The Irish Language

Thanks for that, Roger. And your opinion on this subject is as valuable as anyone else's-- indeed, your "outsider perspective" is especially valuable.

Here is my views on that; I don't think any language is any better or worse than any other, any more poetic or less poetic than any other, any more abstract or less abstract than any other. All language is abstract by definition-- "me Tarzan, you Jane" is abstract conceptual thought. Some languages appeal to some people more than others, but I think that's purely subjective. I've always found Russian and German more appealing than the romance languages, which most other people seem to favour.

I want to revive Irish for only one reason-- it's MY language! In the sense that it was the language spoken by my ancestors. Also because it is an endangered language and reviving it adds to the diversity of the world. To be true, I do find a warmth and a softness which appeals to me in it, but I don't know how much of that is my imagination. English appeals to me at least as much as Irish and probably more.

As for abstraction and its dangers. We should be careful of this, I think. Edward Feser gave an excellent talk entitled "What We Owe to the New Atheists", in which he welcomed the New Atheist's challenging of Christianity on rational grounds because Christianity had so long ceased to defend itself on rational grounds, especially since the Nouvelle Theologie had rejected scholastic philosophy (that is, the highly dry and rationalistic philosophy practiced by St. Thomas Aquinas and his tradition). Anyone can find the article with an internet search, but here is a relevant quotation:

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Scholasticism. It’s a word that will raise hackles on the backs of some Catholic necks, and not only liberal ones. Some years ago, at an initially friendly dinner after an academic conference, I sat next to a fellow Catholic academic, to whom I mildly expressed the opinion that it had been a mistake for Catholic theologians to move away from the arguments of natural theology that had been so vigorously championed by Neo-Scholastic writers. He responded in something like a paroxysm of fury, sputtering bromides of the sort familiar from personalist and nouvelle theologie criticisms of Neo-Scholasticism. Taken aback by this sudden change in the tone of our conversation, I tried to reassure him that I was not denying that the approaches he preferred had their place, and reminded him that belief in the philosophical demonstrability of God’s existence was, after all, just part of Catholic doctrine. But it was no use. Nothing I said in response could mollify him. It was like he’d seen a ghost he thought had been exorcised long ago, and couldn’t pull out of the subsequent panic attack.
Now he was not, it should be emphasized, theologically or politically liberal. Far from it. Nor is his response, though extreme, as unusual as you might think. There is something about Thomism, Scholasticism more generally, and “rationalistic” or philosophical approaches to religion and morality even more generally that a certain kind of religious sensibility, even a certain kind of conservative religious sensibility, simply finds off-putting. I think this owes in part to a kind of fideism which is offended by the very idea that there is theological or moral knowledge to be had apart from grace and apart from divine revelation — and perhaps especially offended by the very idea that a pagan like Aristotle or Plotinus might know something important about these topics that the ordinary simple Christian with his Bible or rosary does not know. I think it owes also in part to a worry that philosophical arguments are too cerebral, too cold and bloodless, to be relevant to concrete religious or moral life.

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Admittedly, I am talking about religion here, rather than society or culture, but I think the same thing applies. Thought is incurably abstract. I think the cure for bad abstract thought is good abstract thought.

As for capitalism being an Anglo-Saxon success story, I wonder how much of this is simply an historical accident? Wikipedia lists the top countries in terms of GDP as:

The USA
China
Japan
Germany
The UK
France
India
Italy
Brazil
Canada.

Perhaps GDP isn't a good measure of success at capitalism, but how otherwise might we measure it?

That's interesting, Maolscheachlann. If you look at GDP per capita, there is only one Anglosphere nation in the top 5: Ireland!


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Thanks for that, Roger. I've read the post to which you referred, and also Young Ireland's comment-- with which I actually agree.

I think I can best address the argument in a numbered list:

1) The whole idea of "Catholic cultures" bothers me. Yes, I'm nostalgic for Catholic Ireland, but that really has nothing to do with Irishness being somehow more innately Catholic-- I just think that ANY culture which is steeped in Catholicism is going to be elevated and deepened. The Catholic Church is the universal Church, and holding up Mediterranean cultures as somehow more Catholic (in my view) diminishes that universality. Similarly, making Catholicism dependent upon some social or economic system diminishes its universality in my view. Personally, I believe a great plurality of social and political and economic systems are compatible with Catholicism.

Similarly, the idea that some languages are more Catholic or more compatible with Catholic bothers me. Everything God created is good.

2) I'm not an economist or an expert in finance, but do you believe it is possible to run a modern economy without usury?

3) Belloc seems to be engaging in some sleight-of-hand when he insists that the Tudor dog was wagged by the nouveau riche tail. A very convenient way to avoid Young Ireland's critique! They were absolute monarchs; they were more absolute than any monarch before or after in British history.

Similarly, when you say De Gaulle was a democratically-elected monarch, it does lead me to ask: well, if you can have a democractically elected monarch in this sense, don't the categories collapse?

4) The whole idea of Belloc abandoning democracy because he was disappointed with his experience as an MP is all too typical of the "sour grapes" rejection of democracy by many anti-democrats. I don't understand the objection that plutocrats, the media, Jews, reptilians, or anybody else are "the real masters" of democracy. In the end, it comes down to a person alone in a voting booth and a list of names. You're not going to get any fairer than that, unless perhaps it's "direct democracy" in the manner of a Greek city state. Yes, perhaps that person in the polling booth has been bombarded by propaganda all his or her life, but it's still his or her decision. Does that mean you can't try to improve democracy, make it more truly democratic? Of course it doesn't.

