One Hundred Years of Canadian Philosophy

Abstract

Although in the present paper we shall consider only the development of modern philosophy in English Canada, it should not be forgotten that the philosophical tradition of French Canada goes back at least three centuries. In justification of our procedure it is perhaps necessary to remind an American audience that the “conquest” of New France by the British nearly two hundred years ago was essentially military. Certainly the earlier French-speaking population has never been assimilated racially, linguistically, or culturally by the numerically superior English. Ostensibly united politically, in most other respects the two groups have gone their separate ways. The absence of any treatment of French-Canadian philosophy in the present paper should be interpreted, therefore, as symbolic of the basic cultural disunity of the country.