Was it Thomism all along?

There exists a tension within the soul of Irish republicanism that has been ignored for far too long. It is the tension between Gaelic particularism and republican universalism. In his graveside oration on the death of O'Donovan Rossa, Patrick Pearse endorsed the vision attributed to the deceased of an Ireland "not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free as well". Republicans can legitimately strive for an 'Irish Ireland' and still be republican; the question here how such an aim is rationalised in theory. The problem is that Gaelicism is clearly a particular conception of the good. Yet republicanism proper is supposed to be neutral as to particular ideas of the good, promoting only the good of civic virtue and vigilance. Some will point out that a republic is also concerned with promoting justice, liberty and equality, but these are principles of right, not good. 

Pearse didn't create this tension of course. Two of the four figures he references in Ghosts, Tone and Davis, demonstrate it. Tone is part of a wider Enlightenment rationalist tradition and that is reflected in how he speaks about liberty and freedom. Spiritually, his thinking was understandably close to that of the French Revolution. Davis, writing half a century later, is part of a different zeitgeist - a romantic nationalism that is rooted in the German thinking of the 19th century (note). For Tone the nation is something created to achieve an end, freedom from tyranny. We cast off whatever prior labels we have and band together under the common name of 'Irishman' in order to sever the English connection. To become free, we leave our various notions of the good - catholic, protestant, dissenter - at the door. Davis saw the nation quite differently, something explicitly ancient and spiritual. The unified nation exists prior to politics or the state. He wants us to be free but more importantly he wants us to be us.

As Pearse wrote in Ghosts:

"Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make explicit the truth that a nationality is a spirituality. Tone had postulated the great primal truth that Ireland must be free. Davis, accepting that and developing it; stated the truth in its spiritual aspect, that Ireland must be herself; not merely a free self-governing state, but authentically the Irish nation, bearing all the majestic marks of her nationhood."

Tone and Davis were both protestant. The cleavage between catholic and protestant within Irish separatism is sometimes remarked upon but here we have a very significant difference between two protestant separatists; a view of the nation as subsequent to the state/political versus a view of the nation as prior to it.

Both views are in conflict and neither view on its own is satisfactory for the 'Irish Irelander'. Under Tone's view, we have freedom but without a detailed conception of the good, such as the desire to restore Gaelic society. Indeed, Tone had little interest in Irish culture (see Bartlett, p39). There's nothing inconsistent about this; it is not at all clear how one derives the promotion of Gaelic culture or any particular culture from discussions about the right. Today, we hear Provisional Sinn Féin press for Irish language rights in the six counties. Of course, in trying to reconcile the need to appear cosmopolitan with the instinct to conserve our native culture, they must push the lingo of rights to its extreme. It's all rather disingenuous. A right will certainly give anyone who wants to speak the Irish language assistance, but it won't encourage anyone to learn it in the first place which is surely the point.

With Davis, meanwhile, you have a different problem; the potential for the good to run amok and encroach upon freedom. To take the Irish language example again, Davis was cited by Pearse as a major inspiration for the later Gaelic revival. Without wanting to put words in Davis' mouth, a logical extension of his view (as presented by Pearse) is probably the 20th century policy of compulsory Irish in schools. If the goal is to be authentically ourselves, such a policy is surely warranted. Compulsory Irish can be said to restrict individual freedom. In practice, nationalists/republicans would not have a problem with this policy, reasonably asserting that there is no such thing as perfect freedom and that sometimes rights will be infringed in the name of the good. The problem is that this kind of argument feels arbitrary and sounds like special pleading. It can also rebound on the person making it when the view of the 'good' changes. What is the recourse if he has already conceded that the good can trump rights? It becomes a battle over the meaning of authenticity, but this is a highly judgmental and subjective test. Another problem with simply asserting the good is that a point comes where coercion becomes self-defeating; we get the Murder Machine as anticipated by Pearse himself.

Thomism

A solution to the above is found by going back to the idea of the Natural Law. According to St Thomas Aquinas, there are four categories of law; Eternal, Divine, Natural and Human. The highest category is the Eternal Law which governs everything according to God's perfect plan. It is largely inaccessible to humans. Natural Law is that part of the eternal law that is accessible to humans via the unique faculty of reason. Divine Law is that part of the Eternal Law as revealed through scripture and sacred tradition and is the proper domain of the Church. Finally, Human Law is positive secular law and is the proper domain of the state. The Natural Law is real in that it exists independently of us and it is objective in that its provisions can be known through reason.

An appeal to the Natural Law is therefore an appeal to the right. It differs from Enlightenment appeals to the right in two respects. The first is its realism; its obligations pre-exist us due to the fact that it is derived from nature which is created by God (an important point here is that natural law is different from the physical laws of nature). Enlightenment thinkers can assert the objectivity of moral law, but without the divine element, cannot assert its reality beyond the world of empirical observation. Immanuel Kant, the finest of these thinkers, could at best postulate an objective moral law. He could not say it existed as a fact. The second is its account of the good. The Natural Law as described by Aquinas provides a singular and objective account of the good. Simply put, it tells us that everything in creation is endowed with an inclination towards the good (and therefore God); goodness for a thing is its actualisation and perfection in accordance with its inherent purpose. This is called teleology. Enlightenment thinkers tended to reject the idea of intrinsic purpose and therefore inherent good; this means that good becomes subjective and inferior to the right. Romanticists inverted this reasoning, accepting the subjectivity of the good but prioritising it over the right, leading to relativism.

