Charles Taylor and the Hegelian Eden Tree: Canadian Compradorisim by Ron Dart

The fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom. Genesis 3:6 Canada

may produce more original work on Hegel than any other nation.   
David MacGregor, Literary Review of Canada (February 1994)

 

The fact that the well known Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, won the enviable Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities in 2007 has been noted and noticed by many. There are few that have won this prestigious award, and fewer Canadians have taken the trophy home.Taylor did so, and did so in a way that has made many a Canadian proud of their native born boy. But, philosophy is about asking critical questions, and critical questions keep us from slipping into
hagiography. Why did Taylor win the Templeton Prize, what questions need to be asked of Taylor, what intellectual agenda does he serve and are there other Canadians of equal worth and merit that might have won the Templeton Prize but did not?

Most Canadians that study philosophy in any serious way often learn of Plato and Aristotle, if they are fortunate the Patristic contemplative way (many know little of this), Medieval thought, the fragmentation of thought in the Reformation, then the journey into the modern and postmodern mood and ethos. I suspect, if most Canadians (or non-Canadians) that study philosophy were asked about Canadian philosophy and philosophers a blank and confused stare would come across their bewildered faces and baffled minds. Surely, there is no such thing as a distinct Canadian philosophical tradition and Canadian philosophers that embody such a tradition. Such is the colonial mind. Nothing good can emerge from within the womb of Canada, hence the turn most Canadians make to a variety of elsewhere communities (past and present) in their study of philosophy.

Is there, though, a distinctive Canadian tradition of philosophy, and, if so, what is it? And, if there is such a tradition, where does Charles Taylor stand within such heritage, line and lineage? The answer to these questions might assist us in understanding why Taylor won the Templeton Prize.

 There is little doubt that The Faces of Reason: Philosophy in English Canada, 1850-1950 (1981), by Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott, did much to highlight the obstinate fact that there is a distinct philosophical tradition in English Canada. Armour/Trott ignored French Canada, and this is a limitation in their approach, but The Faces of Reason made it clear that between 1850-1950 a distinct form and way of doing philosophy had emerged in Canada. Canadian philosophy and philosophers saw things differently and thought in a different way, in a general sort of way, than those in the United Kingdom and the USA. Leslie Armour, more than any Canadian philosopher, has walked the extra mile to highlight the fact that there is a distinctive Canadian way of doing philosophy. Armour’s faithful and conscientious work means that he has opened up a path for many to see. This is why, and rightly so, a festschrift was written and dedicated to Armour. Idealism, Metaphysics and Community (2001) has many a fine essay dedicated to Armour, and most of his publications are listed in a well pondered bibliography. But, what has Armour to do with Taylor other than the fact that both are Canadians and both are philosophers?

Taylor won the Templeton Prize and Armour did not. Why linger much longer on the work of Leslie Armour?

 

The Faces of Reason makes it most clear that the Canadian tradition of philosophy that is nearest and dearest to the Canadian soul and psyche is a form of Hegelian idealism. This fact, and its historic reality, was made even clearer in the recent book on George Grant. There are three essays in Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics that deal with Grant’s questioning of the Hegelian tradition in both Hegel and the Canadian appropriation of Hegel. ‘Grant, Hegel, and the Impossibility of Canada’ (Robert C. Sibley), ‘Response to the Strauss-Kojeve Debate: Grant’s Turn from Hegel to Christian Platonism’ (Alexander Duff) and ‘Freedom and the Tradition: George Grant, James Doull, and the Character of Modernity’ (Neil Robertson) all tell, in different ways and for different reasons, why Grant parted company with Hegel and his modern disciples and followers in Canada. Interestingly enough, in Athens and Jerusalem, there were no articles on Grant and Taylor. This should noted given the fact that such an essay would have brought the debate between the ancients and moderns, Grant and Taylor into the Canadian context. Grant and Doull (a modern Canadian Hegelian) squared off on the Classics-Modern debate, and there is no doubt Grant engaged Canadian liberal Hegelianism in many forms in Canada, but the Grant-Taylor differences was left untouched in Athens and Jerusalem.

 What has been the nature of Charles Taylor’s journey, what role has Hegel played in such a journey, why can Canadian Hegelianism be a form of colonialism and compradorism and how can George Grant come as a distinct critic of Hegel, Hegelianism, Taylor and the modern project? Let us begin with Hegel, then move ever onward and forward to Hegel in Canada and Taylor’s appropriation of Hegel. There is no doubt that Charles Taylor stands within a certain philosophical tradition, and it is best to know what such a tradition is and why.

