Sixty years ago, on the 4th November 1964, the physicist John S. Bell published a paper called "On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox". This was an important paper for both philosophy and physics with implications for our understanding of reality and freedom.
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2014/11/04/john-stewart-bell/
Laws against Witchcraft were enacted in Britain and Ireland.
https://archives.blog.parliament.uk/2020/10/28/which-witchcraft-act-is-which/
These were removed by the Witchcraft Act 1735, after pushback against superstition by intellectuals such as Hans Sloan & later Bishop of Down & Conor, Francis Hutchinson
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2014/10/31/essay-concerning-witchcraft/
Swift died in Dublin #OnThisDay, 1745 but lives on at the 22nd International Swift Symposium, just ended.
https://www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/event/22nd-international-swift-symposium/
Three hundred years this year since the Drapier Letters, protesting the proposal for new coinage for Ireland.
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2013/06/18/swift-crowned/
On the feast day of Adomnán (d. 704AD), a post about his Law of the Innocent, an attempt to limit civilian casualties in warfare nicknamed "the first Geneva Convention".
Funeral of John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh #otd 1663.
DIB: https://www.dib.ie/biography/bramhall-john-a0891
Bramhall debated Hobbes in Paris in 1645, on the nature of free will. Their political theories also different - Hobbes argued for absolute monarchy while Bramhall believed political authority came from God but its form varied in different countries. https://www.jstor.org/stable/175036
Legendary Irish King Brian Boru died #otd 1014 at the Battle of #Clontarf.
His death is pivotal in Geoffrey Keating (Seathrún Céitinn)’s Foras feasa ar Éirinn, a popular history both in Irish and English translation.
https://www.ria.ie/library/catalogues/special-collections/medieval-and-early-modern-manuscripts/foras-feasa-ar-eirinn
A history which worked to put both Old English and Gaelic Irish in a good light, it portrayed Ireland as ruled by the English king by consent, not through conquest.
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2014/04/23/brian-boru/
It's #Shakespeare 's birthday #otd (probably).
Iris Murdoch on basing aesthetics, not on definitions, but on the concrete.
"let us start by saying that Shakespeare is the greatest of all artists, and let our aesthetic grow to be the philosophical justification of this judgement."
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2016/04/23/shakespeare-aesthetics-and-morality/
The first performance of Handel's #Messiah ( #otd 1742) was almost stopped by Jonathan Swift, and was attended by philosophers such as Patrick Delany and Edward Synge.
https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2013/04/13/swift-handels-messiah/
The music of course was captivating, but the anti-Deist message of Handel's #Messiah would also have appealed to a city who had been losing its temper over free-thinkers and deists for decades.
Philosophy adjacent Samuel Beckett born #OTD 1906.
He "deftly suppressed his philosophical reading in public statements. We don’t know why."
https://irishphilosophy.com/2013/05/14/beckett-nietzschean/
Image: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Beckett_2007.jpg
Only belatedly do I realise that the #eclipse was the perfect time to share this, on the 9th century scholar Dúngan's attempt to explain eclipses to Charlemagne
Irish Philosophy
