One Hundred years of Canadian Philosophy

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CANADIAN PHILOSOPHY jOHN A. IRVING ALTHOUGH in the present paper we shall consider only the development of modem philosophy in English Canada, it should not be forgotten that the philosophical tradition of French Canada goes back at least three centuries. In justification of our procedure it is perhaps necessary to remind an American audience that the "conquest" of New France by the British nearly two hundred years ago was essentially military. Certainly the earlier French-speaking population has never been assimilated racially, linguistically, or culturally by the numerically superior English. Ostensibly muted politically, in most other respects the two groups have gone their separate ways. The absence of any treatment of French-Canadian philosophy in the present paper should be interpreted, therefore, as symbolic of the basic cultural disunity of the country. The teaching of modern philosophy began in Canada a century ago with the appointment in 1850 of James Beaven (1801-75) to a professorship of Metaphysics and Ethics in the newly reconstructed University of Toronto. In the evolution of a Canadian philosophical consciousness during the la.~t hundred years five phases or stages may be distingllished. First, the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense as developed by Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, and as modified by Sir William Hamilton, was widely diffused during the period from 1850 to 1872. Second, Objective Idealism dominated the half-century from 1872 to 1922, chiefly through the labours of John Watson. Third, the Realism of George Sidney Brett was the most influential new approach behveen the years 1910 and 1940. Fourth, a search for a "balanced philosophy," whether through the use of the comparative method as advocated by Rupert Clmdon Lodge, or otherwise, has been the detenni.nlng characteristic during the past decade. Fifth, in the future, the stage not yet reached, the principal emphases will be in the fields of intellectual history and of social philosophy. lThis is the first of two papers, printed in this issue, which were present~d at the forty-seventh annual meeting of the Amaican Philosophical Association (Eastern Division), held at the University of Toronto. They were given at a !ympos.ium on Canadian philosophy, December 29, 1950. It should be noted that Professor Max Black, the chairman of the programme comm.ittee, made several cfforu, in co-operation with Professor Charle! W. Hendel and Watson surveyed incisively and maturely the limits of philosophy, science, and religion. The presuppositions and weaknesses of T. H. Huxley's scientific materialism, Herbert Spencer's evolutionary natur~ a.Lism, and J. S. Mill's empiricism were pointed out with devastating accuracy; and the claims of religion were vindicated by an appeal to the Kantian critical philosophy, to which were added the over~ tones of Caird's Idealism. With the exception of Royce> Watson was the most prolific writer of the idealistic movement on this continent. His books and articles enjoyed wide popularity because his teacmng was organically related to the socio-cultural environment of the age. The Idealism of Caird and Watson had, as James Cappon once put it, "a well-defined public, whose needs and receptivities counted for something in the form which their teaching took." Both the grandeur and the sobriety of Watson's speculations were partly due to the need in Canada of adjusting philosophical thought to a watchful and inquiring public which was not confined to academic circles. Watson's major writings fall into four main groups, according as they are concerned with (1) classical German philosophy; (2) hedonism, positivism, and empiricism; (3) the philosophy of religion; (4) political philosophy. On German philosophy, Watson wrote such authoritative books as Kant and His English Critics (1881 ), The Philosophy of Kant Explained (1908), and Schelling>s Transcendental I deali.sm ( 1882). In addition to th~se expository and critical works, he edited and translated Selections from Kant, a book which was revised and reprinted eleven times between 1882 and 1934. This project grew out of his realization that if students of philosophy were to pass from a lower to a higher plane of thought they must read the classical texts for themselves. He would set his more advanced students at work upon the text of...