Twentieth-century Canada fostered a range of great minds, but the country's diversity and wide range of academic fields have led to their ideas being portrayed as the work of isolated thinkers. Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom contests this assumption by linking the works of C.B. Macpherson, George Grant, and Charles Taylor to demonstrate the presence of a Canadian intellectual tradition.

While these three philosophers are very different in temperament and outlook, Robert Meynell reveals the shared subtexts of their political philosophy. He not only enriches our understanding of these three central figures but reconstitutes and rehabilitates the tradition of Hegelian ideas and influence in Canadian thought and shows how this tradition has helped shape some of the dominant assumptions behind the Canadian outlook and identity.

An important work of political philosophy and the history of ideas, Canadian Idealism and the Philosophy of Freedom uncovers and explores a long-overlooked thread that stitches Canadian thought together.