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Freedom Equality Community The Political Philosophy of
Six Influential Canadians 1st Edition James Bickerton
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): James Bickerton; Stephen Brooks; Alain-G. Gagnon
ISBN(s): 9780773576209, 0773576207
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 1.03 MB
Year: 2006
Language: english
freedo m, eq uali ty, co mmu n i t y
This page intentionally left blank
Freedom, Equality,
Community
The Political Philosophy

of Six Influential Canadians
ja m e s bi ck e rto n , st e p h e n b rook s,
a l a i n - g . g ag n o n
McGill-Queen’s University Press

Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2006
isbn-13: 978-0-7735-2975-5 isbn-10: 0-7735-2975-6
Legal deposit first quarter 2006

Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest

free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.
This book has been published with the help of grants from St Francis
Xavier University, the Université du Québec à Montréal, and the
University of Windsor.
McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the

Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also
acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp)
for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canadian Cataloguing in Publication
Bickerton, James
Freedom, equality, community: the political philosophy of six influential
Canadians/James Bickerton, Stephen Brooks, Alain-G. Gagnon.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn-13: 978-0-7735-2975-5 isbn-10: 0-7735-2975-6
1. Political science – Canada – Philosophy. 2. Canada – Politics and

government – 20th century. i. Brooks, Stephen, 1956– ii. Gagnon,
Alain-G. (Alain-Gustave), 1954– iii. Title.
jc253.b52 2006 320’.01 c2005-905814-5
Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13

by Infoscan Collette, Quebec City
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
1 Ideas, Intellectuals, and Canadian Public Life 3
2 The Radical Political Economy of Harold Innis 14
3 Lament: The Anguished Conservatism of George Grant 35
4 André Laurendeau: The Search for Political Equality

and Social Justice 55
5 Personal Emancipation, Pluralism, and Community:

The Egalitarian Vision of Marcel Rioux 71
6 The Communitarian Liberalism of Charles Taylor 91
7 The Universalist Liberalism of Pierre Trudeau 119
8 Six Influential Canadians 147
Notes 163
Bibliography 169
Index 179
Preface
It may be due to a Canadian sense of modesty, or perhaps to

centuries spent as a colonial outpost of great empires, but Canadians
have not been inclined to look upon themselves as important play-
ers on the world intellectual stage. They appear to themselves to
be off to the side, given a line now and then, but generally destined
to be supporting cast to the great centres of Western thought. Indeed,
for most of Canada’s history it has been normal for Canadians and
Canadiens to go abroad, especially to England, France, and the
United States, to study under the world’s acknowledged experts in
history, economics, literature, the sciences, and other domains of
learning. In addition to being an importer of capital to build its
railways, finance its factories, and develop its natural resources,
Canada has been an importer of ideas.
There is nothing wrong, least of all in the world of ideas, with
learning from others and importing the best of what is on offer. In
this sense Canadians were enthusiastic globalists long before glo-
balization entered the lexicon. But long years of turning their eyes
outward may have caused Canadians to neglect what was growing
in their own backyard and to assume that made-in-Canada, at least
in the realm of ideas, signified something parochial, probably deriv-
ative, and almost certainly second-rate.
Whatever else one might say of it, Canadian political thought is
none of these things. At the same time it is only fitting, and certainly
viii Preface
very Canadian, to acknowledge the truth: the rest of the world

knows little of the intellectual traditions that have evolved in Canada
and Quebec and, not surprisingly therefore, the impact of Canadian
thinkers and their ideas beyond their country’s borders has been
marginal, at best. There were no Jeffersons, Madisons, and Paines
in Canada’s early history. The twentieth century produced far more
in Canada in the way of searching political reflection. But it may
be that the comparative placidness of the Canadian scene and the
gradualism of the country’s evolution from colony to independent
state, combined with the fact that Canada no sooner moved out
from under the shadow of one fading world power, Great Britain,
than it came under the shadow of an ascendant one, the United
States, caused the world to pay scant attention to the political thought
of Canadians and Québécois. Until the relatively recent emergence
of an interest in Canadian studies and Quebec studies in the United
States, Great Britain, and France, interest in and knowledge of the
Canadian intellectual scene were extremely limited.
Canadians, as would be expected, awoke to the significance of
their own stories and intellectual traditions before the rest of the
world took any notice. The past two generations of Canadians have
been educated in a university system where courses and programs
of study on the history, literature, politics, culture, and political
thought of French and English Canada are plentiful. They have
been taught that Canadians and Québécois, like other peoples, have
grappled in their own ways, and in the special circumstances of
their distinctive histories, with the great questions that arise from
the human condition. But they remain, with relatively few excep-
tions, unaware of the identities and ideas of those individuals who
have contributed most to the shaping of contemporary political
thought in their country.
This book is written for anyone who wishes to know more about
those whose ideas have helped fashion the modern landscape of
Canadian and Québécois political thought. In some cases their
influence has been chiefly indirect, through writings and teaching
that shaped the thinking of political decision-makers and opinion-
leaders. In others, particularly in the case of Pierre Trudeau and
André Laurendeau, their influence was more direct and their style
more engagé. The six thinkers discussed in this book certainly are
not the only figures to leave their mark on the political thought of
French and English Canada in recent decades, but their importance
is undeniable.
Acknowledgments
It is our pleasure to thank the many people who supported us in

the writing and publication of this book.
Huron University College provided Stephen Brooks with an ideal
atmosphere to work on portions of this book while he was a visiting
research scholar. The opportunity to present some of this material
to colleagues there was very much appreciated. Jim Bickerton would
like to extend a note of thanks to the Department of Political
Science at St Francis Xavier University for its collegial and support-
ive atmosphere, and to departmental secretary Marcy Baker for her
cheerful and patient efficiency. Alain-G. Gagnon wishes to thank
his graduate students at McGill and later at uqam for several
exchanges on the general theme of the book over the years, but
especially Fred Appel, Raffaele Iacovino, Dimitrios Karmis, and
Luc Turgeon.
Our universities provided welcome financial and word processing
support for this project. We would like to express our special thanks
to Cecil Houston, dean of Arts and Social Science at the University
of Windsor, Mary McGillivray, academic vice-president at St Francis
Xavier University, and Diane Demers, vice-dean, Faculty of Political
Science and Law, Université du Québec à Montréal.
The people at McGill-Queen’s University Press were a pleasure
to work with. Roger Martin, acquisitions editor at McGill-Queen’s,
was unflagging in his support and a constant source of good humour
x Acknowledgments
during the review process. Joan McGilvray, coordinating editor,

guided this book through the production process with her usual
deft touch. Kate Merriman’s sharp copy editing eye and judgment
saved us from many infelicitous turns of phrase and obscure mean-
ings. Luc Turgeon provided a fine index. Last, but never least,
McGill-Queen’s Executive Director Philip Cercone’s support for this
book is acknowledged with gratitude.
As always, spouses and children deserve the authors’ collective
acknowledgment for their sustaining love, understanding, and for-
bearance; Theresa MacNeil and Neil, Ben, and Luke Bickerton,
Louiselle Lévesque and Vincent Gagnon, and Christine, Paul, Tom,
and Marianne Brooks.
f r e e d o m , e q ua l i t y, c o m m u n i t y
chapter one
Ideas, Intellectuals,
and Canadian Political Life
Ideas have often seemed elusive in Canadian politics. A century

ago, the French social scientist, André Siegfried, commented on
what he believed to be the almost complete absence of grand ideas
and ideological conflict from Canadian politics. Instead of offering
voters competing sets of ideas and waging battle over matters of
principle, Siegfried said, “Canada’s parties and politicians engaged
in a sort of bidding war for the votes of citizens. The promise of
a road, a post office, or a contract substituted for serious discussion
of larger issues concerning the ends of governance.” “Whoever may
be the winner,” Siegfried observed, “everyone knows that the coun-
try will be administered in the same way … the only difference will
be in the personnel of government” (Siegfried [1906] 1966, 113).
Siegfried has not been alone in arguing that ideas have had a
hard time rising to the surface of Canadian political life, remaining
submerged under heavy layers of patronage, brokerage-style party
politics, and political leadership that sought to dull their edge rather
than allow them to cut clean divisions through the body politic.
Echoing the judgment of many of his mid-twentieth century con-
temporaries, the historian Frank Underhill once remarked that
“Canadian history is dull as ditchwater and our politics is full of
it” (Underhill 1960, 43). Commenting on the leadership style of
4 Freedom, Equality, Community
Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie

King, the constitutionalist and poet F.R. Scott wrote:
He blunted us.
We had no shape
Because he never took sides,
And no sides
Because he never allowed them to take shape.
He seemed to be in the centre

Because we had no centre,
No vision
To pierce the smoke-screen of his politics.
(Scott and Smith 1957, 27–8)
For all that Siegfried found the apparent absence of ideas from
Canadian politics to be disconcerting, he offered a charitable and
functionalist explanation for what he saw as the uninspiring and even
low tone of Canadian political life. Important divisions and great
issues were latent in Canadian politics, he believed, but the mobi-
lization of citizens and interests around these divisions – particu-
larly religious and linguistic conflict – would threaten the political
system to its foundations, unleashing passions and resentments that
the young country might not be able to withstand. The domination
of Canadian politics by two parties, Liberal and Conservative,
whose principles were very similar and behaviour in office nearly
identical, and the systematic refusal of Canada’s leading politicians
to engage one another on the battlefield of ideas, represented the
price that had to be paid in order to maintain the survival of a
country where great passions and ideological division lay seething
below the generally dull surface of Canadian political life.
A less charitable but equally functionalist interpretation of the
relative absence of grand ideas from Canadian politics was fur-
nished by the Canadian left from about the 1950s and 1960s, in
response to the failure of Canada’s party system to develop along
the class-based lines predicted by many social scientists. When the
expected development did not occur, many on the left argued that
the dominant parties, the Liberal and Progressive Conservative par-
ties, deliberately avoided issues involving class conflict, preferring
Ideas, Intellectuals, and Canadian Political Life 5
to frame Canadian politics in the familiar terms of regional and

linguistic interests. In so doing these dominant parties and their
leaders impeded what those on the left considered to be the normal
evolution of politics in a modern society, what they called a “cre-
ative politics” that would be based on the opposing interests of
workers and the owners of capital, the weak versus the privileged,
and that would necessarily require that politics address such ideo-
logically charged matters as the role of the state versus that of mar-
kets, the appropriate division of wealth in society, and the meaning
of justice and equality. Creative politics would give rise to a party
system polarized on class lines, providing citizens with real choices
between competing sets of ideas and policies, in the process flushing
what Underhill called the “ditchwater” from Canadian political life.
In their book Crisis, Challenge and Change: Party and Class
Revisited, Janine Brodie and Jane Jenson updated the idea that
ideological division has been suppressed in Canada by established
parties who see in class-based politics a threat to their dominance
(1988). They argued that Canada’s major parties had provided
citizens with a non-class definition of political life that stunted the
emergence of class consciousness. Instead, voters were offered a
definition of politics that purported to be pragmatic and a reflection
of the mainstream values of Canadian society. The brokerage-
politics style of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties
has been, they argue, inimical to a politics of ideas (unless one
considers a choice between a jobs project in New Brunswick and
a government contract for a company in Mississauga to fall within
the realm of ideas).
If Canada’s historically dominant parties have preferred to fight
it out within familiar and narrow confines, avoiding wherever pos-
sible the sorts of questions and issues those on the left believe are
the real stuff of political life, this does not mean that ideas could
not have entered Canadian political life through some other door.
The media, academe, unions, social movements, and minor parties
may identify and frame issues in alternative ways, broadening the
discourse of politics beyond the preferred parameters of the dom-
inant parties and their leaders and injecting ideas into political life.
There is no doubt that this has happened in Canada. Moreover,
the Canadian left’s argument that the only idea-based conflict deserv-
ing of the name is that which is based on class is flawed. The classic
faultlines of Canadian politics – French v. English, Canada v. the
United States, and central Canada v. the eastern and western regions
of the country – are associated with ideas about the country, the
nature of Canadian society, the proper interpretation of its history,
and normative judgments on that history. None of this can be
reduced to a mere by-product of class conflict.
It would be strange, indeed, for a society to give rise to great
ideas concerning issues that are not essential to its history. The work
of great thinkers arises from the ferment of the conditions that
characterize their society. One would expect intellectuals, senior pol-
iticians, and opinion-leaders to turn their attention to the defining
faultlines of Canadian history and the Canadian condition, and to
interpret more universal questions involving freedom, equality, jus-
tice, and human dignity in terms of this history and these conditions.
The preoccupations of Canada’s leading intellectuals are, indeed,
what one would expect from the history of the country. It is prob-
ably fair to say that Canadians and Québécois have talked and
written about ethnolinguistic division and the proper understanding
of the history of relations between Frenchand English Canada as
much as the intellectuals of any other linguistically divided society.
Canada’s relationship to the United States is so intimately woven
into the Canadian consciousness and has inspired such an enor-
mous outpouring of analysis and polemic that no telling of the
Canadian story can avoid reflecting on the meaning and conse-
quences of this relationship. Indeed, the ways in which English
Canadian intellectuals have thought and talked about freedom,
equality, and community – the thematic pillars of this book – have
been powerfully influenced by perceptions of Canada’s southern
neighbour. The nature of the relationship between what has often
been called the industrial heartland of Canada, stretching from
Windsor to Montreal, and the less populous regions to the east and
west of this corridor, has been ignored by some of Canada’s leading
political thinkers whose attention has been fixed on questions aris-
ing from French-English and Can-Am relations. Nevertheless, some
of the best history writing, such as that of Harold Innis and Donald
Creighton, has understood the importance of the regional question
for an understanding of the Canadian condition.
b ys ta n d e rs to h i s to ry ?
Contrary to what Siegfried and many others have suggested, Canadian

