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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Léon Dion is a pioneer of political science in Quebec and Canada. For over 25 years he has advocated a series of reforms of the Canadian federal system, striking a balance between his commitment to Quebec nationalism and his loyalty to Canada. This article analyzes Léon Dion's use of German thought in his latest book, underlying his effort to thwart the apathy and moroseness descending upon Quebec politics in the post-referendum era. A parallel will be drawn between Dion's book and Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in Berlin in the winter of 1807. Both thinkers are characterized by intellectual involvement and concern for national identity in times of crisis. It will be argued that Dion's book contains an important political message for English-speaking Canada.
Léon Dion est un pionnier de la science politique au Québec et au Canada. Depuis plus de 25 ans il multiplie les projets visant à réformer le fédéralisme canadien, à la recherche d'un équilibre entre son engagement du côté du nationalisme québécois et sa loyauté envers le Canada. Cet article analyse l'emploi que fait Léon Dion de la pensée allemande dans son dernier livre, à la base de sa volonté d'en finir avec l'apathie et la morosité qui se sont abattues sur la politique québécoise depuis le référendum. Un parallèle sera esquissé entre le livre de Dion et les Discours à la nation allemande de Fichte, conférences prononcées à Berlin à l'hiver de 1807. Les deux penseurs sont caractérisés par leur engagement intellectuel et leur souci de l'identité nationale en temps de crise. On défendra la thèse voulant que le livre de Dion contienne un important message politique pour les Canadiens de langue anglaise.
1 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Addresses to the German Nation, ed. with an introduction by Kelly, George A. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968).Google Scholar
2 Meinecke, Friedrich, The Age of German Liberation, 1795–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 33–34.Google Scholar See also Bryce, James, The Holy Roman Empire (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 414–15.Google Scholar
3 Dion, Léon, À la recherche du Québec (Quebec: Les presses de l'Université Laval, 1987).Google Scholar With its anticipated four volumes, Dion's project is more ambitious than Fichte's. The first book, however, delineating as it does Quebec's national identity and the problems it faces, justifies the idea of a parallel with Fichte's Reden.
4 The book went to press between the Francophone Summit in September 1987 and the death of René Lévesque in early November.
5 Larose, Jean, La petite noirceur (Montreal: Boreal, 1987), 16Google Scholar; and Salée, Daniel, “Pour une autopsie de l'imaginaire québécois: regards sur la morosité postmoderne,” Revue canadienne de théorie politique et sociale 10 (1986), 114–15.Google Scholar
6 Gagnon, Alain G. and Paltiel, Khayyam Z., “Toward Maîtres chez nous: The Ascendancy of a Balzacian Bourgeoisie in Quebec,” Queen's Quarterly 93 (1986), 739–40.Google Scholar Dion himself believes that there is a profound malaise in contemporary Quebec. This malaise is the starting point for his book. See Dion, À la recherche du Québec, xi. I agree with him.
7 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 133.
8 McRoberts, Kenneth, Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis (3rd ed.; Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 400.Google Scholar
9 Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation, 30.
10 Dumont, Fernand, Le sort de la culture (Montreal: L'Hexagone, 1987).Google Scholar See also Bergeron, Gérard, À nous autres: Aide-mémoire politique par le temps qui court (Montreal: Québec/Amérique, 1986)Google Scholar; and Balthazar, Louis, Bilan du nationalisme québécois (Montreal: L'Hexagone, 1986).Google Scholar
11 Dion, À la recherche du Quebec, 28–29.
12 Calwell, Gary and Fournier, Pierre, “The Québec Question,” Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 12 (1987), 30–31.Google Scholar
13 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, ix, x; Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 15.
14 One should specify however that Dion as a thinker is not blind to the problems of contemporary liberal society. See Dion, Léon, Société et politique: la vie des groupes; tome second: Dynamique de la société libérate (Quebec: Les presses de l'Université Laval, 1972), 460–61.Google Scholar
15 Dion, Léon, Société et politique: la vie des groupes; tome premier: Fondements de la société libérate (Quebec: Les presses de l'Université Laval, 1971), 10–11.Google Scholar
16 Philonenko, A., Théorie et praxis dans la pensée morale et politique de Kant et Fichte en 1793 (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1968), 168, 178, 185.Google Scholar
17 Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 166; and Meinecke, The Era of German Liberation, 44–45.
