IrishPhilosophy

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Blog: IrishPhilosophy.com Catherine Barry, Hume Scholar, working on a PhD at Maynooth University on religious toleration in 18th century Ireland. #EarlyModern, with a broad interest in Irish intellectual thought.

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IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 20d

5/ The very first recorded mention of 'vox populi, vox Dei' includes this concern about truth, and it comes from another Englishman, the 8th century Alcuin. (It also privileges the elite qua elite.) archive.org/details/voxp... (a history of the use of the proverb) p. 9

9. The people in accordance with divine law are to be led, not followed. And when witnesses are needed, men of position are to be preferred. Nor are those to be listened to who are accustomed to say, "The voice of the people is the voice of God." For the clamor of the crowd [vulgi] is very close to madness.

10. There is a popular proverb: from hardness something survives, from softness, on the other hand, nothing remains. Nevertheless wisdom ought to wait upon constancy and constancy upon perfect wisdom, so that constancy may be wise and wisdom constant.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 20d

3/ Locke was more critical yet of the idea "vox populi vox Dei". Just because an idea was held by many did not make it *true*. (An idea being rare didn't make true either.) Unlike the Greeks & Romans, Locke believed mass error was possible. archive.org/details/lock... p. 53

many men's eyes they think cannot but see right; so many men's understandings of all sorts cannot be deceived, and therefore [they) will not venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age, nor have so presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbours. They are content to go with the crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going right, or at least serves them as well. But however vox populi vox Dei has prevailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember wherever God delivered his oracles by the multitude, or Nature truths by the herd.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 20d

2/ Swift's remark was in an obscure work about interactions of elites and commoners in Greece and Rome. He distinguishes general opinion (which classical elites tended to follow) from the opinion of a small majority (dare we say Brexit?) en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wor...

[Greek and Roman elites saw it as a] point of honour to condemn whatever person they [the people] impeached, however frivolous the articles were, upon which they began, or however weak the surmises, whereon they were to proceed in their proofs. For, to conceive that the body of the people could be mistaken, was an indignity not to be imagined, till the consequences had convinced them, when it was past remedy. And I look upon this as a fate, to which all popular accusations are subject; though I should think that the saying, Vox populi vox Dei, ought to be understood of the universal bent and current of a people, not of the bare majority of a few representatives, which is often procured by little arts, and great industry and application; wherein those, who engage in the pursuits of malice and revenge, are much more sedulous than such as would prevent them.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 20d

What song did the Sirens sing in The Odyssey? Wrong answers only.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 26d

A Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria), showing off the reason for its common name in a ridiculously attractive St Joseph's Square today. @maynoothuniversity.ie @stpatsmaynooth.bsky.social

Against a background of New House (covered with green creeper), and St Patrick's University Chapel (obscured except for the steeple by a weeping willow), the Smoke Bush appears as a cloud of russet fluff on an elegant grey trunk. Close up, its clear the plumes are the remains of the airy plumes of pinkish-purple flowers that appear in summer. Past its first flush, yet still beautiful.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 27d

I don't know if you depressed Dr John Curry, Charles O'Conor of Belanagare, but you are somewhat depressing me! A letter from an oppressive age (Ireland, 1758) archive.org/details/lett...

The governors of all nations (persons in power, in place, and in expectation) are generally more corrupt than the governed; for the latter have no expectations but the reasonable ones of security and ease. Men in authority, therefore, are hardly tractable, and they hate all changes for the better, if not the better for them. I have, for this reason, no great matter to expect from appeals to them when enforced only by the strength of the argument and the weakness of the arguer.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 29d

In the 17th century, 1 and 2 were called "priestcraft", the use of religion for secular gain. Liberty Fund: oll.libertyfund.org/titles/champ...

“[The Clergy] forecasted to have no other Superior but the King, whose new Authority they engaged to maintain by the influence they had on the Consciences of the People; expecting with reason the like Favour and Protection from the King, together with an encrease of their Power; since he was in a great measure obliged to them for his own”
- Robert Molesworth, “An Account of Denmark” (1649 edition)

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· 29d

There's an alternative Copenhagen mermaid (discovered by my son) which is nightmarish.

