Leslie Dewart

Academic career

Dewart’s academic interests were wide-ranging, and evolved considerably over the course of his career. He first graduated with a BA in Honours Psychology in 1951. He then enrolled in the Graduate Department of Philosophy, receiving his MA in 1952 and his PhD quickly thereafter in 1954. He began his teaching career in Philosophy at the University of Detroit in 1954, then returned to Toronto to teach at St. Michael’s College in its then independent Department of Philosophy from 1956 to 1968.

He was appointed to the Department of Philosophy, School of Graduate Studies in 1961. His interests in theory of knowledge and religion then led him to join the Department of Religious Studies, St. Michael’s College in 1968 to 1975, and he served in the Institute of Christian Thought there from 1969 to 1979, and the Faculty of Theology from 1968 to 1988.

Late in 1969 an investigation by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was convened to examine the theological opinions in Dewart's writings, particularly The Future of Belief. However, no condemnatory action was taken by the authorities.

Among his other appointments in the field were: Chair of the University of Toronto Combined Departments of Religious Studies (1970 to 1971), Professor in the later University of Toronto Department of Religious Studies (1975 to 1988) and the Graduate Centre for Religious Studies (1976 to 1988 – the year of his retirement). During this time, Professor Dewart strongly argued for the continuation of a place for Theology in these University divisions.

During his time in Philosophy and Religious Studies, Dewart served in editorial or advisory capacities for journals such as Continuum, Internationale Dialog Zeitschrift, Concurrence, Studies in Religion – Sciences réligieuses and Journal of Ultimate Reality and Meaning.

In the late 1970s Dewart turned his attention to the study of law, receiving the LLB from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto in 1979, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1981.

Dewart's Personal Epilogue

Dewart’s obituary [Globe and Mail, 2 Jan., 2010] begins, “His plan completed.…” These terse words beg examination of his “plan” which he had outlined as an afterword in his last book published posthumously, Hume's Challenge and the Renewal of Modern Philosophy. In the epilogue (cf. David Hume). “The Future of Philosophy,” he judged that his attempts at understanding the failure of modern philosophy may or may not have succeeded. “It is not out of the question that in the future there should be other attempts, besides mine, to understand the historical causes of the failure of modern philosophy, and to attempt to remedy them. And if such attempts reach the correct conclusions that have escaped me, they should yield more adequate proposals than mine.” He realized that his generation had not seen philosophy overcome the mistakes that brought it down. And returning, in this secular age, to theology or a religious faith to overcome these mistakes was not an option in Dewart’s plan for the future of philosophy. Science’s brief ascendency and profitable contribution to civilized society, which is currently waning, had not taught modern society how to wield power without doing harm to itself and the world. Philosophy needs a sound understanding of human nature to do that. However, his plan for philosophy amounted to minority viewpoint within a minority viewpoint. Regarding this minority community of philosophers, whom he referenced in his books, he wrote: “I have referred to a few of the few others who are like-minded,” acknowledging, however, that their reasons for their discontent differed from his. He accepted that his recommendations for future philosophical improvement may ultimately prove useless. But, he acknowledged at the same time that reason may eventually prevail.

Writing

Dewart published five books during his career:

Philosophical "Dehellenization"

Western philosophy is no longer restricted to the ideas of a classical world, but may be consciously undertaken within the personal world of experience that is beginning to "dehellenize" itself. Although written as a text on political philosophy, this philosophical lesson was learned from the Cuban revolutionary experience (cf. his first book). Although not widely recognized at the time, the revolutionary experience was, in fact, a process of “dehellenization,” as Dewart understands the process throughout in his writings. Thinkers will conceive of God, in a dehellenized future of thought, as an existential reality, Dewart maintains.

Western philosophy, "come of age," does not experience the world as hostile, as did the Hellenists, but rather, as stimulating and challenging and Western philosophy must dehellenize its interpretation of experience accordingly. This dehellenization requires the abandonment of scholasticism, with the subsequent development of a conscious re-conceptualization of experience. Dewart identifies the development of human conscious re-conceptualization as dehellenization, which is a positive term. It is not "un-hellenization," since dehellenization evolves out of Hellenization. Dehellenization is but the current stage within Western philosophy’s evolution, and it may not be the last.

The religious perspective motivates Dewart’s thinking, to varying degrees throughout all his works, and it is by his own words that his notion of dehellenization is expressed most succinctly.

"I am disinclined to believe in the hidden power of the immanent divinities which, as Thales thought, all things are full of. Belief in the Christian God implies, so far as I am concerned, a positive disbelief in Fate: necessity be damned, for all I care. I refuse -- let me make the religious nature of this act of un-faith clear, I refuse -- until, if ever, I should be shown otherwise, to believe the primitive superstitions that there are implicit necessities within being, that being has, as its very reality, an inner warrant to command assent, and that invisible predeterminations constitute it and make it definable as that which has an antecedent call on the intellect"