Conor Cruise O’Brien, in his prodigious output of writings on Irish topics, would sometimes refer to “the matter of Ireland”, to indicate the wearying intractability of the historical and contemporary problems of Ireland and the course of Anglo-Irish relations.
This was an echo, no doubt unconscious, of the hoary English complaint that the problem with the “Irish question” was that, whenever the English found an answer, the Irish simply changed the question. The matter of Ireland – or, more pertinently, perhaps, the matter with Ireland – is the subject of Bryan Fanning’s latest book.
The exploration of Ireland's changing cultural condition over time, through a close reading of a selection of key commentaries and texts, is an approach to intellectual history to which Fanning, a political scientist, seems particularly attracted. In an earlier work, The Quest for Modern Ireland: The Battle of Ideas 1912-1986, which he described as a series of documentaries about distinctive and influential domains of intellectual debate – Fanning explored the contributions of key journals, including The Bell, The Crane Bag, Christus Rex, Administration and Studies, to enlightened debate in Ireland's public sphere. Fanning's heading for these contributions to public debate was "Thinking for Ireland". More recently he has, with Tom Garvin, put together the compendium The Books That Define Ireland. Histories of the Irish Future is, likewise, a series of essays on influential commentators on Ireland – its problems and prospects – from the 17th to the 21st century.
The individuals selected for examination in this latest series of documentaries on Irish intellectual history are William Petty, William Molyneux, Edmund Burke, Richard Whately, Thomas Malthus, Friedrich Engels, John Mitchel, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, James Connolly, Jeremiah Newman, Cruise O’Brien and (the sole living writer) Fintan O’Toole, the Literary Editor of this newspaper. For some of these thinkers Ireland was a central or burning concern throughout their lives; for others – Malthus, Engels – it occupied a lesser place. But, on the basis of the heft, impact and originality of their writings on Ireland, they all have a strong case for inclusion here.
The collection as a whole is lively and provocative, its assured and admirably concise explication of key texts and propositions punctuated by the author’s own judgments and asides, which are witty, insightful and frequently challenging. The approach in each essay deftly combines the contextual with the interpretative. Inevitably, Fanning’s commentary shows a stronger sympathy for some of his witnesses than for others. But not even those for whose perspective he evinces least sympathy (Newman) are denied a fair and careful presentation of their central propositions and their redemptive vision for Irish society in their own time.
Clearly, the issue that immediately confronts the reader is the basis for the author’s selection of thinkers. On this Fanning offers some assistance. For the most part he “is not drawn to ideologues that became dogmatically fixed on some political position or set of beliefs and thereafter ignored other perspectives or changing circumstances”. Additionally, from a 21st-century perspective, Fanning contends that three main traditions encompass political thought on modern Ireland: conservatism, liberalism and republicanism. Fanning sees his witnesses as satisfying these several criteria.
Not everybody will be convinced. Ideological coherence is not necessarily dogmatism. In the case of Cruise O’Brien, for example, one may concede that the intensity of his political and polemical engagement and the sheer brio, intellectual and stylistic, of his writings would justify his inclusion, whatever the inconsistencies and contradictions of his lifetime of argumentation. He is not the only thinker in this gallery who defies neat classification.
However applied, Fanning’s criteria involve exclusion as well as inclusion. Cultural nationalism – Davis, Hyde – is, presumably, too dogmatic, insufficiently engaged with contradictions and changing circumstances. In this context an examination of the substantial body of writing, over six decades, of Desmond Fennell might have yielded a valuable perspective on a humanist-nationalist position undergoing continual revision in the light of changing circumstances – and one, moreover, in which the Irish experience is considered in a wider comparative framework.
One assumes that, having given the cohort of critics in the Crane Bag (and Field Day) their say in an earlier volume, the author did not feel obliged to include in the current volume a sustained critique of Ireland's historical experience in colonialist terms. Nor is this the only perspective absent. Is there no worthy, intellectually weighty champion of an Ulster unionist perspective on Ireland since 1920? But it would be unfair to dwell too much on omissions.
Where the collection succeeds admirably is in stimulating the reader to reflect on current debates on the condition of Ireland in the early 21st century. In particular the volume underlines the urgent need for a more thorough interrogation of the competence of a small state in today’s world, within the structures of the EU and in an integrated global economy and communications system, to shape the lives of its citizens. Political leaders cannot shirk this interrogation. When they, and other voices in the public space, talk of “restoring the nation’s sovereignty” what do they mean apart from exiting the bailout programme?
In his perceptive chapter on Fintan O’Toole’s quest for a new republicanism (based on a “new coherent and deeply rooted civic, democratic and social morality”) Fanning highlights the treacherous historical reefs on which such a project may come to grief.
In his brief concluding essay Fanning identifies the “place of Ireland’s now-large immigrant communities within the Irish nation-state and in Northern Ireland” as the most challenging issue facing any contemporary thinker disposed to formulate a vision for a new Irish future. This may prove prophetic. But one can readily identify other formidable challenges already upon us. The draining away of public confidence in the capacity of key institutions to exercise good authority, together with a widespread sense of powerlessness among citizens in the face of the actions of large corporations and seemingly unaccountable bureaucracies, raise fundamental questions about the relevance of an Irish state to the lives of its citizens on the eve of the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Our commemorations, whatever else they attempt, must involve an adult public debate – in which political leaders show their hand – on where Irish society now stands and where it is headed. A future collection of essays on visions of the Irish future, seeking substantial, coherent statements from the early decades of the 21st century, would need to find more to draw on than is currently on offer.
Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh is a former professor of history at NUI Galway
