Socrates is celebrated not only as the Athenean philosophical gadfly put to death for persistently asking questions but also as someone who plied his trade in the market-place. With some notable exceptions, philosophy after Socrates retreated to the academy.
Questioning Ireland is a bold venture in reconnecting philosophy with debate about public issues. Appropriately, the volume of 13 essays celebrates Father Fergal O'Connor, who influenced a whole generation of students of politics in UCD and who brought habits of reflection and inquiry to a wider audience on many appearances during the early years of The Late, Late Show.
Appropriately also, the first essay, "Figures of the Teacher: Fergal O'Connor and Socrates" by Joseph Dunne, captures the peculiarly engaging, challenging and playful style of Fergal O'Connor's teaching and communicating. More generally, it is a defence of a practice of teaching which awakens in students a search for the truth, in turn animated by a care for the good.
Thereafter, the editors and contributors cast their net widely, the themes ranging from the nature of the State to prison policy, from feminism to the role of the public service, from the environment to the legal framework governing commercial life.
The writing is neither cloistered nor closeted, but moves fluidly between the practical and the theoretical, between the immediate issue and the reflective hinterland. At a time when the practitioners in the market-place seem to have a kind of Midas touch, it is timely that political philosophers contest some of the prevailing "wisdom" in a relatively accessible idiom.
Perhaps the essay which exhibits these qualities best is Philip Pettit's "Prisons, Politicians and Democracy". Starting from the well-established thesis that imprisonment is a most ineffective way of combating crime and yet remains an extraordinarily persistent feature of western democracies, Pettit turns to a penetrating presentation of two rival versions of democracy, along the route outlining two rival accounts of personal autonomy. It is bracing stuff and, for those who remember their Plato, very reminiscent of Plato's moves between psychology and politics.
Yet this is thoroughly modern writing without a whiff of pedantry. Every stage of the argument is open to further debate, but that is precisely the point - to awaken a lively spirit of inquiry about contemporary issues. Attracta Ingram argues for a gradual decoupling of the nation of citizens from the ethnic nation-state, Iseult Honohan makes a plausible case for the continuing relevance of the idea of the common good in the face of misunderstandings perpetrated by both its advocates and critics. Frank Litton and Fergus Armstrong both use Alasdair MacIntyre's idea of internal values within a practice to counter stereotypes of bureaucracy and the depradations of the untrammeled profit motive, respectively.
These are thumbnail sketches of some of the interesting ideas explored. Perhaps the variety of themes and approaches could be seen as a flaw, but I prefer to see it as a continuation of the spirit of Fergal O'Connor who, while remaining true to his Dominican vocation, presents an abiding image of an unfettered mind.
Jack Hanna is a journalist and author.