Most Famous Irish Philosophers
Irish philosophy is small in number but deeply influential in two distinct moments. In the early medieval period, John Scotus Eriugena, working at the Carolingian court, produced the most original Latin philosophy between Augustine and Anselm. In the eighteenth century, George Berkeley's idealist empiricism and Edmund Burke's reflections on the French Revolution shaped foundational debates in modern philosophy and political theory. John Toland's deist Christianity Not Mysterious provoked one of the period's most consequential controversies; Anna Doyle Wheeler co-authored an early feminist socialism in the early nineteenth century.
The Irish philosophical tradition has often crossed easily into English and Scottish philosophy, but its distinctive figures repay attention on their own terms. The thinkers below include the most original early-medieval Latin philosopher and the founders of modern idealism and conservative political philosophy.
Irish philosophers
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George Berkeley
George Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop best known for his theory of immaterialism, sometimes called subjective idealism. His Principles of Human Know...
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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke was an Irish-born British statesman and political philosopher, often regarded as the founder of modern conservatism. As a member of Parliament he supported concilia...
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John Scotus Eriugena
John Scotus Eriugena was an Irish theologian and Neoplatonist philosopher active at the court of the Carolingian king Charles the Bald. He produced the first Latin translation o...
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John Toland
John Toland was an Irish-born freethinker, political pamphleteer, and one of the most controversial English-language philosophers of the early Enlightenment. Educated at Glasgow...
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Anna Doyle Wheeler
Anna Doyle Wheeler was an Irish-born British socialist and feminist philosopher of the early nineteenth century, the principal philosophical collaborator of William Thompson and...