Irish Philosophy:: Irish Culture.ie : A Guide to Irish Culture on the Web

A Guide to Irish Culture
on the web

Philosophy

Edmund Burke Edmund Burke, author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, is known to a wide public as a classic political thinker: it is less well understood that his intellectual achievement depended upon his understanding of philosophy. The present essay explores the character and significance of this for his thought. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

George Berkeley (1685–1753) Bishop of Cloyne, was one of the great philosophers of the early modern period. He was a brilliant critic of his predecessors, particularly Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke. He was a talented metaphysician famous for defending idealism, that is, the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas. Berkeley's system, while it strikes many as counter-intuitive, is strong and flexible enough to counter most objections. His most-studied works, the Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Principles, for short) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Dialogues), are beautifully written and dense with the sort of arguments that delight contemporary philosophers. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Feargall, also known as Virgil and Solivagus (fl. mid eighth century) As early as 748, he maintained the sphericity of the earth, the existence of the antipodes, and the plurality of worlds. – Historical memoirs of the city of Armagh, By James Stuart. Google Books.

Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) Hutcheson opposed Thomas Hobbes’s old thesis (later taken up by David Hume) that human conceptions of right and wrong, virtue and vice, were rooted not in any theological or natural conceptions but purely in hedonic pleasure and pain calculations. Hutcheson accepted that virtue is often associated with pleasure and vice with pain, but tried to avoid Hobbes’s conclusion that it all boils down to self–interest. The History of Economic Thought website

Remarks Upon the Fable of the Beesby Frances Hutcheson, 1750 McMaster University. Archive for the History of Economic Thought

John Scotus Eriugena Johannes (c.800–c.877), who signed himself as Eriugena in one manuscript, and who was referred to by his contemporaries as the Irishman (scottus — in the 9th century Ireland was referred to as Scotia Maior and its inhabitants as scotti) is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Richard Kearney (1954– ) holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature (including two novels and a volume of poetry) and has edited or co-edited 14 more. Richard Kearney’s Homepage

Institute for Feminism and Religion aims to explore a prophetic approach to feminism and religion, inclusive of many traditions and emerging consciousness in Ireland. Institute for Feminism and Religion

John Moriarty (1938–2007) is the author of Dreamtime, the trilogy Turtle Was Gone a Long Time: Crossing the Kedron, Horsehead Nebula Neighing, Anaconda Canoe, Nostos, an autobiography, Invoking Ireland, Night Journey to Buddh Gaia, and Serious Sounds. Before his death he was working on establishing a Christian Monastic Hedge School which he called Slá na Fírinne. John Moriarty website

Appeal of Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler Women, the Family, and Freedom By Susan G. Bell, Karen M. Offen. Google Books

Excerpt from, Appeal of One Half The Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, by William Thompson and Anna Wheeler, 1825 excerpt from Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, To Retain Them in Political and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery; In Reply to a Parargraph of Mr. Mill’s Celebrated Article On Government (London: Richard Taylor, 1825). Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

John Toland (1670–1722) Born in Ardagh on the Inishowen Peninsula, it is likely that he was originally christened Seán Eoghain Ui Thuathalláin, thus giving rise to the sobriquet Janus Junius Toland. He was the first person called a freethinker (by Bishop Berkeley) and went on to write over a hundred books. His first book Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) was burnt by the public hangman in Dublin. He escaped prosecution by fleeing to England, where he spent most of the rest of his life. In his 1704 Letters to Serena, he coined the expression ‘pantheism ‘. Wikipedia

A Guide to Irish Culture on the web

A Guide to Irish Culture
on the web