MCCCD Official Course Competencies:

PHI247  2005 Summer I – 2006 Fall

Introduction to Irish Philosophy

1.

Explain the significance of Augustinus's distinction between God's creation and God's governance. (I)

2.

Explain the relationship between transcendence and immanence in Eriugena's metaphysics. (I)

3.

Identify empirical and non-empirical elements in Irish Enlightenment thought. (II)

4.

Explain John Toland's anti-clericalism and his emphasis on individual autonomy. (II)

5.

Compare and contrast Hutcheson's understanding of beauty with the relativistic view held by many people today. (II)

6.

Compare and contrast Hutcheson's altruism with Hobbes's "egoism." (II)

7.

Compare and contrast the utilitarian ethics of Mill, Thompson, and Wheeler. (III)

8.

Identify the roles that the arts serve in the philosophies of Peter Browne, Henry MacCormac, Iris Murdoch, Richard Kearney, and John O'Donohue. (II, III, IV, V)

9.

Identify psychoanalytic dimensions in the thought of John Wisdom and Richard Kearney. (IV, V)

10.

Compare and contrast the opposition to method in Maurice Drury and John O'Donohue. (IV, V)

11.

Compare and contrast the treatments of the self-other distinction in the thought of Maurice Drury and Richard Kearney. (IV, V)

12.

Explain the relationships between Irish philosophy, history, and culture. (VI)

MCCCD Official Course Outline:

PHI247  2005 Summer I – 2006 Fall

Introduction to Irish Philosophy

I. Medieval Irish Metaphysics

A. Augustinus's ontology of miracles

B. Eriugena's neo-Platonic metaphysics of divine self-creation

II. The Irish Enlightenment

A. John Toland's anti-clericalism

B. Peter Browne's analogical theology

C. William King's theodicy

D. George Berkeley's idealism

E. Francis Hutcheson's moral and aesthetic sensationism

III. The Irish Nineteenth Century

A. William Thompson's radical utilitarianism

B. Anna Doyle Wheeler's feminist utilitarianism

C. Henry MacCormac's socialist holism

D. Frances Power Cobb's moral anti-Darwinism

IV. The Irish Twentieth Century

A. J.O.Wisdom's psychoanalysis of metaphysics

B. Maurice O'C. Drury's irreducible individualism

C. Iris Murdoch's ethics of attention

V. The Irish Present

A. Richard Kearney's ethics of Other within Self

B. John O'Donohue's spiritualism of the anam cara

VI. What is "Irish Philosophy"?