Benjamin Whichcote once said that “only madmen and fools are pleased with themselves: no wise man is good enough for his own satisfaction.” While Whichcote’s wise man accepts this disparity, the madmen and fools suffer from a deluded self-satisfaction which, one can assume, might make them dangerous. The twenty-four brief chapters of Imperfection develop this governing idea as it relates to the present state of the God debate, modern ethnic conflicts in which religion is a marker of identity, and the idea of freedom in relation to the uncertainties of self-determination.

Human beings are imperfect creatures who nonetheless have ideas about perfection. Grant argues that the most interesting and creative things people do are shaped in the gap between these two poles. A retrospective view of his work over forty years, Imperfection displays the scope of his insights and reveals an important Canadian public intellectual.