George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations ed. by Larry Schmidt (review)

les procedures de sa demarche. Major a refuse d'emblee ce r61e. La Nuit incendiee en paie Ie prix. (CAROLINE BAYARD) Larry Schmidt, editor. George Grant in Process: Essays and Conversations An.nsi. x, 223. $15.95 cloth, $7.95 paper This anthology of previously unpublished (with one exception) essays on George Grant also features a series of interviews with him about his work. Each of the four groups of essays - on politics, intellectual background, theology and history, and philosophy - begins with a 'conversation' on the topic. The volume grew from a symposium held at Erindale College in April "977, which was followed by a group discussion with Grant in October of that year. From that latter process the conversations emerged. Most of the fourteen contributors came from the fields of religious and theological studies, while a few were political scientists of a.philosophical rather than 'quantitative' cast. No one professing philosophy, as the practice is now understood in Canadian universities, was present. This seems one of the volume's more Significant aspects. A thinker like Grant ought to concern those who profess philosophy. The life of man in the state, the role played by reason .in public affairs, the influence of philosophical theories in the world of actual political choice, these have ever been Grant's concerns, from the briefest book review to his series of lectures on English-Speaking Justice. Such matters were of concern to Plato as well as to a few others; one wonders why those who profess philosophy shun them now. Their more circumscribed and technical interests appear to have excluded them from the sort of moral and political discussion that happens in this book. The situation indicates no slight cultural impoverishment. The quality of the individual submissions varies conSiderably. Rather than attempting to grade them, my time would be better spent in calling attention to their collective implications. The very nature of the gathering that produced the volume precluded the presence of hostile critics, but it also seems to have excluded the rigorously critical. Grant has helped furnish those in the field of religious studies with a language they can use to come to terms with the realities of Canadian history and politics. A fine achievement this, but the beneficiaries of the bequest have not seen fit to go beyond it. Their essays are based on reverence and explication rather than critical challenge and analysis, giving to the volume a clubby atmosphere that its subject is great enough not to need. The book reinforces the split between Grant and the profeSSional philosophers I have talked of, since it presents the image of a guru and his selected disciples 468 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 reassuring themselves of their collective wisdom in the face of the world's indifference. George Grant is beyond that sort of thing, which is why the best commentary I have seen on his writing concerns his use of myth and rhetoric and doesn't bother to attribute to him prophetic powers (see R.D. MacDonald, 'The Persuasiveness of Grant's Lament for a Nation,' Studies in Canadian Literature, 2 [Summer 1977], 239-51). On the one hand, true believers; on the other, and outside the volume, the indifferent . The cover photo shows a figure who could double for the Commendatore . He has grasped the hand of this Don Giovanni of a culture, but it continues to ignore his embrace. (DENNIS DUFFY) Claude T. Bissell. Humanities in the University University of Ghana, 1977. 82 J.M. Cameron. On the Idea ofa University University of Toronto Press. xiii, 92. $10.00 These lectures by two distinguished members of the staff of the University of Toronto approach similar subjects from opposite directions: Professor Bissell concentrates on the proper place of the humanities in the university, and Professor Cameron deals with the essential character of the university, which he finds closely centred upon the humanities. A reviewer finds it hard to resist reaching for that standard examination question: 'Contrast and compare .. .' Bissell, an eminent administrator as president of Carleton University and then as president ofthe University of Toronto for a long and arduous term, is also a notable scholar, learned in English literature of the...