political life has not been bereft of grand ideas. Even Mackenzie
King, who did as much as any single person to keep ideas and
ideological conflict out of Canadian political life, made his small
contribution to the stockpile of Canadian political thought through
the corporatist vision elaborated so ponderously in his book Indus-
try and Humanity (1918). In a country whose history has been
marked by deep and often passionate divisions – between Catholics
and Protestants in the early history of Canada, and between French
and English Canada for all of the country’s history – where regional
resentments have long simmered and frequently boiled over to pro-
duce parties of protest, and where the country’s relationship to the
United States has been a source of controversy and angst for over
two centuries, ideas could not be excluded from political life.
Siegfried may have overstated the case, although in his defence
it must be said that Canadian public life during the first several
decades after Confederation was not notable for the presence of
high principles or inspiring political leaders. Railroads, tariffs, and
squabbles between the centralizing designs of the Conservative
Party, led by John A. Macdonald, and the forces defending provin-
cial rights in the fledgling country were the dominant public issues
of the times. Canada’s relationship to Great Britain occasionally
provided the impetus for broader reflection on the nature of the
country and its future, as occurred during the Boer War and again
during World War I, and the Great Depression of the 1930s spawned
a wave of critical rethinking about capitalism and the appropriate
role of government through the Cooperative Commonwealth Fed-
eration – predecessor to the New Democratic Party – the League
for Social Reconstruction, intellectual organs like the Canadian
Forum, and even among many establishment politicians and leading
bureaucrats1. But the broad centre of Canadian politics, represented
by the Liberal and Conservative parties, continued along in the
brokerage-politics mode of avoiding direct engagement with ideas
and principles in preference for interests and patronage. Grand
reflection on policy and the role of government tended to be man-
aged through that most Canadian of devices, the royal commission,
and its near cousin, the policy white paper. These bureaucratized
and state-controlled methods for critically examining some aspect
of Canadian society, economics, or public policy provided what,
from the standpoint of state elites, has surely seemed a politically
safe channel for consideration of new ideas in public life. To some
degree they have performed a function that might otherwise have
been expected to be filled by the party system and elections.2
It is usual to attribute the low profile that ideas have had in

Canadian public life to such factors as the party system; the impact
of federalism, which has transformed issues that might have been
framed in terms of grand ideas and principles into questions of
jurisdiction; and the political culture, which is less polarized on
class lines than in many other western democracies. But to some
degree the explanation may lie in the fact that Canada has always
been, nationalist pretences aside, a bystander to world history. The
Americans, the French, and the British, to name a few, all shaped
the course of world history in their various ways. Their domestic
struggles and their international involvements gave rise to critical
reflection on their principles of government. Senior politicians and
leading thinkers were aware that their nation was a force in shaping
history and, therefore, that the consequences of their ideas and
actions would not be light and transient.
Canada, by contrast, developed on the margins of history’s march,
seen by the rest of the world as that place north of the United
States. Without meaning to diminish the importance for those
involved of the domestic struggles and accomplishments that have
marked Canadian history, these struggles and accomplishments
have not been of an order that captured the outside world’s atten-
tion. It should come as little surprise, therefore, that Canadians’
reflections on their politics and society, and on the human condition
as viewed through a Canadian lens, have had little impact beyond
this country’s borders. On the contrary, Canadians historically have
been enthusiastic importers of ideas fashioned elsewhere, adapting
them to Canadian circumstances, but exporting little intellectual
capital in return. (It must be said, however, that Canada has long
been an exporter of intellectuals and creative people generally,
although this is not the same thing as exporting distinctively Cana-
dian ideas.)
Some would argue that this is no longer the case and that, in
recent decades, Canada has moved from the margins of history
toward its centre, showing other countries how a multi-cultural
society based on principles of tolerance, equality, and respect for
group rights can be made to work. Intimations of this were already
to be found two generations ago in the writings of Pierre Elliott
Trudeau. He argued that Canada, if it could find ways of respecting
and protecting the rights of its two main ethnolinguistic communi-
ties, could provide a working example to the world of a non-ethnic
form of nationhood. Since Trudeau’s time, it has become common
among the country’s English-speaking intellectuals to argue that the

evolution of group rights since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
became law in 1982 and recognition of forms of Aboriginal self-
government demonstrate that Canada is fashioning a society built
on pillars of tolerance and equality, showing the way for other
nations. The work of such Canadians as Michael Ignatieff, Charles
Taylor, and Will Kymlicka is known throughout the English-speaking
world, demonstrating that Canada has emerged from its long ado-
lescence in the world of ideas.
Whether Canada is no longer a bystander to world history is not
a question that we can answer here. It is certain that the intellec-
tuals and opinion-leaders of all societies exaggerate the importance
and even awareness in the rest of the world of those issues and
accomplishments that they know so intimately. If Canadians are
guilty of this fault, then they are not alone. But it also seems likely
that, more than in the past, the Canadian case warrants the world’s
attention. As global migration changes the demographic and cul-
tural faces of societies and the forces of globalization challenge and
render antiquated traditional notions of sovereignty and nation-
hood, the struggles that are ongoing in Canada may indeed have
relevance far beyond this country’s borders.
English Canadian politicians and nationalist intellectuals fre-
quently boast that Canada is pioneering a sort of post-modern,
post-nationalist form of pluralistic society where, in Charles Taylor’s
words, different communities can belong to Canada in different
ways. Whether this is truly the future, for Canada or any other
country, is far from obvious. But as Canadians attempt to cope
with the complicated dynamics of their own condition, including
tighter economic integration into the North American market, pro-
found demographic changes over the last several decades as a result
of a shift to non-European sources of immigration, the challenge
of Aboriginal demands for greater autonomy and even sovereignty,
and the continuing uncertainty of Quebec’s relationship to the rest
of Canada, their efforts to think through the questions raised by
these forces surely resonate beyond their borders.
f r e e d o m , e q u a l i t y, a n d c o m m u n i t y
v i e w e d th r o u g h t h e c a n a d i a n p r i s m
This book is an exploration of the modern political traditions of

French and English Canada, viewed through the prism of some of
their leading intellectuals. We have selected figures from each lin-

guistic community whose influence on their fellow intellectuals’
thinking about politics has been profound. From English Canada
we have chosen Harold Innis, an economic historian, and George
Grant, a philosopher whose writings on Canada have been widely
read by social scientists. From French Canada we have chosen
Marcel Rioux, a sociologist, and André Laurendeau, a journalist
and leading nationalist intellectual of his generation. We also include
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a former prime minister and leading Quebec
federalist of his generation, and Charles Taylor, a philosopher,
both of whom we consider to span the French-English divide. The
freedom/equality/community framework used throughout this book
is intended to assist readers in making sense of each thinker in
terms of concepts that are both familiar and central to democratic
theory. Applying a common framework is also intended to enable
readers to better discern the similarities and contrasts in the work
of these leading Canadian political thinkers.
In choosing several thinkers for inclusion in this book we have
been guided by a simple rule. We have selected those whose ideas,
in our judgment, have most powerfully influenced the political
thinking of Canadians and Québécois over the last two generations
and, moreover, whose writings help us understand how Canadians
have thought about some of the core values of democratic politics
and their meaning in Canada. All of the thinkers included in this
book – some more than others – have written extensively about
the Canadian condition. Through the prism of their work we hope
to arrive at an understanding of how each has conceived of the
grand architecture of democratic political life – freedom, equality,
and community – in the Canadian or Québécois space.
Four of the six thinkers whose work and influence are examined
in this book are from Quebec. All four spent most of their adult
lives in Montreal. We are aware that this may seem oddly skewed
and not representative of the range of perspectives that have con-
tributed to Canadian intellectual life. The fact that so many pre-
eminent Canadian intellectuals and artists, individuals whose work
has interpreted the Canadian experience and explored the Canadian
imagination, are from Montreal can hardly be dismissed as acci-
dental. Charles Taylor has said that Montreal, historically Canada’s
most bilingual city, has been a sort of estuary where the waters of
French- and English-speaking Canada, and their different cultural
traditions and histories, have met and mixed. It is not surprising
that this meeting place of Canada’s two linguistic solitudes has

produced many of the country’s most prominent political thinkers.
This presumes, some will object, the centrality of French-English
relations to the Canadian political experience and the comparative
marginality of regional perspectives from outside of central Canada
and of what might be called “new Canada” perspectives that start
from the fact that the Canada of today is far more ethnically
pluralistic than it was a generation ago. Of the six thinkers whose
ideas we examine, only Innis addresses in a major way questions
of regionalism and centre-periphery relations. Of the six only Taylor
weaves multiculturalism into the central pattern of his thought.
If the preoccupation and interpretation of these six thinkers
appear to be predominantly central Canadian, this simply reflects
the reality of Ontario and Quebec’s domination of the national
political stage. Had it been the case that British Columbia or Alberta
or the combined Maritime provinces had a population nearly equal
to that of either Ontario or Quebec, the contours of Canadian
political life would have been drawn quite differently. It has, how-
ever, always been the case that central Canada had, and continues
to have, the economic and political clout to thrust its concerns,
interests, and visions of the country to the centre of Canada’s
national life. This, of course, has fuelled regional grievances and
even a longstanding sense of political alienation in western Canada.
It has not, however, produced much in the way of political philos-
ophy beyond a negative philosophy of grievance expressed by some-
one like George Woodcock, writing from British Columbia. One
searches in vain for a thinker of the stature of Laurendeau, Taylor,
or Grant emerging from the experience of western or Atlantic Canada
and expressing a vision of politics and of Canada that has resonated
through this country’s intellectual life to the same degree as the six
intellectuals we have selected.
They are, of course, all white males of either Anglo-Saxon or
French origin – or a mixture of the two. Thirty years from now,
when someone writes this sort of book about thinkers whose ideas
have helped shape the course of Canadian politics in the twenty-
first century, the selection of thinkers will very likely be more inclu-
sive. But in terms of thinkers whose work has influenced recent
generations of Canadian opinion-leaders and policy-makers, we
believe that most observers of the Canadian political scene would
agree with our choices. Together their work reflects the key intel-
lectual debates over Canada’s most enduring and vital internal
political struggle – the national unity issue – as well as its most

pressing external concern – the country’s relationship with the
United States.
Our exploration of the ideas and influence of several prominent
intellectuals from Canada’s two chief language communities is not
intended to be biography. Nonetheless, the experiences and indi-
viduals that shaped the thought, philosophy and careers of these
leading political thinkers cannot be ignored. Ideas and the intellec-
tual traditions they express have sources, and these sources need
to be identified and explained. Consequently, some biography is
necessary. But unlike such a marvellous study as Carl Berger’s The
Writing of Canadian History (1976), our principal aim is not to
understand the sources of an intellectual tradition but to explain
the impact of a tradition – or two traditions in this case – on politics
and society.
In saying that Canada has been characterized by two intellectual
traditions, one Quebecois and the other Canadian, we do not mean
to suggest that this country’s intellectual life has been marked by
two solitudes. It is inescapably the case, however, that political
thinking in French-speaking Quebec and in the rest of Canada has
drawn on significantly different sources and focused attention on
rather different questions and problems. Who would deny the abso-
lute centrality of the national question in the political tradition of
French-speaking Quebec? English Canada has always had its own
national question which is, obviously, quite different from that of
Quebec. The two traditions are, of course, linked by the fact that
relations between the French- and English-speaking communities
and the status of Quebec have been central concerns of both, and
each tradition has evolved in response to its perception of the other.
Moreover, there are important cross-over figures like Taylor and
Trudeau, and to a lesser degree Laurendeau, who have had an
important impact on both traditions. But the development of a
Québécois identity, particularly since the Quiet Revolution, has
reinforced the divide between these traditions.
The themes of freedom, equality, and community do not have
equal weight in the works of the six thinkers discussed in the
following chapters. Nor is it always possible, or for that matter
desirable, to neatly separate these concerns in the writings of any
one of them. These themes tend to be woven together in a complex
skein of ideas in which one theme provides the dominant tone. For
example, Charles Taylor’s arguments about freedom and equality
are filtered through what we would argue is a particular moral

vision of community. The communal strand of Taylor’s thinking
suffuses his entire œuvre, giving his arguments on freedom and
equality a distinctive colour. Pierre Trudeau, on the other hand,
starts from quite different first premises. Trudeau’s ideas regarding
collective rights and nationalism are powerfully influenced by his
liberal individualism. His well-known antipathy toward nationalism,
and his ideas on linguistic equality, are shaped by an individualistic
philosophy whose influence is evident throughout his writings and
political career.
Trudeau aside, it is probably fair to say that the problem of
individual freedom is not generally thought of as central to the
œuvre of any of the other thinkers examined in this book, nor to
Canadian political thought in general. This is, however, only par-
tially true. Canadians have tended to conceive of freedom as a
social product, a condition that is possible only in a certain kind
of society with certain kinds of institutions. The book title Freedom
Wears a Crown captures well the older Canadian notion that real
freedom can only be experienced within a social order that respects
stability and the rule of law. Today, Canadians continue to be
deeply skeptical of American conceptions of freedom as the absence
of constraint and as a sort of pre-political state that, per Locke,
provides the raison d’être for government and a moral social order.
It would be somewhat misleading, however, to suggest that Cana-
dian political thinking has assigned little weight to questions of
freedom, compared to issues of equality and community. This appears
to be the case only when Canada is compared to the United States.
But questions associated with freedom have been important and
the ways in which equality and community have been conceived
would be incomplete and incoherent without an examination of
what Canadian political thinkers have said about freedom.
Each of the six thinkers discussed in the following chapters has
a defining tone to his work and occupies a distinctive place in
Canadian intellectual and public life. Taken together, their writings
provide a sort of map of modern Canadian and Québécois intel-
lectual waters, at least as concerns political life. Not every school,
tributary, and current is covered by this map, but someone wishing
to navigate the waters of Canadian democratic thought is unlikely
to be put off course by the picture that emerges from their work.
They truly are six thinkers whose writings have made a difference.
chapter two
The Radical Political

