant carries over into the sixties an understanding of tradition as history in its necessary, directional aspect. Tradition, for him, in 1964 as in 1954 is the past grasped as a meaningful totality or, better, as a succession of meaningful totalities, which are both continuous and discontinuous. The concept of tradition is Grant's way of rendering intelligible the changes that have occurred in human affairs, in human thinking and acting. It is his way of giving an immanent coherence to the human community in time - a coherence, a temporal unity, that extends to thought as well as to action . His alignment of 'tradition' with 'fate' in the later sixties reinforces the term's double application: 'the tradition' is the inherited totality of thought and practice that is efficacious in the present: it is both 'spiritual' and 'practical.' Philosophical thought is not exempted from the efficaciousness of the tradition. On the contrary, Grant makes the point that 'necessity' is pre-eminently necessity in the human soul, necessity for thought about what is good: it is chiefly concerned, he says, 'with what the most influential souls have thought about human good .' The fatedness of our thought, though a central theme of Grant's later writings, is not a new theme. The historicity of thought, its dependence on the tradition, is an assumption of his Hegelian period. But now 'fatedness' bears the meaning of 'tragic fatedness,' for thought cannot bring about its own reconciliation with historical necessity. It becomes clear to Grant after PMA that we cannot reconcile the contradictions we have inherited, all of which are aspects of the one overriding contradiction, 'history' versus 'eternity.' The western tradition as our 'fate' is no longer transparent to our willing and our thinking, as Hegel supposed. It is true that we can think historical necessity, as Grant attempts to do, on the level of distinct historical totalities, each of which is a continuous thread of historical experience and meaning: for instance, the totality of our experience in the technological society, the totality of our nation's history, the totality of European civilization grasped in the tension of its 'primals.' But these totalities are processes that cannot be thought in their unity, and so our efforts to think the tradition must rest in uncertainty and ambiguity. Towards the end of the sixties, the fatedness of our thought presents an even more terrible spectre in Grant's writings. It is the spectre of historical forgetting, of modem man losing his past, being cut off by the certainties of the present from the roots of the western tradition. In recollecting the tradition one transcends the present, grasping its meaning in grasping the meaning of the past. Recollecting is a way of self-knowledge. But is such transcendence of present immediacies

165 Summary and Criticism possible to us, or are we essentially technological man, locked into the technological vision which distorts and suppresses all meaning beyond itself? What is the ground of our remembering? What guarantees recollection to us? The ground of our remembering is not for Grant as for Heidegger the tradition itself: the tradition is not for him the immanent eschatology of Being. Grant's faith is not, therefore, in the creativity of tradition, in its inexhaustible power of self-transcendence. Is the ground of our recollection, then, the indestructibility of nature, its unrelenting resistance to technological mastery? In 'A Platitude,' Grant invokes natural catastrophes as occasions of recollection without making them sufficient conditions. Is the ground, then, an enduring human nature , the persistence of certain fundamental experiences and ideas? Says Grant in the same ' Platitude': 'Whether there are intimations of essential deprivals which are beyond elimination by the calculations of the present spirit is just what must remain ambiguous for us.' No, the ground of recollection for Grant, we would propose, is the self-revelation of Eternal Justice to the human soul, the illumination of the mind by divine grace, which has the appearance for us of chance . Recollection for Grant is, before all else, recollection of our 'primals' as western men, of the roots, the foundations of the western tradition. It is recollection of the 'first presences' of the Bible and Greek philosophy . In these 'first presences' the truth of the western tradition appears, for they are our 'original openings' to the whole, to the goodness of all that is, to 'comedy' and 'tragedy.' In the light of these openings, our past is revealed to be a structure of necessity and chance that is tragic, because it is a falling away , a wandering from the truth of the beginnings. In the light of our beginnings, the present is revealed as deprival, as the absence of truth . This is so because what is recollected answers our deepest desire, our most fundamental passion or need, in a way that present certainties do not. What is recollected gives us peace and joy; it calls us forth to give ourselves away. By contrast, the certainties of the present are not lovable; in them our desires do not find their unity and their rest. Thus, the tradition to which the present also belongs is shown to be the tragic deprival of our loving as well as our thinking . And yet, the fruit of recollection, says Grant, is to love: it is to love our fate, to love necessity which is not lovable. In the presence of those images of perfection recovered from our buried past we are never more conscious of the distance between necessity and the good, between the totality of technological freedom in which human willing is supreme and the eternal perfection that transcends human willing and the processes dependent on it. At the same time, however, these images embrace the necessity that negates them; they embrace modem man's oblivion to eternity. They do this, we would venture, by pointing to the cross at the heart of perfection, to the self-giving weakness that overcomes necessity by

166 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice suffering it. In our contemplation of this self-giving weakness , the power of loving our fate is given to us . 'It is given to us ' (Grant prefers to say) to overcome the terrible paradox of modernity in our loving. It appears that what we can overcome in our loving we cannot overcome in our thinking. For Grant the thinker, the contradiction between the modem tradition of freedom and the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem is final: he at least cannot think together 'history' and 'eternity.' On the level of thought he appears to accept Strauss' s either-or: either historical or non-historical thought gives the true account of what is. Yet 'history' is not simply an erroneous way of understanding oneself and one's world. It is, rather, the unprecedented actualization of certain 'potentialities of reasoning and making happen,' which makes the world available to us in a new way. Grant's energies in the seventies are directed to exploring the common structure of these potentialities as it is revealed in our central notion of 'technology. ' This novel structure is first and essentially manifest in modem mathematics and mathematical physics, which hold the world before us as calculable and manipulable objectivity. Upon this prior actualization depend our other feats of reasoning and making happen. Thus, the actualization of these potentialities, above all for Grant, separates us from the Greeks, who merely 'contemplated [them] as mistrusted potentialities. ' This actualization - our specifically modem triumphs of 'making happen' - constitutes the stumbling-block for political philosophy today. For these triumphs of mastery place us in a relation to human and non-human nature that conceals our own essence, that for which we are fitted . English-Speaking Justice traces the path of this concealment in the historical progression in interpenetration of technology and liberal justice. It shows the necessary consequence of this concealment for our practice of public justice, for that fundamental framework of legal justice that renders politics possible in society. Nevertheless, both Time as History and English-Speaking Justice end in the call to think what is uniquely given to us in technological civilization 'as having been actualized, in relation to what is remembered' (TH , 52), in relation to the ancient accounts of justice which are our 'original openings' in the West. Here is perhaps, the greatest paradox of Grant's writings , greater even than amor fati , that he exhorts us to a task that he has rendered impossible, the task of thinking our fate in relation to what is remembered. A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO THE ISSUES

Revelation versus tradition Grant' s writings show us why tradition thought as fate cannot be an authority for our thinking about justice and our doing of justice. This is because fate, or

167 Summary and Criticism historical necessity, is ultimately ambiguous. It ta.Ices away with one hand what it gives with the other, and ends in paradox. The past of the tradition contradicts the present of the tradition and truth must belong to both because both belong to 'the whole,' that is, to eternity. To see history as tradition, as a series of meaningful totalities that are at once continuous and discontinuous, is to see it sub specie aeternitatis. Each historical totality is an image of eternity, even if an inverted image. For Grant the present darkness is meaningful as darkness, just as for Heidegger the absence of Being is a form of its presence. While Grant believes that the traditions of our past (the past of ttie western tradition) contain the highest truth, his belief finds no justification in the notion of tradition as fate, because this notion is the great equalizer of traditions. Consequently, he must be content with 'refusing' Nietzsche rather than refuting him; and therein lies Grant's nobility, in his refusal of Nietzsche. 1 But Grant is a traditionalist apart from thinking the western tradition as our fate. That is, he upholds the authority of the past, but not simply as past. 2 Rather, he upholds the authority of foundations, of beginnings, of what he calls 'first presences' or 'primals.' Thus, he is traditionalist, we would propose, in the way the Romans were traditionalist - they participated in the mystique of foundations. 3 The authoritative foundations for Grant are the 'first presences' of European civilization: 'revelation and philosophy.' The primals of the western tradition are not themselves 'tradition' in the sense that all subsequent traditions are 'tradition' : they are not a 'confusion of truth and error.' Rather, they are revelation: they manifest the highest truth, the truth with no admixture of error. We have argued that Plato and the Gospels, as distinct from the Bible and Greek philosophy, are revelation in this sense; they possess the authority of foundations for Grant. And as revelation, because the truth is one, they do not stand in contradiction. Grant's writings, therefore, imply an understanding of revelation as foundation, as the truth of our beginnings which is recollected. Our relation to the truth is our relation to the foundations of 'the tradition,' and this relation is increasingly tragic in Grant, as he perceives the tradition as a structure of error, of forgetting, of deflection from the foundations. The foundations stand in judgI Heidegger's ignobility lies in his not 'refusing' Nietzsche . 2 Grant does not believe that the oldest truth is the highest truth, that perdurance is the greatest test of truth. 3 We are indebted to Hannah Arendt's discussion of Roman traditionalism in her brilliant historical-philosophical analysis of authority entitled 'What Is Authority?' in Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Viking Press 1961), 91-141. This same analysis instructed our understanding of the conceptual complex of tradition, authority, and religion in chapter 4.