The Good

What then does the Natural Law tell us about the good that the romanticists and Enlightenment rationalists cannot? As stated, the Natural Law derives an ought from an is because it sees everything as having inherent God-given purpose and sees the good as the fulfilment of that purpose. Another important point should be noted here. Aquinas was an Aristotelian; for him perfection was not attained by moving beyond the immediate world to some higher realm of pure forms. Qua Aristotle, universals and particulars are not radically separate notions. In fact, reality for humans is a composite of both. No universal exists that is not instantiated in a particular. For example, humans are essentially social and political beings. They cannot simply be abstracted from their environment, society and culture. If the goal is to cultivate human flourishing, this is achieved in the contexts that humans are situated. My personhood is not fully realised by my turning away from my national heritage but through the embracement of it. Similarly, it is not realised by turning away from my family or community, but through those things. There can of course be individual flourishing beyond that, but it does not come at the cost of those things. 

Returning to the example of compulsory Irish then, where does this new reasoning leave us? What we have said about the Natural Law and the good have two implications for the debate. Firstly, as a matter of right, there is a direct case to be made for the policy but it is insufficient. We could say that the forced unlearning of the Irish language, as would be the case with any language of the world, is manifestly wrong and so equivalent measures to restore the language are right insofar as they are proportionate and necessary. However, this must be balanced against the rights of the individual and this once again is where the language of justice alone starts to break down. Why should someone today be responsible for a wrong committed by someone else in the past? Two wrongs don't make a right etc. The language of right alone leaves us in a stalemate and competing claims can only be settled by a reference to some good.

This is where the second appeal to the good as deduced from the Natural Law is decisive. From the principle of cultivating perfection in combination with the Aristotelian view of the individual as a social and political animal rooted in his time and place, we can deduce that the Gaelic restoration for the Irish nation constitutes an objective good for both the nation and individuals as its members. The intrinsic purpose of the Irish nation, and its members (among other things), is to be Gaelic. As this purpose is derived from the right, it is pursued always with principles of justice and fairness in mind.

The connection between a person and his country's traditions is a special one. In his The Framework of a Christian State, Fr Edward Cahill reflected on the teachings of Pope Leo XIII, who believed that the natural law enjoined us to 'love devotedly and to the defend the country in which we had birth and in which we were brought up.' His holiness also wrote that 'we are bound then to love dearly our country, whence we have received the means of enjoyment which this mortal life affords.' (p590) Taking this, Cahill writes that the Christian in being patriotic is merely doing his duty after his religious obligations, provided he does so in accordance with the principles of justice and charity. For Cahill, the special duties of patriotism involved defending the freedom and integrity of the nation but also its traditions and culture.

Note: Coakley traces the nationalism of Davis to the thinking of German philosopher Herder, though notes that Davis in contrast to Herder based his idea of common feeling of devotion, pride in the past and will to serve rather than language. (p125).

Catholicism and modern individualism

Further to two recent posts, one about Steven Pinker's view that the Enlightenment is the source of science, reason and progress, and another about Tom Holland's view of the modern west as being very much the legacy of Christendom, I came across this interesting article.

A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions and that populations characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual. People from these societies tend to be more individualistic, independent, and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting of strangers) while revealing less conformity and in-group loyalty. Although these patterns are now well documented, few efforts have sought to explain them. Here, we propose that the Western Church (i.e., the branch of Christianity that evolved into the Roman Catholic Church) transformed European kinship structures during the Middle Ages and that this transformation was a key factor behind a shift towards a WEIRDer psychology.

By breaking down extended kin-based institutions and encouraging a nuclear family structure, the Church encouraged more individualistic behaviour.

This also ties in with Larry Siedentop's brilliant Inventing the Individual; the Origins of Western Liberalism which makes a very powerful argument along similar lines, i.e. that the moral revolution unleashed by Christianity sewed the seeds of modern individualism as we know it.

This idea of the Catholic Church as a cultivator of individualism is rather refreshing when one has come to take for granted the more popular idea that the church inculcated authoritarianism and generally frustrated human freedom, i.e. the kind of idea that Pinker would promulgate.

There is also an irony to this; the individualism that the Church unleashed basically went rogue and now thrives independently of any religious objectives.

This highlights two different types of causation; physical and logical. Speaking logically, i.e. the language of necessity, if I was to suggest that you needed Christianity to be have individualism, such an argument would be difficult to sustain.  There are many argument for individual freedom that do not rest on religious foundation. The writings of Kant and Rawls immediately spring to mind as examples. Rawls appealed to hypothetical metaphysical state of nature (i.e. veil of ignorance) in making his case - that this is also a secularised version of the Christian soul doesn't mean it relies on the   actual existence of souls to be valid.

Speaking in terms of physical causation, i.e. the language of historic contingency, it is extremely hard to see how modern individualism could have emerged without Christianity. Without the church's concern with individual souls, conscience and will, the conceptual space for the notion of individual flourishing would not even have existed.

These arguments are a reminder that in criticising modern individualism, Catholics should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remember that individual freedom remains inextricably linked to the faith. Christians should be wary ceding individual freedom as a principle to liberals and being seduced by anti-individual movements on the right.

"Backwoodsmen"

Speaking in the election, Leo Varadkar said;

"Other parties talk about change, but we have been the ones who have been driving it through, and we want to finish it. 

And if we have a Fianna Fáil led government, I have no doubt that the social progress we have seen in recent years will not continue.

There are a lot of backwoodsmen in Fianna Fáil that would slow down social progress. 

The referendum would not have happened had Fianna Fáil been in office."

So this is obviously a reference to the fact that a significant number of Fianna Fáil TDs opposed repeal of the 8th amendment in the 2018 referendum.

I had to look up the meaning of the term "backwoodsman", and according to dictionary.com it means "an inhabitant of backwoods, especially one regarded as uncouth or backward."