There is little doubt that Hegel is the grand magus of the modern liberal ethos. He has, more than most, articulated why liberalism is and should be the reigning ideology of our age, and why it is foolish to resist and oppose such an intellectual system. Hegel argued that all of human history (guided by the Weltgeist-world spirit) is about our increasing consciousness of the meaning of liberty and freedom. The seeds of such a way of being were planted in the Classical past, emerged with some maturity in the Roman Catholic civilization of Patristic and Medieval Europe, bore yet greater fruit in the Protestant forms of Christianity, found a certain beauty and fragrance on various religions of the world, and in the Enlightenment bore abundant fruit. Each generation, in such an organic unfolding, in a dialectical way, builds on the previous generation.

Liberty and freedom is the key to such a fuller awakening, and to oppose or question such a fundamental reality is to dare to question to spirit of the age that ever seeks to stir and enliven on and all, souls and civilizations with an ever more profound alertness to the meaning of liberty. Those who are out of step with such movement of history are out of touch with the meaning and forward march of history. There are left wing Hegelians (Marx and clan) centrist Hegelians (social democrats and democratic socialists) and right wing Hegelians (liberty loving Americans), but each all (left, centre and right) hold high the flag of liberty. The differences within the Hegelian clan are not about liberty and freedom (this is the creed and what the high council has decreed), but about how such a reality can be best delivered. This is why there are those that have argued that we have come to the end of history. Most now agree that liberty is the foundation that none can doubt or question. The debates, as I mentioned above, are more about how liberty and freedom can be best.

The modern world is, in essence, Hegelian, and it is virtually impossible, in the liberal modern ethos to questions such a position and perspective. Where does Charles Taylor fit into such a tradition?

Taylor studied at McGill from 1948-1952, then he was off to England to do graduate and doctoral studies. When Taylor was in England, he was a founder of Universities and New Left Review that became, in time, New Left Review.

Taylor also headed the World University Services in Vienna. It does not take to much reflection to realize where Taylor tipped his intellectual and political hat. Taylor returned to Canada in 1961, and he began teaching at McGill. The 1960s were an interesting period of time for Taylor. He taught, but he was also at the centre of NDP activism, also.Taylor  ran four times as an NDP candidate at a federal level, and he ran against Pierre Trudeau in the 1965 election. Trudeau had supported Taylor  in the 1963 federal election. We could say that Taylor was a soft left Hegelian in the 1960s, although his writings on Hegel were minimal.

Taylor’s more committed NDP activism began to wane in the 1970s, but before such a turn occurred, he published The Pattern of Politics (1970). This is a small book, and a tract for the times just like Grant’s Lament for a Nation (1965). The interesting thing to note, though, in The Pattern of Politics is that Grant’s intense nationalism is missing, but there is no doubt that Taylor is attempting, within a Canadian context, to determine how freedom and liberty can best be accomplished for each and all.

Taylor is certainly aware, in The Pattern of Politics, that the USA and corporate wealth inhibit a fuller liberty for Canadians, and he warns Canadians of being ‘a miniature replica’ of the USA and being mired in the ‘quick sands of dependence’. It is important to note, though, that Taylor’s concerns with the colonization of Canadian culture and economics never brought him to the point of being as committed to nationalism and socialism as was the Waffle movement in the late 1960s-early 1970s in the NDP. The goal is liberty, but liberty for Canadians must not be pushed too hard or too far. It is not easy to reconcile Canadian nationalism and American imperialism.  The means is a left of centre approach, but a left of centre approach that was cautious and wary of offending at a certain level of discourse and action. George Grant and Robin Mathews would have their doubts about Taylor’s rather assimilationist Hegelianism in The Pattern of Politics. Hegel is the silent sage through the 1960s for Taylor, though.

It was just a matter of time before the silent sage would move from his hidden throne room and be summoned forth to appear. Taylor had to recognize his master. It was in the 1970s that Hegel, the magus, appeared on the stage for all to see. Taylor did the introductions well. Hegel (1975) and Hegel and Modern Society (1977) established Taylor as a leading Hegelian scholar, and such an explicit doffing of the intellectual and political cap placed Taylor in the mainstream and establishment tradition of Canadian Hegelianism. Much of Taylor’s work since the 1970s has been merely a fleshing out, within the Canadian context and beyond, of the essential rightness of Hegel (past, present, future).

