Irish Philosophy & Me

Cathy Barry charts her journey through historical Irish thought.

- Catherine Barry

Some claim Britain as the origin-point of the Enlightenment. France and Germany are equally famous for their philosophy. But what about Ireland? Those particularly interested in philosophy may have heard of John Scotus Eriugena and George Berkeley, but probably no more than that. Ireland has not been seen as a philosophical place.

In 2013 I was dabbling in blogging. Just before St Patrick’s Day (17th March), I saw Berkeley and Irish Philosophy on a library shelf, and decided to post about Berkeley, the single isolated genius I expected to find in that book. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I wasn’t expecting, for example, William Molyneux promoting Enlightenment thought in late seventeenth century Dublin. A correspondent with John Locke, Molyneux set up an Irish philosophical society on the lines of Britain’s Royal Society, and convinced the provost of Trinity College Dublin to add Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding to the syllabus.

As for John Toland, he was a shock to everyone. Born into an Irish-speaking Catholic family in Donegal, he left all that behind and became an advocate of ‘rational religion’ (that is, of deism), as he expounded in Christianity Not Mysterious (1696). The book, which argued that true religion includes no mysteries, caused a furore in both England and Ireland. When Toland arrived in Dublin in 1697 he found himself denounced from the pulpit. A few, including Molyneux, welcomed him, but after months of arguing in taverns and coffee shops, he left just before the Irish Parliament ordered his book banned and burned by the public hangman. Never to return to Ireland, Toland was later an editor of republican writings, a political philosopher supporting the Whigs, a pamphleteer for various political figures, and a hanger-on at the court of Sophia of Hanover.