Perched on a pile of rocks with modern office buildings as a backdrop, the The Genetically Modified Little Mermaid (by Bjørn Nørgaard) seems to be captured mid-transmogrification, with her face mask like, and her limbs apparently morphing into legs.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 12

5/ King Billy was a icon for those seeking Catholic Relief too. Here, in 1727 a Catholic writer outlines the interdenominal nature of William of Orange's lands and army. "A letter to the Revd. Mr. Stephen Radcliffe, M.A. vicar of Naas": link.gale.com/apps/doc/CW0...

[In] Germany the Lutheran and Romish Priests do in some Churches successively celebrate divine service upon the same Altar. The Papists there, under Protestant Princes, bear Civil and Military Employments without any other Distinction than that of Merit; have full Liberty of Concience, intermarry with Protestants, and enjoy all other Benefits of human and Civil Society. In Holland, the Papists have likewise full Liberty of Conscience: They are employed in all Military Affairs; They are Lieutenants, Generals, Major-Generals, Colonels, Captains, inferior Officers, and common Soldiers; nay, here in Ireland, in King William's Time, You, your self might have seen many Dutch Officers and Soldiers going to Mass, [...]

[at the same Time] fighting for King William against King James and the Papists, and being frequently ask'd by such of the Irish Officers, as could speak French, why they, who were Catholicks themselves, would fight against a Catholick Prince, and Roman Catholicks? Their Answer was, that tho they were Catholicks, their Swords were Protestants, and that being employ'd and pay'd by a Protestant Prince, they could not, would not, betray their Trust, nor forfeit their Honour. Whence it is manifest that neither the German Protestant Princes, nor the States of Holland, nor even King William himself, had the Notion of the Papists which you are pleased to conceive of them.

pifts which you are pleaſed to conceive of them

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 12

3/ And the iconography was so much better. Both James II and William III fought at the Boyne. Neither was present at Aughrim. A classic depiction from 1778 of William crossing the Boyne on a white horse. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bat...

"The Battle of the Boyne" (Benjamin West, 1778) depicts William (left) in a red coat, brandishing a sword and riding a white horse as he crosses the Boyne at the head of his troops.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 5

#AmRev250 #4thJuly #IndependenceDay brilliance from @anniewestdotcom.bsky.social (alt added)

Thomas Jefferson sits in his study, stressed. His elbows are on the table, his hands either side of his face as he frowns in thought. Before him on the table are papers with sections of the Declaration of Independence, surrounded by failed drafts, crumpled up.

He thinks "...among these are Life, Liberty....and...and......."

Behind him, we see a pastoral scene, with an angler fishing in the river, people strolling, lovers meeting, a boy flying a kite, a group throwing a ball, and various other pursuits of happiness.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 3

I lived in a small single aspect south facing apartment in 1990s. In any warm spell, it baked. Can't imagine what it would have been like in the recent heatwave. Housing, including apartments, must be liveable.

New apartment standards introduced by the Minister for Housing, James Browne, will now make apartments smaller, reduce the number of dual-aspect apartments required in any one development, limit the requirement for balconies and lower floor-to-ceiling heights, all in the interests of increasing financial viability for developers. The viability of being able to live in these apartments – particularly with hotter summers - has not been given much attention.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 3

New #AmRev250 history just dropped.

"There are all these anti-Trump protests: we don't want kings, we want rule of law," Thiel said. He framed the American Revolution not as a campaign against King George III, but as a revolt against an all-powerful British parliament, whose lawmakers exercised "totalitarian" control.

In Thiel's telling, the US Constitution was designed as a corrective to Britain's "tyrannical rule of lawyers," with a presidency, he said, built to be "more powerful than King George III."

He contrasted the United States's constitutional system with that of today's European Union, which he described as a stagnant, rule-bound bureaucracy, under which people are "NPCS" with no power to make decisions. non-player characters in video games

"The EU is rule of law," Thiel said. "It is like bad AI."

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jul 1

THE POLITICS OF AI ARE GETTING WORSE... Training an employers AI is risky longterm for employees. www.citadelsecurities.com/news-and-ins...

Danielle Li's work is useful here because it makes the worker-agency problem precise. Al adoption is not just a question of whether firms can deploy models, it is a question of whether workers will continue supplying the tacit knowledge those models need. Firms have historically rented expertise from workers...but Al allows them to record, codify and scale that expertise as capital. Once workers understand that their documentation, chats, decisions, and process knowledge can be used to train systems that replicate their work, they have an incentive to withhold, bargain, litigate or demand a share of the gains. For now, the benefits of Al are being sold as productivity, but the costs are being experienced as disruption

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 29

It's *interesting* that in the US ambassadors' letter printed in Politico, they didn't include separation of powers in this bit. www.politico.eu/article/lett...

