Unfinished symphony: a potted history of humanism in Ireland with a sting in the tail
- Owen Morton
- Mar 31
- 14 min read
Updated: Apr 4
By Owen Morton
Owen lives in Sutton, a coastal suburb in North Dublin. He's a humanist who likes jazz and the two aren’t un-related. Jazz, he suggests, is a freethinker’s musical art form of choice – and the humanist link has to do with, if not spontaneity as such, then with decommissioning boundaries and engaging in unfinished symphonies where the script, or the score, hasn’t been written in stone at the outset. This article is his first attempt at engaging an “offshore” readership. He was energised by the challenge, and educated in the process, he says.
A potted history of humanism in Ireland
A meandering odyssey having a Joycean flavour, an English mentor and a sting in the tail.
The essay in prospect is an attempt to deliver to a largely detached readership, geopolitically speaking, a foreshortened history of a neighbouring island landscape to its West. The surprise package, perhaps, is that this learned demographic, that carved out a reputation internationally as “the island of saints and scholars”, had earlier served as an intellectually robust humanist stronghold. Rome and St. Patrick put paid to that particular jaunt.
If histories of Ireland abound, what distinguishes this mini-dissertation is that one comes at it from a different angle, as in airbrushing trotted-out pivotal events: the likes of the Norman Invasion, the Plantation of Ulster, the Penal Laws, the Famine, the Easter Rising, “the Troubles” among them – a contrarian call, one might say, on the part of an Irish storyteller of republican persuasion.
An exception, an over-arching seminal event – in terms of its lead-in and its impact – is the 1798 republican rebellion, fomented for the most part by Dissenting Ulster Protestants seeking an end to perceived self-serving monarchical English Rule and, concomitantly, to advance freedom of religious expression. The story unfolding is thus premised in the nurturing of republican idealism on the part of 18th century Western European intellectuals – a momentum labelled “The Enlightenment”, alternatively “the age of reason”, and acknowledged as the cradle of modern secular humanism, wherein, we propose, Ireland’s contribution is understated.
If you’re sitting comfortably, our story begins. In the beginning was the word, and the word was Breitheamh, a judge (pronounced Brehev). He was a pre-Christian Celtic arbitrator disseminating a humanist civil code known as The Brehon Laws wherein, for example, womenfolk enjoyed marital and property rights that our 5th century national saint Patrick, under Roman edict, smartly snuffed out. We’re long since recovering. 1500 years later (in the South) the Married Women’s Status Act 1957 picked up much of the slack.
It might shed a little light, as we set out, to contextualise your narrator’s “republicanism” against the backdrop as outlined above – an egalitarian ethos not to be conflated with an insular, modern-day distortion hijacked by, and finding expression in, nationalist rhetoric. The Enlightenment-inspired humanistic ideal, in a word, pursued citizenship in a human rights charter that had our backs in pursuing a common wellbeing in better stead than that dispensed by hereditary and/or self-appointed figureheads, possessed of an inflated, faux sense of entitlement – kings, Church princes and privileged landed gentry.
“Montaigne, Francis Hutcheson, James Joyce, Charles Handy – none of them professed humanism as such – yet, to a man, patently ideologically in harmony [with humanism].”
As regards airbrushing key historic events, let me clarify: firstly, one sees oneself, as already flagged, more in the manner of a storyteller. Secondly, to my knowledge, an overview of humanism in these parts hasn’t been assimilated as to forge like-minded links presenting between, say, observers the likes of Montaigne, Francis Hutcheson, James Joyce, Charles Handy – none of them professing humanism as such – yet, to a man, patently ideologically in harmony, as we’ll establish.
That one’s declared “essay” is “an attempt” at something, is of course a nod to Montaigne (1533-1592) – the Bordelaise accidental philosopher whose attempts, or essais in French, in 107 chapters, brought new literary meaning to the term. These “attempts” also presented “philosophy” in new light to a waiting world. A 2003 anthology on the part of American scholar J.B. Schneewind profiling 32 key 17th and 18th century exemplars – needless to say including luminaries of the Enlightenment period, Hutcheson, Hobbes, Hume and Kant among them – carries the title “Moral philosophy from Montaigne to Kant”.
