1. Multiculturalism or Interculturalism?

This article begins with a bold assertion: it is time for Canada and Canadian Studies to rethink their use of the term “multiculturalism.” This term — from the Latin multi — implies the presence of many and diverse cultures, but it does not require that these cultures engage each other in any meaningful way. Its approach to inclusion may be described as tolerant but passive recognition of the “other.” “Interculturalism,” however, given that the Latin inter translates as “between” or “among,” implies the possibility of interactive engagement, perhaps a dialogical engagement aimed at not only recognizing the presence of diverse cultures, but also an active attempt to understand other cultures. This understanding can come with the possibility of recognizing and developing shared values and beliefs. Canadian philosophy, as I will describe it, is a practice that facilitates intercultural engagement, the sharing of values and beliefs, the negotiated evolution of those values and beliefs, and an inclusive pursuit of the good life.

The definition of “intercultural” that is used here is meant to be consistent with the recognition of Canada as an “evolutionary” society and culture. Change and adaptation are gradual conative activities; they require effort and they depend on both dialogical and dialectical movement. This is coherent with an idea of Canada as a pluralistic, inclusive, diverse society moving towards equity and justice for all who reside within its territorial boundaries.Footnote ¹

We would, I believe, find it unthinkable that a scholar of antiquity would write about Greek history, politics, or literature without referring to Greek philosophy. Why then would anyone believe that they could speak or write about Canadian history, politics, economics, literature, and the arts without reference to Canadian philosophy?

Before we can legitimately ask the question: “what is Canadian philosophy?,” we need to first ask: “what is philosophy?” Immanuel Kant, in The Conflict of the Faculties, argues that the proper role of philosophy is to make practical the means to the truth (Kant, Reference Kant and Gregor1992, p. 45).Footnote ² Philosophy must have practical application to our “lived experiences.” How did Kant’s observation contribute to the development of the principles that came to act as a foundation for Canadian philosophy? In an article that discusses John Clark Murray’s philosophy, Joan Whitman Hoff tells us that:

Respect, justice, equal treatment, reciprocal rights and duties, and inclusion in the full life of the community are to be found in Murray’s philosophy. Murray was not the only Canadian philosopher to express an idealist approach to both the individual and communal “lived experiences” of Canadians. The value of a culture or a nation-state’s philosophy is to be found in its practical application to aspects of human life and endeavour. To philosophize is to engage in a lived, continually evolving, and maturing endeavour.

A stronger connection to Kant’s observations about philosophy and the idea of an ongoing endeavour can be found in the philosophy of Rupert Clendon Lodge and his perspective on what idealism is and what it entails. A working hypothesis of this article is that “objective idealism” played a central role in the development of a Canadian philosophy. In his studies of education, government, business, religion, and everyday life, Lodge critically compares realism, idealism, and pragmatism in an attempt to produce a “balanced philosophy,” a philosophy that works to form the values, beliefs, and practices of a people. These are all things that are associated with a national or cultural identity, and within his analysis, Lodge does confess a personal bias in favour of the role that idealism might play in the formation of this “balanced philosophy.”Footnote ³ In a footnote to the preface of his Philosophy of Business, Lodge reveals that his own philosophical position and his personal, temperamental inclinations are towards transcendental idealism (Lodge, Reference Lodge1945, p. xi).

It may be helpful at this point to briefly discuss what Lodge had to say about “culture.” A “culture” is the medium in which the pursuit of a good life occurs. The beliefs, values, and practices are essential to the formation, development, and perfection of both individual and communal identity. The good life is an actual life; it has as a focus living and reacting to one’s environment. That environment includes family and social relations, educational and religious philosophies, law and governmental regulations, aesthetic creations, commercial and business practices, scientific endeavours, in addition to a specific sense of place. Each of these environmental engagements requires that individuals and communities live reflectively; but what is “reflective living?”