18 Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 107–08. See also Droz, Jacques, Le romantisme allemand et I'État (Paris: Payot, 1966), 116.Google Scholar
19 Grawe, Christian, Herders Kulturanthropologie (Bonn: H. Bowver und Co. Verlag, 1967), 102–03.Google Scholar
20 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 109–10.
21 Droz, Le romantisme allemand et I'État, 116.
22 French historians of thought, who would have had some grounds for prejudice, are the reliable source on this point and on the general topic of Fichtean studies since the pioneering work of Xavier Léon. See Guéroult, Martial, Études sur Fichte (New York: Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim, 1974), 70–71.Google Scholar
23 For this point I wish to thank Frank Eyck and Erick Waldman, who are, respectively, professors of History and Political Science at the University of Calgary.
24 Dion borrows explicitly here from George Grant. See Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 84–85.
25 Ibid., 10.
26 Taylor, Charles, “Hegel's Philosophy of Mind,” in Taylor, Charles, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 90–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 12.
28 Ibid., 109.
29 Meinecke, The Era of German Liberation, 99.
30 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 74.
31 Ibid., 164. Education is, once again, one of the major preoccupations of the day in Quebec. Twenty years after the creation of the Collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEPs), a major conference took place in Montreal in early November 1988. Its theme was “Penser l'éducation avec André Laurendeau.” In Quebec City, Laval University held a colloquium in October 1988 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its Faculty of Social Sciences. At both events, Léon Dion was a prominent figure.
32 Taylor, Charles, “Why Do Nations Have to Become States?” in French, Stanley G. (ed.), Philosophers Look at Canadian Confederation (Montreal: Canadian Philosophical Association, 1979), 28–29.Google Scholar
33 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 49. Dion's explicit appeal to the intellectual elite coming out of the universities is on page 164.
34 See Dion, Léon, Le Bill 60 et la société québécoise (Montreal: H.M.H., 1967), 125.Google Scholar Dion insisted here in particular on the remarkable influence that the Quebec Assembly of Bishops continued to have on education matters well into the Quiet Revolution.
35 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 49.
36 Ibid., 152.
37 Ibid., 52. Dion writes that such was Fichte's programme and such will be the direction his forthcoming volumes will take. Thus, he makes no mystery of his debt towards Fichte. See also Ibid., 44, 49. If he sees in Fichte a model of political action and reflection for the intellectual, Dion also remains aware of the necessity to use the German thinker selectively. In particular, Dion has no sympathy for Fichte's cult of the state (see Ibid., 114).
38 Droz, Le romantisme allemand et I'État, 115.
39 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 114.
40 Hegel, G. W. F., Principes de la philosophie du droit (Paris: Gallimard, 1940), sec. 324.Google Scholar
41 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 165.
42 Ibid., 12, 33, 109.
43 Ibid., 78–79.
44 This point is well expressed by Smart, Patricia, “Our Two Cultures,” in Mandel, Eli and Taras, David (eds.), A Passion for Identity: An Introduction to Canadian Studies (Toronto: Methuen, 1987), 197.Google Scholar
45 Dion, Léon, La prochaine révolution (Montréal: Leméac, 1973), 9.Google Scholar Dion also lucidly analyzes the predicament of contemporary Western civilization in this book (320–22). His reflections are worth pondering in our times dominated by ahistorical neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism.
46 On this point, see also Taylor, Charles, “Alternative Futures: Legitimacy, Identity and Alienation in Late Twentieth Century Canada,” in Cairns, Alan and Williams, Cynthia, Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, Research Studies of the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, vol. 33 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press for Supply and Services Canada, 1985), 183–229.Google Scholar
47 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 113.
48 Solange Chaput-Rolland was quite eloquent on this point in the summer of 1987, appearing before the parliamentary committee on the Meech Lake Accord. See the Report of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons, The 1987 Constitutional Accord (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1987), 139–40.Google Scholar
49 This explains why Dion proposed an amendment to this clause. See Devoir, Le (dossier), Le Québec el le Lac Meech (Montreal: Guérin Littérature, 1987), 89.Google Scholar
50 Dion, À la recherche du Québec, 127.
51 Ibid., 126.
52 Dion has explicitly recognized the role of nineteenth-century German philosophy as a major dimension of his intellectual apprenticeship in the late 1940s and early 1950s. See Dion, Léon, “Itinéraires sociologiques,” Recherches sociographiques 15 (1974), 229.Google Scholar