Economy of Harold Innis
Harold Innis was Canada’s first scholar in the social sciences to

secure an international reputation. An economic historian at the
University of Toronto from 1920 until his untimely death in 1952,
Innis, along with W.A. Mackintosh, developed the “staples thesis,”
an integrative and distinctively Canadian approach to the study of
economic, social, and political development in frontier societies or
“white settler” colonies. In his later years, Innis extended this sem-
inal work on the role of staples (such as fish, fur, timber, wheat,
and pulp and paper) in Canadian economic history into research
on the history of communications and its relationship to the rise
and decline of cultures and civilizations. Described as a “singular
genius” (Christian 1980, viii) and “forcefully original” (Clement
1989, 7), his ideas and insights influenced a wide range of thinkers
in a variety of disciplines: economics, history, geography, sociology,
political science, communications, and Canadian studies. His is one
of the most important contributions (even more so because of its
pervasive and often subliminal influence) to twentieth century
scholarly and political debates about Canadian history, economy,
society, and culture.
Unlike the other thinkers profiled in this book, Harold Innis was
not a philosopher or political theorist. Nor was he an “engaged
intellectual” in the sense of publicly participating in politics. His
legacy is contained within scholarly writings which are difficult,
The Radical Political Economy of Harold Innis 15
dense, leaden in exposition, and not readily accessible to readers,

though they tend to be, in the words of historian Donald Creighton,
“interrupted by brilliant generalizations” (Creighton, 20). Innis
himself, “a shy man, awkward of manners, little given to light
conversation” (Clark, 29), was anything but charismatic. As for his
thoughts on politics, these seemed almost purely incidental; he
rarely isolated political matters from the broader social, economic,
and cultural context (Berger, 100; Whitaker, 820). Indeed, Whitaker
uses the description “cryptic opacity” to capture the character of
Innis’s political thought. In other words, fully and clearly under-
standing Innis as a political thinker and writer poses a significant
challenge to even the most sophisticated reader.
For these reasons, Innis’s influence on Canadian politics was
neither direct nor immediate. Indeed, there was a noticeable dis-
continuity between Innis and the next generation of Canadian
scholars. His methodologies and insights were neither systemati-
cally followed nor rationally criticized; his work was largely ignored,
and his way of seeing Canada either significantly modified or replaced.
In short, because he was avoided rather than followed, his imme-
diate intellectual inheritance was relatively meager. (Westfall, 38)
Innis simply did not inspire a group of disciples promoting an
“Innisian school”; his thought was not of the “system-creating” sort
(Christian 1980). This, it seems, is precisely the way Innis would
have wanted it. “He distrusted theory. He felt it often led to the
creation of new dogma, new rigidities, and new monopolies of
knowledge” (Clark, 29; Salter, 194). Nor did Innis attempt to insert
himself into the great political issues and movements of his day.
He was opposed to the idea that university scholars would directly
involve themselves in politics, or otherwise place themselves at the
service of political and bureaucratic masters, and he was openly
disdainful of intellectuals who “sold their souls” to the state or to
a partisan cause1 (Creighton, 22; Berger, 101; Salter and Dahl, 114).
All this makes Innis very difficult to classify as a thinker. Both
those who knew him personally and those who have written about
him since his death have described his political and ideological ori-
entation in various, sometimes contradictory ways: he was a radical
conservative, a whig liberal, a nationalist and an anti-nationalist,
an anti-imperialist who extolled the merits of certain types of empire,
an anti-modernist, an anti-centralist, a technological and geographic
determinist, an unrelenting materialist, and “an individual in revolt
against mass society” (Clement, 8). Though no one has asserted that
Innis himself was a socialist, and most agree that at best his nation-
alism was provisional (Acland, 251), his work has been used by
both socialists and nationalists to argue their respective (and some-
times overlapping) positions. Finally, at the end of the twentieth
century, a new generation of communication theorists has embraced
the insights embedded within his later work on communications
and culture, describing them as profound and path-breaking.
Above all else, Harold Innis was an intellectual who embraced
the perspective of the marginalized and the colonized, who recog-
nized the uneven but reciprocal power relationship that existed
between the centre and the margin within empires (whether polit-
ical, economic, or cultural), as well as the social dislocation and
contradictory effects that always attended economic and techno-
logical change.
In almost all of its facets, Innis’s work was distinctively Canadian.
The greater part of his academic career was devoted to developing
a philosophy of economic history that was suited to Canadian
needs. In creating the staples thesis to fill this void, he helped
reorganize the way Canada was understood as a nation, while
providing a new raison d’être for the existence of the Canadian
state (Westfall, 37). He examined the origins of Canada’s reliance
on natural resources (or “staples”), and explained its relationship
to economic dependence and to regionalism, as well as its shaping
effects on Canadian political, economic, and social institutions.
Innis was also highly critical of and deeply concerned about the
growing sway of American commercialism over Canada in the
postwar period, the cultural struggle for survival this implied for
English Canada, and the disconnection it was likely to engender
(or exacerbate) between English and French Canada (Acland, 250).
This alarm about the cultural ‘swamping’ of English Canada by an
aggressively expansionist American empire – and what effects this
might have on the social and political stability of Canadian society
– was powerfully echoed in the later work of both George Grant
and Marcel Rioux.
It is these enduring Canadian themes that are present throughout
Innis’s work: dependence and development, imperial-colonial (or
centre-margin, or metropole-hinterland) relations, nationalism and
regionalism, anti-Americanism. However, in distinction from the
classically nationalist position on these subjects, it was not so much

Canada’s quasi-colonial status within an empire that concerned
Innis as it was the character of that empire and the relationship
between territories, peoples, and technologies inscribed within it.
For instance, for Innis it was the lack of balance within the American
empire, its complete and utter present-mindedness and lack of
regard for history and cultural tradition that was deeply disturbing,
and made him fear for Canada’s future as a dependency within that
empire (Christian 1977, 28; Whitaker, 327).
Innis had other concerns as well, about individual freedom and
the state of those institutions and cultural practices that he saw as
essential to the quality of Canadian democracy. In particular, Innis
was concerned about the university and its role within society. As
Canada’s pre-eminent social science scholar, and as head of the
influential Department of Political Economy at the University of
Toronto from 1937 until his death, Innis played a lead role in
determining the direction of work in the social sciences, establishing
standards of scholarly excellence, founding the Canadian Journal
of Economics and Political Science, and defending the autonomy
and freedom of individual scholars and the university community
(Clark, 27; Spry, 108). It was in this specific context that historian
Carl Berger referred to Innis as a “prickly nationalist.” “Innis tried
to make universities live up to what he regarded as their duty to
expand research, create Canadian scholars, and place these scholars
in Canadian institutions.” In doing this, Innis virtually alone cre-
ated the “Toronto school” that looms so large in the historical
development of the social sciences in Canada (Westfall, 38).
Academic freedom and university autonomy mattered deeply to
Innis because he regarded the university as perhaps the only insti-
tution that both allowed and encouraged intellectuals to resist the
social, political, and economic influences that bias the structure of
knowledge (Westfall, 44). For Innis, the university was “the crown-
ing glory of a pluralistic, democratic society” (Berger, 110). It was
virtually the only setting where some perspective on bias, and there-
fore a greater measure of objectivity in the open-ended search for
knowledge, could be gained (Salter and Dahl, 116). While every
other domain was preoccupied with the present and with immediate
results, “those within the university can examine bias, longer-term
perspectives, and the full dimensions of public issues” (Salter
and Dahl, 123). This was why Innis looked so severely on those
university scholars who allowed themselves to be co-opted by gov-
ernment, political parties, or social movements.
For Innis, the purpose of knowledge generated and cultivated
within the university was to break the stranglehold of the present.
There was great value in what did not immediately appear relevant in
relation to the needs of the present because only by the study of the past
and its broad problems could the individual attain a more independent
perspective on his time and on himself. To know nothing but the present
was to be a helpless victim of the debased myths of one’s own immediate
time. Scholarship, fragile though Innis understood it to be, was the cor-
rective to the biases of the present, and it was through the search for truth
that individual freedom was enlarged. (Berger, 110)
Especially in the modern context of overwhelming media influ-

ence, intellectuals based in free and autonomous universities were
one of the few counterforces to pervasive present-mindedness, and
the best hope for retaining a sense of history and the oral tradition
necessary to secure the balance and moderation so essential to a
durable, healthy society and a creative culture. Moreover, it was
crucial that “the values of university life – respect for truth, eval-
uations of bias, multiple perspectives, tolerance, skepticism – should
be preserved and passed on to students” (Salter and Dahl, 121).
This was central to the process of educating a free-thinking, dem-
ocratic citizenry. Education could never be allowed to become the
simple transmission of facts; real education was a process of moral
and intellectual formation that facilitated independent thought.
Innis was convinced this would be lost unless the university was
preserved from the corrupting influences of commercialism and the
state, and he fought tenaciously and unstintingly (at times as a lone
voice against what seemed to be the tide of history) for this vision.
There were a number of influences in Innis’s early life and aca-
demic career that helped to shape these views on humanity, society,
and its institutions. Innis was born in 1894 on a farm in south-
western Ontario, the eldest son of “hardshell Baptist” parents who
were devoutly religious. While Innis did not pursue a career in the
ministry as his mother had hoped, he did attend two universities
with Baptist connections (McMaster and the University of Chicago).
In later life, Innis would reject religion but retain its focus on ethics
and cling to certain convictions and values characteristic of the

Baptist denomination, especially belief in the independence, dignity,
and self-sufficiency of the individual. His Baptist-nurtured suspicion
of and disdain for centralized bureaucracy and institutionalized
authority was deepened by his military service overseas in the First
World War (Creighton, 17; Stamps, 56). Plans for a legal career
after the war were set aside after a summer-school experience at
the University of Chicago took him on the path of a Ph.D. in
economics and an academic career. After completing his thesis on
the Canadian Pacific Railway, he accepted a position in the Depart-
ment of Political Economy at the University of Toronto in 1920
(Creighton, 18).
During his doctoral studies Innis was particularly influenced by
the thought of Thorstein Veblen, the renowned nineteenth-century
American economic theorist who had been a major figure at the
University of Chicago. Innis accepted Veblen’s scathing critique of
the static, ahistorical approach of classical and neo-classical eco-
nomics, and throughout his academic life remained opposed to the
type of narrow disciplinary specialization that he believed imposed
fetters upon skeptical, open-ended inquiry. He continually argued
for an interdisciplinary and historical approach to social science
that was both holistic and culturally-specific. In this connection, he
“resisted efforts to detach economics and sociology from an histor-
ically oriented social science that embraced economic history and
political theory” (Clark, 31). He wanted to cultivate an exchange
relationship between the traditional disciplines, “to bring a multi-
plicity of resources and insights to bear on relevant problems, both
intellectual and practical” (Heyer, 257).
Perhaps the main criticism of Innis’s work is that it often seems
to exclude the very human beings that historians take as their
subject. Thus, for Berger, Innis is ultimately a geographical and
technological determinist whose method and approach effectively
“dehumanize” Canadian history. Impersonal, inescapable, and
anonymous forces simply overwhelm and reduce to insignificance
the actions and choices of individuals (Berger, 93, 94, 98). Others
reject this interpretation and characterization of Innis. They agree
that geography constitutes a powerful structure for Innis, but one
that constantly interacts with other principal economic forces such
as elites, technology, primary producers, and labour markets (Drache,
xxix). Moreover, while technology might “hasten,” “facilitate,” or
“help define” the character of an historical epoch, for Innis it was

never the final determinant.
Interplay, formation and interaction … are terms which best describe his
view of the historical process. If Innis neglects the social relations of
production in his communication researches, as he certainly does, and is
somewhat naïve with respect to the role of ideology, he nevertheless leaves
suitable openings for their inclusion as a generation of Innis-inspired
researchers are beginning to demonstrate. (Heyer, 257)
Far from being crudely deterministic, the staples thesis in Innis’s

