The Faces of Reason traces the history of philosophy in English Canada from 1850 to 1950, examining the major English-Canadian philosophers in detail adn setting them in the context of the main currents of Canadian thought. The book concludes with a brief survey of the period after 1950.
What is distinctive in Canadian philosophy, say the authors, is the concept of reason and the uses to which it is put. Reason has interacted with experience in a new world and a cold climate to create a distinctive Canadian community. The diversity of political, geographic, social, and religious factors has fostered a particular kind of thinking, particular ways of reasoning and communicating. Rather than one grand, overarching Canadian way of thinking, there are “many faces of reason,” “a kind of philosophic federalism”.
The book has two dimensions: “it is a continuos story which makes a point about the development of philosophical reason in the Canadian context.... it is a reference work which may be consulted by readers interested in particular figures, ideas, movements, or periods.”

Leslie Armour works in a variety of fields: metaphysics and its epistemological relations, the theory of the history of philosophy (focusing on the 17th and 19th centuries), and moral, social, and economic philosophy and their relations to culture and religion. His current work includes studies on skepticism, the metaphysics of community, and the metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of ideas of religious tolerance. Leslie Armour is a member of the editorial boards of Laval Philosophique et Theologique and The International Journal of Social Economics and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Leslie Armour's profile page

Elizabeth Trott is a full Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Ryerson University. She previously taught in the Department of Philosophy and the faculty of Education at the University of Toronto. Elizabeth Trott has written extensively about education, art and design, and Canadian philosophy and culture. She was a writer-broadcaster for CBC radio and contributed in creating programs about justice, education and early Canadian philosophers. She was a founding member of the Canadian Society for Practical Ethics and served on the Executive 1985-1990.

Elizabeth Trott's profile page

Faces of Reason is made accessible to readers outside the area of philosophic study by the lucidity and liveliness of the writing....I do not think I have encountered, since Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, a book in this field so open to the layman interested in the links--within the general cultural ambience--between philosophy and letters.

George Woodcock, Canadian Literature, 94, Fall 1982, 2004 December

An extraordinary document -- the first systematic history of the development of Canadian philosophy from 1850 to 1950.

Arnold Ages, Toronto Star, May 22, 1982, 2004 December

For those interested in Canadian intellectual history, The Faces of Reason is an indispensable work, based on intensive research, written from a unified point of view, and expressed in an accessible style.

J.T. Stevenson, University of Toronto, Canadian Forum, June/July 1982, 2004 December

Now, The Faces of Reason comes to us with the glowing recommendations of Northrop Frye and George Grant. Frye exclaims, This is the kind of book I have been looking for for a long time.'' It is the kind of book that does for Canadian philosophy what Frye's own The Bush Garden has done for Canadian literature--it opened the mine of a rich deposit of Canadian culture. Grant praises Armour and Trott for providing the first published account of what went on in the teaching of philosophy in Canada which is really carefully and detailedly done.

Bart Testa, Globe and Mail, October 9, 1982