Irish Philosophy.com

There is, of course, such a thing as Irish intellectual thought

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The tale of St Patrick developed over time, and to fulfil different purposes. Muirchú’s Latin Life of Saint Patrick, compiled around the year 680 which includes tales of wonders, was written to confirm Armagh’s pre-eminent place in the Irish Church. Patrick was said to have arrived in Ireland in 432AD to undermine the earlier Palladius who was documented to have arrived in 431AD. The development of the myth continued into the 15th century, with examples to be found in the Book of Lismoreand the Leabhar Breac. This tradition emphasised St Patrick as a wonder worker and a prophet. At the same time secular writings such as the 12th century Acallamh na Senorach include stories of Patrick meeting the Fianna.

From Appropriating Patrick: Keating, Ussher, Toland and the Early Irish Church on how the myths about Patrick grew and were shaped. On Irishphilosophy.com

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3 consigli e 2 letture per la Festa di San Patrizio

Il 17 Marzo si celebra il Saint Patrick’s Day, festività di origine cristiana e patrono d’Irlanda. Scopriamolo insieme con questi 3 consigli!

Ci sono diverse leggende riguardo alla figura di San Patrizio. Gli si attribuisce anche la custodia del leggendario Pozzo di S. Patrizio (appunto!): «una grotta dalla quale si poteva accedere in Purgatorio.» Lo raccontano su Wired, e spiegano anche come si festeggia questo giorno negli altri Paesi, se serve ispirazione ;)

Ogni anno in tutto il mondo alcuni dei monumenti più famosi si tingono completamente di verde per onorare l’evento. È il Global Greening ed è davvero spettacolare: provate a dare un’occhiata!

Per conoscere meglio la cultura irlandese passate a visitare questo curioso blog dedicato ai filosofi irlandesi: segnala tutte le risorse disponibili online. 

E se nel frattempo vi è venuta fame fatevi tentare dalla ricetta di un ciambellone alla Guinness :)

2 libri per celebrare San Patrizio

La sposa irlandese, Maeve Brennan.

Gente di Dublino, James Joyce. 

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Grazie!

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de Selby’s possibly most interesting theory was that human existence is “a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief” (unattributed quote, TTP.4). From this he determined that any progression in life was impossible and insisted that time as commonly understood was not real. This is exemplified in his aphorism, “a journey is a hallucination” (quote attributed to Country Album, TTP.4). A trip from A to B is, per de Selby, in fact a series of infinitesimal pauses. Thus at no point is the “traveller” in motion. He points to the photograph as proof of this thesis. This was not merely theoretical; he is alleged to have put it into practice by travelling from Bath to Folkestone though the use of picture postcards of the supposed route, barometric instruments, clocks and a device to regulate gaslight to simulate sunlight at various “times” of day.

From de Selby: The Philosopher Preserved by Flann O'Brien on IrishPhilosophy.com

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For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it.

wilde (via fuckyeahwilde) Oscar Wilde: Essays and Lectures THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART (via ringtales) Full text available from UCC Celt project.

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In 1824 James Mill, follower of Bentham and father of John Stuart Mill, wrote an article called On Government for the Encyclopedia Britannica. In it he argued that individuals whose interests were represented by another would not be inconvenienced by being denied a vote. Such people included all women:

the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers or in that of their husbands

This triggered the writing of An Appeal Of One Half Of The Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men” by Irish philosophers Anna Doyle Wheeler and William Thompson (published under Thompson’s name in 1825). This text, called by Thomas Duddy the greatest feminist treatise between Mary Wollstonecraft’s (1792) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and John Stuart Mill’s (1869) The Subjection of Women, demolishes Mill's argument.

More details here.

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I mock Plotinus’ thought And cry in Plato’s teeth, Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul

From The Tower (1928) by William Butler Yeats, expressing his belief that life is rooted in passionate lived experience.

Yeats died on this day in 1939. Read more on IrishPhilosophy.com

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I mock Plotinus’ thought And cry in Plato’s teeth, Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul

From The Tower (1928) by William Butler Yeats, expressing his belief that life is rooted in passionate lived experience. Yeats died on this day in 1939. Read more on IrishPhilosophy.com

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No wonder you should think it little To lick a rascal statesman’s spittle Who to show your great devotion Oft swallowed down a stronger potion A composition more absurd Bob’s spittle mixed with Harry’s t[urd]

James Arbuckle (1729/30) A Panegyric on the Reverend D[ean] S[wif]t. Ah, Enlightenment debate! Quoted in "The Biter Bitten: Ireland and the Rude Enlightenment", by Michael Brown More on James Arbuckle here

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Admittedly, Swift was not an easy man with whom to get on with, aggravating his church superior, Archbishop William King of Dublin, himself a truculent steward prone to picking fights. Arbuckle was an equally thorny character who made enemies easily. He found it necessary to leave the University of Glasgow in a hurry when, as a student, he was involved in an altercation concerning the election of the rector. He retreated to Dublin, where he fell into favor with Robert, Viscount Molesworth of Swords—himself described by one acquaintance as “waspish” and prone to anticlerical outbursts. These traits helped Molesworth to remain close to that most volatile and barbed of personalities, the freethinker John Toland. He promulgated a kind of literary subterfuge that Swift mocked in a series of texts, notably An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, in which he mentioned Toland by name.