 

What is the genius of Hegel and why has Taylor drawn so deeply from the well of Hegel? Hegel highlighted that the Enlightenment tradition was superior to the Classical tradition, but the Enlightenment had a tendency to fragment to three directions. There was the rationalist wing of the Enlightenment that turned to science, reason and the empirical way as the yellow brick road into the future. There were the romantics that dared to differ with the rationalists, and the romantics held high the way of poetry, the arts and intuition. Then, there were the humanists. It was the humanists that attempted to see the best in the romantics and rationalists yet question their limited approaches to knowing and being. It was the humanists within the Enlightenment that attempted to synthesize the best of the rationalist and romantic traditions and raise both to a higher level through such a synthesis.

Charles Taylor, like Hegel, stands very much within the humanist wing of the Enlightenment. Both see the Classical past as limited and partial, and both see the notion of liberty and freedom as best expressed in the humanist vision of the Enlightenment. Poetry and science need not be enemies. Religion and reason need not oppose one another. Individualism and community need not butt horns. There is a place for a higher synthesis of the best elements of both approaches to life and society. Both the soul and civilizations falter and weaken when any extreme dominates the day. The goal of both Hegel and Taylor is the reconciliation, through struggle and opposition, to an ever higher level of the liberal goal of the consciousness of freedom.

There are those, of course, that would disagree with Hegel’s four epochs of human history (Oriental, Greek, Roman and Christian Germanic), Hegel’s underlying thesis of liberty lives on. The modern and postmodern carries the tale of freedom ever forward. It is at this point, though, where Taylor breaks with the postmodern. He argues that postmodernity has broken the dialectic.

Individualism has run rampant to the exclusion of marginalization of community and the state. Hegel vision of the humanist liberal vision was that the freedom of each could only be actualized within the whole, and the public was as important (if not more so) than the private and the individual.

There are right wing Hegelians that insist that the liberty of the individual trumps the good of the community, there are centrist Hegelians that hold the freedom of community-state-nation-individual in tensions, then there are committed leftist Hegelians that insist that the freedom of the state takes precedent over the freedom of nation, community and individual.

Taylor very much stands within the centrist social democratic stream of Hegelianism within the Canadian context.The larger philosophic and political questions beg a deeper question. What does it mean to be human? If an ideological leftist theory held Taylor in the 1950s, and Taylor’s leftist activism preoccupied him in the 1960s, a turn occurred in the 1970s.

Taylor began to take his theory deeper. Taylor’s two books in the 1970s on Hegel placed in on front stage in the world of Hegelian scholarship. The 1980s nudged Taylor to greater depths on the questions of human nature and the self. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989). The ideology of the 50s had waned, the activism of the 60s thinned out, Hegel had been probed in the 70s. The time had come to examine the roots and sources of the self. Sources of the Self is an exquisite and compelling apologia for the modern notion of the self, the sources of such a self and the conflicts within the modern liberal project.

Taylor tends, as ever, to caricature or ignore the classical tradition when he needs to dive deeper. But, this is part of his commitment to Hegelian liberalism. The past is merely a preparation for the present as the present is an unfolding preparation, of ever increasing goodness, for the future. The cunning of reason will make it so. Reason will even use the slaughter board of history to bring about an ever higher end. All, in the end, is about progress to a higher understanding of liberty.

The larger issues of political theory and activism had given way to questions of the self in the 1980s for Taylor. Sources of the Self was such a convincing and compelling defence of modern liberalism that Taylor was asked to do the CBC  Massey lectures. The Malaise of Modernity (1991) is a reader’s digest version of Sources of the Self. Those who have followed Taylor’s journey from the 1950s to the 1990s cannot help but sense that political theory and political activism have lost their luster by the 1980s, and Taylor’s project through the 1980s-1990s is a defence of Hegelian liberalism. This means much work must be done on unpacking the sources of the self and the varied ways of defining identity. Pluralism and multiculturalism becomes the buzz words, and dialogue and dialectic ever continues. The more substantive questions of Canadian nationalism and American imperialism simply don’t exist, in a serious way, for Taylor . He has become, in many ways, the quintessential bourgeois and humanist liberal, defending the liberal status quo.

