George Parkin Grant is one of the most perspicacious thinkers Canada has ever produced. Grant’s language is prima facie deceptively simple if compared with thinkers like Harold Innis or Marshall McLuhan. As I began to delve further, however, I discovered that beneath the almost poetic simplicity lay an elaborate, deeply profound system of thought, a multivalent commentary on the western experience. I should add at this point that much of the criticism of Grant, directed primarily at Lament for a Nation, has been grievously unfair. And although this essay will not be taking issue with these criticisms I feel they are the result of piecemeal reading. There is this tendency to jump on passionate thinkers especially those who write in such a way that they can be reduced to catch phrases i.e. Nietzsche: “God is dead”. The first lesson learnt as a student of philosophy is to hold off on criticism until you have begun to grasp the thinker and his thought as a whole. Any philosopher......
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