Just as a reminder, 33% of the electorate voted to keep the 8th amendment. So Varadkar, a man looking to be re-elected as Taoiseach, has essentially called a third of Irish people uncouth and backward.

The first thing that struck me was the double standard here. This is because Varadkar is also quoted as saying that it was:

"a really unfortunate thing that in the last couple of years, particularly the past couple of months, some parties have tried to inject class politics into Irish politics.

And that:

"Fianna Fáil are trying to pit working class against middle class."

So basically culture war politics, whereby the country is divided into "backwoodsmen" and whatever the opposite it, is ok, but class politics, whereby the country is divided into working and middle class is not. What kind of logic sees one as good and the other bad.

The answer to that is to be found in Fine Gael's understanding of "social progress". And not just Fine Gael's understanding of that term, but liberal Ireland's too.

What better embodiment of this conceptualisation than Sen. Catherine Noone and her recent comments on Varadkar and the subject of autism. Noone was a key political figure in the run up to referendum, chairing the Oireachtas committee recommending its repeal. She was prominent in public debate and was highly visible in Dublin castle for the victory celebrations. Almost the perfect symbol of the 21 century Irish woman - empowered, professional, independent. Very socially progressive.

And during the election campaign she described Varadkar as being "on the spectrum" and "autistic" because of his supposedly socially awkward manner. Noone probably meant it as a compliment to her party boss, trying to generate empathy for him. The only problem is that these remarks were deeply ignorant, mean and offensive to people with autism.

On its own, we might not read much more into this episode. But in the context of Fine Gael's abysmal performance on issues like healthcare, housing and crime, all issues which betray a boderline sociopathic lack of empathy with and compassion for ordinary Irish people, it reveals more. It reveals a highly ideological view of social progress, one centred on the maximisation of economic and social liberty  for a very exclusive class of society, one that is mainly urban, professional and well-off, at the expense of virtually everyone else.

The views of Noone, so passionately pro-"freedom" and empowerment of the marginalised in one sense and yet so crassly ignorant of other marginalised people in another, are perfectly coherent and in character for a party, which let's face it, has a very warped sense of morality.

Taking the ball home

On the recent controversy over the Fine Gael government's plans to commemorate the RIC, and the subsequent decision to cancel those plans, Irish independent economist Dan O'Brien argues that "reflecting on history should become more like the practice of faith - a private affair." This is to avoid unnecessary controversy caused by bringing up old and irrelevant divisions.

Is Dan sulking? The force of public opinion caused Fine Gael to backtrack on its ill-advised proposal. Perhaps Dan is a bit sore over this and consequently does not want anything to be publicly commemorated now. The giveaway is the following line; "...and how strongly some of those who opposed it appear to feel on the subject."

So all the strong feelings are on one side? The proposal itself was the outcome of Minister Flanagan's own very personal and strong feelings about the subject. It was completely and explcitly unsupported by the expert advisory group on commemorations, despite the minister's claims otherwise. His strong feelings on the subject were also apparent in various interviews he did to try and defend his decision.

There were strong feelings on both sides. But the issue here is not an inability to commemorate the past, but just an unwillingness to celebrate certain things, and a feeling of genuine annoyance when a government tries to celebrate those things.

It probably was an irrelevant and unnecessary distraction but that was Fine Gael's fault for starting such a pointless fight. It was not irrelevant in the sense that the history of the RIC or Tans in Ireland is irrelevant. History like that is as relevant as the current times dictate, and the passions (passion not being a dirty word btw) aroused show that the subject matter is still very important.

So contrary to O'Brien's narrative, Fine Gael, due to strong feelings, sought to commemorate something that was not appropriate to commemorate, and were forced to backtrack due to inevitable and justifiable backlash of the pubic. Using this as a argument for banning all commemorations is just sour grapes. The controversy is a signal to think a little more carefully about what we commemorate, not that commemorations should cease full stop.

Review: Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland

In this lengthy tome, historian Tom Holland provides a history of Christianity and Christendom up to the present day. The central thesis is that the current Western mindset, despite its secular pretensions, is still undeniably Christian in both its genealogical origin but also its core philosophy and outlook. 

The book starts in ancient Greece and advances chapter by chapter over two millenia, through the inception of Christianity to the present day. Mini-biographies of key figures, philosophical, religious and political alike, are interwoven into the narrative. The book has many chapters, each with rich stories and vivid descriptions that serve to bring the past to life.

I

As stated, the main thrust of the book is twofold. The first is that the Western Mind is Christian in origin. As a theory of historical causation - that the birth of the Christian idea caused the emergence of the Western Mind as we know it today - this argument is convincing and well made. The rival thesis is one mostly associated with the French Philosophers of the Enlightenment and later British propagandists. It presents the modern mindset as emerging in the Reformation and picking up where the Roman Empire and classical antiquity left off. It is what Herbert Butterfield famously described in his book of the same name as "The Whig Interpretation of History." The middle ages represent an interruption or an aberration in this otherwise continuous historical chain.

Writing on the French Revolution, at a time of widespread murder of clergy and destruction of religious property, Holland sums up the dominant view with regards to Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular:

"A grim warning of what might happen should the revolution fail was to be found in the history of Greece and Rome. The radiance that lately had begun to dawn over Europe was not the continent's first experience of enlightenment. The battle between reason and unreason, between civilisation and barbarism, between philosophy and religion, was one that had been fought in ancient times as well. (p.381)"

By this point in the book, however, Holland has already demonstrated how unsustainable this view is. Firstly, even before making any arguments, the succession of events shows more continuity than disjointedness. Whilst Rome is deemed to have 'fallen' in the 5th century (or to be more precise the Western part of it) its descent wasn't as clear cut as such language suggests. Holland writes that in the 6th century the province of Africa had been recaptured by the Romans, as was Rome, and was a secure province (p.162). And there were 'Caesars' in the West centuries later.  In the 8th century, Charlemagne ascended to the rule of the Franks. Holland writes:

"he exerted a sway that was Roman in its scope. In 800, the pope set an official seal on the comparison in Rome itself; for therefore on Christmas Day, he crowned the Frankish warlord and hailed him as "Augustus". Then having done so, he fell before Charles' feet. Such obeisance had for centuries been the due of only one man: the emperor in Constantinople."