hands was a marvellously sophisticated and complex instrument,
a way of examining the relationship between various elements in the

historical process, especially social structure, politics, and the economic
system. It located all these elements within a dynamic imperial system
characterized by a disequilibrium between metropolitan centers and their
hinterlands … Staples illuminated the ties between government, business
and society, and consequently linked economics to geography, political
science, and sociology. And it tied all of them to the study of Canadian
history. (Westfall, 39)
freedom
In his various writings, Innis mounts a powerful critique of modern

society, and much of this revolves around his conception of free-
dom, the dangers to it, and how best to preserve it. Innis’s notion
of freedom is derived from an older kind of liberalism rooted in
the ideas of eighteenth century British philosophers such as Hume
and conservative (or Whig liberal) thinkers such as Edmund Burke.
For Hume and Burke freedom can only exist where the law creates
it and where it is maintained by a civil culture in which individuals
are protected from the arbitrary will of others. In other words,
freedom is not an abstract and inalienable right of individuals that
is then restricted or impinged upon by legal and political authori-
ties, either with (democracy) or without (autocracy) their consent.
Instead, freedom is understood to be a product of specific historical
and cultural conditions, the result of certain customs, conventions,
and institutions that have evolved over a long period of time. The
presence of human freedom in a society is a measure of that society’s
balance and stability, which “produce conditions in which humans

can flourish” (Noble, 32–4).
It was this Whig liberal or Tory conservative British tradition
that shaped Canadian political culture and clearly differentiated it
from that of the United States. Innis was steeped and nurtured in
this cultural and political milieu, and more overtly exposed to it in
his formal education. This view of freedom was also amenable to
his distrust of centralized authority and bureaucracy (in effect, of
institutionalized power) and his faith in the dignity, integrity, and
creativity of the individual at the margins of systems of centralized
social control. It affirmed for him the key role of such institutions
as parliaments and legislatures, courts and the common law, and
(of course) universities. These institutions protected spheres of non-
interference in which the individual is free to act and served as a
counterbalance to the tendency toward centralization and monop-
oly. It is the continued autonomy, health, and vitality of such insti-
tutions, Innis surmised, that maintains the requisite cultural balance
and political stability within society that makes individual freedom
possible (Noble, 39–42).
The basis for Innis’s ideas about human freedom, however, went
well beyond either simple intellectual agreement with earlier Whig
liberal thinkers, or the cultural conditioning that would have accom-
panied his immersion in Anglo-Canadian values, traditions, and
institutions (although undoubtedly both were relevant). It was
Innis’s own materialist analysis of Canadian and world history that
shaped and informed his views on freedom. His various researches
were most directly concerned with empires and the monopolies of
power and knowledge that they invariably promote. Innis loathed
monopolies of all sorts, and extended this economic concept to the
spheres of politics and culture.
There seems to be an underlying fear that runs throughout Innis’s work

that there is an all too disturbing tendency of social organizations to seek
to control as far as possible the life of the individuals within their ambit.
Implicit in Innis’s writings is a preference for what Michael Oakeshott
calls a civil association, a state in which autonomous and integrated indi-
viduals live in free association with others of their kind, pursuing their
chosen ends in the context of rules or laws which outline the conditions
of their association. It is this tendency [of monopolies] to destroy the
conditions for free association that Innis deprecates. (Christian 1977, 32)
Innis’s scholarly method was to analyze the structure and work-

ings of the economic, social, and political institutions of partic-
ular empires (whether formal or informal) in order to understand
the biases embedded within them. Innis responded positively to
Thorstein Veblen’s concern to detect what he called “trends” and
to escape their influence (Berger, 88). In Innis’s work, this translated
into an almost obsessive preoccupation with the negative effects of
“bias” and how these could be counteracted. For Innis the main
task of the social scientist was to uncover and reveal the effect of
bias on social institutions (Creighton, 21).
One of the fundamental lessons of history, for Innis, was that
the efficient organization of markets depended upon the secular
exercise of power by elites, and that control over the technology
of communication was the principal lever by which this was done.
Elite control over technology, wielded through large-scale organi-
zations (religious, military, corporate, administrative), produced
“monopolies of knowledge” that gave these elites control over
social space and the social order. Innis analyzed the ways elites
cultivated each wave of new technology in order to enhance their
authority and prestige, using specialized knowledge as both an
economic weapon and as an instrument of power for empires,
nations, and states. (Drache, xlvi) Innis posited a certain irony in
this, however, in that the more complete the monopolistic control
of elites, the more vulnerable were they and their institutions (and
by extension the civilizations they represented) to eventual over-
throw and destruction (Christian 1977, 34).
Past civilizations had been one of two types. “Temporalizing”
civilizations relied on technologies of communication (or media)
that stressed orality and a strong oral tradition; they exhibited a
“time bias” which favoured cultural preservation and “enhanced
social cohesion by means of powerful belief systems, reinforced by
family, kinship and religious ties.” “Spatializing” civilizations relied
on various forms of formal written text as the main technology of
communication; they had a “space bias” which enhanced the capac-
ity for political coordination and encouraged a social structure
suited to the need to control far-flung regions within an empire
(Drache, xlvi). The most durable, creative, and healthy civilizations
were those that were characterized by cultural balance brought on
by the presence of media that exhibited counteracting biases. This
created a situation where elite preoccupation with political and
economic control over space (territory) was countered with a cul-

tural obsession with time (history, ethics, values, and tradition). The
resulting societal balance and moderation forestalled the growth of
a self-destructive monopoly of power and knowledge (ultimately
the bane of civilization and individual freedom). Under these con-
ditions human civilization – and within it individual freedom and
creativity – was able, for a time, to flourish. Always, however, the
central problem for Innis was one of power (be it civil or eco-
nomic): who possessed power and how did its exercise impact upon
the social order, and in particular the dignity and freedom of the
individual? (Christian 1980, xvi)
It is this question of power, and particularly the relationship
between power and knowledge, that Whitaker argues is central to
Innis’s later work, which was increasingly political in its orienta-
tion. Innis did not have a sanguine view of power. “Power is poison
… a friend in power is a friend lost” (Whitaker, 824). But Innis’s
understanding of power went well beyond its personal manifesta-
tions and effects. His scholarly interest was in the social power
gained through control over knowledge and its byproducts (such
as technology). Monopolistic control over communication media
had the odious effect of allowing the power elite to construct a
form of ideological hegemony that suppressed freedom of thought
and inquiry.
He […] believed that the fundamental form of social power is the power
to define what reality is. Monopolies of knowledge in the cultural sense
refer to the efforts of groups to determine the entire world view of a
people: to produce, in other words, an official view of reality which can
constrain and control human action. (Carey on Innis, as quoted in
Whitaker, 825)
In the modern context, the progressive mechanization and monop-

olization of knowledge embeds within communication media a
growing bias in the direction of control over space, while simulta-
neously undermining those media of communication (particularly
the oral tradition) that have a time bias concerned with, and
capable of maintaining and transmitting, the cultural heritage of
past generations. This monopolization of knowledge through
space-biased media of communication implies great class inequality
of political and economic power, but Innis locates the material
basis for this systematic bias in thought “at a deeper level than
class alone, although that is involved … it colours all thought
communicated through the same media, whatever its source”
(Whitaker, 826).
The increasing pace of technological progress associated with
modernity, which for many heralded the inevitable triumph of
human rationality, instead caused Innis to foresee violent distur-
bance and ultimate civilizational collapse, brought on by a radical
imbalance and instability at the centre of Western civilization. This
imbalance (whereby space-biased media completely dominates
time-biased media) produces both an accelerated rate of change and
an exaggerated “present-mindedness” in Western culture that liter-
ally destroys time (in the sense of an appreciation of time) and
along with it the intellectual capacity to bring perspective to bear
on the ‘here and now.’ For Innis this process was catastrophic,
because the ongoing mechanization of knowledge (a product of the
dominance of space-biased technologies such as mass media) entailed
the loss of the oral tradition (and the dialogue that is central to it)
that is a core element of time-biased media. The oral tradition,
Innis argued, acted as an antidote to the technological effects of
modernity. It had the salutary effect of enhancing the individual’s
sense of continuity and community by nurturing cultural memory;
it promoted empathy and thus a reverence for values and ethics;
and it encouraged tolerance for ambiguity in meaning. Its loss
would “lock the culture into an eternal present” (Stamps, 62–3).
This would fully unleash individualism as a dynamic of change, but
also leave individuals culturally and intellectually deprived and
open to manipulation by controlling elites (Salter, 198).
It was only the continued possibility, however slight, that counter-
measures might yet be set in motion that would restore balance in
Western civilization that left “some glimmers of light amid the
gathering gloom” for Innis. This hope prevented him from going
beyond his stance of “radical conservatism” to a position of total
pessimism and despair (Whitaker, 826). The source of this hope lay
in Innis’s “faith in the human spirit and in the creative and liber-
ating power of human intelligence” (Christian, 42). It also sprang
from his historical dialecticism, his belief that opposing tendencies
are at work in history (Salter, 194). Thus, monopolies of knowledge
are opposed by antagonistic elements working against them. This
can create cracks in the façade of monopoly power that allow the
“human spirit” to break through, usually on the intellectual and
territorial margins of empire, “at new levels of society and on the

outer fringes” (Innis as quoted in Whitaker, 826).
Innis’s view of the radical potential of the margin did not accord
with the well-established views of previous social and economic
thinkers who argued that social change originated at the centre and
emanated from there to outlying regions.
The contrary, Innis argued, is true; it is those areas that have escaped the
restrictive influences at the centre [which can be understood in both spatial
and intellectual terms] that retain the possibility of development. Technol-
ogy has its greatest impact in frontier areas which are more open to social
change, and then works in to the centre in an attack on the more conser-
vative elements … Whether empires [political, commercial, military, reli-
gious] were overthrown from within or without, the agents of change
would most likely be elements that had been marginal to the empire”
(Christian 1980, xiii). New technologies, in other words, have often been
the equivalent of double-edged swords, making possible the extension of
control from the centre, while at the same time providing those on the
periphery with a potential weapon of resistance (Salter, 196).
Innis’s thinking about freedom, then, had a dual origin and dimen-
sion. It had older, traditional roots in a nineteenth-century Anglo-
Canadian culture that was ‘Whig liberal’ or Tory in its values.
However, it also arose from a radically new political-economy cri-
tique of technologies of communication and their relationship to
monopolies of knowledge and power. The latter posed a threat
to civilization and individual freedom if not in some way checked
or counterbalanced. Though pessimistic about the direction of
things in the postwar period, Innis still signaled some hope that the
gathering momentum of an elite-dominated system of social control
would not become complete, averted in the end by the resilience
and resistance of individuals and communities on the margins of
empire whose creative adoption and use of new technologies ulti-
mately would forestall (if not directly undermine) the enveloping
spread of monopolistic central control.
equality
Innis was a liberal, and his view of the ideal society did not include
socialistic egalitarianism; equality of opportunity and social mobil-
ity, on the other hand, clearly were central features. His primary
concern was to promote the virtues of a society where monopoly

power was checked through a balance between “contending hier-
archies and competing media of communication.” Innis’s ideal soci-
ety, one supposes, “would be one ruled by competing elites, each
scouring society to find the most talented individuals in order to
recruit and train them for social leadership” (Christian 1980, xii).
At the same time, Innis was highly sensitive to the arbitrary
power, social inequality, and economic constraints imposed upon
individuals on the margin, those who peopled peripheral nations
or regions within international and national empires (whether
formal or informal). Innis’s perspective was informed by his own
position as a colonial intellectual on the margins of an empire. His
famous observation that Canada had made the journey “from colony
to nation to colony” (Christian 1977, 28) encapsulates his belief
that independent nationhood had not been an endpoint for Canada,
but a temporary and transitory period between colonial status
within first the French, followed by the British, then, finally, the
American empire.
Innis’s sensitivity to the inequality embedded within metropole-
hinterland relations within empires was woven into his historical
method. “He began from the perspective of the colonized. When
he explored the underlying dynamics of economic and communi-
cation history, he did so by situating his analysis in detailed social
histories of those peoples affected by major shifts in power and
systems of control. His is without doubt an analysis from the hin-
terland” (Salter, 195). As noted above, his very “Canadianness”
was central to his adoption of this vantage point, reinforced by his
own “life and times” and his extensive travels to the more remote
areas of Canada. His overseas service in World War I exposed him
to the superior and high-handed treatment of Canadians and other
“colonials” by the British political and military hierarchy. In the
interwar period, he travelled extensively, canoeing two thousand
miles down the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean, visiting Yukon
and the Klondike, northern Manitoba, and the western shores of
Hudson’s Bay, and travelling throughout northern Ontario, Quebec,
the Maritimes, and the outports of Newfoundland. “From these
travels Innis gained not only an unrivalled familiarity with the
geography of Canada and a mastery of the technology of industries,
but also a unique perspective on the impact of industrialism on
Canada’s north and other hinterland areas” (Berger, 87, 90).
Innis developed the concept of the “margin” to express the unequal