 There is, in short, some serious shifts and alterations in thought and action between the younger Taylor and the elder Taylor. These shifts have been aptly noted and painstakingly probed in Ronald Beiner’s article, ‘Hermeneutical Generosity and Social Criticism’ in Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit: Essays on Contemporary Theory (1997). Philosophy in a Time of Lost Spirit, like Beiner’s earlier book, What’s the Matter with Liberalism? (1994), dares to interrogate the ideology of liberalism. ‘Hermeneutical Generosity and Social Criticism’ points out that Taylor cannot have it both ways. It’s impossible to have a foot on the dock and another foot on the boat as the boat is leaving the dock. Those who turn more and more to a generous interpretive approach to the self, society and politics find it increasingly difficult to raise hard critical questions about politics, society and the self for the simple reason that positions and perspectives, dialogue, process and dialectic is the new ideology. Procedural liberalism winds the day. But, when social criticism comes to the fore, notions such as right and wrong, good, better and best, bad, worse and worst take front stage. There is no doubt that Taylor has tended, in the last two decades to marginalize social criticism (the younger Taylor ) while holding high hermeneutical generosity.

The feet of the soul need to be either on the dock or the boat. A thinker or activist cannot have it both ways. Hermeneutical generosity tends to lead to a paralysis of action on substantive issues while social critics tend to be weak on accepting the equal truth claims and insights of most perspectives.

There is no doubt that Charles Taylor is one of the most important defenders of the modern liberal project. He does not summon forth its deeper premises and question them. He accepts them as the best for this ethos that we live in.

Taylor is quite willing to question some of the aberrations of liberalism but not the core and centre of liberalism. The Classical and the Postmodern will not do for Taylor. It is the Hegelian liberal project, for good or ill, that must be defended. It is such a project, in a distorted way, exists in the USA, and, in a deeper more leftist form, exists in Canada. The fact that Taylor has turned more to questions of the self and hermeneutical generosity in the last two decades means he has less and less to say on larger questions of Canadian nationalism and American imperialism. Taylor has, increasingly so, become preoccupied with the liberal agenda of pluralism, deeper diversity, French nationhood, recognition and some of the dilemmas the modernity raises for those committed to it as the reigning ideology of the age.

A problem exists when we marginalize the larger questions and become preoccupied with the secondary questions. This has happened, I fear, with Taylor. This is a more subtle way of being colonized. We just don’t discuss the large issues. We become overly concerned with the self and community.The meaning of nationhood gets lost in the shuffle. We accept the status quo. The New Romans win not by might or force, arms or tanks but by the simple fact that important philosophers just don’t ask the questions about imperialism (and its consequences for many on this fragile earth our island home). This is, perhaps, why Taylor won the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities. Taylor has given himself to progress as defined by Hegel and accepted by the power elite and ruling mandarin class in Canada. Just as Hegel thought the spirit of the age had settled best and in most mature way in his culture, so Taylor has accepted and defended the dominant ideology of our age. Religion must genuflect, also, to modernity if it expects to be heard and have a voice. Taylor knows this, his understanding or religion, like all else, plays into the liberal agenda of pluralism, hence the Templeton Prize. Grant once said, ‘pluralism is the monism of our time’. Taylor could learn much from Grant.

It does seem rather odd that, on the one hand, philosophy is supposed to be about critical thinking, yet, on the other hand, a philosopher like Charles Taylor, is not very critical of the reigning ideology of his day. It is a rather sad day when a liberal lacks the ability to critique liberalism. But, to question liberalism would be to question the air breathed by most intellectuals. The New Romans would not be pleased; neither would the senators that insist that liberalism is the only way to think.

Taylor  has seen, taken and tasted from the Hegelian liberal Eden tree. Such a tree is good to see, better to taste and offers a sort of pleasing wisdom. But, as Taylor himself rightly notices, there is a malaise within modernity that is produced by modernity. It is the toxins coming from the core alerting us to the fact that something is not right in Denmark. George Grant often spoke about the ‘intimations of deprival’ that the most sensitive feel that have tasted the fruit from the Hegelian Eden tree. It is such symptoms, felt and articulated, by the best and brightest, that short warn us about the deeper problems at the heart and core of the liberal project. Most of the battles in the culture wars are more about the type and form of liberalism to be defended rather than a questioning of the foundations of liberalism itself.

The political and cultural left, centre and right merely tap into various aspects of Hegelian liberalism. There are few that have summoned forth the magus from his hidden chambers and dared to both challenge and break the spell of such a centuries old wizard. George Grant was one of the few in Canada to do this. Charles Taylor does not, and he is dutiful and faithful servant of the magus. The future of Canada and our attitude to the New Romans hinges on who we hear and why.

Ron Dart