It is said that Rome fell when the barbarians invaded in 476 AD. In reality there was no sudden barbarian invasion. The Barbarians were not actual barbarians, but Germans and Goths (the latter were incidentally Christian). These groups had been interacting with Rome for two hundred years; the Goths had even sacked Rome before in 410 AD.  Goths and Germans had been the power behind the throne is Rome for many years before it officially fell. The character of Rome changed significantly over time and there is no one point where a changing of the guard can be said to have occurred. Obviously, historians for the sake of explanation do need to draw lines somewhere. The point is that they make judgements in doing so.

II 

Secondly, as Holland shows, the idea that Europe's enlightened spirit in the 18th century had more in common with the ancient world than the world of Christianity, in particular pre-Reformation Christianity, is not credible. Granted, the Christian worldview marked a radical and decisive shift from that of the Greco-Roman one in its heyday, but not in the way that the superficial self-serving propaganda of the philosophes would claim.

Holland shows how in Ancient Greece a philosophical tradition emerged which was based on rationality. For Aristotle:

"In the heavens...beyond the sublunar world to which mortals were confined, bodies were eternal and obedient to unchanging circular orbits; and yet these movements, perfect though they were, depended in turn upon a mover which itself never moved. (p.20)"

Thus emerged the idea of an ordered cosmos. For Aristotle, the lover of wisdom (the Philosopher) undertook to understand the laws that governed this cosmos for its own sake. The subsequent question, then, was how to order the affairs of the world. The answer was to observe the laws of nature. This meant that society was to be organised according to the natural order of hierarchical power. Humans ruled animals, Men ruled Women and Greeks ruled barbarians (p.21). Holland writes how the practical application of this philosophy by the contemporary ruler, Demetrius, led to the disenfranchisement of the poor and the abolition of assemblies (p.22). Later, when Pompey the Great conquered Greece for the Roman republic, he would use this philosophy to "gild his self image". The conquests, the enslavement, the glory - this was all part of the natural cosmic order. A sort of binary logic of master and slave was institutionalised.

"As on the battlefield of Troy, so in the new world forged by Rome, it was only by putting others in the shade that a man most fully became a man".

Was this the pagan world that Montesquieu was referring to in which he said a "spirit of toleration and gentleness had ruled" (p.381)? Of course, in their infatuation with reason, the French Philosophes   took another key idea for granted, the dignity of the human individual. This is at the heart of the Christian message and constituted a total inversion of the dominant Greco-Roman paradigm. Holland writes;

"Not as a leader of armies, not as the conqueror of Caesars, but as a victim the Messiah had come. (p.85)"

This idea was shocking and totally novel. Holland refers to the preachings of St Paul in the embryonic stage of Christianity. Paul proclaimed that the human body was a temple of the Holy Spirit (p.81). Paul taught that to suffer, to be beaten, to be abused, to be degraded was to share in the glory of Christ. For those who adopted God, the spirit of Jesus would redeem their bodies (Ibid).

The dignity of the individual was also enhanced through the Christian view of marriage. Man and woman in marriage were joined like Christ and the Church were joined. While the woman was instructed to submit to her husband, the man was instructed to be faithful to his wife. This was in marked contrast to an earlier Roman view of marriage in which a double standard prevailed, and where there was no obligation of fidelity on the man. Divorce was only allowed in rare circumstances (p.265-6). This therefore put a premium on the institution of marriage to the benefit of the partaking individuals.

In relation to science, the great strides in science in the 16th and 17th centuries were the culmination of centuries of effort. The adoption of the Heliocentric model in astronomy, a key milestone in science's progress, drew on the work of earlier scholars in Oxford and Paris (p.338). Such achievements would not have been possible without universities, uniquely Christian inventions. Nor indeed would they have been possible without the Church's respect for natural philosophy and reason. Notwithstanding this reality, the myth of the medieval period being an age of ignorance and backwardness became popularised in the late 19th century (p.430).

The spirit of toleration and secularisation was an accidental outcome of the 30 Years War of the 17th century. Christianity, therefore, cannot take any credit for it. The settlement that followed brought about the separation of church and state and individual freedom of worship. This is what Herbert Butterfield meant when he wrote about modern Western principles such as democracy and liberty being the accidental product of the clash between certain sects, rather than the necessary product of a particular dynamic within Christianity, i.e. Protestantism.

In retrospect, then, it seems that the Reformation is the key event (inadvertently) whereby Christianity and the technology it cultivated (i.e. science, humanism, reason) began to part way. 

III

The next question is whether the Western mind today is still inherently Christian. While the case is well made that Christianity got us to this point, the jury is out on whether we still need it. Holland believes that we do. He describes Angela Merkel's response to the 2015 Refugee crisis as Christian in all but name (p.503). Similarly, the iconoclastic satire of Charlie Hebdo is not unlike the desecration of idols by early enthusiasts of the Reformation (p.506).