But what I don't get is the idea that autocratic rule can somehow be more representative than democracy. That seems paradoxical. The experience of twentieth century autocratic rulers would suggest otherwise, to put it mildly.

5) I accept that banking and capitalism developed in London and Protestant Europe, and doubtless religious cultures played a part in this. But it had to start somewhere. The world was not going to fit in the contours of the ancien regime forever. The majority of people could not continue to be farmers. The fact that it has taken off so spectacularly in every other country just suggests to me that it was simply the next phase in economic history. It doesn't mean we can't try to humanize and control it.

6) My final point would be a question: accepting all this is true, what then? What are you proposing? A historical enquriy has a value of its own, I admit. And (as Young Ireland said in his comment) of course one should strive to be aware of the limits of one's own cultural viewpoint, and to expand one's appreciation of other cultural viewpoints. (Although I also sympathise with the opinion of D.P. Moran in The Philosophy of Irish Ireland, when he hoped there would never be perfect understanding between the Irish and the English, because if there was they would have ceased to be separate nations.) I'm just not sure how Belloc's historical theories are useful or relevant to our current and future world. We're not going to restore pre-Revolution France; we're certainly not going to turn the rest of the world into pre-Revolution France. Millions of people live in the English-speaking world; surely they have to find a spirituality and a Catholic culture of their own, rather than take a French or Spanish or Italian model?

I agree this thread has travelled a long way from the Irish language, but as moderator I am going to be extremely open to such digressions!

Daniel Hannan in his book How We Invented Freedom argues that common law was more salient in Anglo-American capitalism since primogeniture and the respect for wills meant that most sons were required to go out and make their fortune. So the civilisation was incentivised to orchestrate the conditions under which young men could go out and discharge the need for adventure that he common law set up.

Regarding the Irish language, I've read similar things about how different languages program different modes of cognition. English outcompeted Irish because it is the language of commerce, education, empire, law... whereas Irish is the language of parish gossip. The two languages foster different scales of cognition. When the O'Neill's left for the continent, they took in their retinue all of the most eloquent speakers of Irish; poets, bards, musicians, rhetoriticians. The people left behind were the Gaelic lower classes and peasantry, resetting the laguage to quite an unrefined state. I've never understood the pull to revive the 19th century Irish of Peig Sayers and so on rather than the refined Gaelic that obtained just before the flight of the Earls. That said, I personally believe all primary education should be compulsory in Irish, if we are serious about preserving the language.

The other thing I always invite people to keep in mind is that Modern English emerged concurrently in England AND Ireland. Moreover, our English preserves the rhotic English Chauser.

I was wondering when this post would inevitably rise up. I am immensely grateful for having been raised bi-lingually. I dont come from a Gaeltacht area (though my own piece of South Ulster retained traditional Irish speaking networks into the mid twentieth century) but nevertheless was blessed to have been inculturated with the Gaelic, as well as the Saxon cultural paradigms.

On the issue of "Catholic Cultures" whilst I completely understand Maolsheachlann's dislike of one culture being described as "more Catholic" than another, I heartily disagree with it. Any study of culture will point to certain traits that are emphasised by history, tradition but above all by language. A brilliant example of this is in our sister nation. The cultural difference between the Gaelic Highlands and the anglicised Lowlands is striking. Historically this is as a result of the greater Presbyterian influence on the lowland culture, whilst the Highlands remained, for the most part, Catholic, until the 19th Century. However, what is more striking is an examination of the traits of Highland Gaelic Presbyterians and Lowland Anglicised Presbyterians. Amongst Highland Presbyterians, including those from areas that adopted the Reformation early, there is a tendency towards "Catholic" practices such as veneration of Saints, the use of Sacramentals, and an emphasis on the Sacramental aspects of the Kirk such as the Lord's Supper etc. while their lowland co-religionists are purer in their religious practice as Presbyterians.

Religiously they are the same, culturally, they come from similar backgrounds but linguistically they are different. Gaelic as a language, is saturated with Catholicism. Famously, one cannot Greet someone or say the days of the week without invoking Our Lord, Our Lady, the Saints or the Catholic faith. This applies to the natural world, to feelings, to thoughts and to expressions of emotion. To be frank, Gaelic is Catholic.

There is no doubt that English culture was once Catholic, but in a very different way. The sacred and the secular inhabited very separate existences. There is a reason why Gaeldom was unique in Northern Europe that, despite the best efforts, over several centuries, of several monarchs, the ruling elite and the entire public sphere the Reformation failed here, whilst it took Catholic England about thirty years to expire. That reason is cultural. The general consensus is that Protestantism did not take hold here because the protestant clergy failed to preach in Gaelic (Nonsense), because Protestantism was associated with conquest and foreign powers (the failure of the Reformation to make headway with the Gaelicised Anglo Irish is enough of a rebuttal to that) and the failure of the ruling native aristocracy to adopt the new religion (two of the four Princely families adopted Protestantism) simply doesn't hold up under scrutiny and thus one is forced to look for an alternative explanation. To my mind, the decline of Gaelic in the Highlands in the nineteenth century, followed by increasing Protestantisation is explanation enough.

Some cultures and languages do emphasise the poetic, the creative and the spiritual, others emphasize logic and order. A look at how linguistic differences have affected the development of governance and spirituality between the Greek and Latin churches is evidence enough of that.

The Book of Common Prayer was published in Latin in Ireland because it was illegal to publish in Gaelic. If you were to argue that this doesn't constitute a poor effort at reformation in Ireland by the authorities, all your work is uphill in my opinion.