Making and Un-making the Hegelian Middle

This extensive collection of essays is a thorough elaboration of the now well-established thesis that Hegelian philosophy and Canadian socio-political history have an intimate relationship. For example, Canadian history has required collaboration and negotiation between groups, most recently expressed in multiculturalism, which would be expressed through a specifically Canadian form of Hegelian dialectic. The collection centers on five Canadian “Hegelians”—Emil Fackenheim, James Doull, George Grant, Charles Taylor, and Henry S. Harris— who have either made significant contributions to Hegelian scholarship, or its application to Canadian issues, or both. Grouping these five as Hegelians minimizes the fact that both George Grant and Emil Fackenheim explicitly rejected Hegelian philosophy due to its inability to adequately formulate the relationship between particularity and universality. Resolution of dialectical oppositions is described in the various essays of this collection in many different ways: as compromise, tension, consensus, moderation, communication across differences, promise, etc. The cumulative effect is to suggest that any sort of difference will be framed as dialectical opposition, and thus as Hegelian, by these authors. This framing excludes from consideration one significant other manner of conceiving of the Canadian Geist as devolution of state power.