Sir, – Desmond Fennell (October 27th) says "contemporary Irish culture resolutely values only one kind of creative writing, namely fiction" and he avers that we are "a nation loving the artful creation of made-up stories, fearful of minds probing and presenting the realities of the human condition".
On the contrary, this probing and presenting is the very purpose of literary fiction. It does so by the creation of fictitious settings, characters and action which highlight truths of real human experience.
The purpose of literary fiction is to tell the truth about life, and as such is entirely consonant with the study of philosophy, which is long overdue in Irish schools. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK SEMPLE,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – The real reason why proposals for the introduction of philosophy into the school curriculum, despite being repeatedly advanced over the last few decades by such groups as the committee on philosophy of the Royal Irish Academy, have consistently failed has been simply the opposition of the Catholic Church, which felt that its proper domain was being encroached upon.
The power of such a veto is now much lessened, I think, and the remaining problems would now be how to select a course of study that would be neutral as between the various schools of philosophical thought, and how to prevent such a course from being mind-numbingly boring.
A solution would be to employ a process of Socratic-style questioning, presenting a series of propositions, in ethics or metaphysics, and encouraging students to question them, and provoking students in turn to advance their own opinions, which would then be subjected to the same process. This would train the students in a basic philosophic method which could be applied to the whole of their curriculum, which would in turn produce a more open-minded and inquiring younger generation.
It is such a programme that we are currently developing in the Platonic Centre in Trinity College Dublin, and which we hope to be able soon to present to the second-level teaching unions for their feedback. We do feel that such a module would be a most beneficial component of at least the last few years of the secondary school curriculum. – Yours, etc,
JOHN DILLON,
Director Emeritus,
Platonic Centre,
Trinity College Dublin.
Sir, – Desmond Fennell is absolutely right. This small island has an international reputation for imaginative writing but doesn’t rank anywhere in terms of its thinkers. George Berkeley, the only world-renowned Irish philosopher, was a bishop whose philosophy was also an escape from reality, promoting as it did the notion that the external, material world doesn’t exist and that the things we perceive are simply collections of ideas put into our minds by God.
The few more secular Irish philosophers, like John Toland and Francis Hutcheson, had a major influence outside Ireland but have been effectively erased from the Irish literary landscape.
Of course, both Toland and Hutcheson left the country, but so too did many great writers of fiction who challenged aspects of Irish society through their works, such as Joyce and MacNeice.
It seems that, whether it is through philosophy or fiction, we Irish cannot bear too much reality. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN McCLINTON,
Lisburn.