A Canadian Visionary

George Grant is our William Blake, a visionary in prose rather than poetry, a thinker who sees more than he can say, who speaks in notes, asides and intimations. Despite their philosophic differences, Grant, like Blake, sees and opposes technology’s invasion of the mind, and its consequent reshaping of society and language. Like Blake, he sees and opposes “Single Vision and Newton’s Sleep,” and in its stead advocates multidimensionality and attention to the whole, which is always, even in our wired and webbed time, more given than made. In his addendum to his essay “Two Theological Languages,” written a few months before his death, Grant proclaims, “the great things of our existing are given us, not made by us and finally not to be understood as arbitrary accidents. Our making takes place within an ultimate givenness.”

Canopied by oxymorons—Red Tory, Christian Platonist, Grant’s multifaceted thought does not lend itself to easy simplification. He saw the sun and...