Suchergebnisse

The religion that the British and the French brought to the New World was not a natural monotheism, like the Algonquin worship of a Great Spirit, nor an imperial monotheism like that of the Stoics, but a revolutionary monotheism, with a God who took an active part and partisan role in history; and like all revolutionary movements, including Marxism in our time, it equipped itself with a canon of Sacred books and a dialectical habit of mind, a mental attitude in which the neighbouring heresy is much more bitterly hated than the total rejection of faith. The dialectical habit of mind produced the conception of the false god, a conception hardly intelligible to an educated pagan.... The revolutionary aspect of white settlement extended from religion into economics as entrepreneurial capitalism developed.

Based on a literature review, this study provides an overview of the factors influencing the development of political science in Canada. Inevitably, this approach has a chronological bias, but it has been widened to take account of different perspectives and factors normally considered external to the discipline. The analysis points to episodic rather than linear development and takes account of the interrelationships and variable weights of the social, intellectual, academic, international and economic climates at different times. A model of development is presented which, while limited by its one-country focus, assembles pertinent variables to be tested against experience in other countries and certain considerations relevant to the nurturing of disciplines.