Simply put, reflective living requires effort, what Lodge refers to as a “nisus.” How might that effort be more fully understood? The goal of reflective living is to achieve the good of all — not of some, or many, or the greatest number, but of all of the members of the community. If Canada is properly characterized as a communitarian society, then this is the goal that Canadians ought to pursue. This means the pursuit of this good of all with regard to educational practices, business practices, governmental actions, and relations within the family and everyday life.

Such an engagement in an ongoing endeavour for the good of all can be found in writings of several Canadian philosophers. Notable are: Murray, Lodge, George Paxton Young, John Watson, John Macdonald, Wilfred Currier Keirstead, and George Parkin Grant, among others. Each of them expressed a preference for some version of objective idealism.

Can we truthfully tell the story of a culture or a people, or explain the practices of that culture or people with regard to the law, education, business, government, or family without examining the foundational beliefs and values of their culture? Can we adequately explain why a people prefer certain practices and reject alternative practices? Why would one society or culture prefer inclusion and reject exclusion? One of the major questions before us is whether there is an identifiable Canadian philosophy that can help us to understand how current practices have historically evolved, and what Canadians hope to achieve by engaging in those practices. For the sake of inquiry, let us hypothesize that Canadian philosophy developed from lived experience out of the lives of the Canadian people.

2. Identifying Canadian Philosophy

How can we identify Canadian philosophy? We should not be looking for a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that contain all that can count as Canadian philosophy. Rather, I suggest we bring into play Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances. Not all members of a family share all of the same features, but we can, nevertheless, identify them as belonging to the same family. Not all philosophies share the same beliefs or methodologies. Much the same can be said about religion. Canadian philosophy may be distinguishable from American philosophy, British philosophy, or Chinese philosophy, in much the same way as we can distinguish between the religions of Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, and so on.

I would like to suggest a set of characteristics that are family traits or characteristics of Canadian philosophy. First, it is objectively idealistic in its metaphysics. To be clear, objective idealism comes in many forms and guises. It is not restricted to Platonic or Hegelian varieties. The evolutionary and pluralistic nature of objective idealism is consistent with the evolutionary and pluralistic nature of Canadian society and culture.Footnote ⁴ Second, Canadian philosophy is communitarian in its political and social sympathies, as it is intrinsically opposed to the rugged and atomistic individualism of American philosophy. Third, it is duty oriented in its ethical vision, usually in opposition to American Pragmatism and British Utilitarianism. Fourth, it recognizes the role of a liberal education in the formation of character and responsible leadership. Fifth, it is founded on firm religious convictions. Sixth, it insists that theory must be put into practice, emphasizes the role of reason in life, and exhibits a strong sense of history and historical consciousness. Just as children can be adopted into a family and begin to acquire the beliefs and values of a family, Canadian philosophy accommodates what on the surface may appear to be contradictory systems and beliefs.

Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott referred to Canadian Philosophy as a “philosophical federalism” (Armour & Trott, Reference Armour and Trott1981, p. 4). A federalist relationship is one in which there exists a negotiation of differences, if not a reconciliation of those differences through the recognition of shared values. Recently, when teaching Morley Callaghan’s (Reference Callaghan1989) novel Such Is My Beloved, the influence of Jacques Maritain’s “Integral Humanism” on Callaghan’s thought was raised.Footnote ⁵ The discussion that followed focused on how Maritain’s neo-Thomism was drawn into the objectively idealistic metaphysics found in Canadian philosophy. Both Maritain and Callaghan were interested in the good of the whole person and the good of the community as a whole, and held compatible approaches to questions of social justice.

How should Canadian philosophy be understood or defined?

