Ireland punches above its weight in many fields: cinema, literature, poetry. But what of philosophy? Ireland’s success in creative arts over centuries has led to an impression that we don’t do analytic thinking – at least not in the same way that the English, the Germans or the French do.
In his book The Irish Mind, Richard Kearney describes how “positive discrimination” against Irish thinking emerged in the colonial era. It was best summed up by the English writer Matthew Arnold in patronising commentary about the “Celtic soul”, Irish mysticism and our supposed rejection of “the despotism of fact”.
This prejudice is explored further in Thomas Duddy’s A History of Irish Thought. Through his research, he said, he frequently encountered a perception that Ireland lacks “a national, ethnically distinctive intellectual history”.
Unthinkable today revisits the matter. And, with the Fifa World Cup upon us, it’s timely to do so in the context of that memorable measure of intellectual talent: Monty Python’s Philosophers Football Match.
Would Ireland be capable of fielding a team to rival the Greek and German sides which lined out in that comedy sketch? If you haven’t seen it, a German team captained by Georg “Nobby” Hegel loses 1-0 to a Greek side containing star thinkers Plato, Aristotle and goalscorer Socrates.
Picture another cup final. This time it’s England. They have no shortage of talent to call upon. Jeremy Bentham, who invented the panopticon security design for prisons, is naturally in gaol – I mean, goal. In defence, enforcer Thomas Hobbes, who said life without laws would be “nasty, brutish, and short”. And up front, Mary Wollstonecraft, who through her Irish mother could have qualified for us but, like Declan Rice, now togs out for the Old Enemy.
But here comes Ireland.
1 George Berkeley (born Co Kilkenny)
Football is a mental game and that suits the controversial bishop of immaterialism.
2 Frances Power Cobbe (Dublin)
The pioneering animal rights activist went toe-to-toe with Charles Darwin on the moral implications of evolutionary theory, and the risk of science being used to justify cruelty. Then, as now, a rock of sense.
3 Edmund Burke (Dublin)
Who better in the back line than “the father of conservatism”?
4 Anna Doyle Wheeler (Tipperary)
It’s a game of two halves. Or it is? The feminist writer rejects arbitrary distinctions in her “Appeal to One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the other Half, Men” (1825).
5 John Scotus Eriugena
Described as the greatest philosopher writing in Latin between Augustine and Anselm, he has owned the number five position – or, at least did, in the days of the punt (when he was on the £5 note).
6 Roy Keane (Cork)
If Franz Beckenbauer can make Monty Python’s German side then Mayfield’s sage of soccer (“Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, “Everyone has opinions”, etc) surely qualifies.
7 Iris Murdoch (Dublin)
Her philosophy of “unselfing” makes her the perfect team player.
8 Francis Hutcheson (Down)
The ultimate utility player, or rather utilitarian player – as a founder of that philosophical school.
[ Do you take the Peig Sayers or the Friedrich Nietzsche view of life?Opens in new window ]
9 Onora O’Neill (Antrim)
Possibly the world’s leading thinker on trust in an age of misinformation. Who should you put your faith in? In the relevant field, says O’Neill, look for “competence, honesty, and reliability” (eg in football, Katie McCabe).
10 William Molyneux (Dublin)
Bamboozled 17th century Europe with the “Molyneux problem” (exploring the distinction between sight and touch) and hopes to cause similar havoc with England’s defence.
11 John Toland (Donegal)
There’s nothing this anticlerical “freethinker” likes more than slicing through religious doctrine.
Manager: Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Austrian felt very much at home in Ireland during stays in Wicklow, Dublin and Connemara. His “ladder metaphor” imbues the squad with self-belief as they take to the pitch: “Anyone who understands me … must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.”
Substitute: John Moriarty (Kerry)
Replacing Keane on 78 mins, the eco-philosopher brings calm to proceedings. “Our minds elsewhere, on other goals, we are forever driving past our paradisal lives,” he says.
Now imagine: “There are seconds left – the sides are deadlocked. Does a tree fall in the woods if no one sees it? Who knows, but VAR has spotted a hand ball in the English box. And it’s George Berkeley who is stepping up to take the penalty. ‘Esse est percipi,’ he says. ‘To be is to be perceived.’ Bentham – a notorious critic of human rights – tries to refute it. Already on the losing side of a key argument in moral philosophy, he dives the wrong way. And it’s a goal!
“More precisely, it either crossed the line, or it didn’t cross the line, and that’s good enough for referee Erwin Schrödinger.
“England captain AJ Ayer is protesting; he says the verification principle of logical positivism implies the final score is a pseudo-statement lacking empirical rigour. John Locke and John Stuart Mill are arguing about the proper limits of liberalism after conceding what was a soft penalty. And, in an outburst viewed as unsporting behaviour, an exasperated Bertrand Russell proclaims ‘the present King of France is bald’ and gets a red card.”
One doesn’t have to dream. Ireland has a winning tradition of philosophy. It deserves more recognition.
