“A passionate critic of the French Revolution yet a defender of the revolt of the American colonies: this lecture explores the paradoxical relationship between Edmund Burke and the history of conservatism.”
Richard Bourke – Edmund Burke and the Origins of Conservatism from Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin on Vimeo (1 hour)
“It may seem strange to some that The Irish Times would ask whether this is what the men of 1916 died for”, an editorial in the paper said the day the Troika came to Dublin, under the headline “Was it for this?”1. Why does this line from Yeats’ poem “September 1913”2 still resonate so much?
For many it is because the Ireland that the 1916 Rising aimed to achieve does not exist. Yeats’ dissatisfaction is shared with us. This feeling is not a new thing. In 1922, George Russell wrote in Studies that3:
the Irish Revolution, which began in Easter Week, has also triumphed solely in externals. Our spiritual, cultural, and intellectual life has not changed for the better. If anything, it has retrograded.
Iris Murdoch wrote only one historical novel, The Red and the Green1. It follows the events leading up to the 1916 Rising as they affect an Anglo-Irish extended family “in a complex story story of misunderstandings, failures of perception, and ultimate self-discovery” 2.
There is a certain sense of right and wrong placed by nature in the minds of men […] We know by conscience that this moral sense is in us, and it would be vain to try and demonstrate it by argument; it is analogous to the intuitive perception of truth which is the basis of all knowledge, or to the sense of taste by which we distinguish foods; and just as we should have no notion of truth or falsehood if this intuitive sense of truth were taken away, nor any notion of flavours without this sense of taste, so, if this sense of right and wrong; of honourable and shameful, were removed, these words would have no force or meaning. This sense is so natural, so constant and uniform, that it can be stifled by no prejudices and extinguished by no passions; its sacred judgement can be corrupted by no bribes; it lives in the most wicked men, to whom virtue is so pleasing they involuntarily admire their betters.
Abbé Luke Hooke, Religionis naturalis et moralis philosophæ principia, methodo scholastica digesta (Paris, 1752-54), Vol I, pp. 482-3. Quoted in English in R. R. Palmer (2015) Catholics and Unbelievers in 18th Century France, Princeton University Press, pp. 40-1 (originally published 1961).
This image of the Union of Craic reminded me of Michael Brown’s opening to his political biography of John Toland.
Inishowen is isolated. A promontory on the northern reaches of the Donegal coast, located on the north-western corner of Ireland it is a remote peninsula which seems removed from the concerns of wider Irish, let alone British politics.
Yet this image is deceptive, for in fact Inishowen is near the very heart of the British Isles. The map of the archipelago, when turned on its side, makes this apparent, for the province of Ulster juts out into the Irish Sea and is nestled between the Argyllshire region of Scotland, the north Welsh region where the island of Anglesey gestures towards County Down, and the Cumbrian coastline of England. This position at the heart of the British Isles has had the unfortunate consequence of making the province the archipelago’s charnel house: when the political structures of governance and representation have become unstable or illegitimate, Ulster has been the central arena of contestation…