relationship which developed in industrial society between eco-
nomic and administrative centres and those hinterland regions from
whence the centre drew usable resources. The margin existed in his
work as “a space drawn into the axis of imperial economy, admin-
istration, and information that remains ‘behind’ (in temporal terms)
or ‘outside’ (in terms of industrial or political power) … its usable
topographies are shaped, in dialectical interaction with its own
resources, to serve the requirements of the empire” (Acland, 288).
For the imperial metropole or “centre,” the hinterland colony or
“periphery” was primarily a possession, something to be used in a
self-interested way. On the other hand, the periphery becomes
dependent on the centre both as a market outlet for its resource
commodities (staples) and also for a continual inflow of capital
needed to pay for the industrial and transportation infrastructure
of its resource-dependent development.
There were (and are) a number of distorting effects and negative
consequences for the periphery that flow from the fundamentally
unequal or “dependent” exchange relations that are established
between centre and periphery. Periphery economies tend to be sub-
ject to instability and volatility (a “boom and bust” pattern of
development) as exogenous forces set the agenda. Thus, the Cana-
dian economy, primarily based on the “hewers of wood and draw-
ers of water” model, lost many of the potential economic benefits
from resource exploitation as these flowed abroad. Regions in
Canada became overspecialized in certain types of resource produc-
tion and burdened with high debt because of the transportation
overheads required to ship resource wealth to foreign markets. This
created the inherent risk of a growing disparity between the fixed
costs of public indebtedness and the capacity of the economy to
pay the increasingly high costs of resource development. Such con-
ditions continually threatened to produce a virtual “staples trap”
that posed a major obstacle to full national development. Staples-
based development also exacerbated regional inequalities in
Canada, as the national government sought to counter the negative
effects of resource export dependence by using tariffs to force
branch-plant industrial development in central Canada to service
the national market. In this way the tariff, in Innis’s opinion, became
a racket for central Canada to keep what it had vis à vis the
outlying regions (Drache, Introduction).
It should be noted, however, that Innis was not an anti-imperialist

tout court. On the contrary, for Innis, balanced empires summed
up what was best in human aspiration. Innis’s concern was that
particular forms of empire are more or less harmful, more or less
destructive, to themselves as well as to their colonial possessions.
This understanding of Innis’s view of empires, and centre-margin
relations more generally, helps to explain Innis’s unmistakable rejec-
tion and excoriation of both American imperialism and Canadian
nationalism. When Canada slipped irrevocably into the orbit of the
American empire after World War II, its economy was pushed
southwards in a continental direction and economic nation-building
was put on the backburner. But the American empire was unlike
the British; indeed, it was like no other, either preceding or con-
temporaneous. “It embodied the worst tendencies of the modern
epoch, a radically imbalanced and unstable conglomeration alto-
gether out of touch with the time dimension of culture and increas-
ingly reliant on violence and mechanized knowledge to control
space” (Whitaker, 828). To the extent that Canadian nationalism
might provide the backbone for resistance to American control, it
was viewed by Innis as a good thing, but only “insofar as it offered
a creative alternative to this swollen Leviathan.” If, on the other
hand, Canadian nationalism did nothing more than reproduce
internally what was worst in the imperial centre, then it merely
serviced parochial and petty self-interests “that were equally as
appalling as the imperial parent that gave it birth” (Whitaker, 828).
With increasing urgency, Innis warned that Canada was under-
going a process of re-colonization, this time by the United States,
which, in the years after World War II, had become the centre for
new international monopolies of knowledge and technology. This
monopolization provided the basis for new conditions of coloniza-
tion and new forms of empire that were not primarily military or
administrative, but economic and ideological. Innis’s concern was
especially directed toward English Canada, and was fuelled by his
fears about the effects of the “constant hammering” on Canada’s
cultural life of American commercialism (Acland, 250). Not only
was this likely to destroy the potential for an independent and
unique national culture in Canada, it was also likely to widen the
gap between English and French-speaking Canadians. This led Innis,
despite his suspicion of nationalism, to support the 1951 Massey
Report’s proposal of a strong, state-sponsored “public culture” in
Canada (Acland, 251).
As noted, Innis’s deep concern about the pervasive cultural and

economic effects of Canada’s reintegration into someone else’s
empire (the American) was explicitly tied to that new empire’s
imperial character and design, and most especially to the lack of
cultural balance within it, a balance that Innis saw as crucial to a
civilization’s quality, stability, and durability. The same critical
assessment, when applied to urban central Canada’s relationship
with its eastern, western and northern peripheries, informed Innis’s
growing skepticism and wariness about the centralizing and increas-
ingly technocratic tendencies of Canadian nationalism. He warned
against “social scientists carrying fuel to Ottawa to make the flames
of nationalism burn more brightly” (Innis 1946, xii). This argument
is congruent with the position adopted by Laurendeau, who called
it “an abuse of language” to hear the centralizers called federalists,
when in fact they were destroying the balance between governing
powers that was at the heart of Confederation. Such warnings were
also issued, for similar reasons, by Trudeau early in his career, and
later for quite different reasons by George Grant.
Innis’s conviction that the trend to centralism bode ill for Canada’s
eastern and western peripheries compelled him to urge provincial
politicians to be vigilant in protecting and enhancing provincial
autonomy in the face of centralizing forces in the 1930s and 1940s.
These views on Innis’s part were well-entrenched and never shaken,
even when other English-Canadian intellectuals were rallying to the
cause of a stronger federal government to deal with the Depression
and the aftermath of the war. The reason for this is that Innis’s
analysis of the federal-provincial relationship was rooted in his
exhaustive studies of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the fur trade,
the cod fisheries, the mining and pulp and paper industries, and
other forms of staples-based development that comprised the central
core of Canadian economic history. This history clearly demonstrated
for him the high cost imposed on the peripheries of centrally designed
and centrally controlled economic development, in terms of eco-
nomic volatility, distorted development, and social dislocation.
In Innis’s estimation, the economic policies of the Canadian state
had reinforced a pattern of development that benefited the centre
to the detriment of the peripheries. So, when the economic ravages
of the Depression years led others to call for the provinces to
transfer many of their powers to Ottawa to allow the national
government to deal with the crisis, Innis was one of the few Anglo-
intellectual voices of dissent; when Keynesian policies of central
economic management became all the rage, Innis resisted and pro-
tested; when political pressure on those provinces resisting postwar
fiscal and political centralization became intense, Innis urged them
not to relent (Creighton, 89; Berger, 101; Bickerton, 233–35). This
support for a large measure of provincial autonomy, for a decen-
tralized or, minimally, a balanced federation, and for changes to
national policies to make them more regionally sensitive, reflects
Innis’s materialist analysis of the uneven regional distribution of
benefits and costs associated with staples-based development in
Canada. It also reflects his fundamental dislike for and distrust
of centralizing bureaucrats and monopolistic concentrations of
knowledge and power.
Innis’s greatest empathy and concern, perhaps, was with those
individuals, whether Aboriginal peoples, small farmers, fishers,
woodsworkers, or miners and other industrial wage-earners, who
were marginalized by economic and technological change. Innis’s
economic history delved into their key role in the staples economy,
their conditions of work, their knowledge and skills, and the social
dislocation they experienced with changes in trading patterns, tech-
nology, business cycles, industrial organization, resource depletion,
or state policies. He was profoundly affected by the poverty and
relative powerlessness of Depression-era Atlantic Canadian fishers
which kept them “literally in a state of bondage … destitute of the
means of improvement … doomed to perpetual servitude” (as quoted
in Bickerton, 233). He greatly admired the courage, ingenuity, and
dogged forbearance of fishers, and used the great injustice of their
material circumstances to support his arguments for a revolution
in the organization and prosecution of the fishing industry in order
to address the evident power imbalances within it, including major
changes in technique, export markets, jurisdiction, and government
support for effective producer organizations (Bickerton, 233).
In a similar fashion, in his study of the fur trade, Innis stressed
that “the Indian and his culture were fundamental to the growth
of Canadian institutions” (as quoted in Drache, xlii), and that the
abandonment of Aboriginal peoples, once the fur trade declined
in economic importance, was a breach of the Crown’s fiduciary
responsibility, reflective of Canada’s inability to transcend its colo-
nial origins in order to build on its own traditions and accord full
political rights to one of its founding peoples (Drache, xliii). Only
toward the end of the twentieth century did the words and actions
of Canadian governments and courts begin at last to lay the foun-

dations of a new, post-colonial tradition of reconciliation with
Aboriginal peoples, based on the constitutional entrenchment and
legal protection of their unique status within Canada, and formal
recognition that past governments had failed to acknowledge or
protect their Aboriginal rights and deal honourably with the First
Nations as equals.
community
In his study of the fur trade, Innis elucidated the materialist under-
pinnings of Confederation and the Canadian community. He provided
an economic raison d’être for an independent, continent-spanning
Canada, over and against the continentalist view that Confedera-
tion was an artificial creation that denied an otherwise “natural”
north-south geography and economy. On the contrary, it was Innis’s
belief that “Canada developed not despite geography, but because
of it” (Berger, 97). Its geographical coherence, its political unity, its
various regional cultures, and its economic and social institutions
were all bound together historically and continuously influenced by
the country’s staples-based economy and its place within a compet-
itive international system of production and exchange (Berger, 95–9).
While Innis did not formally incorporate the concept of “com-
munity” into his thought, his attitude towards it was that of a
certain kind of liberal, not of the utilitarian sort, but “one in tune
with the tradition of civic republicanism” (Carey, 82). In his his-
torical scholarship, Innis clearly shunned individualistic approaches
to understanding perceptions and behaviour. Human perception
and knowing were seen to be social rather than solitary activities.
As an institutional economist, he was especially interested in the
effect of social institutions on individual perception (Stamps, 57).
As noted previously, Innis believed it was a society’s institutions
that created the conditions for individual freedoms, or alternatively
for the suffocating restraint of monopoly and tyranny. To be more
specific, Innis thought it was the historical evolution of a society’s
ensemble of social institutions that was responsible for creating the
kind of community that could ensure a high quality of individual
freedoms, in conjunction (necessarily) with political and economic
stability. All these conditions were necessary for the full develop-
ment of the individual talents and potentials within society.
Innis’s collectivist orientation was centred in concern for the

health and vitality of society perceived as an organic whole, and a
recognition that the fate of the individual ultimately rested on the
fate of his or her society. It was not, however, a collectivism that
was explicitly or predominantly statist. The state was an institution
that Innis fundamentally distrusted. This helps to explain why he
consistently advocated a decentralized political system in Canada.
First and foremost, the centralization of power in Canada was
opposed by Innis because he believed that all large concentrations
of power (states included) “had self-destructive, empire-like quali-
ties” (Stamps, 58). He thought it important to defend both the
integrity and the diversity of provincial communities against cen-
tralizing and homogenizing forces – economic, technological, polit-
ical – at the core of modern society. A “progressive community
life” was crucial to a healthy, well-balanced, stable society, and this
would be lost should local control over resources, economy, and
the determination of community affairs be ceded to national (or
global) decision-makers. To prevent or moderate this, to avoid
becoming “storm centres to the modern international economy,”
provincial (as well as national) communities needed adequate insti-
tutional protections (Kroker, 1984, 82–3; Bickerton, 233–235;
Drache, xvii).
Secondly, defending provincial autonomy was necessary to the
maintenance of the traditions of responsible government in the prov-
inces, a meaningful role for provincial legislatures, and the quality
of local democracy. It also was congruent with Innis’s concern to
protect and shore up those few “time-biased” institutions in Canada
that were still rooted in the oral tradition, a short list that included
provincial legislatures. The operative principles of provincial legis-
latures were rooted in the oral tradition, which made them one of
the few societal institutions in modern society that could conceivably
act as a counterbalance to space-biased institutions such as the mass
media, centralized bureaucracy, and the modern corporation, all
of which were biased toward encompassing and exerting control
over space.
As an “unrelenting materialist,” Innis was profoundly aware that
changes to the economic and technological base of a community
would impact upon its politics, culture, and society. Nor was he
mesmerized or enamoured with the “march of progress.” He rec-
ognized that economic growth and development did not necessarily
mean improvement. In fact, he warned that the rapid pace of change
in modern society, if unchecked, had great destructive potential

(Westfall, 39). Many communities, great and small, had throughout
history become victims of economic and technological change. The
historical interplay Innis posits between technologies of communi-
cation and the socio-political order suggests that the introduction
of radically innovative technologies will have profoundly disruptive
and often contradictory effects on the cultural and social fabric of
civilizations: “on authority, power, values, public opinion, and
intelligence … world views collide, institutions are threatened, and
cultures find themselves in crisis … traditions, social mores, myths,
and politics must fight for their lives” (Drache, xlviii).
Canada’s fate as a national community was a source of great
concern for Innis, and he was frankly pessimistic about the country’s
developmental trajectory. In his last years, he viewed the spread
within Canadian society of rampant individualism, crass material-
ism, and pervasive present-mindedness with dark foreboding. He
saw the source of this cultural change in the growing dominance
of modern mass media, the insatiable expansion of the American
commercial juggernaut, and the growing power and scope of a
centralized state bureaucracy, all of which were monopolistic and
biased toward social control over space. An additional concern for
Innis was the seductive attraction of American-style abstract rights,
legally guaranteed to individuals in a formal, written constitution.
Innis preferred the more concrete liberties “that evolved over the
course of a community’s practical historical experience” and in a
way “consistent with the continued life of the society” (Noble, 40).
Innis argued that these societal trends, which he attributed to
Canada’s willing if not eager absorption into the American empire,
would bring about the progressive devaluation and deterioration of
historical memory in Canada, the neglect of the common good, and
ultimately the destruction of a distinctive culture and community
(indeed, all sense of culture and community). Yet his calls for Cana-
dians to resist American imperialism “in all its attractive guises”
exhibited little faith that anything could be done and offered little
by way of practical suggestions on how the slide (further into the
American empire) might be reversed (Whitaker, 829).
conclusion
Harold Innis was a groundbreaking and radically innovative thinker.