168 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice ment on the tradition, on the epochs of deflection, and their presence in the tradition is increasingly a presence of absence. For us modems, who belong to the tradition of technological freedom, the foundations are present only in the solitary act of recollection, which must be solitary because what is recollected lies outside the public realm. It lies outside the realm of public speech, lacking a coherent language of communication in the present. Since, we have proposed, Grant recognizes the authority of the Gospels as the foundation of the tradition, we are pressed to inquire whether the Gospels understand authority as the authority of foundations. Upon the Gospels' understanding of authority depends the Christian understanding of revelation . We must ask: Are we related to the revelation of the Gospels as to the truth of our beginnings from which we have fallen away through the historical forgetting of the tradition? We could ask the same question of Plato's writings which also have the authority of foundations for Grant- namely, what is Plato's understanding of authority and of our relation to the truth of which he speaks? We shall confine our questioning, however, to the authority of the Christian revelation and leave Plato to those better equipped to judge his case than ourselves. We shall inevitably speak out of the New Testament and not the Gospels alone, and must do so confessionally in order to make any theological point at all, since we cannot at this juncture raise a battery of critical exegetical problems. As far as the Gospel accounts go, the only authority they know is the authority of Jesus Christ as the only Son of God, as the Way and the Truth - an authority vouchsafed by the prophetic Scriptures, by Christ's earthly ministry, by his resurrection appearances and his bodily ascension. The Gospel writers and the other disciples have only the authority of their commission from Christ dependent on their discipleship during Christ's earthly ministry, on their 'having been there.' In the Acts of the Apostles the testimony of the Spirit comes to the fore as the authority for the apostolic proclamation of Christ's work, but even here the authority of direct commission is presupposed, and given centrality in the case of Paul's ministry. The Epistles retain the dual structure of authority: the witness of the Spirit in the community of believers and the direct commission from Christ. What is constantly implied in the New Testament understanding of authority is the direct relation to the truth. Authority is inseparable from living in the presence of the truth, in the presence of the crucified and resurrected Christ through the Holy Spirit. Authority is, therefore, inseparable from revelation, the revelation of the Father in the Son through the Spirit, and revelation holds together the past and the present in co-penetration. There is no authority where the truth is not present, whether it be the presence of commission or of the Spirit's testimony. This is what distinguishes the authority of revelation in the New Testament from

169 Summary and Criticism the authority of foundations in the traditionalist and historicist senses: that the truth is present directly and not mediated historically, through the tradition. When revelation becomes foundation, the truth is no longer present as present, but only present as past, as memory. The truth of foundations, mediated through the tradition, can only be grasped recollectively, by means of historical recapitulation. Thus Heidegger's 'destructive recollection' of the western tradition is a recapitulation of the movement of the tradition to arrive at the truth of foundations. While Grant follows the way of historical recapitulation in Time as History, he follows it as Nietzsche's interpreter, and the end to which it brings him is self-understanding, knowledge of the meaning (the essence) of the present. It does not bring him to the truth of foundations, of 'philosophy' and 'revelation,' of Socrates and Christ, by which Grant is enabled to refuse Nietzsche. The recollection wherein he is given the truth of philosophy and revelation is not the recapitulating recollection of the western tradition in the manner of Heidegger. Rather, it is the supra-historical grasp of the supra-historical truth given to the mind in meditation on the words of the Gospels and of Plato. This recollection transcends the realm of tradition, of historical mediation, being the presence of the supra-historical truth to the human mind. It is revelation in this immediate and transcendent sense, we have argued, that is called for in Grant's later work by the failure of the tradition, by the breakdown of the historical dialectic. When the tradition becomes for Grant a structure of bondage, only the trans-historical Truth can liberate the mind. In Time as History the tradition is no longer the way back to the truth of foundations. In this respect, Grant has overcome the historicist principle. For remembering that 'pass[es] over into thinking and loving what is good' is nothing else than the revelation of the good in the present which breaks through the web of necessity. This being the case, however, we are led to question the appropriateness of Grant's implied conception of revelation as the truth of foundations given in recollection. For, if 'the tradition' is no longer the way back to the truth, then the truth is not the truth of foundations. In Time as History, we would argue, Grant's overcoming of the historicist principle is incomplete. From a Christian theological point of view, revelation is always revelation of the crucified and resurrected Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, through whom the world was created and by whom it has been redeemed. And Scripture is the outward medium of revelation, the place of revelation, in that it authoritatively witnesses the person and the work of Christ which is believed in the church through the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Truth, therefore, has a double presence among us: Christ is present in the unified testimony of the Spirit and of Scripture. And in his double presence, the Truth is present as present and

170 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice future as well as past: his presence is eschatological rather thanfoundational. He is the Truth of the End pre-eminently , and of the Beginning under the sway of the End. The revelation of Christ in Scripture is foundational in only one sense: it is the foundation of an ongoing community of believers, a temporal community of faith, hope, and charity . Similarly, the truth of Scripture is recollected in only one sense: namely, in Scripture is recollected the creating, sustaining, and redeeming action of the Word of God in the course of human affairs from the beginning of the world to the beginning of the church . Upon the recollection of Scripture depends our recollection of God's actions. The recollection of Scripture, therefore, is the final word , the authoritative word, that breaks through the bondage of 'the tradition,' of the inherited structures , apprehensions , thoughts , and acts that enslave us. It is the presence of universal truth dissolving the veil of illusion and deception which is our fate in the very language we speak. It is the living word that overcomes the death of language because the living Christ, the source of being and truth, is present to us in it. In recollecting God's actions in time , the witness of Scripture recollects the future that these actions entail. This is the future promised by God himself as the fulfilment of his actions. It is the future that is proleptically present in the souls of those who believe in Christ and love him, who live in the power of the Spirit. It is the future that is proleptically present in the sacraments of the church. This future is the absolute future, the universal future, the future of mankind and of creation: it is the perfection, the consummation of all things under the rule of Christ. It is the end of created and fallen time, of created and fallen mankind, of created and fallen nature. And because the end is proleptically present in the souls of the faithful and the sacraments of the church, Christians understand themselves as living in the end-time, not the historical end-time of Hegel and Heidegger, but the eschatological 'in-between' ; that is, in-between Christ's resurrection and his glorification in all the world.

History as providence versus history as fate We have said that Grant, while rejecting the modem concept of 'history,' still retains a notion of history - as fate , as necessity. He continues to attribute a universal course to temporal events, a universal meaning to the past that comprehends the present and the future. This meaning is the meaning of the western tradition from its foundations to the present. It is universal because the present of the western tradition, the rule of technology, is being universalized. Technology is not only the future of the West; it is the future of mankind. Grant agrees with Heidegger that mankind is entering upon the planetary rule of 'technique.• Since

171 Summary and Criticism technology has come forth from the western tradition, the western tradition is the universal human fate. The western tradition as our fate is a tempo:-al structure of necessity to which our desiring and our willing as well as our thinking are bound. Grant attempts to bring this structure of necessity to light on the level of meaningful historical totalities. His guiding purpose in this endeavour is to manifest the present darkness, to uncover the moral and the theoretical darkness of technological freedom in our society. He does this by showing technological freedom to be a totality of 'experience' - of apprehending, thinking, and acting - that closes us to contemplation of the transcendent good . In thinking technological freedom as a historical totality, an encompassing 'tradition,' Grant is required to give an account of the origin and the development of this totality, and his historical-philosophical analysis eventually brings him to the 'primals' of the western tradition, to biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. Thus, the darkness of technological society is rendered necessary by being taken up into the movement of the tradition itself, that is, into the movement of history in its necessary directional aspect. And this necessity is a kind of meaningfulness, of intelligibility: it is the intelligibility of process. The intelligibility of process is not the intelligibility of traditional teleology; nevertheless, it is a form of intelligibility. Our theological reservation about Grant's thinking of necessity in terms of historical totalities is not that it makes providence scrutable but that it makes sin scrutable. It is precisely the point of his rejection of 'history' in the Hegelian sense that providence is not scrutable: that the unity of necessity and goodness cannot be thought. Necessity as fate is not providence in the Christian sense of the unfolding of God's purposes in time, for this unfolding cannot be thought as the movement of the tradition. Rather, Grant's understanding of necessity comes closer to a theological understanding of the necessity of human sinning. On this understanding our fate is our bondage to sin as a consequence of the fall. History as necessity is the course of human sinning in time. The theological question, however, is whether the necessity of sinning is meaningful in the way that the movement of 'the tradition' is meaningful for Grant. Our own judgment is that it is not meaningful, that it cannot be thought as historical process. For the necessity of sinning is the limit to the meaningfulness of human thought and action, which are meaningful only as they are freely directed to the good. In thinking necessity on the level of historical totalities Grant tends to essentialize sin, to make of it a historical essence in the manner of Heidegger. He professes to reject the understanding of history as a finite, irreversible process in which individual events have ultimate and unique meaning (by virtue of their place in the process), yet in his concept of 'the western tradition' he retains the

172 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice elements of process, irreversibility, and uniqueness. For the historical totalities that belong to 'the tradition' are irreversible in their sequence and unique in their meaning . This tendency to essentialize sin leaves Grant open to the charge of fatalism . All historicism is fatalistic, and to the extent that Grant falls under the sway of historicism, he too is fatalistic. Having raised this theological reservation about Grant's attempt to think the present darkness in terms of the western tradition, we must confess that he wonderfully illuminates the present darkness as darkness. He manifests with great clarity the prevailing form of sin in our society: technological hubris, the will to unlimited freedom. He points with prophetic urgency to the tyrannous hold among us of a false understanding of ourselves and our world that mocks the Creator and his creation . The weight of Grant's analysis falls on the church, which is shown to be too often a corrupt flatterer of the idolatrous ethos of society. His philosophical criticism, therefore, proves to be an invaluable way of self-knowledge for Christians and non-Christians alike, an indispensable antidote to the complacency and dogmatism of the civil religion of late state capitalism. Grant's work indeed accomplishes the negative task of political philosophy from a Christian point of view: that of uncovering the structure of sin in society. In denying, therefore, that sin is a historical essence, a historical 'totality,' we are not denying that sin is susceptible of rational analysis on the level of society. For we cannot come to a full awareness of the scope and power of our communal sin without perceiving it as tending towards a form that has its own consistency and internal logic. 4 Nevertheless, if necessity to sinning is the limit to the meaningfulness of our common thought and action, then we must stop short of essentializing sin, of seeing it as an intelligible phase in the movement of 'the tradition.' Rather, in thinking our common sin, we should regard the concepts we use (for instance, 'technological reduction' and 'historicism') as helpful guideposts that point to the deficiencies of our thinking and acting and sharpen the demands of the good on us. We can use such generalizing critical concepts in this fashion precisely because their validity is both established and limited by the truth of Scripture. The good that comes to appearance in these negative concepts is given to us authoritatively in the revelation of Scripture, in which is laid down those standards by which our thought and action in the present are finally to be 4 This perception may well find its biblical warrant in the figure of the Antichrist ('the beast from the sea') depicted in the Revelation of St John . One interpretation of the Antichrist that gives the figure cogency within the totality of Revelation is that it represents the power of Satan to assume concrete historical embodiment in a multiplicity of political-cultural forms. If the author of Revelation does, in fact, invoke the Antichrist as the principle of evil's positive historical reality, by so doing he endows evil with transient being and intelligibility while witholding from it final ontological status.

