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National Philosophy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

F. E. Sparshott
F. E. Sparshott
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Four years ago, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada asked Professor T.H.B. Symons, an historian and a former President of Trent University, to undertake a study of “the state of teaching and research in various fields of study relating to Canada at Canadian Universities.” The first two volumes of his report have now been published under the title To Know Ourselves. In his Preface, the President of the AUCC observes that few reports commissioned by his organization have been more eagerly awaited by the university community. That is the ideology of Cloudcuckooland. In reality that community, except that part of it that comprises deans and their assistants and the assistants to the assistants of deans, awaits no report of any body with eagerness: it awaits them rather as our forefathers looked forward to the annual descent of the passenger pigeon, and believes that reading and writing reports unfits a person for teaching and scholarship. But this report is one that takes notice of what we are doing and not doing and urges us to change our ways, and the aspects of our practice it considers are ones which in any case a responsible teacher will from time to time pass under review. Others will read the report, if we do not, and will ask themselves and us how we stand on it: it will become part of the background against which we are judged. So it seems fitting to use this occasion to say something about the report, “Though for no other cause, yet for this: that posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream…”. It is the occasion, and no skill or interest of the speaker, that determines the subject; for by an unhappy accident the office that goes with this address is filled this year by one who has concerned himself less with public policy than any of his recent predecessors. But if the occasion thus leads the speaker to mouth ignorant and disconnected platitudes instead of philosophizing to some purpose, that in itself may serve either to point Professor Symons' moral or to exemplify the bad effects of reports on academic life.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1977

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References

2 T.H.B. Symons, To Know Ourselves: The Report of the Commission on Canadian Studies, Volumes I and II. Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1975. All references are to Volume I.

3 Hooker, Richard, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1594), the Preface.Google Scholar

4 Op. cit. pp. 99–102.

5 Ibid. p. 99.

6 Ibid. p. 12.

7 Ibid., p. 130, curriculum recommendation no. 9.

8 Davies, D.I., Philosophy in Canada: a Report to the Canadian Philosophical Association on the Philosophical Survey 1969–1971. Kingston: Department of Sociology, Queen's Universitv, 1972. p. 1Google Scholar.

9 Op, cil. p. 101.

10 Ibid. p. 102.

11 Truth in Advertising: a Symposium of the Toronto School of Theology. Toronto: Fitzhenry and Whiteside. 1972 Cf. F. E. Sparshott, ‘Can There Be Truth in Advertising?’, Stimulus, November 1972, pp. 14–15.

12 See for example Aelius Aristides, Oration on the Four, p. 404 Dindorf: philosophers “never write useful articles, organize conventions, honour the gods, advise governments, comfort the afflicted, arbitrate in civil disputes, counsel the young (or anyone else), or give any thought in what they write to considerations of the public good.”

13 William, R. Shea, and King-Farlow, John, editors, Canadian Contemporary Philosophy Series. New York: Science History PublicationsGoogle Scholar.

14 Op. cit. p. 101.

15 Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

16 The text ignores the Commissioner's insinuation (p. 101) of a causal connection between United States citizenship and neglect of Canadian topics. No evidence is cited to support the insinuation. The Commissioner, on the basis of the Davies report, singles out the Laval department for its praiseworthy concern with local issues, without commenting on the fact that the nationality of that department was alleged to be only 5% Canadian (Davies. p. 16).

17 Op. cit. p. 100.

18 The Oxonian materialists. U. T. Place and J.J.C. Smart, were both connected with Corpus Christi College, whose quondam President. Sir Richard Livingston, exerted a mild and continuous pressure in the direction of the Commonwealth.

19 For an understanding of national philosophy without common doctrine or communal reference, cf. George Krzywicki-Herburt's article on Twardowski in Paul Edwards, ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), Vol. 8, p. 166. Twardowski is said to have transformed Polish philosophy by creating a school linked by style and standards alone.