George Grant

By: William Mitchell

George Parkin Grant was born in 1918, in Toronto, Canada, and would grow to be one of Canada’s most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. With one of his grandfathers being the principal of Queen’s University, and the other one of the founders of the Rhodes scholarship program, Grant had a deep background in academics and critical thinking while growing up. Grant graduated as an undergraduate from Queen’s University and took his D. Phil at Oxford. Soon after college, Grant volunteered in an ambulance corps during WWII, in which he had a spiritual experience that convinced him of a higher, benevolent presence, which would lead him to be a devout Christian for the rest of his life [1]. Grant garnered recognition for his work, Philosophy in the Mass Age (1960), and his work Lament for a Nation (1961) made him nationally famous. In it, he criticized the recent political actions of Canada, and declared their country would forever further be a satellite state of America, which he saw as building a continental technological power. However, in his later years Grant focused heavily on the role technology was playing in our society, in a mostly negative framework [2]. George Grant died in 1988 in Halifax.

In his earlier days post-college, Grant spent most of his time studying and debating the political actions and patterns of the Canadian governmental system. He was considered a “Red Tory” in his day, part of the government party of Brian Mulroney which was considered a party of “political fat-cats and friends of big business.” [4] Grant lamented what he perceived to be the submissiveness of Canadian culture to the more liberally dominated American continentalism that was spreading at the time. During his later years however, many of Grant’s works focused on what he called technology, which encompassed both

modern society’s advanced scientific products as well as knowledge.

Most of Grant’s lasting philosophies and thesis points that hold a strong grasp on today’s world have to do with his views on technology. Grant saw technology as an all-encompassing force and world-view. He saw technology as having its own drives and tendencies that are holding humanity as its captive passengers, and ultimately will end up being contrary to human nature [4].In his Thinking About Technology essay, Grant writes, “modern civilization is distinguished from all previous civilizations because our activities of knowing and making have been brought together in a way which does not allow the once-clear distinguishing of them.” [3] To Grant, our will to control the Earth has ushered in a new unity of arts and sciences that was unheralded. Grant’s ending thesis is the result of following this technological advancement will lead to a world in which all sense of humanity and human ethicality will be lost. Grant believed that technology will ultimately be the end to everything that had meaning to humanity, and that we were already so far along in the process that it is inevitable. The only hope Grant leaves us with is the hope of Divine Providence [4].

In general, Grant is widely unknown outside of Canadian culture, but he had a large and lasting impact during his lifetime on their political system and views of the future. Grant tried to push Canada away from the patterns of America’s capitalistic society and tried to highlight Canada’s independence from this country that dominated the North American continent. However, Grant’s ideas still hold influence in today’s ethical thinking of the role that technology plays in our society. Grant was skeptical at best of modern society’s trends toward technology, and its all-encompassing power, which has inarguably only gotten worse with the passing decades. It is easy to extrapolate the ideas Grant introduced in his technological essays towards today’s forces of social media, smart phones, smart TV’s, smart homes etc., and he most likely would have decried the influence of all these things. In many ways we have seen how technology can dehumanize many aspects of our lives, which Grant would declare both unstoppable, and ultimately fatal to humanity.

Source: georgegrantsociety.org

References

[1] Beer, Jeremy. "The Home of American Intellectual Conservatism - First Principles." First Principles George P. Grant. December 27, 2012. Accessed February 07, 2019. http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=93.

[2] Christian, William. "George Grant." The Canadian Encyclopedia. September 7, 2009. Accessed February 07, 2019. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/george-grant.

[3] Grant, George. TECHNOLOGY AND JUSTICE. S.l.: LIST, 2019.

[4] Wegierski, Mark. "Introduction to the Thought of George Parkin Grant." George Grant Society. January 19, 2016. Accessed February 07, 2019. http://www.georgegrantsociety.org/blog/2015/10/23/introduction-to-the-thought-of-george-parkin-grant.

Brought to you by:

George Grant

References