173 Summary and Criticism judged. It is in recognition of the power of revelation decisively to judge our present that we look upon our critical constructs merely as guideposts - for they too are tainted by our sinfulness . They conceal as they reveal, and so stand in need of continual correction in the light of Scriptural revelation. By refraining from thinking the necessity to sin in terms of historical totalities, we are not, in addition, denying the usefulness of historical knowledge in our struggle for social self-understanding. It is indisputable that the beliefs and practices in societies change over time, that there is change at the level of social structures and institutions, and that these changes are inseparable from the prevailing forms of sin, with the consequence that the particular tendencies to injustice and disorder that mark our own society stand out more clearly against the different configurations of past societies. Historical recollection is, therefore, an important aspect of thinking our sin, as long as it is purged of its progressivist assumptions by subjection to the scriptural truth that every society stands under God's judgment in the crucified Christ. This truth about society effectively opens us to the past: to what has been thought and desired and done. It is the ground of historical objectivity (which, as Strauss is right in arguing, is the proper norm for the historian). For on the one hand, it guarantees the 'thereness,' the unique being, of every thought and desire and action in the past, and, on the other, it demands humble receptivity to the truth and goodness, as well as to the error and sinfulness, of what has been thought and desired and done. To understand history as providence rather than as fate, as necessity, is to understand that everything that happens in time and space stands under the double sign of the cross, the sign of judgment and of redemption, which will be sealed on the Last Day . To believe in providence is to believe that the universe from moment to moment is in accordance with the Father's will, and judgment and redemption are the two sides of the Father's will in Christ for his fallen creation in bondage to human sin . Thus, the present as well as the past of our society, all our public traditions - of political and legal justice, of learning, of worship (even ecclesiastical tradition) - everything we have inherited from the past, all that has been thought and done (that does not carry the authority of revelation), participates in the darkness of human sin and the light of saving truth. The ultimate meaning of every past event, and of the past as a whole, that is to say, the meaning of universal history, is given secretly in the cross of Christ and awaits its universal revelation in Christ's eschatological judgment. We cannot, therefore, know the meaning of history outside of Christ's eschatological judgment. Only in the final judgment is the meaning and unity of history manifest. We cannot in the present think the meaning of history in any form, whether it be that of western history, of European civilization, of North American history, of Canadian history. We cannot think history (that is, the

174 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice tradition) in any of these forms. For the final meaning of all events is ambiguous. All we can know now is that the Spirit of Christ is at work in everything, judging and redeeming sinful man, sustaining and restoring fallen nature. Our hope for the future, therefore, is inseparable from our agnosticism in the present concerning the meaning of the course of events. Despite the temptation to fatalism in his thinking, however, Grant does not ultimately yield to it. As a practical man and a thinker he manifests the untruth of fatalism, of the conviction that we are enslaved by necessity in the form of 'technique.' His writings, like his life, testify that the love of Christ has already broken the bondage of sin in our common life. He both thinks and does what is good - and more than that, he thinks and does what is good in the public realm. Grant is a passionate communicator of the truth that is given to him. To communicate the truth, he once said, is the first requirement of charity. This is central, we would add, to the Christian profession that Christ's rule has begun, that his love has triumphed on the cross and is even now overcoming the necessity of sinning. In Christ's eschatological rule, which has begun but awaits fulfilment, our •fate' is overcome, •the tradition' is overcome, the hold of the past of sinning on the present is overcome. What fatalism denies is the eschatological reality of divine justice: it denies that justice has come and is making men just. But this is the substance of the Christian hope. In professing this hope in the eschatological presence of justice, we are still able to affirm with Weil and Grant that justice is clinging to the good through the veil of necessity, as long as we understand necessity to be something other than the necessity of human sinning, as will shortly become clear. In our preceding remarks we have been addressing ourselves to Grant's later understanding of history as tragic necessity. Of course, he always understood the tradition as necessity, but initially he believed necessity to be reconcilable with the fulfilment of human freedom. Under the influence of Hegel Grant conceived the tradition as the dialectical progression of human freedom towards perfection, that is, as an eschatological movement. But if, from a theological point of view, the tradition cannot be thought as tragic necessity, neither can it be thought as eschatological reconciliation. As we have said, all our inherited traditions (of thought as well as of practice) come under the sign of judgment and redemption. They are not of themselves eschatological, as historicism asserts, but may be used by the Spirit of Christ in his perfecting work. At the same time we must admit that those inherited ideas and practices in our society that appear to presume the revelation of Scripture do have a particular theological status. We are thinking especially of the inherited ideas of justice and procedures of justice in our society. Theologically considered, these traditions

175 Summary and Criticism have the status of revealed law. Under this theological category we include not only those traditions of morality and justice that depend on the Old Testament (on the Sinai code), but also those ideas and practices that depend on the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, for instance, the tradition of equal respect for all persons, even those who have violated the law. All these traditions are 'revealed law' because they are social: they embody the norms for earthly society and not for the Kingdom of God. As belonging to the Law, our traditions of thought and practice are also open to the Gospel, to Christ's redemptive work. This is, perhaps, more immediately true of our traditions of thought, in so far as thought always intends universality, and our traditions of action carry this eschatological import only secondarily, through their relation to our traditions of thought. Our eschatological hope, then, is that in the consummation of God's will in Christ both the necessity of sinning and the failure of the revealed law will be overcome. We must, however, sharply distinguish eschatological overcoming from the 'overcoming' of nature and law in the 'false universal' of technological freedom. For our eschatological hope denies neither the permanence and validity of the created order nor the constancy of the divine nature. Nature, law, freedom An enduring aspect of Grant's attack on modem historicism and his suspicion of 'Biblical religion' is his attachment to classical natural law, defended by Leo Strauss as the essence of philosophy. Natural law theory is, in Grant's eyes, perhaps the only intelligible way of bringing the natural order under the 'primal claim of the good.' He does not see how nature as pure contingency, as 'blind necessity,' can be related to this 'primal claim,' for in this case there is no 'congruent and specifiable relation between nature and good. ' 5 In the fifties Grant considers Hegel's solution to this problem: making nature, as the realm of pure contingency, an expression of the will of the absolute - that is, taking up nature into the System, into Absolute Spirit. But he soon decides that the givenness of nature, its independent meaning, its resistance to human willing, is not preserved in Hegel's reconciliation. Grant's hesitations about the modem scientific view of nature are systematically laid out in PMA. What has been lost to the modem conception is the notion of limit in the double sense of: I / the 'categorical wrong,' that 'by which we are measured,' and 2 / necessity (chance), the law that is 'death' to us, the 'very negation of freedom and power,' but which, nevertheless, is to be accepted, 5 Quote from Grant, cited in E.B. and D.R. Heaven, 'Some Influences of Simone Weil on George Grant's Silence,' in George Grant in Process, 70

176 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice suffered. In PMA he calls for restoration of the double notion of limit without pressing for a return to classical natural law, that is, to the vision of a hierarchy of substances, each directed to the good through its immanent law. In the sixties this settlement of the problem of nature, law, and freedom (which was precarious from the start) cracks under the weight of the spectre of technological tyranny that haunts Grant. An important question for our interpretation of Grant's position on the problem of nature is the extent of his adherence to Simone Weil. For Weil has thought nature as the realm of pure contingency, of 'blind necessity,' and yet has preserved it as something to be contemplated and suffered. She has vindicated the scientific aspiration to conceive the world as a network of geometrical and mechanical laws, while at the same time condemning the goal of this striving in modem science, the overcoming of necessity through manipulation and control. By conceiving natural necessity theologically, as the cosmic cross of Christ, the perfect mediation of the divine Word itself, Weil has brought science as the knowledge of necessity into harmony with the enjoyment of beauty, the acceptance of affliction, and the love of God. She has shown how 'natural justice' is ordered to (but not continuous with) 'supernatural justice,' how natural love is ordered to the supernatural love of God, of neighbour, and of necessity (fate). Furthermore, in her understanding of freedom as perfect obedience to Christ, Weil has reconciled freedom and necessity, without, however, denying the distance between necessity and the good on which the reality of suffering depends. And finally, she has held together contemplation and charity in her recognition of the supernatural equality of all men. It is difficult to know how much of Weil's theological mediation of Plato and the Gospels Grant accepts, since she is very much a silent partner in his writings. As an interpreter of Plato's theology she is, as we know, Grant's highest authority. However, we have seen that he departs from Weil's thinking in two important respects: he gives memory an essential place in our relation to the truth, and he thinks necessity (fate) on the level of meaningful historical totalities. According to Weil, the memory, like the imagination, is an instrument of delusion, subject to laws of 'blind necessity' analogous to geometrical and mechanical laws of force. Similarly, human affairs, in her view, are the outworking of 'blind fate' such that their course in time lacks intelligibility, in the sense of meaningfulness, of purposefulness. 6 It is our suspicion that, just as Grant cannot abandon 6

While Weil views individuals, countries, nations, and civilizations as having 'destinies,' she does not attempt to think these destinies as meaningful wholes, as unities. Therefore she does not, as Grant does, present western history as a 'unified fate' that needs to be thought, or attempt to enucleate the essence of the modem vision of which all modem phenomena are manifestations.