Historically, Canadian philosophers would approach their subject as an endeavour, as a conative activity, as a way in which Canadians move their lives forward, perhaps towards those ideals that give individual lives meaning and direction.Footnote ⁷ Consequently, they move the community forward in the achievement of its good. Canadian philosophy may be understood as an applied science: an activity in which theory and practice should converge. The history of Canadian philosophy can be seen as a history of rational negotiations, evolutionary adaptations, and reasoned accommodations (see Watson, Reference Watson1872). The end product might be what Lodge called a “balanced philosophy,” and perhaps not unlike what American philosopher John Rawls would characterize as a “reflective equilibrium.”Footnote ⁸

3. The Importance of “Place” in Canadian Philosophy

There is yet another feature that we must consider in establishing the existence and nature of Canadian philosophy and that is the concept of place. Canada is the second largest country on the planet and that comes with a complex regional diversity. Canada’s physical complexity is intrinsically tied to a diversity in rational interests. This plurality of interests, needs, and the rational claims on which they are based must be negotiated. It is not difficult to imagine that a diversity of rational interests could be embedded in sometimes opposing ontologies. There may be one ontology that cuts across regional differences and that is the concept of place as “northernness.” Perhaps the most comprehensive study of the concept of “North” can be found in Sherrill Grace’s (Reference Grace2007) Canada and the Idea of North. In this work, Grace postulates that “nordicity” defines Canadian culture and shapes a distinct Canadian identity:

I would suggest that the concept of North also can be imagined as the ontological ground on which conflicting ontologies may be negotiated and reconciled. The popular culture exclamation of “we are North” may be an affirmation of not only a cultural identity, but also an ontological ground on which rests both a specific worldview and a concretely identifiable set of beliefs and values — that is, a metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological standpoint. In this regard, I would like to cite one more perspective on the importance of “North” within the philosophical worldview of the Inuit. Janet Wesselius, writing on Sheila Watt-Cloutier, states that: “ice ‘really’ is the life force for the Inuit; if the ice melts, the Inuit will cease to exist as Inuit. If the ice disappears, their culture, their knowledge and traditions, their way of life will be lost” (Wesselius, Reference Wesselius2021, p. 478). Wesselius compares Watt-Cloutier’s philosophy with that of Lodge’s ideas of applied philosophy, balanced philosophy, and reflective living. Wesselius suggests that “just as Watt-Cloutier’s thought grows out her Inuit habitus in the Canadian Arctic, so too is her thought shaped by her place in the larger Canadian milieu” (Wesselius, Reference Wesselius2021, p. 482).

The importance of place should not be underestimated when it comes to how any culture or society will develop a worldview. In a previous discussion of Canadian philosophy, I postulated both: “a) that perception is situated, i.e., it occurs in a specific context and b) that thought is inhabited, i.e., it includes as part of its contents a history, a culture, and a foundational psychology” (Timko, Reference Timko2023, p. 507). It has been claimed that Canadian philosophy has its roots in objective idealism. While it is true that this idealism gestated for the most part in Germany and England — and in the case of Grant in Ancient Greece — it was born, nurtured, and matured in the physical, ideological, spiritual, and cultural space that we call Canada. The practice of the philosophy that can be characterized as objective idealism is both situated and inhabited. Similar arguments can be made for the conceptual traits that I identified earlier: communitarianism, the emphasis on reason, the focus on mutual duties and obligations, as well as other family traits that are usually identified with Canadian philosophy.

4. The Many and Diverse Voices of Canadian Philosophy

If we can imagine the possibility of a Canadian philosophy as a dialectical unity, the communal thoughts and reflections of a diverse “family,” then in addition to the history of Anglo Canadian voices, we need to include the evolution of the practice and teaching of Canadian philosophy in Québec. In the final chapter of The Faces of Reason, Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott consider what a detailed study of philosophy in Québec may include and make reference to Charles de Koninck, Louis Lachance, Yvan Lamonde, and Roland Houde (Armour & Trott, Reference Armour and Trott1981, pp. 511–512). To that list, I would add Guy Rocher, Marcel Rioux, René Lévesque, and André Laurendeau. We need to include in our ongoing dialogues the worldviews of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, the contribution of women to the construction and practice of this philosophy, and, in the current context, the voices of African Canadian philosophers and the voices of Canada’s LBGTQ+ communities.

