General

This is a category for general posts about Irish philosophy. It will typically mention more than two philosophers and/or make general statements about Irish philsophy or thought.

Anti-Philosophy Mindset

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I would call it more an anti-philosophy mindset. People in general regard philosophy as being a bit airy-fairy, and about abstract things which, again, have nothing to do with the practical life of people.
Has it always been like that? The fact is that during the last few centuries most philosophers in Ireland have been Anglo-Irish. They felt they had the right to think freely about the world. They felt themselves part of the European scene, and the Catholics thought that the people who had the right to think freely about the world were Anglo-Irish and priests.
Since then, we have in universities quite a number of Catholic or post-Catholic philosophers, and they are simply ignored by the culture at large. If you look at the work of Irish philosophers — people like Richard Kearney, Philip Pettit, William Desmond — they are never noticed on the Irish scene, never reviewed, never discussed. So in that sense, Irish criticism is a very poor thing; it is confined to the real world, namely fiction.

Desmond Fennell, quoted in Unthinkable: Great Ideas for Now, by Joe Humphries, pp. 55-56 (available from Irish Times Books).

The book is based on the Unthinkable columns in the Irish Times, which started on World Philosophy Day 2013 “as a small gesture towards imagining a different future (p. 1). The column aims to gather great ideas from various thinkers to illustrate the range of alternative ways there are to looking at and approaching the world, a breadth (the Desmond Fennell quote would suggest) that is too often passed over in Ireland.

In tandem with the launch of the book, Joe Humphrys of Unthinkablechaired a debate asking “Are science and religion really in conflict?”. See this Irish Times page to read Joe’s summation in Socratic dialogue form, to hear the full debate or to listen to the Irish Times Off Topic podcast which includes a discussion involving me, Joe Humphreys, Hugh Linehan and Fionn Davenport on Philosophy and Irish Life.

The Unthinkable column continues weekly in the Irish Times.

Patrick and a question of identity

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Statue of St Patrick overlooking green fields and a rainbow
Image: starbeard /Flickr (CC BY)

Last year Vox Hiberionacum published two posts on the historical Patrick and the voicing of early Irish identity: one relating to classical and early medieval terms used by outsiders and a sequel on terms used in Patrick’s own writings. In brief, Patrick used the term Scotti, which had with negative connotations, but mainly to refer to the pagan Irish. The converts he referred to as Irish/Hibernae, including in the famous account of his dream where ‘the voice of the (not yet converted) Irish’ calls on him to return to Ireland, and in contexts referring to existing converts. Vox Hiberionacum points out the complexity of identity involved in both terms – the people referred to in both were of multiple backgrounds, classes and tribes. Some were not even born in Ireland. In his Letter to Coroticus protesting the killing and enslavement of Irish converts to Christianity by a British chieftain, Patrick writes

Indignum est illis Hiberionaci sumus
‘For them, it is a disgrace/shameful that we are from Ireland‘. 

Whether this is a slip or a rhetorical device, it is the first insular expression of an Irish ‘we’, and it includes not only the Irish born in Ireland but Patrick himself.

This complexity inherent in the term “Irish” brought to mind two of Ireland’s greatest philosophers. Johannes Scotus Eriugena adopted two names denoting his Irishness, plausibly because even by his time being an Irishman (Scotus) did not automatically mean born in Ireland (Eriugena). George Berkeley in several places in his Philosophical Commentaries writes, “we Irish” (“we Irish do not hold with this”, “We Irish think otherwise”). Yet he is often claimed as English. Both philosophers are enmeshed in the complexities of Irish identity.

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Book: Dictionary of Irish Philosophers

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About (via Bloomsbury Publishing) Since 1999 Thoemmes Press (now Thoemmes Continuum) has been engaged in a large-scale programme of biographical dictionaries of philosophy and related subjects. This volume on Irish philosophers follows the standard format of arranging entries alphabetically by thinker. It includes two forms of entry: (1) entries reproduced from previous editions of Thoemmes … Read more

Book: Berkeley and Irish Philosophy

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Contents from Bloomsbury Publishing Note on the Text Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Berkeley’s Philosophy 1. George Berkeley 2. On Missing the Wrong Target Part II: The Golden Age of Irish Philosophy 3. Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Irish Philosophy 4.The Culmination and Causation of Irish Philosophy 5.Frances Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux Problem 6.The Impact … Read more

Borges on Irish Philosophy

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Borges
Borges
110 Borges [warholized]
(c) Gisela Giardino/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

I was intrigued by these quotes from Jorge-Luis Borges in Richard Kearney’s Post-Nationalist Ireland.

My father introduced me to Berkeley’s philosophy at the age of ten. Before I was even able to read or write properly he taught me to think. He was a professor of psychology and every day after dinner he would give me a philosophy lesson. I remember very well how he first introduced me to Berkeley’s idealist metaphysics and particularly his doctrine that the material or empirical world is an invention of the creative mind: to be is to be perceived/esse est percipi. It was one day after a good lunch when my father took an orange in his hand and asked me: ‘What colour is this fruit?’ ‘Orange’, I replied. ‘Is this colour in the orange or in your perception of it?’ he continued: ‘And
the taste of the sweetness—is that in the orange itself or is it the sensation on your tongue that makes it sweet?’ This was a revelation to me: that the outside world is as we perceive or imagine it to be. It does not exist independently of our minds. From that day forth, I realised that reality and fiction were betrothed to each other, that even our ideas
are creative fictions.

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