177 Summary and Criticism the search for meaning, for intelligible direction, in the course of human affairs, 7 so he cannot abandon the search for meaning, for purposeful order, in nature. If he could, we would suggest, the modern darkness would not be so dense, the paradox so radical, as it is in Time as History. 8 Whether or not our suspicions are right, it is at least true that Grant's persisting resistance to the historicist and technological view of nature as 'blind indifference,' as meaningless apart from our purposes for it, raises in an acute way the question of what the biblical view of nature is. It is our judgment that Weil's conception of nature is not the biblical view, and in the light of the biblical view is theologically inadequate. 9 It is theologically inadequate, we would propose, because she does not conceive the relation between the divine work of creation and redemption in a sufficiently positive manner. Redemption, for Weil, is 'decreation' : it is the overcoming of necessity by ' something created' when it 'passes into the uncreated,' into God. 10 Against Weil's mystical and Gnostic theology , 11 we would call for a Christian understanding of nature and freedom that preserves the theological tension between creation, redemption, and eschatological perfection. Such an understanding would provide a compelling criticism of the ideal of technological freedom, while at the same time offering positive guidance for our action in the present. In this understanding, there is room for both natural teleology and a conception of necessity (chance) as something to be contemplated and suffered rather than overcome. We can do no more here than give three theological pointers to this understanding. 7 This is especially evidenced in Grant's endeavour 10 grasp the meaning of the present age as something novel in the course of temporal events. We have argued that ii is the endeavour lo find philosophical meaning in modernity as a novel event that binds Grant lo the problematic of historicism, and al the same time opens the way for a theological reflection on divine providence. 8 In our twofold suspicion that Grant continues to seek intelligible order in history and nature, we depart from the interpretation of Grant's position in relation lo Weil offered by E.B . and D.R. Heaven (see note 5). Nevertheless, we are indebted to these authors for their precise circumscription of the issues and points of tension between Grant and Weil. 9 Weil, of course, would be the first to admit that her theology is not 'biblical.' She does not regard the Old Testament as partaking in the truth of Christ. The Gospels, for Weil, are a late and unsurpassed flowering of the Greek spirit. 10 Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Craufurd (London: Routledge and K. Paul 1952), 28 11 Weil is confessedly Gnostic, and her writings continually incur that charge. She is Gnostic not in upholding the equal ultimacy of two opposing principles (matter and God), which she does not, but in regarding blind necessity, the blind movement of matter, as 'absolute evil' and, at the same time , the 'presence of God in creation' 'under the form of absence.' 'Evil ,' says Weil, 'is the innocence of God. We have 10 place God al an infinite distance in order 10 conceive of him as innocent of evil; reciprocally, evil implies that we have 10 place God al an infinite distance.' Ibid., 99

178 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice I / Created nature. It is clear that Grant sees the pennanence of the natural order as threatened by a belief in God's creation of the world according to his sovereign will. We would merely point out that there is no justification for his fear in the creation account of the first chapter of Genesis. For Genesis tells us that God created the world according to a certain order, and this order is perceptibly consistent with rational principles of cosmological differentiation. 12 Further, God establishes 'kinds' among living creatures and judges this to be 'good .' The pennanent integrity and validity of 'kinds' is guaranteed by the unchanging will of the creator, whose indivisible yet differentiated will is the law of every kind. 13 We should add that the givenness of cosmic order is not only asserted in Genesis I but is echoed throughout the Wisdom literature to which this passage can be argued to belong. God also establishes a teleological relation between the orders of living creatures, so that one 'kind' contributes to the perfection of another. To man, whom he has created in his own 'image and likeness,' God gives all seed-bearing plants and fruit-bearing trees for food . He gives all green plants to the other wann and cold blooded animals for food . God makes man, male and female, the ruler and subduer of 'the earth.' Man's governance is apparently not at odds with the creational distinction of kinds or the teleological order among living creatures . The question that Grant's writings put to us is whether the teleological order of nature extends to man: whether man too has a purpose, end, or good that is the law of his being. Plato says that justice is that for which man as man is fitted. The Old Testament prophets say that justice is that after which men hunger and thirst. Separating these two answers is the Old Testament account of man's fall into sin, his choosing of evil. In the Old Testament, men hunger and thirst after justice (righteousness, salvation) because they have lost it. We may infer that Adam and Eve, the first human community, were created with justice. But what is this justice? - the presence of God's will in the human heart. Says the prophet Isaiah ( I :27) •Justice shall redeem Zion and righteousness her repentant people. ' The order of human community that springs from the presence of God's will in the 12 Augustine demonstrates this in The City of God 11. 13 Calvin recognized a creational use of the Old Testament Law, interpreting the 'kinds' of the Genesis account as established by divine ordinance. A fruitful development of the notion of 'creation ordinance' is found in the writings of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, who has erected a philosophy of the structures and aspects of temporal reality on the principle of 'sphere sovereignty.' The principle of 'sphere sovereignty,' derived by Dooyeweerd from the notion of 'divine legal ordinance,' is a juridical principle of 'original right,' which 'guarantees the irreducibility and protects the distinct laws of the different spheres' of temporal reality. See Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular and Christian Options, trans. John Kraay , ed. Mark Vander Vennen and Bernard Zylstra (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation 1979).

179 Summary and Criticism heart is the natural order, created justice. It is by God's will that man is governed and governs the rest of creation justly. 2 / Fallen nature. In his early theological writing Grant interprets Adam's choice of evil to mean that man is created a being whose will is not determined by natural necessity, by the natural order of goods that his reason apprehends . In his later writings he repeatedly voices the suspicion that the liberal understanding of freedom as an Archimedean point outside nature is historically derived from the biblical view. Grant's suspicion exhorts us to ask again about the relation between human freedom and natural necessity implied in the Bible. On the basis of Genesis 1 we may say the following: that man as a being whose will is determined by the will of his creator, is a being whose will is determined by the created order of goods established and sustained by the creator's constant will. The determination of man's will by God's will (by divine necessity) is inseparable from its determination by natural necessity, in the sense of created law: this inseparability is contained in our inference from Genesis 1 that man's ordained governance of creation does not violate the ordained distinction of kinds or the teleological order among living creatures. Nevertheless, Adam did fall, and the question remains for Grant (as for us all) how man created in God's image could choose evil. We shall place before Grant Augustine's answer, which Grant knows as well as we but apparently finds unacceptable: namely, that the possibility of man's choosing evil is given in man's being man and not God, in man's being a mixture of being and non-being, in his having been created 'out of nothing. ' It is the deficiency of being belonging to man's finite will that makes possible the rift between the order of will and the order of nature. 14 Yet this rift is not itself created, that is, natural. It results from 'a falling away [of the good will] from the work of God to its own work.' 15 The essential thing for Augustine is that man's choice of evil is primarily a falling away of man's will from God's will, and only secondarily an alienation of man's will from the order of created goods. The ideal of technological freedom described by Grant is the guiding idea of an apostate will that has placed its own works before God's. At the centre of the technological ideal Grant puts the overcoming of necessity, in the sense of chance, claiming that western Christianity has found in the Biblical view of history a sanction for man 's overcoming of chance. In response to Grant's claim we would propose that the biblical understanding of non-human nature as fallen because of human sinning compels us to view 'chance' as something to be suffered rather than conquered . This is because 'chance' in the context of fallen 14 The City of God 14.11; 11.16, 17 15 Ibid ., 14.11

180 George Grant and the Twilight of Justice nature is nothing other than God's providence bringing good out of evil. Under the condition of fallen nature, God' s providence has two poles: the first is God's sustaining of created goods and their original order; the second is God's redemption of mankind in Jesus Christ and restitution of all creation in him. What Grant refers to as the 'blind necessity' or 'pure contingency' of nature relates to both these poles of providence. The first pole is not far from the Greek understanding of the 'beneficence of nature,' that is, the understanding of natural catastrophes as manifesting the primacy of the good. For creation under the wages of sin is held in unity in defiance of disunity - a whole of warring parts - so that the upheavals of nature belong also to the sustaining of the created order. The necessity of every natural occurrence is God's willing of some good. Simone Weil, therefore, is right in seeing obedience to the good as the other side of natural necessity. The second pole of providence, the redemptive pole, embraces God's use of fallen nature as an instrument of judgment, of chastisement, to bring sinful mankind to repentance. God uses the necessities of fallen nature to crucify our wills; and in that crucifixion Christ is present, offering us eternal life in communion with him. Acceptance of necessity is, indeed, obedience to the good , if 'necessity' is understood as the wages of sin, the disruption of nature resulting from the fall of Adam. 3 I Redeemed nature. Neither the necessity of sinning, the disorder of human nature, nor the disorder of non-human nature is the last word. The last word is Christ's eschatological kingdom: the perfect community of the redeemed , united with one another by their union with the Father through the Son in the Spirit. How the rest of the creation participates in this restored community must remain hidden until Christ's second coming, but that it does participate is implied in the certainty at the heart of the New Testament proclamation of the resurrection of the body. We do know, however, that this perfect union of man with God and man is perfect freedom . Perfected freedom, as Grant once recalled from Augustine , is freedom not to be able to sin, the freedom of perfect obedience. And perfect obedience is freedom from bondage in all its aspects, including bondage to tradition.

