Even academics who would retreat in horror from the idea of
cracking an Irish joke suffer, Duddy argues, from a tendency to
underestimate the Irish as thinkers. According to him, they assume
that unlike, say, France, Germany, England or Japan, Ireland lacks
the 'continuities of culture, institution, and civic life that are
the prerequisite for a national, ethnically distinctive
intellectual history'. This book aims to make them reconsider. To
do this, Duddy provides an ambitious intellectual history,
stretching from the seventh century to the 20th. Along the way, we
meet the Irish Augustine, who attempted to explain all the miracles
in the Bible as God operating within, rather than violating, the
laws of the universe; John Scottus Eriugena, who thought that
reality could be interpreted in five different, mutually exclusive
ways; Robert Boyle, who is included on the grounds that he had
large landholdings in Ireland; a few famous names like George
Berkeley and Jonathan Swift; and modern Princeton philosopher
Philip Pettit, who makes a relatively convincing argument for
supporting what he calls republicanism over liberalism. As this is
a history of thought, rather than of writing (Ireland's credentials
in the poetry department always having been widely known to be top
notch), Wilde and Yeats, although present, get short shrift; and
Joyce does not appear at all. This is a lucid, if somewhat dry,
work of intellectual history that presents a number of intriguing
capsule descriptions of its various thinkers. It is possible that
'Irish Thought' is a meaningless category in the first place, and
Duddy's defence of it is one of the weakest points in the book.
Nevertheless, it's a well-written and interesting textbook which
should be of use to students of philosophy and Irish history.
(Kirkus UK)
The first complete introduction to the subject ever published, A History of Irish Thought presents an inclusive survey of Irish thought and the history of Irish ideas against the backdrop of current political and social change in Ireland.
Clearly written and engaging, the survey introduces an array of philosophers, polemicists, ideologists, satirists, scientists, poets and political and social reformers, from the anonymous seventh-century monk, the Irish Augustine, and John Scottus Eriugena, to the twentieth century and W.B. Yeats and Iris Murdoch.
Thomas Duddy rediscovers the liveliest and most contested issues in the Irish past, and brings the history of Irish thought up to date. This volume will be of great value to anyone interested in Irish culture and its intellectual history.
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