With an academic career that spanned the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s,
he preceded the other thinkers discussed in this book by a genera-

tion or more. Whether in the subject matter he chose to study, the
theories and methods he adapted and devised to do so, or the
cultural values, sense of identity, and world outlook he brought to
bear on this material, Innis was one of the first distinctively Cana-
dian social scientists. His impact on Canadian politics during his
lifetime, however, was for the most part indirect. Much more sig-
nificant has been his intellectual legacy to thinkers in the social
sciences who came after him, whether in economics, history, polit-
ical science, or communications.
Innis’s core concerns, which grew out of his extensive research
into the political economy of staples development, were both quint-
essentially Canadian and eerily prescient of the events and issues
associated with economic and political developments during the
half-century after his passing. These concerns included the loss of
Canadian identity and independence under the “hammer blows”
of American commercialism; the threat to regional autonomy and
self-governance from centralizing state bureaucrats; the key role of
the university for a democratic society and the need to maintain its
institutional autonomy from overweening political and corporate
influence; the systemic social, economic, and political biases involved
in the introduction of new technologies and modes of organization;
and last but certainly not least the deleterious effects for individual
freedom, cultural integrity, and societal stability of the tendency
toward centralized, monopoly control over these new technologies
(and the concentrated social power that attended such control).
As noted, these themes in Innis’s researches and writings found
reflection in the later work of many thinkers in many different
disciplines. They are echoed, sometimes closely (as with Grant) in
the perspectives offered by the other Canadian thinkers profiled in
this book. Innis was clearly a forerunner and a path-breaker, and
though his influence has seldom been direct, he did provide a broad
framework of analysis, a direction of inquiry, and a research-
cum-political agenda that helped to give both shape and substance
to intellectual and political debates in this country.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
B 1 — Devoir sacrifier son enfant, inconnu d’autrui, sous
la pression des nécessités : — Mélanippe-la-Sage d’Euripide,
Lucrèce-Borgia (II, 5).
2 — Devoir, dans les mêmes circonstances, sacrifier son
père : — les Hypsipyles d’Eschyle, d’Euripide et de Métastase, les
Lemniennes de Sophocle.
3 — Devoir, dans les mêmes circonstances, sacrifier son
époux : — les Danaïdes de Phrynichus, d’Eschyle, de Gombaud, de
Salieri, de Spontini, les Lyncées de Théodecte, d’Abeille, les
Hypermnestres de Métastase, de Rieupeyroux, de Lemierre, etc.
4 — Devoir sacrifier son gendre au salut public : — Un
patriote (M. Dartois, 1881).
5 — Devoir combattre son beau-frère pour le salut
public : — Horace. La loyauté et l’affection qui subsistent entre les
adversaires écartent toute ressemblance avec la XXXe.
La nuance B (B 1 par exemple) prête à de beaux entrelacements
de motifs : dans Mélanippe-la-Sage, celle-ci se trouvait (1o) forcée
de tuer son fils, ordre auquel elle eût résisté, au risque de sa propre
vie, mais elle était en même temps (2o) forcée de cacher son intérêt
pour cet enfant, de peur d’en révéler l’identité et d’en causer, ainsi, la
mort certaine. C’était, on le voit, le procédé du dilemme appliqué à
une donnée dramatique. On peut l’adapter, avec un égal succès, à
tous les cas où un personnage reçoit une injonction à laquelle il ne
veut pas obéir ; il suffira de le faire tomber par son refus même dans
une seconde situation aboutissant à un résultat aussi répugnant, ou,
mieux encore, identique. Ce dilemme d’action se retrouve dans ce
qu’on appelle le « chantage » ; nous l’avons vu aussi ébaucher sa
cruelle alternative dans C de la XXe (Théodore, la Vierge Martyre,
etc.), et la manifester clairement dans D, surtout D 2 de la XXIIe
(Mesure pour Mesure, le Huron, etc.) ; mais il est, là, posé tout
crûment, par un seul et même personnage ou événement, d’une
nature tyrannique, odieuse. Tandis que, dans Mélanippe-la-Sage, il
résulte d’une façon si logique et si impitoyable de l’action que, ne
songeant plus à nous révolter, nous le subissons complètement ; et il
nous paraît plus naturel, plus écrasant.
Avant d’abandonner ces 4 situations symétriques (et rien
n’empêche le lecteur d’en grouper d’autres ainsi, pour en tirer un
profit analogue), je veux encore indiquer une manière d’en disposer
les éléments en vue de chercher des états d’âme moins déflorés.
Nous venons de voir aux prises les forces : Passion (vice, etc.),
Affection pure (pour des parents, pour des amis, pour des
bienfaiteurs, et, particulièrement, pour leur vie, pour leur honneur ou
pour tel autre de leurs intérêts), Raison d’État (succès de ses
compatriotes, de sa cause, de son œuvre), Égoïsme (volonté de
vivre, cupidité, ambition, avarice, vanité), Honneur (parole, chasteté
féminine, fidélité), Foi (vœu religieux, serment à la divinité, piété
familiale). Opposez-les deux à deux, — et étudiez-en les conflits.
D’abord se produiront les cas déjà cités ; mais en voici de
nouveaux : une Passion ou vice détruisant l’Intérêt de l’État (car
dans Antoine et Cléopâtre, il ne tombe que la Puissance royale des
deux amants, et l’on ne sent pas des peuples en péril) ; — l’Égoïsme
(sous sa forme « ambition » par exemple) luttant avec la Foi, en
l’âme d’un homme, cas fréquent dans les guerres religieuses ; —
l’Égoïsme sous cette forme ambitieuse étreignant l’Affection pure
(l’intrigant qui renie ou sacrifie son père, sa mère, son ami, et s’en
fait des marchepieds, — tableau splendide !) ; — un combat entre
l’Honneur personnel et la Raison d’État (Judith aux bras
d’Holopherne, Bismarck falsifiant la dépêche de son maître).
Opposez ensuite les nuances entre elles (le héros sera pris entre sa
foi et l’honneur des siens, et ainsi de suite) ; les sujets naîtront par
milliers.
Avis spécial, la tragédie néo-classique étant morte, au roman
psychologique, son légataire.
XXIV e SITUATION
Rivalité d’inégaux
(Rival inférieur — Rival supérieur — Objet)
J’aurais voulu ne faire de cette donnée et la suivante (Adultère)

qu’une seule : la différence gît dans un contrat ou une cérémonie,
d’importance variable, selon les milieux, et qui ne change pas, en
tout cas, considérablement les émotions dramatiques à naître du
combat pour l’amour ; cette différence même devient absolument
insensible dans les sociétés polygames (drames indous) ; j’aurais
donc préféré créer une situation indépendante avec une nuance de
telle autre. Mais j’ai craint qu’on ne m’accusât de refouler, de parti
pris, les œuvres modernes dans un nombre de catégories aussi
restreint que possible ; les deux que nous allons analyser en
contiennent en effet la majeure partie.
Déjà nous avions remarqué qu’entre « Haine » et « Rivalité de
proches », la seule dissemblance venait de ce que, pour la dernière,
s’incarnait, sous forme humaine, l’Objet disputé, le Casus belli. Pour
la même raison nous pouvons rapprocher ces données, « Rivalité
d’inégaux », « Adultère », voire « Adultère meurtrier », que déjà nous
vîmes, de toutes les Situations (Ve, VIIe, VIIIe, IXe, Xe, XIe, XXXe, XXXIe)
qui dépeignent la lutte pure et simple. Toutefois, l’Objet aimé
s’élance mieux des cas présents de rivalités, assez sentimentaux,
qu’il ne pouvait le faire des rivalités de proches ; et nulle part ailleurs
occasion aussi favorable ne se présente au poète dramatique pour
dessiner son idéal amoureux, puisqu’ici l’énergie des efforts n’aura
d’explication que par la beauté de la femme ou de l’homme qu’on s’y
arrache.
Les cas se divisent, d’abord, par sexes, puis selon les degrés
hiérarchiques des rivaux.
A — Rivalités masculines, 1 — d’un mortel et d’un
immortel : — Mrigancalekha de Viswanatha, le Ciel et la Terre de
Byron ; — de deux divinités inégales : — Pandore, de Voltaire.
2 — D’un homme simple et d’un magicien : Tanis et Zélide de
Voltaire (Nuance recommandée à M. le Sâr Péladan).
3 — D’un conquérant et d’un conquis : — Malati et Madhava
de Bhavabouti, le Tribut de Zamora (Gounod, 1881), le Saïs (Mme
Ollognier, 1881) ; — d’un vainqueur et d’un vaincu : — Alzire de
Voltaire ; — d’un maître et d’un banni : — Appius et Virginie de
Webster, Hernani, Dante (Godard, 1890), Mangeront-ils ? de Hugo ;
— d’un usurpateur et d’un dominé : — le Triumvirat, de Voltaire.
4 — D’un roi suzerain et de rois vassaux : — Attila, de
Corneille.
5 — D’un roi et d’un seigneur : — Le Chariot de terre cuite de
Soudraka, le Moulin et la Nina de Plata de Lope, Agésilas et Suréna
de Corneille, Démétrius de Métastase, le fils de Porthos (M. Blavet,
1886).
6 — D’un puissant et d’un homme nouveau : — Don Sanche
de Corneille.
7 — D’un riche et d’un pauvre : — La Question d’argent de M.
Dumas, la Nuit de la Saint-Jean (Erckmann-Chatrian et Lacôme,
1882), En grève (M. Hirsch, 1885), Surcouf (M. Planquette, 1887).
Roman : partie des Travailleurs de la Mer.
8 — D’un homme honoré et d’un homme suspecté : —
L’Obstacle (Daudet, 1890), Le Drapeau (M. Moreau, 1879), Devant
l’ennemi (M. Charton, 1890), Jack Tempête (M. Elzéar, 1882 ; on y
trouve, en sus, le procédé, d’origine comique, du quiproquo : il porte
sur l’identité du personnage longtemps victime), La Bûcheronne (Ch.
Edmond, 1889).
9 — De presque égaux : — Dhourtta Samagama (où il s’agit
d’un maître et de son disciple). De même pour les Maîtres
Chanteurs.
10 — D’hommes égaux, dont l’un jadis coupable d’adultère
(rentre aussi dans les Doubles rivalités) : — Chevalerie rustique
(Verga, 1888).
11 — D’un homme aimé et d’un qui n’a pas le droit d’aimer :
— la Esmeralda.
B — Rivalités féminines, 1 — D’une femme simple et d’une
magicienne : — La Conquête de la Toison d’Or de Corneille.
2 — D’une victorieuse et de sa prisonnière : — Le comte
d’Essex de Th. Corneille, les Marie Stuart de Schiller et de M.
Samson.
3 — De reine et sujette : — Marie Tudor et Amy Robsart de
Hugo. Le titre de cette sous-nuance est, on s’en souvient, le seul cité
des prétendues 24 situations de Gérard de Nerval ; on pourrait bien
faire tenir encore sous cette dénomination les sous-nuances B 1, 2,
4. Mais cela ne ferait toujours que la moitié d’une des quatre
nuances de « Rivalité d’inégaux », qui a elle-même l’importance tout
au plus d’une Situation parmi la Série de nos trente-six.
4 — D’une reine et d’une esclave : — Bajazet, Zulime, partie
d’Une nuit de Cléopâtre (de Gautier, par V. Massé, 1885).
5 — D’une dame et d’une servante : — Le Chien du jardinier
de Lope de Vega (où se voit le mieux réussi peut-être, des portraits,
tant de fois essayés, de la grande dame amoureuse).
6 — D’une dame et d’une plus humble : — François les bas
bleus (M. Messager, 1883).
7 — De presque égales compliquée de l’abandon de l’une
(se rapproche d’A 1 de la Situation XXV) : — Ariane de Th. Corneille,
Benvenuto (M. Diaz, 1890). Roman : la Joie de vivre.
8 — D’un souvenir ou d’un idéal (celui d’une femme
supérieure) et de la vassale de celle-ci : — Sémiramis reconnue
de Métastase. Madame la Mort de Rachilde (le champ de la lutte est
subjectif). L’Image de M. Beaubourg. Cas symétrique pour le
masculin : la Dame de la Mer d’Ibsen.
C — Double rivalité (A aime B qui aime E qui aime C) : —
Adrien de Métastase, Emilia Galotti de Lessing, la Fermière (M.
d’Artois, 1889), Ascanio (Saint-Saëns, 1890). Il est loisible d’allonger
la rivalité en triple, en quadruple, etc., ce qui serait curieux, mais
sans beaucoup varier les effets : tantôt, seulement, on fermera la
chaîne en un cercle (c’est-à-dire que C aimera A), ou par une simple
boucle (C payant E de retour).
D — Rivalités indoues. — On commence de nos jours à se
rendre compte que la loi du divorce a été obtenue surtout par les
efforts de nos écrivains dramatiques, qui étaient moins persuadés
certainement de sa légitimité qu’ils n’en éprouvaient le besoin pour
renouveler un peu leurs combinaisons restreintes. Ah ! quel air plus
vif et plus pur ils eussent aspiré en se retournant vers la polygamie
indoue ! Gœthe, le dieu Nil de ce siècle, Théophile Gautier (qui
prévit la décadence de la femme par l’accroissement du vice) et
Barrès (l’Ennemi des lois) paraissent avoir senti de la sorte. Il est à
espérer que les malentendus de la Maison actuelle, où la fidélité
archaïque, la monogamie réelle, surtout d’un côté, n’existe à peu
près plus, s’apaiseront, avec un tant soit peu de cet esprit de
tolérance.
1 — Rivalité d’une amante divine et d’une mortelle : — Les
amours de Crichna par Roupa.
2 — De deux mortelles : — Agnimitra et Malavika par
Kalidaça.
3 — De deux femmes légitimes : — Le Collier de sri Harcha
dêva ; la Statue de Radjasekhara.
Aux positions hiérarchiques respectives des deux rivaux ou
rivales s’ajoute, comme moyen de varier, la position, à leur égard, de
l’Objet aimé. Les aspects de la lutte dépendront en effet de ce que le
prix se tiendra plus ou moins près de l’un des deux adversaires, et
de ce qu’il sera situé dans un rang inférieur à tous deux, moyen
entre l’un et l’autre, ou supérieur même au plus élevé.
XXV e SITUATION
Adultère
(Époux trompé — Époux adultère — Adultère complice)
Sans mériter de constituer une Situation à lui seul, l’Adultère se