Montaigne’s essays, it’s acknowledged, had a profound influence on Enlightenment idealism, and we’re indebted to English writer/historian Sarah Bakewell for her 2010 biography How to Live – a life of Montaigne in making him accessible in her inimitable easy-going yet scholarly style. Sarah followed up in 2024 with Humanly Possible. In this update she describes Montaigne (please say mon-TEN-yeh not mon-TAYN) as “one of the greatest humanists in history”. It was uplifting, as an octogenarian, to have experienced a first wherein one’s review of Bakewell’s book was presented in the Irish Times – excerpts as follows:
Reflecting on humanist philosophers of antiquity, in the 1850s French writer Gustave Flaubert observed: “Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ was yet to come, there was a unique moment in history between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find such grandeur.” Grandeur indeed!
Noteworthy is a balanced appraisal acknowledging that religiosity and humanism weren”t always mutually exclusive, notwithstanding which, declaring herself a “non-believing humanist”, Bakewell resolutely explores avenues where reason and faith diverge. The difference presents, in a word, in prioritising the pursuit of happiness and a sense of worldly ethical purpose over proclaimed mortal unworthiness and, our sins forgiven, the promise of eternal life.
Humanly Possible presents as a treasure trove of freethinker challenges to received wisdom on the part of men and women who cared about the here and now, and about one another. If humanists will rejoice in the affirmation that permeates this intellectual, philosophical, scholarly tour-de-force, floating agnostics may draw inspiration, comfort and meaning. As for others? God knows.
A link between “one of the greatest humanists in history”, as noted above, and a 20th century literary giant, a Dubliner, presents in a piece titled “Heresy” in the Summer 2022 edition of The New Humanist sub-titled: “A century after its publication, is Ulysses still the greatest work of humanist literature?” Montaigne/Joycean interaction doesn’t end there, as we’ll learn.
In final reference to one’s “English mentor”, I’d partaken in a group Zoom engagement where, reflectively, Sarah expressed a preference for “ists” over “isms”, taking a lead from which, one is drawn, here, towards building a story around individual humanist exemplars and what makes them tick – all the better to portray humanism in action.
We’ll build our potted history of Irish humanism in a portrayal of a dozen noble souls, known and lesser-known as the case may be – some referenced merely in passing. Focus, by the way, is from the perspective of an observer having limited knowledge of endeavours in the North where humanism plays out within the framework of UK alliance. The aforementioned Montaigne/Hutcheson/Joyce/ Handy “in the now” ideological interaction is key.
Our starting point is an under-the-radar Co. Down-born philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) – “the most influential Irishman you’ve probably never heard of”, opined Irish Times diarist Frank McNally. Hutcheson is referenced as “The Father of the Scottish Enlightenment” not least in having mentored Adam Smith (author of The Wealth of Nations) and David Hume in Glasgow University where he served as Professor of Moral Philosophy. He’d spend his most creative years in Dublin (1720 –1729), dying there on a return visit on his 52nd birthday. His “greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” ideal [later systematized by Jeremy Bentham] impacted far and wide. Benjamin Franklin, describing him as “the ingenious Mr. Hutcheson”, paraphrased his happiness proposition in the preamble to The American Declaration of Independence. Both Joyce and Handy, below, also attuned to this grounded vibe, as their output bears witness.
A Presbyterian minister, Hutcheson’s humanitarian and humanistic worldview surfaced widely and multifariously – for example, in his anti-slavery advocacy: “nature makes none masters, none slaves” he posited. He had question marks, too, over the doctrine of original sin in postulating that we’re born with “a knowledge and sense of right and wrong, without, and prior to, a knowledge of God”. On home ground his fingerprint presents forcibly in his influence on radical Presbyterian Dissenters in Ulster who, as Enlightenment idealism filtered through, and under the aegis of The Society of the United Irishmen, sought to end English rule.