The key here is to recognise the distinction between means and ends. Christianity was once the end towards which certain means (technologies) were developed. As modernity unfolded, these technologies took on a life of their own and the end they served lost relevance. We eventually arrived at the point, after the end of the Second World War, where ends either became completed privatised (liberalism) or declared non-existent (existentialism). And so Angela Merkel may have been privately motivated by religion, but her public stance was standard liberal humanitarianism. And Charlie Hebdo exalted freedom of speech for the sake of, well, freedom of speech.

With that in mind, the only conclusion is that the West may have had Christian origins but is no longer Christian in its DNA. And that is to its peril.

Steven Pinker and Whig History

In his book, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker makes two basic claims; firstly, that the world is a better place than it used to be by reference to various metrics such as quality of life, hunger, poverty, violence etc; secondly, that the reason for this improvement is enlightenment values such as reason, science, progress and humanism.

It is very hard to deny that he has a point in relation to the first claim, though there may be arguments to be made that this is a qualitative question in addition to just being a quantitative one. We will return to this at a later point.

In relation to the second claim, Pinker's approach is nakedly ideological if not embarrassingly naive. In the Whig Interpretation of History, Herbert Butterfield wrote about a tendency among historians to attribute the rise of modern British liberal democracy to a sort of instinct towards progress, a will to progress even, that had its roots in the Reformation. Whig historians saw history as a struggle between the progressive instinct and the reactionary reflex.

Pinker is very clear that when he speaks of progress, he is not referring to any metaphysical teleological force. That is, it has happened because of human action and will only continue to happen if humans make it so. There is no inevitability to it - it is contingent rather than necessary.

Like the Whigs though, Pinker still sees the modern world as being a tug of war between two broad sets of values. He sets up a binary opposition of Enlightenment versus Counter-Enlightenment. All of the good progress is down to Enlightenment values and has happened in spite of the counter-enlightenment. If we can just concentrate on the former, the world will get better.

And like any true ideologue, certain concepts and events, regardless of their occurrence in time and space, are put into the Enlightenment category with the contra being put into the other.

So, for example, humanism, science and reason are all put into the Enlightenment category. Unreason, exemplified by religion, is a counter-Enlightenment phenomenon. The same goes for anti-humanism, again exemplified by religion's pro-occupation with soul, but also nationalism's subordination of the individual to the tribe. (And Pinker makes it clear that he includes nationalisms "fused with Marxist Liberation movements").

In the second decade of the 21st century, he speaks of populist movements that are "tribal rather than cosmopolitan, authoritarian rather than democratic, contemptuous of experts rather than respectful of knowledge, and nostalgic for an idyllic past rather than hopeful for a better future." (p29) He attributes this general counter-enlightenment to the Romantic movement of the early 19th century that "pushed back hard against Enlightenment ideals". (p30)

Unfortunately for Pinker this thesis is full of holes, big and small.

1. First of all, there are the usual tricks with time and space you get with ideologues. He lists Rousseau and Herder amongst the romanticists, even though they were clearly active before the romantic period and are much closer in time and actual relation to the Enlightenment. He suggests that fundamentalist religion is part of the counter-enlightenment, even though that has its origins in the Reformation which predates it by a couple of hundred years. He claims science for the Enlightenment even though the scientific revolution took place in the 17th century, and arguably had its roots in medieval times as historians of science now accept.

It could be argued that Enlightenment is a state of mind rather than a specific event, but then we are in the realms of Whiggish-style teleology, where events are explained by reference to later events or timeless concepts. 

The same point can be made about reason more generally. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher, insisted on the importance of reason in the field of theology. Not content to depend on revelation alone, Aquinas felt that any truth must also be supportable by rational argument. The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, criticised Aquinas' approach to reasoning, arguing that it was not conducted in the spirit of free inquiry, with a willingness to follow it wherever it lead, but with the intention of only using to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion, and to fall back on revelation in any case should the argument fail. Russell's critique of Aquinas is adequately dismantled here. The fact is that it is very questionable whether any reasoning is conducted in a truly free spirit that is independent of any belief systems or value assumptions. More importantly, though, it doesn't matter because the reasoning will stand or fall on its own merits anyway. The takeaway is that Aquinas, and other medieval thinkers, placed a clear emphasis on reasoning which could only have served to increase its value. 

2. Secondly, we have lazy mischaracterisations, such as the idea that romanticism was anti-humanist or anti-individual. Romanticism was a very broad and complex movement. It took place against the backdrop of political, social and economic upheaval. Certain elements of romanticism certainly sought to re-discover and re-empower the individual in a quickly changing world. The same goes for nationalism, which played an important role in the rise of modern democracy in the 19th century and formation of the nation-state as we know it. Nationalism was the key ingredient in conferring political and popular legitimacy on newly expanding states and economies.

After designating nationalism as a bad concept, he writes that it should not be confused with "civic values, public spirit, social responsibility, or cultural pride". (p31) Of course, this sophistic sleight of hand misses the point, namely that the whole utility of nationalism is that it has provided, historically, an emotional imperative to do these very things. It cultivates practical patriotism. It's like saying, love of your town should not be confused with having an anti-litter ethic; but loving your town will give you more motivation not to litter.

Furthermore, nationalism or at least the rise of the nation-state was a key vehicle by which the power of the Catholic church had been pushed back in the centuries preceding the Enlightenment. This is rather inconvenient for Pinker's thesis as it disrupts the idea that nationalism and religion are cosy bedfellows with regards to the values that the Enlightenment is supposed to own. A local example also supports the point; the Catholic Church in Ireland generally opposed all Irish nationalism throughout the 19th century, whether it be expressed constitutionally or otherwise. Only with liberation theology in South America in the 20th century did we see any kind of meaningful partnership between the Catholic Church on some clerical level and nationalist movements. 