Bibliography

THE PUBLISHED WRITINGS OF GEORGE GRANT

Books, pamphlets, articles 1943 Canada: An Introduction to a Nation. Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs (Special Series) 1945 The Empire: Yes or No? Toronto: Ryerson Press 'Have We a Canadian Nation?,' Public Affairs (Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University) 8: 161-6 1951 'Philosophy,' in Royal Commission Studies (The Massey Report). Ottawa: King's Printer 1952 'Pursuit of an Illusion: A Commentary on Bertrand Russell,' Dalhousie Review 32: 97-109 1953 'Philosophy and Adult Education,' Food for Thought 14: 3-8 'Two Languages in the Ethical Tradition - Hebrew and Greek.' An address delivered to the Maritime Philosophical Association, published in United Churchman, Sackville, NB 1954 'Plato and Popper,' Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science 20: 185-94 'Adult Education in an Expanding Economy,' Food for Thought 15: 4-IO 1955 The entries on 'Canadian History ' in Chambers Encyclopaedia . London: Newnes. See various volumes. The Paradox of Democratic Education . The Ansley Memorial Lecture 'Jean Paul Sartre,' in John A. Irving, ed., Architects of Modern Thought, 1st and 2nd series, 65-74. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Publications 'Contemplation in an Expanding Economy,' The Anglican Outlook (Montreal), 8--11

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' The Minds of Men in the Atomic Age,' in Texts of Addresses Delivered at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Couchiching Conference, 39--45. Toronto: Canadian Institute of Public Affairs & Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 'The Uses of Freedom - a Word and Our World,' Queen's Quarterly 60: 515-27 'The Teaching of Philosophy in Canada,' in Encyclopaedia Canadiana (Grolier Society of Canada) 8: 183--4 Philosophy in the Mass Age. Toronto: Copp Clark; New York: Hill and Wang 1960. Reprinted with a new introduction, Copp Clark 1966 'Fyodor Dostoevsky,' in John A. Irving , ed., Architects of Modern Thought, 3rd and 4th series, 71-83 . Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Publications 'An Ethic of Community,' in Michael Oliver, ed., Social Purpose for Canada, 3-26. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 'Philosophy and Religion-1961,' in Robert M. Hutchins and MortimerJ. Adler, eds , The Great Ideas Today, 336-76. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Brittanica 'Conceptions of Health,' in Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins, eds, Psychiatry and Responsibility, 117-34. Princeton: Van Nostrand 'Carl Gustav Jung,' in Architects of Modern Thought, 5th and 6th series, 63-74. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Publications 'Tyranny and Wisdom -The Controversy between L. Strauss and A. Kojeve,' Social Research 30: 45-72 . Reprinted with a new introduction in Technology and Empire (1969), 81-109 'Religion and the State,' Queen's Quarterly 70: I 83-97 . Reprinted with a new introduction in Technology and Empire, 43-60 'Value and Technology,' in Canadian Conference on Social Welfare: Proceedings, 21-9. Ottawa: Queen's Printer 'Progres technique et valeurs humaines,' in Canadian Conference on Social Welfare: Proceedings, 30-9. Ottawa: Queen's Printer 'Turning New Leaves,' Canadian Forum (March), 282--4 Lament for a Nation : The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism . Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Reprinted with a new introduction, 1970 'Protest and Technology,' in Charles Hanly, ed., Revolution and Response, 122-8. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 'A Critique of the New Left,' in D.I . Rousopoulo, ed. , Canada and Radical Social Change, 55-61. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart 'Technology and the Great Society,' in John Irwin, ed., Great Societies and Quiet Revolutions (The Thirty-Fifth Annual Couchiching Conference), 71-6. Toronto: Canadian Institute of Public Affairs & Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

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'Canadian Fate and Imperialism,' Canadian Dimension 4: 21-5. Reprinted in Technology and Empire, 63-78; also in Mary Jane Edwards, George Parker, and Patrick Denham, eds, The Evolution of Canadian Literature in English 1945-1970, l@-9. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1973 'Wisdom in the Universities: Part One,' This Magazine ls About Schools I: 70-85 'The University Curriculum,' This Magazine ls about Schools 2: 52-7. Reprinted in Howard Adelman and Dennis Lee, eds, The University Game, 47--68. Toronto: Anansi Press 1968. Also in Technology and Empire, 113-33 Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America . Toronto: Anansi Press •A Conversation on Technology' (with Gad Horowitz), Journal of Canadian Studies 4: 3--6 'Is Freedom Man's Only Meaning?' Saturday Night (Toronto) 84 (March), 31-3 'Horowitz and Grant Talk' (with Gad Horowitz), Canadian Dimension 6: 18-20 Time as History. The Massey Lectures, 9th series. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 'Revolution and Tradition;' Gerstein Lecture, Canadian Forum 50: 88-93. Reprinted in Lionel Rubinoff, ed., Tradition and Revolution, 81-95 . Toronto: Macmillan 'Nationalism and Rationality,' Canadian Forum 50: 336-7. Translated into French for Le Devoir (Montreal) 'Ideology in Modern Empires,' in J.E. Flint and G. Williams, eds, Perspectives of Empire, 189-97. London: Longmans Group 'The University Curriculum and the Technological Threat,' in William R. Niblett, ed., The Sciences and the Humanities and the Technological Threat, 21-35.London: University of London Press 'Knowing and Making,' Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 4th series, 12: 59--67 '"The computer does not impose on us the way it should be used,"' in Abraham Rotstein, ed. , Beyond Industrial Growth, 117-31. Massey College Lectures 1974-75 . Toronto: University of Toronto Press •Abortion and Rights,' with Sheila Grant, in Eugene Fairweather and Ian Gentles, eds , The Right to Birth: Some Christian Views on Abortion, 1-12. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre 'On National Unity,' in Grant and Lamontagne on National Unity, 5-9. Toronto: Constellation Life Insurance Co. 'Introduction' to James and Robert Laxer, The Liberal Idea of Canada, 9-12. Toronto: James Lorimer and Co. 'Can We Think outside Technology?' Tract no. 24, 5-23. The Gryphon Press, University of Sussex, England

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English-Speaking Justice . The Josiah Wood Lectures, 1974. Sackville, NB: Mount Allison University Press 'Faith and the Multiversity,' The Compass 4: 3-14. Also in The Search for Absolute Values in a Changing World, 1: 183-94. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, San Francisco, 1977 'Diefenbaker: A Democrat in Theory and in Soul,' in Toronto Globe and Mail, 23 August 'Nietzsche and the Ancients: Philosophy and Scholarship,' Dionysius 3: 5-16 'The Case against Abortion,' in Today Magazine, 3 October 'Dennis Lee - Poetry and Philosophy,' in K. Mulhallen, D. Bennett, and R. Brown, eds, Tasks of Passion: Dennis Lee at Mid-Career, 229-35. Toronto: Descant Editions 'Euthanasia,' with Sheila Grant in Ian Gentles, ed., Care for the Dying and the Bereaved, 133-43. Toronto: Anglican Book Centre 'Celine: Art and Politics,' Queen's Quarterly 90: 801-13

Reviews 1954 H.M . Tory by E.A. Corbett. Canadian Forum 34: 112-13. 1961 Church and State in Canada West: Three Studies in the Relation of Denominationalism and Nationalism, 1841-1867 by John S. Moir. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 12: 131 I 962 Thought - From the Learned Societies of Canada by W .J. Gage . Dialogue I : 100-1 I963 Christianity and Revolution, The Lesson of Cuba by Leslie Dew art. Canadian Forum 43: 282-4 1964 The Predicament of Democratic Man by E. Cahn . University of Toronto Law Journal, 461-3 The Four Faces of Peace by L.B . Pearson. Canadian Forum 44: 140 1966 The Secular City by Harvey Cox. United Church Observer I July, 16, 27 The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Canadian Dimension 3-4: 59-60 1975 The Collected Papers of Walter Bagehot, Volumes V-Vlll: The Political Writings, ed. Norman St John Stevas. Globe and Mail , I March, 31 The Gladstone Diaries, Volumes Ill and JV: /840-/847, 1848-/854, ed . R.D. Foot and H.C .G . Matthew . Globe and Mail, 20 September, 35 I977 Nietzsche's View of Socrates by Werner J. Dannhauser. American Political Science Review 71: 1127-9 Simone Weil by Simone Petrement, trans. Raymond Rosenthal. Globe and Mail, 12 February, 43

185 Bibliography Torture in Greece: The First Torturer's Trial, 1975 by Amnesty International. Globe and Mail, 11 June, 42-3 Essays on Politics and Society by John Stuart Mill . The Collected Works , Volumes XVIII, XIX , ed. J.M. Robson . Globe and Mail, 6 August, 42 1982 The Great Code: The Bible and Literature by Northrop Frye . Globe and Mail, 27 February, E 17 Outsiders: A Study in Life and Letters by H. Mayer. Globe and Mail , 16 October, El6 1983 The World, The Text and the Critic by E.W . Said . Globe and Mail, 7 May, EIS SELECTED WRITINGS ON GRANT

