George Grant's magnificent four-part meditation sums up much that is central to his own thought, including a critique of modern liberalism, an analysis of John Rawls's Theory of Justice, and insights into the larger Western philosophical ...

George GrantÑphilosopher, conservative, Canadian nationalist, ChristianÑwas one of Canada’s most significant thinkers, and the author of Lament for a Nation, Technology and Empire, and English-Speaking Justice. Admirers and critics of the author will welcome these compelling essays about society’s traditional values in a technological age.

"George Grant in Process contains 14 essays by noted scholars on Grant's political thought, his religious thinking and philosophical method, the intellectual background of his ideas, and his “red-toryism.”".

William Christian has selected some three hundred letters, postcards, telegrams, and journal entries which reveal much about Grant - both the troubled man and the daring thinker.

In Time as History, a collection of his 1969 Massey lectures, George Grant reviews the thought of Nietzsche and concludes that the conception of time as history ...

"Historian Ramsay Cook called George Grant one of Canadas two most important political thinkers in the twentieth century.

If Grant had not already been thinking the matter through for some time, he could not have prepared Philosophy in the Mass Age so quickly.

Canadians have relatively few binding national myths, but one of the most pervasive and enduring is the conviction that the country is doomed. In 1965 George Grant passionately defended Canadian identity by asking fundamental questions about the meaning and future of Canada’s political existence. In Lament for a Nation he argued that Canada – immense and underpopulated, defined in part by the border, history, and culture it shares with the United States, and torn by conflicting loyalties to Britain, (...) Quebec, and America – had ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Lament for a Nation became the seminal work in Canadian political thought and Grant became known as the father of Canadian nationalism. This edition includes a major introduction by Andrew Potter that explores Grant’s arguments in the context of changes in ethnic diversity, free trade, globalization, post-modernism, and 9/11. Potter discusses the shifting uses of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” and closes with a look at the current state of Canadian nationalism. (shrink)

Legacy of Truth is an introduction to parent-directed classical education. The next new thing in education, it is the latest rage at academic conferences, curriculum fairs, and professional conventions. In reality, though, it is anything but new. It is simply the age-old foundation upon which the Western academic tradition has been built, an approach that prepared students for a joyous lifetime journey of learning.Classical education is a conscious return to the academic disciplines and methodologies that emphasize the basic thinking and (...) character skills necessary to launch young men and women on a path of learning. While it requires hard work, it is not a system of education for intellectuals only. It is an approach that takes seriously the need of all -- men and women, boys and girls -- to be grounded in the good, the great, and the true.Similarly, mentoring is an integral aspect of Christendom's great legacy of truth. Recognizing that all true education is the undertaking of mental and spiritual discipleship in which one person invests in and mentors another, covenantal learning is centered in responsible tutorial and familial relationships. It reinforces the authority and the responsibility of parents to educate their children, and it focuses on the reality that education is not an outcome but the happy result of discipline, commitment, and rigorous workWith the failure of most modern approaches to education evident to all but the most hardened bureaucrat, the serious academic rigor, tutorial discipline, and family involvement of the past are once again in vogue in education. For many, the Christian vision of classical and covenantal education has been revived, and TheLegacy Truth is an introduction for parents and children on the joyous lifetime journey of learning. (shrink)

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

This book sheds light on Grant's early intellectual interests, the centrality of his pacifism, his struggle to educate himself as a philosopher (he studied history at Queen's University and law at Oxford), his ambivalent relationship to organized religion, his quarrels with York and McMaster Universities, and his attitude to John Diefenbaker.

George Parkin Grant is probably Canada’s leading political and social philosopher. This carefully chosen collection extends from his earliest to latest writings. William Christian who, as a younger scholar, knew Grant personally, has authored George Grant: A Biography and edited, George Grant: Selected Letters. He has introduced the new editions of Grant’s Philosophy in the Mass Age, and Time as History. Sheila Grant was married to George Grant for (...) forty-one years, and has taken a very active role in the continuation of his intellectual legacy. Most recently, she made a major contribution in George Grant and the Subversion of Modernity, edited by Arthur Davis. (shrink)

This first retrospective following Grant's death examines the significance of his major work, Lament For a Nation. The essays by philosophers, artists, theologians, political scientists and Canadian nationalists assess the impact of this important Canadian's work, and the intellectual legacy he has left behind.

This work is a very fine scholarly biography of George Parkin Grant, often considered Canada's preeminent political philosopher. William Christian is a professor of political studies at the University of Guelph, who--as a younger scholar--knew the more elderly Grant well, in person. Drawing on numerous primary sources, Christian's book is both a personal history of Grant, as well as a careful description of the philosophical, intellectual, and religious odyssey of Grant's life. It pays particular (...) attention to Grant's early life and background as the fount of many of his later ideas. The work includes acknowledgments; a chronology; a preface; twenty-five pithily titled chapters; an epilogue; extensive endnotes; a list of sources--archival and interview sources, works mentioned in text or notes, selected secondary sources, and a bibliography of George Grant's publications prepared by K. Mark Haslett; as well as an index; and photo credits. The scholarly apparatus is quite excellent, indeed, and could serve as a starting point for those interested in further study of Grant. Christian's book may, however, be criticized as being somewhat too hagiographical. (shrink)

picture and image of the universe? How much can he mirror of the illimitable cosmos, material and spiritual, knowable or unknowable? How much can he realize the abstruse relation between its two antithetical but complementary sides? That is how to judge in any deeper and wider sense of a brain and its capacity. I was talking once in a London drawing-room with Cotter Morison and a famous and able literary hostess. I happened to say, as I say now, that Spencer (...) seemed to me by far the greatest mind I had ever met with. “What?” cried the lady surprised; “would you put him above George Eliot?” To me, I confess, the question seemed almost ludicrous. Imaginative work is beautiful and attractive, just as artistic work is; but to suppose it can be put on a par, so far as the measure of intellect is concerned, with scientific or philosophic work seems to me to betoken a certain lack of just standards of capacity. “Vanity Fair” is great in its way; and its way is just as incommensurate with the greatness of the “Principia” or of the “Principles of Biology” as is the greatness of the Transfiguration or the Venus of Milos. But if we want to measure minds, as minds, one against another, I say fearlessly that scientific and philosophic grasp is the one true standard of the highest attainment, and that no man who ever yet trod our planet gave proof of such mastery in both these lines as Herbert Spencer. (shrink)

A number of his more disturbing essays are also included, such as his controversial writings on abortion. The editors' substantial introduction places the articles in the wider context of Grant's life and thought."--BOOK JACKET.

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire and (...) emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)

This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since (...) the model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence. The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social. (shrink)