3. This leads us nicely onto another set of holes, namely Pinker's selection bias. He is keen to point out the Enlightenment's first and proudest offspring, the American revolution and speak about the enlightened nature of both its founding documents and fathers. In relation to its second, but not so proud, offspring - the French revolution - he is unsurprisingly a little quieter. Suffice to say, the French revolution exalted reason as a virtue and brought that logic to its very violent and bloody conclusion. Not that the American revolution is completely clean from Pinker's point of view either. At the time, it had a clear nationalist component to it, and one that was clearly more tribal (i.e. anti-British, if not other ethnicities too) than the dispassionate social contract he approves of.

Another blatant case of elision is his favourably citing of David Hume and Immanuel Kant in defence of reason. Hume famously said that reason is the slave of the passions and that it cannot give rise to moral motivation. This is a direct contradiction of what Pinker is calling for - the prioritisation of reason as a virtue as opposed to just a tool. Kant was influenced by Hume and also warned about the limits of reason. Pinker claims to follow the example of Hume and Adam Smith by saying he starts with an honest appraisal of human nature and goes from there. But in bluntly dismissing romanticism, nationalism and religion (on faulty grounds) he really isn't. There's no real attempt to marry human nature with the principles he advocates in a practical way. Instead he just ignores that point, doubling down on the point about needing reason, science, humanism. Ironically, he advocates humanism yet seems distinctly uninterested in humanising these subjects.

His discussions on humanism and religion also elide the important role of Quakers in the abolition of slavery.

In summary, Pinker has failed to make the case that reason, science or humanism are direct products of the Enlightenment. They have disparate roots. In his book, Butterfield argued that British liberal democracy was the accidental outcome of the clash of Catholicism and Protestantism. Its the same story here. The modern world, good and bad, is a product of the clash of many intellectual strands and traditions. Democracy and freedom owe as much to romantics and religion as they do to the enlightenment thinkers. This also causes him to go wrong in his belief that science, reason, humanism on their own can be of benefit to us.

In this area, Pinker has all the hallmarks of someone who has stepped out of his academic comfort zone and has found himself out of his depth. He still refers to the Dark Ages, a term that is now largely discredited amongst historians. He cites the case of Galileo as an example of religion's incompatibility with science, totally ignorant to the nuances of that case and the other elements it involved. I think Pinker will come to be seen as a very overrated and over-achieving public intellectual in time.

Ireland's weird politics

In a previous post, I spoke about the political and how it relates at its purest to the distinction between friends and enemies. That is because nothing unites like a common enemy (it is much harder to unite around a common value) and from that unity comes political community.

The politics of any given time refers to the way in which friends and enemies are designated in that time. In the Ireland of the present, the political enemy is what can be termed "Catholic Nationalism". Catholic Nationalism has never really existed. It is an imagined object. To be sure there has been nationalism and there has been catholicism and the two have often overlapped, associated with each other and even complemented each other. But they are nevertheless distinct and separate.

Why are they perceived as forming a singular thing? Well nationalism and Catholicism are both the foes of a third political creed in Ireland, liberalism. And for liberalism, presenting these foes as one unified villain creates a more simplistic and therefore compelling narrative.

In presenting the unified villain, Catholicism and nationalism are reduced down to common essential elements. Mainly, these are patriarchy, authoritarianism, atavism, irrationality and a general sense of being of the past. These are all very much the opposite of what liberalism today prides itself on. Desmond Fennell famously characterised this binary division in the 1980s as being between nice people and rednecks. This was quite brilliant by Fennell because his use of the term 'rednecks' emphasised the imported artificiality of this division. Ireland has actually not changed that much since the 1980s, i.e. all of the key structural changes that have produced the social upheaval since that decade had already occurred by that point.

This weird politics, still at its infancy when the shrewd Fennell commented on it, has now grown into an all-encompassing monster. The picture above shows Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein leader, speaking after the disgraceful and reprehensible killing of journalist Lyra McKee in Derry and waving the pride flag in solidarity. LGBT rights have of course long been pulled into the orbit of the contemporary politics, and so the flag in a southern Irish context has come to signify liberation from Catholic repression. How interesting then that in the north, it is used by McDonald to express a rejection of a retrograde nationalism. Afterall, there is nothing to suggest that McKee's LGBT identity was anything but incidental to the killing. And yet the political currency of that identity is used by McDonald to shame her killers.

The LGBT movement and feminism, radical movements in their purest forms, have been effectively commandeered by liberalism and used by it to clobber its enemies. The street credibility, authenticity and general coolness of these movements, which accrues from an earlier and genuinely disruptive radicalism, has conferred on them a moral power which liberalism has exploited shamelessly. This reserve of moral power is fast depleting but not before liberalism has mined every last bit. And not before Sinn Fein has subscribed fully to liberalism.

Why do I call this politics weird? For the simple reason that it is clearly dysfunctional and seems to distract from monstrous incompetence and shoddy governance. It is not a politics that delivers for the plain people of Ireland. What Ireland needs is a new politics. The enemy designate for this? Let's go back to what works; the British, colonial imperialism of all forms, rentiers, landlords, planters.

Pat Leahy and the backstop

Last week I wrote about how a certain moral bankruptcy permeated Dan O'Brien's recent commentary on Brexit and the backstop.

A similar trend is apparent in the case of Pat Leahy of the Irish Times this weekend. The central point in his latest piece is that the Irish government has a decision to make in relation to Brexit; whether to continue with their backstop policy or whether to give Theresa May a bailout by granting a concession to help her get the deal over the line. He then talks about the form the concession might take and the need for Theresa May to prove in advance that it would be accepted (since her trustworthiness has imploded).

