In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Comment: George Grant on Liberal Self-Destruction and the Impossibility of Conservatism The account of George Grant's unclassifiability in the final pages of H.D. Forbes'spaperpaintsa veryattractivepicture. But it also provides an essential clue to the sense in whichGrant, inspiteofForbes'smisgivings , was more than anything else a conservative , even in his nuanced accountofthe impossibility ofconservatism. Grantgave many differentshadingsto the terms he used. By "conservative" in its most political sense, he meant thechoice ofa particularaspectofthe humangood andactionon its behalf. Grant's recognition of both the inadequacy and the impossibility of this choiceis welldescribed by Forbes. Nevertheless , it needs to be noted that Grant was able sometimes to work with these ideological conservatives. Butlying behindthis senseof the term was a profounder conservatism, rooted in faith, that pointed toward a refusal to choose, a ceasingto act. Thisconservatism also seemed increasingly impossible. All the more mysterious to him was hisownopenness to it. Wecan beginto approach these issues by giving brief, necessarily crude characterizations of liberalism, conservatism and socialismsimplyas practicalpoliticalchoices ofkey goods (I leavenationalismoutofconsideration for now). Liberalism originally seeks a reconciliation between freedom and justice in the expectation that competition between moreorless equally matched, selfinterested freeagents will result ina stand-off, forcing mutually fair arrangements between them. Conservatism holds that this can happen only if initial limits are set on the process through moral, political orreligious education establishing traditions ofordered freedom. Socialism tends to thinkofbothof these views as misreading human nature which is spontaneously interested injustice unless artificial circumstances distort it into privatized "individuals"who need holding in by external restraints, either in the form of others likethemorin theform ofoverarching principles. Joumal ofCanadian Studies Vol. 26, No. 2(Eri1991 Summer) Grantgave mostofhis attention to tracing the deficiencies of liberalism. But that is because he was responding to its powerin the modern world. In a broader context, as Forbes explains, Grant found conservatism and socialism just as dubious. Instead of settling into a hoped-for self-limiting equilibrium, liberalism is bound to escalate beyond all limits, promoting increasingly destructive conflicts in which visionary technocrats get more and more control over the weak. Itsdanger, in which Grant seesus most deeply involved, lies in freedom absolutizedand leadingto tyranny. Buthe knew very well thatorderand traditionabsolutized also lead to tyranny. Grant's doubts about religious education derive, as Forbes points out, in partfrom hisunderstanding that tradition iswhatPlatocalls"convention,"and what modern (or, in their view, "post-modem") historicists tum to after they deny there isany such thingas permanenttruth: the historically contingent prejudices of community consensus which, however necessary, are deadening to those who crave the truth beyond mere opinion. To the extent that we becomeonly what our teachers make us we are their puppets. In itstum, socialismcanhardly restits fate on how people are now; rather it finds itself tempted tosaythatdemocracy will only begin to become possibleaftera fewgenerations of the new order. Each of these ideologies desires agood; eachmoves towardone form oranotherofthe universaland homogeneous state, whosecrucial place in Grant's thought Forbes has explained, a world system in whichall areequal with thesoleexceptionof the"creative"bureaucrats who use the others as mere raw material either to express their own freedom or to mold the desirable social types and from whom there is no place to hide. But this does not mean that individual liberty, order or community are not aspects ofthe good. A Christian PlatonistlikeGrant can envisagea society in which what we call individuality, orderandcommunity combine in something beyond all ofthem. He would call itthe KingdomofGod. ButforGrant not only can it not bean objectofdirect political activism;even speakingabout it or thinking about itinvolves the risk that someonewill try 69 to use force to bring it about and so produce atyranny. The tension betweenGrant's desire to bear witness to the Kingdom and his realistic reluctance to see it taken up as a "project" to be imposed by will on a recalcitrant world would be what made him respond to Leo Strauss's account - no doubt somewhat differently motivated - of the secret ways soulmates have ofsearching for each other in a world where the search for fellowship is so open to manipulation. ForGrant, here very much inaccord with tradition, the Kingdom is not only not an object of political activism; neither...

pdf

Share