We each know President Donald Trump personally, and can assure you there has never been a president more committed to the Declaration's ideals - to political liberty, freedom of speech and rule by consent of the governed or to world peace and prosperity. We are extremely proud to serve in his administration.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 28

Inspired by this invitation to Europeans to celebrate #AmRev250 today www.politico.eu/article/lett... I have written a piece recalling the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers referenced in the letter. irishphilosophy.com/2026/06/28/a...

John Trumbull's painting, Declaration of Independence. It depicts the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman) presenting their work to the Congress. It does not represent a real ceremony; the characters portrayed were never in the same room at the same time.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 23

I should give the full quote in that case! Synge was associated with Robert Molesworth & Francis Hutcheson. He was attacked for a sermon he made on toleration and wrote a reply in which the quote below appears. archive.org/details/bim_...

I think it had been in the whole, happy for the Christian World, that his Works had not been preserv'd; because all the Good which his best Writings have done or will do to the End of the World, is vastly over-ballanc'd by the Mischief he has already occasion'd, by this one wrong Opinion of the Lawfulness of Persecution, on Account of Errors in Religion.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 23

3/ Milton's meeting with Galileo proved more attractive than his ideas about censorship for many years. "When a legend becomes fact, print the legend." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mi...

A young John Milton (left) is entering a room to visit the elderly, blind scientist Galileo Galilei (right). Behind Milton stands a Dominican monk holding a set of large keys, representing his role as a jailer. Galileo is seated at a desk, in a room cluttered with symbols of his work including an hourglass, a telescope on the wall behind him, and various manuscripts. In the far left a bed is just visible with a crucifix over it. On the wall just to the right of Milton is a copy of Titian’s The Assassination of Saint Peter Martyr.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 14

#YeatsDay I think of this chart often these days.

Annie West's Yeats Test (with apologies to Fintan O'Toole). A line graph with "Amount of Fear" on the X-axis, y-axis is frequency with a curve linking poetic references.

So "Peace in our time" is low in fear and maps to "anything by Seamus Heaney". "There are no strangers here" and "no country for old men" have more fear but are still below "pushing and shoving" on the X axis. "All changed, changed utterly" lies between "scaremongering" and threats", "things fall apart" at "attempts at diplomacy" (we are here?) and "a terrible beauty is born" sits at "thermonuclear war".

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 14

Have to add an ALT. Love the Dublin policemen diagnosing Yeats with poetic madness. #YeatsDay

2 "Yeats never had the remotest idea of taking care of himself. He would go all day without food unless someone remembered it for him, and in the same way would go on eating unless someone checked him. That first winter, a hard one, he would come to see me-five miles from Dublin, striding along over the snow-bound roads, a gaunt young figure, mouthing poetry, swinging his arms and gesticulating as he went. George Russell complained to me the other day that Willie Yeats had said somewhere of him, and printed it, that he used to walk about the streets of Dublin swinging his arms like a flail, unconscious of the alarm and bewilderment of passers-by. It was Willie's own case. I remember how the big Dublin policemen used to eye him in those days, as though uncertain whether to 'run him in' or not. But, by and by, they used to say, 'Shure, 'tisn't mad he is, nor yet drink taken. 'Tis the poethry that's disturbin' his head,' and leave him alone."

Katharine Tynan, 1913

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 11

Love this. Alt added. There was absolutely a portion of the jury who said, "This guy is not guilty, but man, Fuck him." Socrates said he should be given free dinners!

Breaking Bad, Jesse & Walter are across a table from each other, eating.

JESSE: The vote to execute Socrates had a greater margin than the vote to convict him.

WALTER: What?

JESSE: Socrates was convicted by a margin of 280-220 by a 500-man jury. However, they voted that he be executed by a margin of 360-140.

JESSE: Apparently they were insulted by his proposed punishment for himself being very light. But that means there's a portion of the jury that was like, "This guy is not guilty, but man, Fuck him."

WALTER: Jesse, what the hell are you talking about?

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 10

A modest proposal. #Swift #Gulliver300

World Cup of ideas

Sir, Joe Humphreys ("Ireland vs England in philosophy: Who would win a World Cup of ideas?" June 8th) makes a strong case for a very competitive Irish team, but the absence of Jonathan Swift from the starting 11 is unforgivable.