The first course on Indigenous Canadian philosophy was offered at Lakehead University by Dennis McPherson and Douglas Rabb in 1990. Relatedly, one source for understanding the value of Indigenous Canadian worldviews in relation to the development of a Canadian philosophy can be found in D’Arcy Rheault’s (Reference Rheault1999) Anishinaabe Mino-Bimaadizwin. There we find the following descriptions which, I believe, echo some of what I have been saying about philosophy in general and Canadian philosophy in particular: “Anishinaabe philosophy is not a purely intellectual pursuit; it is a lived philosophy, a philosophy of process — a way of life. It finds meaning in the lived experience of each being of Creation […]” (Rheault, Reference Rheault1999, p. 108). Thus: “It can be said that the Anishinaabe person is a practitioner of sorts, a practitioner of Mino-Bimaadiziwin” (Rheault, Reference Rheault1999, p. 109).

Finally, Chike Jeffers (Reference Jeffers2012) reminds us of both a need for and the prospects of an African Canadian philosophy, while George Elliott Clarke (Reference Clarke2014), who many will recall for his poetry and fiction, provided us with an anatomy of African Canadian thought. We must attend to these voices because they do represent both diversity and, on occasion, dialectical opposition to Anglo Canadian perspectives.

We also need to move our attention farther afield than departmental academic philosophy as it is practised in Canadian universities. Think of “philosophy” in the broadest sense. Canadian philosophy does traverse both disciplinary and traditional cultural boundaries. I have often used Margaret Atwood’s (Reference Atwood1996) Survival as a philosophical text. In that work, Atwood shows us the very nature of the Canadian “psyche,” as philosophers from the pre-Socratics forward have understood that term.Footnote ¹⁰ I have also drawn on Nellie McClung’s (Reference McClung1915) In Times Like These.Footnote ¹¹ Armour and Trott likewise include Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis in their history of philosophy in English Canada.Footnote ¹²

Earlier in the article, I referred to Jacques Maritain’s influence on Canadian writer Morley Callaghan. The development of neo-Thomist and transcendental Thomist philosophies proved to be compatible with Rationalism and Thomism in Québec — and English Canada — as well as amenable to a synthetic unity with existing forms of idealism, such as the transcendental idealism associated with Kant and Johnann Gottfried Herder’s reflections on language and culture.Footnote ¹³

I am certainly not the first to make this argument about the importance of geographical, historical, and cultural context. Trott, Armour, Rabb, Ian Angus, Robin Mathews, and R. Bruce Elder, to name a few, have made similar claims over the last few decades. Let’s consider Elder’s and Trott’s explorations of Canadian philosophy.

Elder is an experimental filmmaker, critic, and philosopher. In his work Image and Identity, he convincingly demonstrates “that there are interrelations among Canadian film, Canadian art and Canadian philosophy” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. xiii). The last conjunction of his statement is important. In the opening chapters, he gives us the evolution of Canadian philosophy with its beginnings in Scottish Realism, its traditions of dualism and reconciliation of opposing ideas, and argues that Canadian philosophy has been a unifying force in Canadian culture (Elder, Reference Elder1989, pp. 54–72). He proceeds to show that: “Absolute Idealism had an enormous impact on social theory in Canada” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 66), and he gives us an in-depth analysis of the contributions of Watson and Grant. He observes that: “Watson used the principle of reconciliation in the social sphere to explain the relation between universal and particular interests” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 66), and that Watson believed that any philosophy which emphasized atomistic individualism, which spoke of “individual[s] apart from social order must be incoherent” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 68). Elder is identifying the philosophical differences that distinguish Canada from its southern neighbour. That contrast is reinforced when he reminds us that Watson used Absolute Idealism to identify “community” with a “strong moral centre” and the route to freedom could only be found in the exercise of “principles of duty” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 71). When it came to the question of rights, Watson, he tells us, proclaimed that “the social good has primacy over individual rights, and only the common good validates individual rights” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 71). Elder demonstrates that Watson, Young, and others reject utilitarianism — and by implication they would reject American pragmatism (see Watson, Reference Watson1876). He claims that “Absolute Idealism readily found a following in Canada, for it seemed to respond to the needs of the Canadian mind” (Elder, Reference Elder1989, p. 66).