Badertscher, John . 1980. "The Prophecy of George Grant' (Review of EnglishSpeaking Justice), Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 4: 183-9 Blumstock, Robert. 1966. 'Anglo-Saxon Lament' (Review of Lament for a Nation), Canadian Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 3: 98-105 Christian, William . 1978. 'George Grant and the Twilight of Our Justice' (Review of English-Speaking Justice), Queen's Quarterly 85: 485-91 Cook, Ramsay . 1970. 'Loyalism, Technology and Canada's Fate,' Journal of Canadian Studies 5: 50-60 Crook, R.K . 1966. 'Modernization and Nostalgia: A Note on the Sociology of Pessimism,' Queen's Quarterly 73: 269-84 Darby, Tom. 1979. Review of English-Speaking Justice in Canadian Journal of Political Science 12: 161-5 Duffy, Dennis. 1969. 'The Concrete Hypothesis - A Meditation,' Journal of Canadian Studies 4: 3-6 Hall, Douglas John . 1976. Lighten Our Darkness: Towards an Indigenous Theology of the Cross . Philadelphia: Westminster Press Lampert, Laurence. 1974. 'The Uses of Philosophy in George Grant ,' Queen's Quarterly 81 : 495-511. Reprinted in Schmidt, ed . , George Grant in Process (q .v.) - 1978. 'Zarathustra and George Grant: Two Teachers,' Dalhousie Review 58: 443-57 Morton , W.L. 1970. 'The Possibility of a Philosophy of Conservatism ,' Journal of Canadian Studies 5: 3-14 Rotstein, Abraham . 1973. The Precarious Homestead: Essays on Economics, Technology and Nationalism, ch. 12. Toronto: New Press Schmidt, Larry, ed. 1978 . George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations . Toronto: House of Anansi Underhill, F.H . 1965. 'Conservatism = Socialism = Anti-Americanism,' Journal of Liberal Thought I: 101-5

Index

abortion 133, 141, 149-51 Aeschylus 84, 108 Allen, Sheila Veronica 14 Anaximander 116 Aquinas, St Thomas 37, 63; Thomism 19n Arendt, Hannah 3, 6, 63n, 167n Aristotle 7, 15-16, 19n, 76, 99, 130, 142 attention, Weil's concept of 84-5 Augustine of Hippo 18-19, 35, 37, 157, 179-80 authority 13-14, 42, 80; of tradition 20n, 66, 166-9; see also Biblical revelation, authority of beauty, divine 81--4 being: and language 109-10; eschatology of 116-18 biblical religion 35-7, 79, 120, 130, 175; see also Christianity biblical revelation: and Greek philosophy 8, 15-17, 23-5, 88, 98-101, 129-32, 155-7, 159, 166; and the concept of 'history' 23-5, 35-9, 61, 120--1, 159-60; authority of 44, 67-8, 77-9, 100, 166-70; and modern political

philosophy 76-8, 98-101, 120--1, 163--4; and the western tradition 98101, 105, 120--1, 126, 129-31, 15460, 163-71 Burke, Edmund 58, 96 Calvinism 45-6, 92--4, 100, 148 Canada: nationhood 11-14, 48, 87-8, 133; Conservative party of 47-8, 96; see also Conservatism, Liberalism, and North America capitalism 30, 39, 48, 172; see also Liberalism, technological chance: scientific overcoming of 49, 57, 72, 77, 87, 91, 101, 112, 127, 137, 150, 162, 179; and necessity 84-5, 159-60; and recollection 103--4, 105, 165; see also Contingency, Necessity, and Fate charity 58, 75-6, 83, 91, 120, 130, 170, 174; and contemplation 80, 84, 99101; see also Compassion Christianity 5, 18, 29, 32, 37-8, 62-5, 67, 76-80, 93, 108, 120--2, 130, 155; see also Biblical religion and Biblical revelation church: its theological task 15-16;

188 Index Hegel's concept of 71, 76; and revelation 169-70 Churchill, Sir Winston 147 Cochrane, Charles Norris 17-19 compassion 76, 78, IOI computers 137-9; see also Technology conservatism 4, 10, 28, 59n, 62; Canadian 12-13, 62-6, 95-8, 102; philosophical basis of 62-6; British 96-7, 147 contemplation: modern eclipse of 30, 91, 94, 157; and charity 80, 84, 99-101; of nature 84, 100, 160--1 contingency 89, 113; and necessity 523; of thought 53-5; see also Chance contractualism 140--7; see also Justice, political conventionalism 52-3 creation - biblical concept of 177-9; analogy in human freedom 17, 19, 99, 156, 160; and the concept of limit 42, 44, 94; continuing 42 - in Plato 82-3 - in Weil 82-3, 177 Dasein 118; see also Being democracy 63; see also Equality, social Descartes, Rene 111, 117 determinism: cultural or sociological 21-2; technological 91, 157 dialectic: hermeneutical 16, 34; see also Biblical revelation and Greek philosophy; Hegel, historical dialectic of; and Historical freedom, dialectic of Diefenbaker, John 48, 96 Dooyeweerd, Herman 6, 178n Dostoevsky, Fyodor 26-7, 158 Doull, James 14, 17, 28 Duns Scotus 16

education: of George Grant 11-15; adult in technological society 22-3; religious in Ontario schools 62-6; in 'multiversities' 134, 153 Eliade, Mircea 33 Ellul, Jacques 87, 90n, 91-2, 108 empire: British 13; American 96; see also Imperialism Enlightenment principle of freedom 29, 31-2, 37, 42, 51, 58, 89 equality: social in technological liberalism 31, IOI, 146,148, 15l ; andChristian revelation 10 I , 122; religious in Weil 85, 176 eschatology: Christian 169-70, 173-5, 177, 180; and the concept of 'history' 24, 36-7, 42, 61, 120, 130; immanent, in Hegel and Heidegger 44, 117-18, 165 essence: historical 10, 109, 171-2; Plato's doctrine of 21; see also Modernity, essence of, and Substance eternity: in opposition to 'history' 7, 10, 33, 42-3, 79, 124-5, 130, 157, 161, 164, 166; modern oblivion of 10, 165; and amor fati 124-5, 127; and justice 152 evil: and radical freedom 16-17, 42-3, 93, 179; in Nietzsche 128; and necessity 41, 43, 98, 159-60; historical overcoming of 38-9, 160 existentialism 17, 25-7, 120 experience: of 'history' 51-2; of the permanent 'whole' 51, 56, 76-7, 104-5; see also Greeks, cosmological awareness of, and History, modern consciousness of faith: and philosophy 16-17, 20, 45, 155; in technology 7, 90, 95; in

189 Index democracy 63; in Hegel-Kojeve 71; and recollection 88 , 104; in Christ 93 , 170; in the transcendent good 45 , 86 , IOI , 152; see also Biblical revelation and Jesus Christ Fall, biblical doctrine of 42 , 77 Farrer, Austin 7, 14, 17-19 fate - historical IO, 88, 91 , 177; and tradition 108, 115-18, 164-7, 170-2; and language 109-10; opposed to providence 170-5; and sin 171-3; see also Necessity, historical - love of 86-7, 165-6; in Weil 80-5; in Nietzsche 125-8 - modem technological 86-8, 108 , 134, 138; North American 92-7; and lament 97-8, 102; and thought 101-2, 104--5, 108, 134-9, 164-6; and recollection 102-5, 108, 115-18, 128-31, 164-7, 169 Feuerbach, Ludwig 76 freedom - beyond choice: in Augustine 35 , 180; in Weil 84 - biblical account of 16-17, 36-7, 99, 130, 156-7; and existentialism 25-7 ; created freedom 178-9 - historical: dialectic of 22---4, 30-2, 111, 156-7, 161-3, 174; in Marx 3840; history of 34---40, 45, 158; Reformation legacy of 23-5 , 37 , 42, 46, 51, 76 , 93---4 , 99 , 158; Enlightenment principle of 29, 31-2, 37-8 , 42, 45, 51, 58, 71, 89-90; Heidegger's concept of 118 - and law 35, 41-2, 46, 51 , 78, 99, 160-1, 175 - and necessity 41 , 45 , 53, 78, 91, 125 , 156-7, 159-62, 179

- philosophic 32-3; in classical Greece 16-17, 30-1, 33-5 , 130, 156-7; in Hegel 22-3 - political 13-14, 140 - technological 35, 49, 60, 78, 86 , 90-1, 101-2, 162, 175 - and tradition 60, 162-3, 180 friendship 83---4, 89, 91, 100 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 50 Galileo 92, 111 Gnosticism 79, 177 God - eternity of 33, 38, 42-3 - and history 36-7, 111, 159-60; Kingdom of 24 , 37, 122; see also Heilsgeschichte - Incarnation: and history 36-7, 48, 61 ; and creation 82---4 - moral limit 41-2 , 63, 71 , 159-60 - in Plato 80-3 - and sovereignty of will 26, 94 , 15961 ; see also Creation and Providence, divine - transcendence of 17, 70, 80 - the universal good 16-19, 81, 100, 122, 145; man's desire for 100, 113, 126-7 good, goodness: highest or universal 16-19, 81, 122, 165; particular 13, 19, 103; and necessity 25-7, 34, 41, 44-5, 59-61, 79-88 , 97-8, IOI , 104-5, 157, 159-60, 165-6, 171, 174-6, 179-80; historical creation of 39, 90, 97 , 114; obedience to 84-5, 174, 180; and recollection 98, 102-5 , 129, 165; and owingness 139; and political right 149 Gospels: revelation in 45, 87, 108, 167-8; and Plato 132, 152, 167-8 , 176