Swift's contribution to the philo-sophical tradition of utopianism, im-mortalised in his masterpiece Gulliv-er's Travels, cannot go unnoticed, especially this year, the 300th anniversary of its publication.

Swift's inclusion in the Irish team could be a gamechanger. As Kathleen Williams pointed out in her 1958 book Jonathan Swift and the Age of Com-promise, Swift's work is characterised by "the elusive brilliance of the attack [But] the attack is also a defence".

Thus, I have a modest proposal to improve the Irish team: take William Molyneux out and give the No 10 shirt to Swift. A small change guaranteed to make a big difference.

Humphreys is right, Ireland's philosophical tradition deserves more recognition, It also needs more space on the school curriculum. Without philosophy we would only be a horde of yahoos. - Yours, etc,
Prof VITTORIO BUFACCHI, Department of Philosophy, University College Cork.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 5

"The terms of this comparison are strictly binary—there are only the great and the diminutive. One is either massively aggrandized or utterly mortified" until...

The long overthrow of slavery and the dismantling of the European empires, both of which we can see as culminating very roughly in the 1960s, created the conditions in which it was possible to, as it were, normalize being normal. By normal I mean escaping from Gulliver's confounding predicament - the ability to be neither great nor negligible but comfortably on the same level as everyone else. To go back to Berkeley's "Disposition of the Eyes," we might invoke Philip Pettit's "eyeball test" for the existence of a genuine republic: the ability of each person to "look others in the eye without reason for fear or deference." And by normalizing I mean making this principle into a governing political ethic.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Jun 3

Lack of foresight is really unsurprising in an LLM, but this kind of research is really valuable, since it demonstrates it clearly. Can we call this BHD "the Broom Effect"?

From the original Sorcerer's Apprentice starring Mickey Mouse, 5 brooms created from the original water carrying broom walk down steps into deep water, to deposit more water in line with commands given.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· May 31

So good, it needs an ALT. #CSLewis

A LETTER FROM C.S. LEWIS:

TO DR. ALASTAIR FOWLER.

10 December 1959

I only once detected a pupil offering me some one else (Elton) as his own work. I told him I was not a detective nor even a schoolmaster, nor a nurse, and that I absolutely refused to take any precaution against this puerile trick; that I'd as soon think it my business to see that he washed behind his ears or wiped his bottom.... He went down of his own accord the next week and I never saw him again. I think you ought to make a general announcement of that sort. You must not waste your time constantly reading me and Dowden and Churton Collins as a sort of police measure. It is bad for them to think this is 'up to you'. Flay them alive if you happen to detect them; but don't let them feel that you are a safeguard against the effects of their own idleness. What staggers me is how any man can prefer the galley-slave labour of transcription to the freeman's work of attempting an essay on his own....

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· May 23

(Image: Truth Social post by Trump, featuring the words "Hello, Greenland!" over the image of a giant Trump, leering over a mountain range at a classic Greenland town.) #Gulliver300 Counterpoint:

Classic image from Gulliver's Travels (300 years old this year), where Gulliver is tied down by the tiny Liliputians. Image source: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65473/pg65473-images.html

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· May 6

A beautiful day on campus @stpatsmaynooth.bsky.social @maynoothuniversity.ie

The tower and steeple of the chapel stand out against a clear blue sky, framed by red and green leafed trees, with the Columba centre on the right bathed in sunshine.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· May 5

It's weird how the most obscure 18th century pamphlets are topical these days: "arbitrary will...acting against all the salutary Truths which might detect or limit it" (Charles O'Conor, Seasonable Thoughts (1751), p.5)

4. Persons interested in Error [i.e. persons benefiting from error] will not fail to establish it , when armed with Power. Power infers
arbitrary Will ; a Liberty of acting against all the salutary Truths which might detect or limit it; and hence the Inutility, and frequently the Danger, of proposing any Measures of Rectitude in Tyrannical
Countries.

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· May 1

Earliest reference in English to Fontenelle and strawberries that I could find is here, from 1863, p. 103. books.google.ie/books?id=6tA...

IrishPhilosophy@irishphilosophy· Apr 30

Unfortunately I don't know that, but it would be interesting if so since eating too much fruit was supposed to be bad for you in 17th century. This description of a dead wife by her husband assumes it would be better if she ate no summer fruit at all. archive.org/details/bim_...