Relatively recently, Trott furthers Elder’s claim that Canadian thought is a dialectical unity. Trott reminds us that philosophy is a practice and that it is best described within a “framework of a dialectical relation” (Trott, Reference Trott2019, p. 188). This also applies to an understanding of culture. She proceeds to show us the historical relation between culture and philosophy in Canada, giving us an in-depth exposition of John Watson’s contribution to Canadian philosophy and culture (Trott, Reference Trott2019, pp. 191–192).

5. The Importance of Philosophy in Understanding Canada

More than a few of the above-mentioned philosophers in Canada have recognized the relation between philosophical concepts and the emerging idea of a nation-state. Keirstead argued that a people need to remember the evolution of customs and traditions in the institutions of a society, for these things are the data that is utilized by a creative intelligence in the reconstruction of the morals, ideals, and social institutions. Keirstead saw a life of social service as the ultimate goal of Canadian society, and for that to come about the institutions of business and politics, of health care and education needed to undergo change. He believed that individuals develop in the context of a society and are conditioned by its customs, that the goal of a society is to evolve and move gradually towards its ideal, that this ideal is being continually reconstructed. This social progress demands the reconstruction of the “existing customs and institutions,” and that permanency and change are relative to each other (Keirstead, Reference Keirstead1912, pp. 40–41). This is to say that social progress is the product of dialectical and dialogical movements. For Keirstead, rights are completely derived from membership in a particular society. Regarding taxation, he recommended that we:

Keirstead was not alone in projecting an objectively idealistic vision of society, its culture, institutions, and practices. In applying his vision of idealism to communities, Lodge argued that North American communities as he observed them appeared to be driven by a realist logic and psychology, coloured, as he said, by the “flood-lights of ‘efficiency,’ ‘science,’ ‘technique,’ ‘objectivity,’ and ‘rationalisation’” (Lodge, Reference Lodge1947, p. 167). Idealists find themselves in a minority position in such communities, but this does not diminish the idealist’s obligation to “reveal the community to itself” (Lodge, Reference Lodge1947, p. 177). This revelation should occur as idealists apply their philosophy to education, business, government, and everyday life.

6. Final Observations

Whatever else it may be, Canadian philosophy was always and still remains responsive to the human condition as it was and is experienced within the confines of the Canadian landscape, Canadian history, and, most importantly, a distinctly Canadian culture. In capturing these observations, some philosophers are engagingly succinct. Grant writes: “The facts of birth are inescapable. So are the very facts of belonging to the civilisation that has made one” (Grant, Reference Grant1969, p. 76). Canada, according to Grant, holds within its boundaries a way of being that is distinctive for all of its peoples. One might say that a sense of “distinct society” is ontologically embedded in the Canadian consciousness, and that the problem for the “self” of any Canadian is ontological displacement, of not being “one’s own.” Is there a civilization without a philosophy of its own? The existence of a philosophy that is one’s own as a people, as a culture, works to prevent such displacement.

How does such work take place? Grant was committed to the future through education:

We have often heard Canada described as “a community of communities.” Each of the smaller communities — whether they be secular or religious, urban or rural, English, French, Indigenous, or any of the ethnic communities that were incorporated into the Canadian mosaic — can share values and beliefs with the larger community through its own language of expression. What I suggest is that the larger community also has a language and that is “philosophy.”

Two things need to be explored here with regard to this language of philosophy. First, it:

Second, there may be a need to more deeply explore the possibility that philosophy is a natural language — the lingua franca of a culture or society. If philosophy is “central to the curriculum” as Grant suggests, if it is the common or natural language of Canada’s identity, the means by which it communicates the “psyche” of Canada — its beliefs and values — then we must ask why courses on Canadian philosophy are not routinely found in the curricula at Canadian universities, and often not found as a requirement, or even an option, in Canadian Studies programmes whether in Canada or elsewhere in the world?Footnote ¹⁴ Can a country fully understand its institutions, practices, culture, and how these things evolve and change over time in the interest of the good of all in its community without studying its own philosophy? I see this as a rather important question to ask in a volume exploring both the nature and the future of Canadian philosophy.