190 Index grace , divine 19, 81, 84, 87, 105, 165 Grant, George Munro 12 Grant, R.M. 79 Grant, William Lawson 11-12 Greeks, cosmological awareness of 33--4; religious traditions of 80-4; see also Experience Habermas, Jiirgen 3, 63n Hegel, G.W.F. ~7, 17, 89, Ill, 170 - and Christianity 29, 71 , 97 - concept of subject in 42, 44-5, 116 - Grant's Hegelianism 10, 15, 22-3, 28-9, 32, 3~7, 42-6, 67, 163-4, 174; Grant's rejection of 58--9, 78-9, 88--9, ~8, 126, 161-4, 171 - historical dialectic of 22, 26, 31-2, 35-7, 43-5, 71-2, 76, 17~5; and Marx 38--40; nature and spirit in 39; and the historical school 53 - Kojeve's interpretation of 70-2, 7~7 - Strauss's criticism of 72-3, 96, 162 Heidegger, Martin 6, 7, 107-9, 128, 167; recollection in 11~18, 165, 169-70; Strauss's criticism of 50, 53, 55n; concept of tradition as fate 108, 115-19; concept of technique 117-18, 135-7, 138, 170-1 Heilsgeschichte 42, 99, 159-60; see also God and History Heracleitus 116 historicism 8, 120, 145 , 159-60, 172, 175; Strauss's interpretation of 50-8, 77-9, 86; Strauss's criticisni of 51-2, 55-8, 69-72, 7~8; Grant's. criticism of 73--4; Grant's historicism 105, 132-3; historicist universal 88--91, 101-2; see also History, modem concept of, and Progress, philosophy of history, 'history'

- concept of time as I ~ 11 - and eschatology 173 - modem concept of: and crisis of political philosophy 5-7 , 3~5. 57-8, 6~7; Grant's rejection of 7, 10-11, 58-61, 80; in Marx 37-40; and making 34, 41 , 71, 112- 13; andnature 39, 43, 49, 52-3, 71, 88-9, 111,161; and the limitations of thought 53-5, 73-4; in Nietzsche 120-5; see also Hegel, historical dialectic of; Freedom, historical; and Technology - modem consciousness of: and the mythic consciousness 3~5; origin of 35-8; Strauss's denial of 51-2, 55-6, 58, 7~7, 1~5 - and nature 43, 160-1 - and providence 35-7, 112, 170-5 - See also Biblical revelation, Eschatology, Eternity, Fate, God, Necessity, Philosophy, Reason, and Tradition Hobbes, Thomas 50, 58, 71, 77, 88--9, 93, 147 Hooker, Richard 95 hope - Christian 61 , 99, 170, 17~5 - historical 61; in Marx 38; in Hegel 71; Grant's abandoning of 58-61, 88, 107, 128 , 161 - philosophical 60- I , 139 Hyppolite , Jean 3, 39n, 45n imperialism 48-50, 86, 88 individuality: mythic denial of 33; modem realization of 40, 91-2; and willing 113 infinite: and finite 17, 19; dialectic of freedom 23-4, 40, 15~8; and eternity 33; and history 34

191 Index Jesus Christ 19, 32, 44, 79, 85; crucifixion of 17, 25, 61, 93, 156, 173; cross and necessity (providence) 27, 41 , 45 , 81-4, 86-7, 98 , 160, 173, 176; cross anticipated in Plato 81-3; cross in Weil 81-4; resurrection of 27 , 61 ; authority of I 68-70; eschatological rule of 173-5, 180; see also God judgment, divine 8 I, 173-4 justice - classical account of 50, 52, 55, 58 - divine 81-7 , 128, 152, 165, 174, 176 - and liberal contractualism: and modern instrumentality 134, 138-9, 141 , 145-53; and technology 140-2, 14653; theoretical progression of 141-7; historical ascendancy of 147-9; future of 149-53 - modern account of: history of 57-8, 141-9; deficiencies of 59-60, I 18, 128, 132-52 Kant, Immanuel 7, 17, 19, 21-2, 42, 111 , 160; and liberal contractualism 142-5, 150 knowledge: Greek account of 50-3, 56-67; historicist account of 53-5, 73-4; modern paradigm of 134-9; and making 134-9; and willing I 12-15; see also History, modern concept of and making, and Philosophy, classical Kojeve, Alexandre 45n; exchange with Strauss 68-79 lament: Grant's political 95-8; and recollection of the good 98, 102-3 language: and the modern consciousness of 'history ' 102, 109-15; and recollection of the good 105; fatedness of 108-10, I 15

law: political 13-14; moral law and freedom 35, 41-2, 46 , 51 , 78 , 99, 156, 160-1 , 175; moral law and God 37, 41-2 , 82-3; revealed moral law 175; moral law and necessity 41-2, 82-3, 86, 159-60; moral law and history 42-3, 159-60; natural law and eternity 34-5, 37, 51-2 , 57-8, 78 , 99, 105 , 176, 178-9 Leibniz, G.W. 117 Lewis, C.S. 14 liberalism: technological 6, 22 , 48, 59-60, Ill, 162-3; secular 14n, 26, 43 , 121-2; and modern science 24, 76, 140, 162-3; essence of modernity 40, 59-60, 67 , 76, 96, 130, 140; Canadian 62-6, 95-7; contractual 140-52; see also Freedom, historical and technological limit: and God 41-2, 63, 71, 159-60; as law 41-4, 46, 51, 82-3, IOI , 159-61, 175; as necessity 41-3 , 82-3 , IOI , 159-61, 175; necessity of sinning 171-2 Locke, John 58, 89, 93, 95-6 , 142-4, 147, 150 love: man's of God 19, 27; divine 19, 27, 81-7, 98, 176; right ordering of 102-3; of justice 152-3; see also Charity; Justice, divine; and Fate Loyalists 95 Luther, Martin 37, 93n Machiavelli, Niccolo 52, 57, 77, 89 , 92, 162 Marx, Karl 38-40, 142, 147; Marxism 38-40, 93n mediation, divine 80-4, 176 memory: and nationhood 12, 102-3; and tradition 102-3; and knowledge of the

192 Index good 102--4, 176; see also Recollection metanoia 18 metaphysics: nature of 21-2; Western tradition in Heidegger 116-18 modernity: essence of 5-6, 30, 132; in Nietszche and Heidegger 106-12; and tradition 31, 33, 60, 65-7, 158, 162-3; in Strauss 50, 52, 57-8, 161; and Christianity 35-8, 76, 91-3, 98- 10 I, 120--1, I 30; see also Biblical revelation; Fate; Freedom, historical and technological; History; and Liberalism morality: rationality of 20--1, 121, 140; and technology 30--2, 88-91, 137--41, 148-52; traditional and modern 35; modern moral synthesis 41-3, 76; and unconditional distinctions 50-- I ; categorical 41-3, 46, 107; public morality and piety 62-6; see also Freedom, God, and Liberalism nationhood: see Canada nature: and freedom 23--4, 31-2, 39, 43, 49, 90, 111, 160; technological mastery of 31, 39, 43, 46-7, 73, 90--1, 94-5, IOI, 155, 157-8; and history 39, 43, 49, 52-3, 71, 88-9, 111, 161; and eternity 43, 52-3, 157-8; created 178-9; fallen 179-80; redeemed 180; see also Freedom, technological; Freedom and necessity; and Law, natural and eternity necessity: and nature 16, 19, 24, 31, 52-3, 81-5, 130, 156, 161-2, 176-7; and the good 25-7, 34, 41, 44-5, 59-61, 79-88, 97-8, IOI, 104-5, 157, 159-60, 165-6, 171, 174-6, 179-80; obedience to 24, 84-5; and freedom

41, 45, 53, 78, 91, 125, 156-7, 159-62, 178; of man to God 44; historical 59-60, 86-7, 97-8, IOI, 104-5, 115, 165-6, 171; contemplation of 100, 153, 176-7; of sinning 171-2, 174; see also Chance; Contemplation; Contingency; Nature, technological mastery of; ·and Nature and eternity Newton, Isaac 111 Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 10, 53, 55, 106-8, 112, 116-28, 130, 137, 140--2, 147, 150--1, 167, 169 nihilism IO, 27, 53-5, 89, 118, 122-3, 125, 137 North America 22--4, 58; moral dilemma of 30--2, 45-6, 128; imperialism of 47-50, 87; homogeneous society of 47-9, 90; original modernity of 91-8 obedience 84-5, 94, 100 Ockham, William of 22n Orphism 80 Parmenides 109, I I 6 patriotism 63-5, 77; see also Lament and Tradition philosophy: and tradition 4-5, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 32-3, 53, 57, 62, 65-7, 73--4, 98-9, 102-5, 115-17, 128-31, 154, 158, 161-7; and revelation 8, 15-19, 44, 63--4, 67, 78-87, 99-100, 105, 128-31, 156, 163-8; and science 20, 23--4; public role of 22-3, 31-3, 56-7; classical and modern 32-5, 161-2; and history 44-5, 76-7; and religion 65-7, 77-8, 162; and recollection 102-5, 115-18, 128-31, 162-6; pre-Socratic 116; see also Biblical revelation; Freedom; Gospels, and