A leading light mingling among Northern freethinkers of the period (and a modern-day icon) was a Dubliner of well-to-do Anglican stock, Theobald Wolfe Tone. He is credited with the simply stated revolutionary mantra seeking “to unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman”. He commands a special place in the narrative on the back of a description he’d garner in the penmanship of socialist historian Seán Cronin: “In America, he was a Jeffersonian democrat; in France, a Jacobin; in Ireland a United Irishman. Wherever Tone was, he was a humanist, a civilised man who stood for light and progress against the forces of darkness and reaction”. Tone: a tolerant, egalitarian, humanist, republican.
In the background, in all of this social agitation we find Mary Ann McCracken, sister of higher-profile United Irishman revolutionary, Tone’s confidant, Henry Joy McCracken. Joy was the family name of the siblings’ mother Ann, of French Huguenot stock, who was in thrall to Thomas Paine until his avowed atheism distanced her. Mary Ann’s place herein reflects her Christian Humanism, as we describe it – as in, simply, the Two Great Commandments in reverse order as circumstances might demand. A devout Christian, Mary Ann always knew when to demote her God to playing second fiddle. A case in point was her Sunday School for Belfast waifs – classroom lessons devoid of religion, of faith formation and of sectarian segregation. The Anglican Bishop closed it down in short order and the segregation persists to this day with the Churches ordaining community division along religious lines. A quarter of a millennium on!
Following the 1800 Act of Union pursuant to the crushing of the 1798 Rebellion, erstwhile radical Presbyterians gradually morphed into mainstream Protestantism that, in time, and into the 20th century, delivered “A Protestant (Unionist) Parliament for a Protestant People”. For her part, Mary Ann as yet hankered after the late 18th century ideals of her executed brother and his fellow travellers, lamenting: “I do not think we are thereby authorised taking up arms against the Government but consider it a duty to wait with patience till the Great Ruler of all events brings about a change through the progress of public opinion”. Mary Ann remained an Enlightenment-inspired republican humanist of Christian persuasion. Your narrator attended a poignant unveiling of a bronze statue commemorating her noble legacy, in the grounds of Belfast City Hall in Spring 2024 – a link that draws our story into modern times, starting out with Joyce and concluding with Handy.
“...a new humanity and the new gospel of life which would make it the business of the community to secure as cheaply as possible, the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number.” McCann in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
James Joyce is the unlikely conduit drawing our lesser-known cast of players into common ground. We present him firstly with reference to Hutcheson's influence – in the fictional character McCann, the college pal of Dedalus (Joyce) in the autobiographical Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). A rebellious, if kindly disposed, McCann speaks of “a new humanity and the new gospel of life which would make it the business of the community to secure as cheaply as possible, the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number”. Ridiculed by his friend, McCann reacts: “Dedalus, I believe you’re a good fellow, but you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of the human individual.” You see, McCann is modelled on Joyce’s real-life student friend, Jesuit-educated (as was Joyce) Francis Skeffington – a radical, republican, pacifist, feminist, humanist. Skeffington was introduced by Joyce to Hanna Sheehy whom he married, changing his name to Sheehy Skeffington (unhyphenated). He edited her feminist publication The Irish Citizen. He grew up in Downpatrick in Co. Down and, unlikely as may present, he was a direct descendant of Englishman Sir William Skeffington (1465-1535), who ruled most of Ireland in the 16th century as the Lord Deputy of King Henry VIII. In correspondence, Joyce fondly, if blasphemously, branded his quixotic, bearded soulmate “hairy Jaysus”. Aged 37, Skeffington’s life was cut short in 1916, executed at the hands of a deranged British Army Officer named John Colthurst Bowen-Colthurst who was court-martialled and deemed criminally insane.