A particularly irritating approach from Leahy here is to mix up his own value judgments with factual analysis. He tells us in a matter-of-fact way that the Irish government still has a decision to make. But whether the Irish government does have such a decision is actually a value-laden statement, and the truth of it depends on one's view as to where responsibility lies.

Most people would subscribe to the philosophy that if you break something you own it. This is why the bank bailouts during the financial crisis caused so much annoyance and disgust - there was a perception that responsibility for causing the problem became separate from responsibility for paying for it.

The Irish government has had no responsibility for the Brexit saga. It did not choose Brexit nor did it choose the red lines. Not even the backstop, which has been vindicated by subsequent events, was really a choice as it was the only real response any Irish government could make in response to the risk facing us.

Notwithstanding all of this Leahy thinks the ball somehow is in our court. He believes that the Irish government has to make a decision on whether to defer the risk of hard Brexit or not. There are a number of problems with this anyway.

Firstly, it's not clear that deferring Brexit would get us anywhere, other than kicking the can down the road for a few years and still leaving the problem of us having to engage with people who we now know are untrustworthy, if not irrational. This point was made by Varadkar and others. Deferring risk means delaying certainty - if the difference is simply one of time, we might as well grasp the problem now.

Secondly, the British government haven't exactly exhausted all of the avenues. The same contradictory red lines are in place and Tory party unity has yet to be properly tested. They still have yet to move out of their political comfort zone. Yet in such a context we are expected to make life as convenient as possible for them by choosing between our own peace and prosperity?

Most importantly, though, even though we haven't broken it, Leahy believes we somehow still own it. Because we stand to get harmed by it, whether by damage to our peace or by damage to our prosperity, the onus is somehow on us to stop it. Such a logic would basically reward and incentivise threats and intimidatory behaviour. In such a situation, I would be of the view that we don't have a decision to make and can only hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Bizarrely, Leahy plays down the political damage a climbdown would do the Taoiseach, on the basis that Varadkar would supposedly find it easier to sell the evasion of an immediate risk of a hard Border now in exchange for the risk of a hard border later. This is very fanciful and would not accord with my understanding of the Irish electorate. If the Taoiseach and Fine Gael were to back down on such a principled stance and simply defer the risk as described above, in the face of British irresponsibility, selfishness, threats, bad faith etc. how could that not be politically disastrous for him? Leahy just asserts that it wouldn't with very little support.

Finally he concludes that it will be Ireland's choice to make and not the EU's and that the situation itself will put pressure on Ireland. Again, this ignores that obvious reality that at this point, the EU clearly feels it has something at stake here itself apart from helping the Irish government. As has been remarked upon widely, if the EU was going to abandon us it would done so by now. Why it hasn't is the real question. The EU wants to make a point of its solidarity and show that delivers for all of its members, including small nations. It's about projecting strength and unity. By speaking of the alleged choice as being only our own, Leahy is presenting a distorted view of the situation where all the pressure is on Ireland.

Is it any wonder Eoghan Harris, the doyen of Irish journalistic shoneenism, has singled out Leahy for special praise in recent columns?

Is Dan O'Brien channeling the Cruiser?

Dan O'Brien and the late Conor Cruise O'Brien. A rather random association you might think. Where did that come out of? There's nothing linking them apart from a common surname and your humble aurhor putting them in the same sentence just there. And maybe the fact that they are both examples of Irish public 'intellectuals', albeit in different fields with differing levels of accomplishment who wrote in different times. But otherwise chalk and cheese.

Except for one very distinct aspect of the Cruiser's political philosophy with regards to matters Anglo-Irish. In reading some of economist Dan O'Brien's recent columns on the Brexit "Backstop", I intuitively knew that there was something I specifically didn't like about what I was reading but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. Then it hit me reading his latest article this morning; Dan O'Brien is basically channelling the Cruiser. That is, the writings of Dan O'Brien contain clearly identifiable elements of Cruiserology. I shall explain.

What is Cruiserology? One of the best essays I have read on the Cruiser is Barra O'Seaghdha's "The Celtic Tiger's Media Pundits" contained in the book Re-Inventing Ireland. There is a lot in the essay worth reading but one of the main takeaway points for me was a story on how a bad personal experience in either the late 60s or early 70s had a significant influence on Conor Cruise O'Brien's thinking on the National Question going forward. The Cruiser was in the North one day during the Troubles and ended up somehow getting beaten up by a group of Loyalists. O'Brien's general reaction to this was very unusual. Instead of being filled with a justified and quite rational anger against loyalism and its brutish violence, as you might expect, he paradoxically directed his indignation at Irish nationalism instead.

Crucially, this wasn't because he thought Irish nationalism was in the wrong and loyalism in the right.  That didn't matter. Rather, because he perceived loyalism as being more violent and dangerous than nationalism, he quite literally and physically feared its backlash and believed it was up to nationalists to refrain from goading or provoking it in any way. When they didn't that made him fearful and angry at them. Effectively, British loyalism was something to be appeased out of a fear of its power. It didn't matter if it was right or wrong, but only that it could hurt us.

So where is the Cruiserology in Dan O'Brien's writings? Let's look at his latest piece. Today he writes that the "backstop chickens are coming home to roost". For him, the backstop is a gamble by the Irish government. And as the prospects of a No-Deal Brexit become more likely (though it is still unlikely overall in my view as the British are bluffing) Dan O'Brien sees the gamble as potentially failing. This view is deeply flawed for two reasons.