présente comme un aspect intéressant du vol (action du dehors)
doublé de la trahison (action du dedans). Schiller, après Lope, s’était
plu à idéaliser le brigandage ; Hugo et Dumas Ier ont entrepris un
paradoxe analogue pour l’adultère et, développant le procédé
d’antithèse qui a créé Triboulet et Lucrèce Borgia, ils ont réussi, une
fois pour toutes ; rien de plus légitime. Le niais, ce fut la croyance du
séculaire troupeau en l’excellence du sujet ainsi présenté : que
d’Antonys ! quels Antonys !… Le public a fini par leur préférer le
café-concert :
… Il a bien fait !
1er cas : L’auteur peint l’Adultère Complice, l’étranger survenu

près du foyer, — le Voleur, — bien plus agréable, mieux fait, plus
tendre… ou plus ferme, que l’Époux trompé. — Quelques
arabesques dont se vête le fait simple et fondamental, le larcin,
quelque complaisance où déchoie un public dès longtemps harcelé,
il n’en reste pas moins, au fond de celui-ci, telle qu’un bon granit, la
vieille conscience : pour elle, ce qu’on vante là, c’est d’oublier la
Parole d’honneur du contrat, cette Parole, ce serment auquel
obéissaient, ainsi que nous, les Dieux d’Homère et les Chevaliers,
cette base à toute agglomération sociale, ce que les sauvages, ce
que les forçats respectent entre eux, ce regard des yeux dans les
yeux, initial à l’effort commun, cette source première de l’ordre dans
le monde et de la pensée, cette lumière du Verbe ! Assurément
l’attention des spectateurs peut être momentanément détournée de
ce point de vue sévère, et cela sans crime aucun, — de par les
droits d’hérésie de l’imagination ; on peut obtenir pour n’importe quel
objet notre rire : ne rions-nous pas, de tous nos nerfs, à voir un
podagre dégringoler bizarrement un escalier au bas duquel il doit se
rompre le cou ? Pour tout objet aussi on peut réclamer notre pitié :
pitié nous avons pour les parjures du joueur et pour ceux de
l’ivrogne ; mais il s’y mêle un mépris las. Or, était-ce précisément de
ce mépris dans la tristesse que notre dramaturgie voulait faire
bénéficier ses jeunes premiers adultères au prix de tant et tant de
soins ? Non, sans doute !… Elle s’est donc fourvoyée.
2e cas : L’Adultère étranger est donné comme moins
sympathique que l’époux méconnu. — Ceci, c’est le genre dit
« moralisateur ». Il ennuie. Un homme à qui l’on a pris son porte-
monnaie ne grandit pas, de ce fait, à nos yeux ; et, les
renseignements qu’il est en mesure de fournir une fois obtenus,
nous laissons là ce lieu vivant d’un épisode curieux, mais qui se
serait aussi aisément produit ailleurs, — et nous ne pensons plus
qu’au tire-laine. Mais si ce dernier, déjà peu grandiose dans son
exploit, nous est portraituré à son tour sous des traits encore moins
intéressants que ceux de sa dupe, il nous dégoûte ; — et l’Époux
adultère n’est qu’un drôle et un imbécile de l’avoir préféré. Puis
(enfants simples et droits que nous restons un peu malgré tout) en
flairant dans la leçon qu’on nous donne un parti-pris, et, par
conséquent des mensonges, nous grimaçons une moue, car nous
n’étions pas venus pour trouver derrière la fable le sourire aigre-
doux d’un pion.
3e cas : l’Époux trompé se venge. — Enfin, il se passe quelque
chose !… Malheureusement cette vengeance n’est qu’un des cas de
la IIIe Situation.
Ainsi l’on ne réussira notre XXVe donnée qu’en la traitant avec
l’esprit le plus humain, le moins élégiaque et le moins austère. Il ne
s’agit d’embrasser ni le parti du filou, ni celui du traître, ni celui du
cocu. Les pénétrer tous, — de tous avoir compassion, — les tous
expliquer… c’est-à-dire se pénétrer soi-même, de soi-même avoir
pitié, soi-même s’expliquer à soi : — voilà le vrai travail à accomplir.
A — Maîtresse trahie, 1 — pour une jeune fille : — Les
Colchidiennes de Sophocle, Médées d’Euripide, de Sénèque et de
Corneille, Miss Sara Sampson de Lessing, Lucienne (Gramont,
1890). Ces exemples sont, de plus, symétriques, à cause de la
vengeance finale, à la classe masculine D.
2 — Pour une jeune femme (le mariage précède le lever du
rideau) : — Un voyage de noces (M. Tiercelin, 1881).
B — Épouse trahie, 1 — pour une esclave qui n’aime pas : —
Les Trachiniennes de Sophocle et Hercule sur l’Œta de Sénèque (1re
partie ; quant à la suite, voir « Imprudence »), Andromaques
d’Euripide et de Racine (où c’est un côté du drame ; quant à l’autre,
voir « Sacrifice aux proches »).
2 — Pour la débauche : — Numa Roumestan (Daudet, 1887),
Francillon (M. Dumas, 1889), Serge Panine (M. Ohnet, 1882) ; c’est
le point de départ des Mères ennemies qui tournent ensuite aux
« Haines de proches ».
3 — Pour une femme mariée (double adultère) : — La
princesse Georges et l’Étrangère (M. Dumas), M. de Morat (M.
Tarbé, 1887), les Ménages de Paris (M. Raymond, 1886).
4 — Dans un but de bigamie : — Alcméons de Sophocle et
d’Euripide.
5 — Pour une jeune fille n’aimant pas : — Henri VIII de
Shakespeare et celui de St-Saëns, Rosemonde d’Alfieri
(combinaison de la présente et de la précédente situation, car il y a
aussi une simple rivalité de roi et de sujet).
6 — Épouse jalousée par une jeune fille éprise de
l’époux : — Stella de Gœthe, Dernier amour (M. Ohnet, 1890).
7 — Par une courtisane : — Miss Fanfare (M. Ganderax,
1881 ; voir B 2), Proserpine (Vacquerie et St-Saëns, 1887), La
comtesse Frédégonde (M. Amigues, 1887), Myrane (M. Bergerat,
1890).
8 — Rivalité d’une femme légitime mauvaise et d’une
maîtresse sympathique : — C’est la loi (M. Cliquet, 1882).
C 1 — Mari antipathique sacrifié à un sympathique
adultère : — Angelo, Le Nouveau Monde de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,
Un Drôle (M. Yves Guyot, 1889), Le Mari (MM. Nus et Arnould,
1889).
2 — Un mari cru perdu et oublié pour un rival : —
Rhadamiste et Zénobie de Crébillon, Jacques Damour de Zola. La
Zénobie de Métastase, par le fidèle amour gardé à son époux, forme
un cas unique (!) parmi ces innombrables drames sur les passions
adultères.
3 — Un mari quelconque sacrifié à un sympathique
adultère : — Diane de Lys (M. Dumas), Tristan et Yseult de
Wagner (avec atténuation en « Folie » produite par un breuvage),
Françoise de Rimini (A. Thomas, 1882), La Sérénade (Jean Jullien,
1887), l’Age critique (M. Byl, 1890). — Même cas sans que l’adultère
s’y commette : — Sigurd (M. Reyer, 1885), La Comtesse Sarah
(1886).
4 — Un mari bon trompé pour un rival moindre : — l’Aveu
(Sarah Bernhardt, 1888), point de départ des Quarts d’heure
(Guiches et Lavedan, 1888), si appréciés outre-Rhin, Révoltée (M.
Lemaître, 1889), La maison des 2 Barbeaux (Theuriet, 1885). — Il
n’y a pas adultère, mais préférence dans la Smilis d’Aicard (1884).
5 — Pour un rival grotesque : — la Dot fatale de Massinger.
6 — Pour un rival odieux : — Gerfaut (de Ch. de Bernard par
M. Moreau, 1886).
7 — Pour un rival quelconque par une femme perverse : —
La femme de Claude (M. Dumas), Pot-Bouille (Zola, 1883). —
Roman : Mme Bovary.
8 — Pour un rival plus laid mais utile : (avec faux soupçons
comiques, c’est-à-dire soupçons crus ensuite faux) : — l’Échéance
de Jean Jullien (1889).
D 1 — Un mari trompé se venge (drames sur le crescendo des
soupçons) : — Le Médecin de son honneur et A outrage secret
vengeance secrète de Calderon, l’Affaire Clémenceau (M. Dumas).
2 — Sacrifier sa jalousie à sa cause (aboutit aux « Sacrifices
à l’Idéal ») : — Les Jacobites (M. Coppée, 1885), Patrie (Paladilhe,
1886). — La sacrifier à la pitié : — La famille d’Armelles (M. Marras,
1883).
E — Un mari persécuté par un rival repoussé : — Raoul de
Créqui (M. Dalayrac, 1889). C’est le symétrique de B 7 et cela
s’achemine, de même, vers « Adultère meurtrier ».
XXVI e SITUATION
Crimes d’amour
(L’Épris — l’Aimé)
La seule tragique des Situations sur l’Amour, — sujet