If apples don’t fall far from the tree, what catapulted Skeffington (and with him Joyce) into our story is the turn of events that witnessed hairy Jaysus’ like-minded left-wing, radical son, Owen Sheehy Skeffington, who’d serve as a Senator in the Irish Government, becoming a founder member and first President of the Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) in the 1950s. A curiosity is that Owen attended The Sandford Park School in Dublin as did noted humanists Conor Cruise O’Brien (Sheehy Skeffington’s first cousin), Justin Keating, and David McConnell, the latter pairing following Sheehy Skeffington into HAI Presidency, David being the incumbent. Keating, a politician, broadcaster, veterinarian and academic, served as a highly regarded Minister for Industry & Commerce in the socialist wing of a coalition Dáil Éireann Government, and later as a Member of the European Parliament. Sandford Park School, in the first half-century of the State, was its only nondenominational academy. More links in the chain (and grist to the mill!)
Joyce embraced Hutcheson and Montaigne in equal measure. If, to-day, Joyce’s name is uppermost in terms of what’s meant by “stream of consciousness” in literature, one’s superficial overview of such a phenomenon suggests that Montaigne led the way. The Frenchman was the quintessential blogger, diarising the minutiae of daily living. In parallel, Joyce observes, for example, on bed-wetting in the opening lines of Portrait and, Montaigne-like, Ulysses’ Leopold Bloom engages Pussens, his cat, in matter-of-fact conversation.
A divergence, here, might at first seem gratuitous as we’d side-track to introduce two contemporary writers – English philosopher John Gray and American novelist Amor Towles. Gray’s acclaimed 2020 Feline Philosophy [reviewed by David Warden in the January 2021 issue of Humanistically Speaking – link provided at the end] suggests that we can learn much from our furry friends’ wily ways. “Cats have no need of philosophy”, he declares, “living as they do in the now or in the near future”. “Faced with human folly” he further observes, “the cat just gets up and walks away”. Unsurprisingly, Gray’s opening chapter is dedicated to Montaigne. And then along comes Towles’ rambling adventure A Gentleman in Moscow (2017). In the lead-in we learn that on day one, having decluttered and now under post-revolution Bolshevik house-arrest in the attic of Moscow’s Hotel Metropol, Count Rostov “with satisfaction looked towards the cat who was busy licking the cream from his paws in the comfort of the high-back chair. ‘What say you now, you old pirate?’ he utters, as he sat back and picked up the one volume he had retained, the book held dear by his father, that he promised he’d one-day read – The Essays of Michel de Montaigne”.
My concluding influencer/exemplar is internationally renowned Co. Kildare-born social philosopher Charles Handy whom, if only to a point, agreeably, I had come to know. Sadly, he left us in the closing days of 2024 aged 92. Charles presented BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day over a five-year span in the early 1990s and will be well known on this account alone, never mind twenty plus “management” books to his credit. He’d describe himself as a “cultural Christian” having a penchant for Anglican evensong. His “Christianity”, however, extended neither to an expectation of afterlife salvation or reward, no more than to creationist conjecture. Humanistically, he’d classify his hereafter as his legacy – not to say he ever gave up his search for the meaning of life. Flavours and undercurrents of the humanness evidenced in the narrative so far permeate the pages of Charles Handy’s expansive, considered and readily accessible prose.
The pursuit of happiness and personal “in the now” fulfilment against a communal backdrop, reflect the Hutcheson canon. His advice to his grandchildren to question everything, to be kind and to safeguard their humanity, is unequivocally Montaigne-esque, and Joyce’s “dignity of altruism and the responsibility of the human individual” spans and encapsulates the Kildare man’s oeuvre in a sentence. Allow me to recount a 2010 exchange in a modest-sized gathering in a Co. Wexford hotel. Charles was the guest-host in a three-day engagement. On morning two, the previous day having purchased Bakewell’s How to Live – a Life of Montaigne in Wexford town, I sought reason to draw it into the group conversation – querying if, by chance, our host had come across it. “It’s above in the room on my bedside locker,” he responded.