From Michael Brown's "The Biter Bitten: Ireland and the Rude Enlightenment" on James Arbuckle's feud with Jonathan Swift. The Enlightenment was sometimes rude and obnoxious, possibly all the more so when contained in a small city like Dublin.

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George Berkeley, a life in monuments. 1. A plaque in Derry where he was Dean from 1727-1734. 2. A plaque on the wall of Harris Manchester College, Holystreet, Oxford 3. A plaque explaining why Berkeley CA was named after Berkeley. 4. Details of Berkeley's grave in Christ Church Oxford 5. The momument to Berkeley in Cloyne, where he was bishop.

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This Tumblr is moving to a new home on IrishPhilosophy.com. All the existing posts have been moved there and there's a lot more to come. Hope to see you there.

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Burke’s hatred of the French revolutionaries was not, at root, reactionary. He opposed them not so much because he disagreed with their political views, though he certainly did, but because he thought those views spelt the death of political society as such. For Burke, the French revolution was an assault on the very conditions of possibility of political culture, a kind of transcendental error, because in destroying, as he saw it, the institutions of civil society, it did away with the very medium by which political power is tempered and rendered tolerable. Burke’s conservative colleagues were quick enough to endorse this criticism when it came to France, but hardly when it concerned the miserable colony on their own doorstep. His animus against autocrats was indeed in one sense conservative: he feared that they would breed mass disaffection, and so threaten the status quo. The British, by failing to extend the blessings of the Whig settlement to their Irish colonials, were obtusely driving this traditionalist religious nation into the arms of an unholy revolutionism, just as they did with their American dependents. If Burke did not approve of Irish republicanism, he saw precisely how the British were responsible for creating it.

Terry Eagleton, Saving Burke from the Tories Magazine article from New Statesman (1996), Vol. 126, No. 4341

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Giants of the Scottish Enlightenment - Part 1 - Francis Hutcheson A video (8:30) from the Institute for Humane Studies. Prof. James Stacey Taylor discusses the contributions of Francis Hutcheson, an intellectual of the Scottish Enlightenment who was instrumental in advancing the sentimentalist approach to morality. Good despite the random insults to Scotland.

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Despite being one of the four most cited theologians in these islands in the 14th century (along with Ockham, Bradwardine, and Wodeham), Richard FitzRalph has almost been forgotten. An international conference on Richard FitzRalph was held in Maynooth in November 2010 to commemorate the 650th anniversary of FitzRalph’s death. After this event the Society was founded, to work towards furthering the study of and improving the public awareness of Richard of Dundalk. Papers from the 2010 conference. The FitzRalph Critical Edition Project in NUIM.

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There are two extreme responses that the financial crisis and its aftermath have provoked. One is to say that all will be well if our governments stop trying to anticipate and deflect the movements of the tiger by propping up and bailing out the bodies that they judge too big to fail. This approach, exemplified in the stance of the Tea Party in the United States, amounts to pre‐emptive surrender in face of the profit‐seeking ventures of credit and capital. It gives government the task of law and order and calls for the abdication of the state in the sphere of production, commerce and employment. This first response would downsize and marginalize government, letting the market rule unimpeded in the financial and material economy. The second radical response would recommend the very opposite. It would support a rejection of dependence on the sort of beast that the international financial system constitutes. Where the first approach would give the tiger free range, this would simply kill the animal. Those attracted to the response complain that that so long as the tiger survives, we all live at its mercy. They recommend that we should reject dependency on impersonal market forces and reclaim our status as a democratic people, our standing as rulers of our individual and collective lives. Because they are simple, these two responses have a natural attraction at a time of extreme crisis. It is comforting to think that all will be well if we can only liberate the power of the market or if we can only re‐assert our will as a people. But because the responses are simplistic, we should back away from each.

Philip Pettit writing in Books and Ideas. Republican Reflections on the 15-M Movement.

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All the while, Swift was keen to acquire a deanery in England — one with a good income, such as Wells, Ely or Lichfield. But he was to be sorely disappointed. Preferment was at the disposal of Queen Anne, who deeply resented his satirical remarks on the Church. Eventually, in April, 1713, he was offered the deanery of St Patrick’s in Dublin, which was in the gift of his friend, the Duke of Ormonde. Commenting on Swift’s promotion, William King, Archbishop of Dublin, said: “A dean could do less mischief than a bishop.” For Swift, the deanery was a “safety net”, since his hopes of something better in England had come to nothing. The drawback was that it meant living in exile: “I am condemned to live again in Ireland … I cannot think nor write in this country”. He was “like a rat in a hole”, said his biographer, Leslie Stephen. Dubliners coldly received Swift on the day of his installation, in June 1713. They shouted abuse in the street and posted notes on the cathedral door, taunting him for his criticism of the Church: “I was horribly melancholy while they were installing me, but it begins to wear off, and change to dullness.”

Swift failing at "popularity in Dublin" contest. Also failing at "moving away from Ireland" contest unlike Burke, Beckett, Wilde, Joyce...

From the Irish Examiner: Reluctant Irishman who became the high priest of satire on events 300 years ago today.

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Listen to Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous by George Berkeley on LibriVox. THREE DIALOGUES BETWEEN HYLAS AND PHILONOUS, IN OPPOSITION TO SCEPTICS AND ATHEISTS The page also links to a Project Gutenberg version of the text. (Note: Hylas is considered to be putting forward the views of John Locke, Philonous puts Berkeley's case.)