This is an important pioneering work. Its author, who lectures in philosophy at the National University of Ireland, Galway, has set out to write the first "synoptic, wide-ranging, inclusive survey of the varieties of Irish thought". Some will see this as an impossible task. There have indeed been notable Irish thinkers, but they may appear too scattered and too diverse to constitute anything that could be called "Irish thought?" However, Duddy robustly (and rightly) rejects this. Irish thought was seriou
Anyone writing a history of Irish thought faces twin problems of definition: who qualifies as Irish and what constitutes thought? Duddy rightly provides a fairly inclusive answer to the first problem. Those who are born in Ireland are treated as Irish. This enables him to include Swift, Hutcheson and the pioneer chemist, Robert Boyle, in his survey, even though all were of English or Scottish parentage. His answer to the second problem is also quite inclusive. "Thought" for him includes not just philosophy, theology and science, but also the kinds of ideas one finds in political and cultural theory, in polemical and satirical writing (such as Swift's) and in certain "visionary writing" (such as that of Yeats).
Irish thought for Duddy begins with an obscure seventh-century figure, known to scholars as the Irish Augustine, author of a treatise on the miracle stories found in scripture. Surprisingly, he takes a critical approach to these, interpreting them whenever possible in a naturalistic fashion. But though some of his thinking anticipates Hume, it seems clear that his approach was motivated not by scepticism, but by the doctrine that God's original act of creation was complete and was not amended by the marvels described in scripture.
He is followed two centuries later by a much more substantial figure, John Scottus Eriugena, Ireland's first émigré intellectual, whose emergence on the European stage in the middle of the eighth century marks the end of the Dark Ages. Eriugena was a daring and original thinker who was later condemned by the Church. He was, however, something of a false dawn so far as Irish thought is concerned, since after him there is no Irish thinker of any consequence until the modern period. This is perhaps not so surprising when one considers that he departed from Ireland shortly after the first Viking raids on the Irish monasteries signalled the beginning of a lengthy period of disturbance.
Irish thought came to life again in the 17th century. Duddy singles out two figures as being of particular importance in this period. Robert Boyle, once known, rather hyperbolically, as "the father of chmistry and the son of the Great Earl of Cork", is still recognised as an important contributor to the development of the experimental method in science. William Molyneus has several claims to fame. He wrote a pioneering work in optics which influenced the theory of perception of George Berkeley and he was the author of a political tract, The Case of Ireland, which, though intended as a defence of the rights of the Protestant minority could not, without inconsistency, be understood as other than a defence of the rights of the entire nation.
IRISH thought reached its apogee in the 18th century. Duddy deals fully and fairly with the three undoubted major figures from this period: Berkeley, Swift and Burke. He seems over-generous in his assessment of that enigmatic figure, John Toland, who should perhaps be more properly assigned to the first or second division rather than to the premiership.
Irish thought declined in the 19th century and this decline continued into the 20th. Neither century produced any thinker of the same stature as the giants of the 18th. Duddy suggest that this was due to a number of factors: the decline of interest in religion, the emergence of a consensus on political and ideological issues and the growth of specialisation in the universities. However, none of these were of great moment in the 19th or early 20th century when the decline was already apparent.
A survey of this magnitude is bound to give rise to quibbles about who should or not have been included. What cannot be questioned, however, is that its author has done a considerable service to anyone interested in the intellectual development of Ireland.
P.J. McGrath is a former senior lecturer in philosophy
at UCC. He has published works on ethics and the philosophy of religion
P.J. McGrath
A History of Irish Thought.
By Thomas Duddy. Routledge, 384pp. £45 sterling hbk/
£12.99 sterling pbk