Drawing the strands together, a non-believing humanist in the Bakewell mould, one experiences a growing latter-day self-awareness of the bona fides inherent in a McCracken/Handy (cultural) Christian humanism world view – softening one’s cough as it were. It would take on added significance pursuant to a chance encounter with Dublin University (Trinity) Professor Emeritus of Medical Physics, Jim Malone, who espouses a “New Humanism” which he introduces as “humanism stripped of its sometimes-aggressive atheism”:
“It doesn’t necessarily imply a religious version of humanism. Rather it proposes sharing many aspects of a rich humanist heritage with those retaining a religious impulse even though they have parted company with organised religion. Likewise, it may facilitate rediscovery of an equally rich (human) heritage embedded in the religious culture we are losing contact with. This includes areas as diverse as visual arts; ritual at times of celebration and need; music; a sense of community; and literature to mention but a few. After all, Seamus Heaney fondly remembered “the radiance of his Catholic boyhood” although he was not a believer in later life. And he noted that “the older I get the more I remember the benediction of it all”.
Malone, thus, Handy-like, isn’t preoccupied with throwing the baby Jesus out with the bath water. His “New Humanism”, as I understand it, keeps an open mind vis-à-vis metaphysical phenomena, unknown unknowns, in the enduring meaning-of-life search. In like manner to Simon Whipple (Humanistically Speaking June 2024 - link provided at the end) Malone, one assumes, would take it in his stride, were his sons to “come out “as Christians. Editorially, Humanistically Speaking, on occasion, and in some measure, draws its readership in this direction.
The model code vis-à-vis humanness and co-habitation (of all sentient beings) presents in the Amsterdam Declaration’s commitment “to the unfettered expression and exchange of ideas and seeking to cooperate with people of different beliefs who share our values, all in the cause of building a better world”. New Humanism, accordingly, extends a conciliatory hand of friendship, of accommodation; taking that further step in bridge-building – to humanism’s advantage, in this observer’s opinion, not least recruitment-wise, where an otherwise cold place presents, as perceived by middle-of-the-road agnostics. Where focus-wise, Amsterdam is expansive on tolerance, on humanitarian interaction and cooperation, it is reserved, for the most part silent, vis-à-vis God, faith, religion (fundamentalism excepted) and ceremonies.
The last word: our summary comes with a sting in the tail – having a Handy “Thought-for-the Day” undercurrent; apposite in the sense, if you can believe, that it’s inspired by a random pot-shot into his book-collection. Page 61 of The Age of Unreason (2002) appropriately headed “Putting the theory to work” advocates:
“If we want to change comfortably and deliberately, we each have to start turning our own personal wheel of learning. The lubricants will make it easier – some proper selfishness, a constant effort to re-frame our bit of the world.”
From the outset, let me now confess, “Montaigne-this, Montaigne-that” notwithstanding, generously and challengingly afforded Humanistically Speaking exposure, your storyteller had little in mind beyond a reaching-out advocacy as to foster an enlightened, humanist island-of-Ireland in the manner of Wolfe Tone – of “Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter united under the name Irishman” (and Irishwomen, of course). Fellow (Northern) Irishmen and women of British birthright and culture, of course, are part-and-parcel of the deal – akin to Scots and Welsh, a layered identity presents. This observer’s take on the state-of-play witnesses Brexit-nurtured green shoots fostering Scots/Welsh-like home-based self-focus and awareness in the Northern Province. Hand-in-hand it behoves a humanist demographic in both jurisdictions, unburdened by the weight of religiosity baggage, to foster all-island mutuality and respect. The South, too, spurred on by Handy’s “re-framing our bit of the world” model, needs to step up to the plate on many counts. Then, and only then, to coin a phrase, let Wolfe Tone’s epitaph be written.
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