essentiellement comique (voir XXVIIIe et XXIXe).
Nous relevons 8 espèces de crimes érotiques :
1o L’Onanisme ; ce « vice solitaire » qui ne pousse point à agir ne
fournit que des silhouettes élégiaques, comme la légende de
Narcisse, Charlot s’amuse, ou grotesques (Aristophane, passim), à
moins qu’on le prenne pour occasion à étudier l’écroulement d’une
volonté, au même titre que nous avons eu l’ivrognerie, le jeu, etc.
(XXIIe).
2o Le Viol n’est qu’un acte, comme le meurtre, généralement bref
comme lui, et point une Situation, tout au plus se rapproche-t-il de
« l’enlèvement ». Ses conséquences mêmes, pour qui le perpétra,
ainsi que celles de :
3o La Prostitution et de ses succédanés, la galanterie, le
juanisme (répétitions d’actes), ne deviennent dramatiques que
poursuivies, traquées par un châtiment, ce qui appartient à la Ve
Situation. Toutefois, si l’impunité est acquise, le goût des Viols et de
la Prostitution tourne aussi à la XXIIe.
4o L’Adultère, — dont le caractère de larcin a donné lieu aux
Situations spéciales que nous avons étudiées.
5o L’Inceste se divise en deux directions principales. Il s’exerce
sur la ligne ascendante-descendante, et alors, s’il remonte (nuance
A), implique un sentiment d’impiété ; s’il descend (nuance B), il
présente un abus d’autorité analogue à celui que nous retrouverons
dans la 8e espèce des Crimes d’Amour. Enfin il se produit encore sur
la ligne en quelque sorte horizontale, entre consanguins ou entre
parents par alliance (nuance C).
A 1 — Un fils aime d’amour sa mère : — Sémiramis de
Crébillon ; pour expliquer ce cas et en atténuer l’effet, l’auteur a
d’abord usé de la XVIIIe (Involontaire crime d’amour).
2 — Une fille aime d’amour son père : — Myrrha d’Alfieri, de
laquelle la psychologie est décalquée d’après Phèdre.
3 — Un père violente sa fille : — Les Cenci de Shelley ; le
conte de Peau d’âne (arrêté à l’intention).
B 1 — Une femme aime d’amour son beau-fils : — Iobate de
Sophocle et Sthénobée d’Euripide, Phèdres de Sophocle et de
Racine, Hippolytes d’Euripide et de Sénèque. — Dans aucun des
cas d’inceste qui précèdent, il n’y a, comme on voit, réciprocité de
désirs ; tandis que la passion, de solitaire, devient partagée, et que
le crime, inconscient du moins d’une part dans Myrrha, s’accomplit
librement dans :
2 — Une femme et son beau-fils s’aiment d’amour : — Renée
de Zola (tirée de son roman la Curée, dont se rapprocherait la
passion presque incestueuse du Dr Pascal). — Platoniquement cette
donnée B 2 est celle du Philippe II d’Alfieri et du don Carlos de
Schiller.
3 — Une femme est à la fois la maîtresse du père et du
fils, qui tous deux acceptent ce partage : — L’École des veufs
(M. Ancey, 1889).
C 1 — Un homme est l’amant de sa belle-sœur : — La Sang-
Brulé (M. Bouvier, 1885).
2 — Un frère et une sœur s’aiment d’amour : — Éole
d’Euripide et C’est dommage qu’elle soit une putain, le chef-d’œuvre
de Ford.
Après ces œuvres, c’est donc plus que des glanages, c’est une
ample moisson qui reste sur pied. On poussera jusqu’à la complicité
des deux parties la sous-nuance A 1 (telle se narre l’histoire de
Néron et d’Agrippine dans Suétone) ; un exemple fragmentaire,
analogue, existe d’ailleurs pour A 2, dans ce début de sinistre
majesté du Périclès de Shakespeare. On renversera le sujet B 1 :
alors on verra le beau-fils épris, sans obtenir réciprocité, de la
femme de son père ; cas, certes, tout aussi commun. Au contraire on
supprimera la complicité dans B 3, dans C 1, dans C 2, en ne
laissant plus subsister la passion criminelle que chez un seul des
personnages. On renversera A 1, et l’on aura « Une mère éprise de
son fils », comme dans la Faenza de Moréas. Sans aller jusqu’à
l’acte criminel, l’étude des simples tentatives ou des désirs mieux ou
pis contenus a fourni de subtils chapitres, en ces psychologies de
grandes dames du XVIIe siècle où se complut Victor Cousin.
Restera enfin à entrelacer chacune de ces cordes de l’inceste à
l’une des 7 autres espèces des crimes d’amour : sous la forme de
l’ignorance, cette 5e et la 6e espèces fusionnent dans un des
épisodes de Daphnis et Chloé. — Ajoutez l’appoint habituel de
rivalités, d’adultères, les meurtres, etc., etc.
6o L’Unisexualité avec ses deux sens, les branches pédérastie et
tribadisme :
D 1 — Un homme aime d’amour un autre homme qui cède : —
Ex. roman. : Vautrin. Ex. dramatiques : Laïus d’Eschyle, Chrysippe
d’Euripide. Cette dernière tragédie paraît avoir été une des plus
belles, la plus émouvante peut-être, de l’antiquité. Trois situations s’y
superposaient avec un rare bonheur : Laïus avait conçu, comme
disent les professeurs, une passion criminelle et, de plus, adultère
pour le jeune Chrysippe ; de là sans doute quelque épithalame aussi
terrible que celui de Ford : ne fallait-il pas faire parler le premier
homme qui sur terre ait ressenti de pareils désirs, ait osé les
exprimer et les assouvir ? ne fallait-il pas que ce qu’il dit expliquât le
chancellement, la chute de Chrysippe ? Alors éclatait la plus
indignée, la plus impitoyable jalousie chez Hippodamie, femme de
Laïus. On la voyait exciter, contre Chrysippe, l’envie ancienne des
deux frères du jeune homme, une envie du genre de celle qui arma
les fils de Jacob contre Joseph, mais une envie qui se révélait
étrangement menaçante au seul énoncé des noms de ces deux
frères : Atrée et Thyeste ! Le fratricide s’accomplissait, à la joie
affreuse d’Hippodamie. Laïus en apprenait les détails de la bouche
expirante de Chrysippe lui-même. Et, dans quelque prédiction, — de
Tirésias sans doute, jeune alors et non privé de la vue — s’ouvrait le
destin des deux familles tragiques par excellence, des Labdacides et
des Atrides, aux crimes inaugurés là et dont devait vivre toute la
légende grecque, inspiratrice des littératures à jamais !
La branche tribadique, saphique, dont la fragmentation en petits
cotterets de nouvelles a du moins chauffé le foyer, par l’hiver de ce
siècle, d’un de nos poètes, ne s’est pas étendue sur la scène : seul,
M. Mourey le tenta, mais en vain, dans son Lawn-tennis. On peut
objecter à une telle entreprise (et ce serait pourquoi le Drame, du
temps de la liberté, n’y aurait point songé) que ce vice n’a pas le
grandiose horrible de son congénère ; lâche, fade, cette mauvaise et
suprême habitude de filles usées ou mal venues n’offre pas au poète
tragique l’égarement brutal, absurde, mais fait de jeunesse barbare
et de puissance, qui se voit dans la passion criminelle des âges
héroïques.
7o La Bestialité, ou amour pour un être en dehors de l’espèce
humaine ; peinte en général comme un vice, elle n’est pas théâtrale.
Toutefois en :
E — Une femme éprise d’un taureau : — Les Crétois,
d’Euripide, semblent avoir révélé les émotions, après tout
concevables, de cette Ultima Thule de l’affolement sexuel. Mieux
qu’ailleurs, évidemment, le caractère mystérieux d’illogisme, de
mysticité dans les sens, de démence aux allures normales qu’a la
passion criminelle, ce frisson de fatalisme que ses victimes
communiquent, a eu l’occasion d’être transporté là, en sa nudité
formidable et triste.
8o L’Abus des enfants mineurs emprunte un peu aux 7 autres
espèces de leurs signes. Pourtant, ce sujet, si moderne, si anglais,
deviendrait, entre des mains habiles, très pathétique : la lecture de la
Pall Mall Gazette nous l’a fait pressentir.
XXVII e SITUATION
Apprendre le déshonneur d’un être
aimé
(Celui qui l’apprend — le Coupable)
Presque aussitôt il en résulte une lutte psychologique, pareille à

celle de la XXIIe (sacrifier les siens), mais sans l’attrait d’un haut
Idéal : il est remplacé, dans la nouvelle action, par le fouet de la
honte.
A 1 — Découvrir la honte de sa mère : — Mme Caverlet
d’Augier, Odette, Georgette (M. Sardou, 1881, 1885), les Quarts
d’heure (2e partie, MM. Guiches et Lavedan, 1888). Cette triste
abolition du meilleur des respects chez l’enfant se colore, en ces
ouvrages, des terreurs de la mère, de ses rougeurs, et de ses
remords devant les conséquences du passé ; par ce dernier point,
l’action aboutit à la XXXIVe (Remords).
2 — Découvrir la honte de son père : — Vieille histoire (Jean
Jullien, 1891).
3 — Découvrir le le déshonneur de sa fille : — partie de la
Fille du Député (M. Morel, 1881).
B 1 — Découvrir un déshonneur dans la famille de sa
fiancée : — L’Absente (M. Villemer, 1889). Ces délicatesses de
romance, dont le tragique, bénin, consiste, à retarder une signature
de contrat, conviennent également à la pseudo-Situation XXIX
(Amours empêchées) ; déjà A 1 et A 2 en exhalaient la fadeur.
2 — Apprendre que sa femme fut, avant le mariage, violée :
— Le Secret de Gilberte (M. Massiac, 1890) ; qu’elle le fut depuis le
mariage : — Flore de Frileuse (M. Bergerat, avec dénouement
« comique », grâce à un quiproquo).
3 — Qu’elle commit jadis une faute : — Le Prince Zilah (M.
Claretie, 1885) et un peu Denise (M. Dumas). Ex. ordinaires : les
mariages par agences.
4 — Apprendre que sa femme a été une fille : — Léna (M.
Berton et Mme Van Velde, 1886) ; — que sa maîtresse a été une
fille : — Marion Delorme. La même donnée, au point de vue du
Remords (XXXIVe), est dans la Madeleine de Zola.
5 — Apprendre que son amant a forfait à l’honneur. Cela
aussi confine à la XXXIVe : — Chamillac (Feuillet, 1886), le Crocodile
(M. Sardou, 1886).
6 — Apprendre que sa maîtresse, ancienne fille, reprend
sa vie d’autrefois (avec circonstances atténuantes) : — La Dame
aux Camélias (M. Dumas) ; partie de Manon Lescaut. Sans l’habileté
féminine, ne serait-ce pas le cours normal de toutes les bonnes
fortunes ?
7 — Apprendre que son amant est un misérable ou que sa
maîtresse est une fille : — M. Alphonse (M. Dumas), Mensonges
(M. Bourget, 1889). Puisque les liaisons seraient éternelles si on ne
les rompait jamais (remarque de M. la Palice) et que, toujours, les
deux amants, lesquels se connaissent certainement bien, donnent
pour raison de leur rupture le titre de la présente sous-nuance, la
conclusion est aussi facile à tirer que peu flatteuse pour le cher
genre humain.
8 — Même découverte au sujet de sa femme : — Le Mariage
d’Olympe (Augier).
C — Découvrir que son fils est un assassin : — Werner de
Byron, la Policière (M. de Montépin, 1889). Cette surprise se
décuple dans les parricides. On peut développer à l’infini la nuance
C.
D pourrait figurer une Situation distincte : il y a non seulement
découverte, mais devoir d’exercer soi-même le châtiment ; cette
Situation servirait d’intermédiaire entre la XXIIe (Sacrifier les siens) et
la XXVIIe que nous étudions, et qui s’arrêterait, alors, après la nuance
C.
1 — Devoir punir son fils traître à la patrie : — Brutus de
Voltaire, Brutus I d’Alfieri.
2 — Devoir punir son fils condamné aux termes de la loi
que le père édicta pour tous : — L’Inflexible (M. Parodi, 1884).
3 — Devoir frapper son fils cru coupable : — Le Régiment
(M. Mary, 1890), l’As de Trèfle (M. Decourcelle, 1883). Se rapproche
de la XXXIIIe (Erreur judiciaire).
4 — Devoir frapper, à la suite d’un serment tyrannicide,
son père jusque-là inconnu. Ce serment imprudent nous mène
un moment auprès de la XXIIIe (Sacrifier les siens) et de la XVIIe
(Imprudence), et dans un autre moment l’acte de « frapper un parent
inconnu » évoque aussi la XIXe : — Severo Torelli (M. Coppée,
1883).
5 — Devoir punir son frère assassin : — Casse-Museau (M.
Marot, 1881). De cette Situation, le parent justicier n’échappe un
instant que pour tomber en D 3 ; il revient donc, résigné, en D 5.

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Force and Freedom Kant s Legal and Political Philosophy

Gender Equality in the Philosophy of Education Connie

Illusions of Equality International Library of the

The Plebeian Experience a Discontinuous History of

The Fascist Temptation Creating a Political Community of

Public Philosophy in a New Key Volume 2 Imperialism and

Hegel s Political Philosophy A Systematic Reading of the

The Community Development Reader 2nd Edition James

The Political Philosophy

McGill-Queen’s University Press

Legal deposit ﬁrst quarter 2006

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest

McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the

Library and Archives Canadian Cataloguing in Publication

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Political science – Canada – Philosophy. 2. Canada – Politics and

Typeset in Sabon 10.5/13

1 Ideas, Intellectuals, and Canadian Public Life 3

2 The Radical Political Economy of Harold Innis 14

3 Lament: The Anguished Conservatism of George Grant 35

4 André Laurendeau: The Search for Political Equality

5 Personal Emancipation, Pluralism, and Community:

6 The Communitarian Liberalism of Charles Taylor 91

7 The Universalist Liberalism of Pierre Trudeau 119

8 Six Inﬂuential Canadians 147

It may be due to a Canadian sense of modesty, or perhaps to

very Canadian, to acknowledge the truth: the rest of the world

It is our pleasure to thank the many people who supported us in

during the review process. Joan McGilvray, coordinating editor,

Ideas have often seemed elusive in Canadian politics. A century

Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie

He seemed to be in the centre

to frame Canadian politics in the familiar terms of regional and

Contrary to what Siegfried and many others have suggested, Canadian

It is usual to attribute the low proﬁle that ideas have had in

among the country’s English-speaking intellectuals to argue that the

This book is an exploration of the modern political traditions of

their leading intellectuals. We have selected ﬁgures from each lin-

that this meeting place of Canada’s two linguistic solitudes has

political struggle – the national unity issue – as well as its most

are ﬁltered through what we would argue is a particular moral

The Radical Political

Harold Innis was Canada’s ﬁrst scholar in the social sciences to

dense, leaden in exposition, and not readily accessible to readers,

classically nationalist position on these subjects, it was not so much

Especially in the modern context of overwhelming media inﬂu-

and cling to certain convictions and values characteristic of the

“help deﬁne” the character of an historical epoch, for Innis it was

Far from being crudely deterministic, the staples thesis in Innis’s

a way of examining the relationship between various elements in the

In his various writings, Innis mounts a powerful critique of modern

balance and stability, which “produce conditions in which humans

There seems to be an underlying fear that runs throughout Innis’s work

Innis’s scholarly method was to analyze the structure and work-

economic control over space (territory) was countered with a cul-

In the modern context, the progressive mechanization and monop-

territorial margins of empire, “at new levels of society and on the