Robert Tobin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641567
- eISBN:
- 9780191738418
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641567.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
‘How do such people, with brilliant members and dull ones, fare when they pass from being a dominant minority to being a powerless one?’ So asked the Kilkenny man‐of‐letters Hubert Butler (1900‐91) ...
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‘How do such people, with brilliant members and dull ones, fare when they pass from being a dominant minority to being a powerless one?’ So asked the Kilkenny man‐of‐letters Hubert Butler (1900‐91) when considering the fate of Southern Protestants after Irish Independence. As both a product and critic of this culture, Butler posed the question repeatedly, refusing to accept as inevitable the marginalization of his community within the newly established state. Inspired by the example of the Revivalist generation, he challenged his compatriots to approach modern Irish identity in terms complementary rather than exclusivist. In the process of doing so, he produced a corpus of literary essays European in stature, informed by extensive travel, deep reading, and an active engagement with the political and social upheavals of his age. His insistence on the necessity of Protestant participation in Irish life, coupled with his challenges to received Catholic opinion, made him a contentious figure on both sides of the sectarian divide. This study therefore seeks to address not only Butler's remarkable personal career but also some of the larger themes to which he consistently drew attention: the need to balance Irish cosmopolitanism with local relationships; to address the compromises of the Second World War and the hypocrisies of the Cold War; to promote a society in which constructive dissent might not just be tolerated but valued. As a result, by the end of his life Butler came to be recognized as a forerunner of the more tolerant and expansive Ireland of today.Less
‘How do such people, with brilliant members and dull ones, fare when they pass from being a dominant minority to being a powerless one?’ So asked the Kilkenny man‐of‐letters Hubert Butler (1900‐91) when considering the fate of Southern Protestants after Irish Independence. As both a product and critic of this culture, Butler posed the question repeatedly, refusing to accept as inevitable the marginalization of his community within the newly established state. Inspired by the example of the Revivalist generation, he challenged his compatriots to approach modern Irish identity in terms complementary rather than exclusivist. In the process of doing so, he produced a corpus of literary essays European in stature, informed by extensive travel, deep reading, and an active engagement with the political and social upheavals of his age. His insistence on the necessity of Protestant participation in Irish life, coupled with his challenges to received Catholic opinion, made him a contentious figure on both sides of the sectarian divide. This study therefore seeks to address not only Butler's remarkable personal career but also some of the larger themes to which he consistently drew attention: the need to balance Irish cosmopolitanism with local relationships; to address the compromises of the Second World War and the hypocrisies of the Cold War; to promote a society in which constructive dissent might not just be tolerated but valued. As a result, by the end of his life Butler came to be recognized as a forerunner of the more tolerant and expansive Ireland of today.
Robert Tobin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641567
- eISBN:
- 9780191738418
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641567.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter focuses on Butler's writings after the Second World War and his efforts to confront the impact of totalitarian thought on Western society. It offers close readings of some of his most ...
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This chapter focuses on Butler's writings after the Second World War and his efforts to confront the impact of totalitarian thought on Western society. It offers close readings of some of his most prominent post‐war writings, and in the process, introduces his preoccupation with exposing the compulsory conversion campaign waged against Orthodox Serbs in Croatia during the war. It accounts for how this concern led to the most traumatic experience of his public life, the so‐called ‘Papal Nuncio Incident’ of 1952. It explores his concern with the creeping anonymity of modern life, exploited by totalitarian regimes before and during the war but also evident after the war in the capitalist West. His travels in China in the fifties, as well as in Europe and the USA in the sixties, confirmed for him this assessment.Less
This chapter focuses on Butler's writings after the Second World War and his efforts to confront the impact of totalitarian thought on Western society. It offers close readings of some of his most prominent post‐war writings, and in the process, introduces his preoccupation with exposing the compulsory conversion campaign waged against Orthodox Serbs in Croatia during the war. It accounts for how this concern led to the most traumatic experience of his public life, the so‐called ‘Papal Nuncio Incident’ of 1952. It explores his concern with the creeping anonymity of modern life, exploited by totalitarian regimes before and during the war but also evident after the war in the capitalist West. His travels in China in the fifties, as well as in Europe and the USA in the sixties, confirmed for him this assessment.
Dwayne A. Tunstall
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823251605
- eISBN:
- 9780823252725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251605.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter examines Marcel’s failure to appreciate the full magnitude of antiblack racism as a system of dehumanization. It contends that Marcel’s sociopolitical thought is an unwitting accomplice ...
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This chapter examines Marcel’s failure to appreciate the full magnitude of antiblack racism as a system of dehumanization. It contends that Marcel’s sociopolitical thought is an unwitting accomplice to colonialism once it is viewed from the standpoint of Frantz Fanon’s criticism of colonialist logic in The Wretched of the Earth and Enrique Dussel’s criticism of western modernity in The Underside of Modernity. In addition, it examines how Gordon’s existential phenomenological account of antiblack racism is compatible with a Marcellian reflective method.Less
This chapter examines Marcel’s failure to appreciate the full magnitude of antiblack racism as a system of dehumanization. It contends that Marcel’s sociopolitical thought is an unwitting accomplice to colonialism once it is viewed from the standpoint of Frantz Fanon’s criticism of colonialist logic in The Wretched of the Earth and Enrique Dussel’s criticism of western modernity in The Underside of Modernity. In addition, it examines how Gordon’s existential phenomenological account of antiblack racism is compatible with a Marcellian reflective method.
Steven B. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300198393
- eISBN:
- 9780300220988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300198393.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Tocqueville applied Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment to modern democracy. He saw in the age of equality the possibility of a new and unprecedented form of despotism arising out of ...
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Tocqueville applied Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment to modern democracy. He saw in the age of equality the possibility of a new and unprecedented form of despotism arising out of long-standing trends toward administrative centralization. Tocqueville drew on Montesquieu’s theory of doux commerce to show how modernity would replace the old warrior ethic of glory in order to produce new habits based on individualism and an ethic of and “self-interest rightly understood.” This ethic was in turn the source of a distinctively modern pathology that leads people to flee from their own freedom in order to seek security and comfort from the state that had become a new kind of tutelary power. Tocqueville’s fears about this new kind of soft despotism were prescient. They were developed by twentieth-century thinkers, like Louis Hartz, Hannah Arendt, and Michael Oakeshott, concerned with the emergence of mass society and totalitarian political parties.Less
Tocqueville applied Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment to modern democracy. He saw in the age of equality the possibility of a new and unprecedented form of despotism arising out of long-standing trends toward administrative centralization. Tocqueville drew on Montesquieu’s theory of doux commerce to show how modernity would replace the old warrior ethic of glory in order to produce new habits based on individualism and an ethic of and “self-interest rightly understood.” This ethic was in turn the source of a distinctively modern pathology that leads people to flee from their own freedom in order to seek security and comfort from the state that had become a new kind of tutelary power. Tocqueville’s fears about this new kind of soft despotism were prescient. They were developed by twentieth-century thinkers, like Louis Hartz, Hannah Arendt, and Michael Oakeshott, concerned with the emergence of mass society and totalitarian political parties.