Firstly, leaving the Cruiserology aside for a moment, this is wrong on a purely factual basis. After Britain voted to leave the EU, British government policy sought early in the process to leave the customs union and the single market. The logical outcome of such a position, then, was that the 6 counties would, at some point, leave the customs union and the single market too. In such a case, you would have a scenario exactly the same as the appalling no Deal vista that O'Brien describes, where Ireland is forced to choose between economic access to Europe on one hand and an open peacful border on the other. The only difference is that by not having a backstop, you kick the can down the road on that decision. It may or may not be more orderly, we do not know. If the backstop is a gamble, then that is no more a gamble than fudging until a later date.

And that's assuming that Brexiteers would not have a found another excuse to threaten 'no deal' anyway. Afterall, up until the last week or so, the European Research Group viewed the backstop as just one problem among many with the Withdrawal Agreement.

Rather than creating this risk of a hard border, the backstop is a way of avoiding it. If there is no deal because of the backstop, then we are no worse than if we had a Withdrawal Agreement that paved the way for a British exit from the customs union and the single market, or indeed a crashout no-Deal because the ERG or the DUP found something else they didn't like. A withdrawal agreement without a backstop is just as bad as a backstop that could cause there to be no withdrawal agreement.

Secondly, there is something more disturbing about Dan O'Brien's approach. By reducing the conversation to one of pure realpolitik, games of chicken and gambles, we lose sight of the bigger moral picture here too. I know, very quaint. This is where the Cruiserology comes in. Basically, moral hazards don't matter to Dan O'Brien. It doesn't matter that the British have acted in bad faith by:

• Trying avoid a backstop, even though they are signatories of the Good Friday Agreement, the spirit of which a hard Brexit would violate
• Going back on a previous commitment to observe the backstop, a commitment given in response to EU/Irish concessions
• Allowing the DUP, a minority party in the North, to use a fortuitous position to hold the process to ransom

What only seems to matter is the end result. And so he sees the "Backstop" not first and foremost as something that the Irish government is morally right and even obliged to insist upon, but just as a move in a game that can only be evaluated by its economic consequences. It doesn't matter that the British are in the wrong, just that they can harm us significantly. The general gist of his anti-Backstop stance is a 'might is right' consequentialism seemingly triggered by fear, if not dubious loyalty, rather than any kind of moral clock.

I don't wish to reduce to this to a realist versus idealist debate because i don't see this distinction as  valid. The Irish government have been realistic. They are also doing what is right. If right does not prevail because of uncontrollable factors, that doesn't mean they should become the object of blame. And by dispensing with any regard for moral idealism, Dan O'Brien is not being realistic. Because as Irish history shows, nothing moves people more than a sense of injustice.

Brexit and English Nationalism

Fintan O'Toole has a lot to say about Brexit. One of the big assertions he makes is that Brexit represents "English Nationalism", i.e. it is an expression of the idea of England as a distinct political community. I believe this is at best over-simplistic and at worst wrong. Before I discuss why I wish to  clarify my understanding of the Brexit impulse.

Firstly, my view has always been that Brexit has two dimensions; an elite dimension and a popular one. These two dimensions are distinct from each other and in some ways are even incompatible with each other.

Politically, the elite dimension emanates from an overlap of Eurosceptic and Thatcherite factions within the Tory party. Its support base is overwhelmingly concentrated in southern England, the home counties and to some extent the City of London and comprises those sections of the British society with an economic interest in deregulation and free markets.

This political tradition has been around since Britain joined the EU but really started to raise its profile in the 1990s around the time of the Maastricht treaty. It has often been referred to as the 'little Englander" tradition, though this is misleading because the economic liberty and freedom it desires is contingent on Britain exerting power and influence on a global level, centred around the concept of the Anglophonic world and building upon existing structures such as the Commonwealth. For this reason, the political tradition invokes a certain nostalgia and romanticism for the British Empire.

Meanwhile, the popular dimension to Brexit is something quite different. Its political base is not made up of well-do-do Tories but natural Labour supporters located mainly in the rust-belts of the West Midlands and the North of England. These are working class people who feel alienated and disaffected by the de-industrialisation brought about by deregulation and globalisation. These people are anti-immigration because they perceive it as directly causing a decrease in their living standards and working conditions. They have no interest in the global Britain promoted by the elite group and in fact will be hurt even more by such a project, as it will involve a repeat of Thatcherism-style economic shock therapy and economic austerity.

Where does this leave us with O'Toole's claims? In relation to the elite group, his claim that Brexit represents English Nationalism is simply wrong. This group are not English nationalists but British globalists. While they don't exactly want to revive the British empire itself, they certainly want to revive the idea of a Anglocentric world-order, economic if not military, with the British elite at the apex. They care not for the principal of national self-determination, and their objections to the EU stem not so much from its alleged hierarchical anti-democratic nature than from the fact that it is France and Germany, and not Britain, at the top of the food chain. In order words, elite Brexit is hegemonic in character.

Ulster unionists demonstrate this mentality perfectly. The Democratic Unionist Party are emphatically not English nationalists but very much are attracted to Brexit because it bolsters and doubles down on the ideology of British unionism. English political nationalism would be dangerous to the DUP because it contradicts the central idea that the whole of the UK constitutes one political unit.

How about the second group? Here, I would say the answer in inconclusive. It could be argued that this group is more nationalistic and isolationist than the first group. This is certainly the case economically where the appetite for de-regulation and institutionalised global piracy would be less. Politically, however, it is a mixed bag. While some might not shed a tear if Scotland broke away and formed another political entity, others would have a more reactionary unionist mindset that sees Scotland (and Ireland) as being naturally subordinate to England. When has British imperial nationalism not been a vehicle for England's interests? The fact that Scottish concerns are arrogantly dismissed is nothing new and is not of itself a sign that they we are dealing with a new phenomenon.

Overall, one cannot help but feel that Fintan has become wedded to a certain narrative and, not for the first time, has become entrapped in it.