193 Index Plato; History, modem concept of; and Political philosophy piety: see Patriotism Plato 7, 23, 55, 76, 79-80, 99, 108, 116, 125, 131, 142; rational freedom in 15-17, 21-2, 33--4; divine providence in 61, 80--4; revelation and public piety in 63; unity with the Gospels 132, 152, 167; justice in 152, 178; and Christianity according to Nietzsche 121-2; Weil's interpretation of 80--5; see also Contemplation and Law, natural and eternity pluralism: liberal 48, 63--4, 146, 148; of values 90 political philosophy: and history 5-8, 32-3, 38-9, 50--8, 68-79; modem crisis of 5--6, 51-2, 57-8, 75--6; classical and modem 52-3, 63-79, 86, 99, 102, 142, 161; and tradition 4-6, 57, 154--5, 16 I; dialectical and synthetic task of Cr-8, 20, 32-3, 40--3, 158; critical and therapeutic task of 50--1, 60--1, 63, 6Cr-7, 75, 106, 108-9; and modem science 30--2, 7Cr-7, 89, 111; history of 57-8, 68, 70--2, 7Cr-7, 79, 89, 120--1, 140--9, 159; popularization of 69, 76; see also Justice, Liberalism and modem science, Philosophy, and Right Popper, Karl 20--2, 142 progress: and modernity 30, 74, 92; and providence 37-8; philosophy of 3840, 54--5; religion of 65, 76; see also Freedom, History, Modernity , and Technology Protestantism: and modernity 4; and contractual liberalism 148-9; see also Calvinism and Freedom, historical, Reformation legacy of

providence, divine 19, 29, 37-8, 58-9, 81-3, 94, 97-8, 112, 170--1, 173; and history 35-7, 112, 170--5 public: the modem 62-7; character of religion 62-7; and private realms 140--1, 163; see also Society Puritanism: see Calvinism Pythagoras, tradition of 80--3 Quebec, nationalism 133 Rawls, John 142-7, 150--1 reason: and revelation 17-19, 63--4; practical 20--1, 34--5, 58; contemplative 20, 22, 30, 32, 34--5, 58; instrumental 30--1, 35, 134--9, I 66; historical 53-5, 58-9, 111, 155; goodness of 121 ; see also Freedom, historical dialectic of, and Philosophy recollection: and the good 98, 102-5, 129, 165; and chance 103--4, 105, 165; and philosophy 104--5, 108, 115-18, 128-31, 165, 166; and revelation 105, 165--6, 169-70; see also Fate and Memory reconciliation, historical 59, 158; in Marxism 38--40; of modem and classical political philosophy 50; of terms in an absolute morality 42-3, 160--1; technological 95, 158 redemption: divine 17, 26, 36, 87, 173-5, 177, 180; technological 38-9; see also Grace, divine; Jesus Christ; Love, divine; and Mediation, divine religion, public role of: and philosophy 44, 65-7; and education 62-5; and public morality 62-7; and tradition 63-7, 155; true religion opposed to public 63-7; of progress 65-7; of liberal democracy 65--6

194 Index Renaissance 52, 88, 92-3 revelation: see Biblical revelation right: natural 52-8; modem crisis of 52, 57-8 Rousseau, J.-J. 58, 89, 96, Ill, 142 Russell, Bertrand 20-1 salvation 19, 26, 81, 95; see also God and history; Heilsgeschichte; Jesus Christ; Grace, divine; Mediation, divine; and Providence, divine Sartre, Jean-Paul 26 science - classical: and philosophy 34, 66, 73, 80-5; view of nature 43, 73-4, 78, 82-4 - modem: and morality 20, 134-41; and political philosophy 20-1, 57-8, 69-72, 77, 158, 160, 162; and liberalism 24, 76, 122, 140, 148, 162-3; and Protestantism 24-5, 37-8, 94, 112,148,157; origins of 24, 77, 95, 122, 157; view of nature 43, 162 - See also Freedom, historical and technological; History, modem concept of; and Technology sin: and human freedom 17, 35, 156; fall into 42; necessity of 171-4; social structure of 172-3 Smith, Adam 95 Socrates 3, 55, 77, 106, 169 society: and philosophy 56-7, 65, 75; and virtue 57-8, 63-4, 72, 77; tyranny of modem 69-72 soul: as substance 42; salvation of, in Weil 81-5; necessity in 85, 97; before God 94; of modernity 109; see also Spirit and Subject spirit: Augustine's concept of 18-19; Hegel's concept of 22, 39; absolute

44-5, 175; the modem 36, 39-40; Holy Spirit 168, 173-4, 180 state: Hegel's concept of 45, 69-72, 76, 171; universal and homogeneous 6972, 76, 96, 102, 123, 162-3; Kant's concept of 145 Stoics 81 Strauss, Leo 3, 6, 7, 10, 90; influence on Grant 50-1, 63-4, 66, 72-80, 86-7, 96, 100, 102, 108, 11 I, 127, 161-2; criticism of historicism 51-8, 161-2; exchange with Kojeve 68-78; and the restoration of classical political philosophy 72-7, 104-5 subject: modem concept of 42, 44-5, 72, 89; and substance 42, 44-5, 161 Swift, Jonathan 95 synthesis: of faith and reason 17, 37; of ancient and modem 29, 50, 59; of biblical and Greek morality 76-7; see also Dialectic; Freedom, historical; History; and Reconciliation technique 90-1, 97, IOI, 104, 123, 134, 174; Heidegger's concept of 115-17; see also Technology, modem instrumentality technology - classical Greek view of 69, 73-5 - and modernity: technological freedom 20, 23, 31, 35, 38-9, 43, 46, 48-9, 86, 90-1, 101-2, 162, 175; modem instrumentality 20, 30-1, 35, 134-9, 141, 145-53, 166; suppression of philosophy 20, 22, 72; conquest of nature 23, 31, 39, 43, 46, 48-9, 88, 91, 125, 156-7, 159-62, 179; modem morality 38-9, 58-9, 88-91 , 134, 138-9; modem imperialism 48-50, 86; social homogenization 48, 50, 139;

195 Index liberal justice 59, 134, 140-2, 146-53; development of 91-5; see also Calvinism; Fate; Necessity, historical; Science, modern and Protestantism; and State, universal and homogeneous theology: and philosophy 7, 15-17, 20, 32, 42, 61, 79-80, 166-80; biblical opposed to classical Greek 15-17, 25, 156; and tradition 17; Plato's 80-4; see also Biblical revelation, God, and Heilsgeschichte thought: transcendence of 56, 73-4; historical limitations of 53-5, 73-4; and historical necessity 86-7, 102, 166; and fate 87-8; and love 166; see also Knowledge, Philosophy, and Recollection time: and eternity 33-4, 42, 79, 127; as history 34, 36-7, 42, 79, 99, 108-28 tradition: and philosophy 4-5, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 32-3, 53, 57, 62, 65-7, 73-4, 98-9, 102-5, 115-17, 128-31, 154, 158, 161-7; dialectic of Western tradition 4-5, 13, 28-9, 50, 67, 126, 156; discontinuity of Western tradition 4-5, 57, 154-5, 159; unity of Western tradition 25, 99, 126, 154-5; Canadian political 12-14, 63-7, 95-8; modern 30-2, 57-8, 60, 66-7, 95-8, 105, 129-30, 154, 158; and freedom 60, 162-3, 180; Christian 63-5, 67-8, 129-30; religious 63-7; and truth 65-6, 105, 128-31; and recollection 101-5; and fate 108, 115-18, 164-7, 170-2; and sin 171-4; see also Biblical revelation, Fate, and Freedom, historical dialectic of tragedy: of the modern fate 60-1, 86, 88, 98, 161, 164; and comedy 60, 107, 165

transcendence: philosophical 22, 33-4; of will 26; of necessity 105; see also Grace, divine Trinity, divine 18-19, 82-3 Troeltsch, Ernst 94 truth: modern synthesis of 10, 40-1, 67, 76-7, 161; of 'history' 10, 102, 152; classical Greek concept of 16, 50, 52-3, 55, 64-6, 70, 73, 76-7, 105; Christian concept of 32, 44, 67, 152, 167-70, 172-4; historicist concept of 44-5, 50, 55, 70, 73; in Heidegger 55, 108, 116-18; in Nietzsche 55, 120-1; of religion 64-5, 67; and tradition 65-6, 105, 128-31, 152, 155; dialectic of 15-16; of revelation versus philosophy 99-100, 129-30, 167-70; of revelation versus tradition 129-31, 167-70, 174 tyranny: of modern society 68-73, 78, 91, 102; modern versus ancient 69; and wisdom 70-3, 102 Obermensch 123-5 universal: historical 66-7, 76, 78, 91; see also Good, highest or universal, and State, universal and homogeneous utilitarianism: Calvinist 94; versus contractualism 142, 147 value, modern concept of 90, 108, 111 Vietnam war 47-8, 86, 149 virtue: and society 57-8, 63-4, 72, 77 Voegelin, Eric 3, 6, 63n, 77 Weber, Max 45-6, 93n Weil, Simone 7, 17, 25, 102, 105, 108, 153, 176-7; necessity and goodness in 27, 41, 61, 98, 160, 174; on Greek science 74, 80-4; unity of Plato and

196 Index the Gospels in 79-80; interpretation of Plato 80-5; unity of justice and love in 80-7, 174; see also Plato Whitehead, Alfred North 111 will

- analogue of divine creation 19 - divine will 36-7, 84, 94 , I 16, 120, 179, 180 - language of 113-15 - in St Augustine 18-19 - and the 'spirit of revenge ' 123-6

- supremacy of: in existentialism 26; in 'history' 34, 36-7, 91, 111-15, 11719, 120, 121-5 , 130, 134; in technological mastery 89, 91, 94, 105, 123; in nihilism 117-19, 121-5, 127 willing: and making 34, 37, 91, 111-15, 134; future in 37, 113-15; and desiring 83, 113-14; and knowing 113, 114, 117, 134 Wolin, Sheldon 63n Xenophon 68-9