Daniel Carey | University of Galway (original) (raw)

Papers by Daniel Carey

Choice Reviews Online, Feb 1, 2012

In her literary-critical dialog, The Progress of Romance (1785), Clara Reeve traces the novel to ... more In her literary-critical dialog, The Progress of Romance (1785), Clara Reeve traces the novel to its ancient and Eastern romance origins, acknowledging the proliferation of prose (and verse) fiction across temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries. The Progress marks one of the first English attempts to narrate a literary-critical history of the novel, and the scope of Reeve's project illustrates just how capacious that history could be. At the end of the eighteenth century, Reeve reached many of the same conclusions already advanced by the French clergyman and scholar Pierre Daniel Huet in the Traitté de l'origine des romans (1670), again subordinating the novel to a broader literary history. For Reeve, as for Huet, this history begins in antiquity; the novel is born of the ancient Mediterranean and its transcultural commerce. Whereas the idea of "progress" might strike us as teleological, Reeve's appendix signals the open-endedness of her work: she concludes with a history, also doubling as an oriental tale, first mediated by its medieval Arabic author and subsequently by its French and English translators. By advancing "The History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt," from the thirteenth-century Egyptian History of Murtada ibn al-Khafif, Reeve eschews the exclusionary preference for the English novel-particularly of the domestic realist variety-that would be exalted by future generations of critics. In France and in England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries alike, writers such as Huet and Reeve remind us, in their accounts of canon formation, that the category of the novel emerges only after the fact. Especially in the earlier part of the period, distinctions between "romance," "novel," and "history" were by no means clear, and the resulting fictions happily embraced generic fluidity and hybridity with seeming abandon. The apparent unruliness of prose fiction troubled eighteenthcentury critics and continues to confound their twenty-first-century counterparts. Although sales of other genres, especially history, far outpaced those of the novel, and

National Stereotyping, Identity Politics, European Crises, 2021

Paragraph, 2017

Philosophical antagonism and dispute — by no means confined to the early modern period — nonethel... more Philosophical antagonism and dispute — by no means confined to the early modern period — nonetheless enjoyed a moment of particular ferment as new methods and orientations on questions of epistemology and ethics developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Locke played a key part in them with controversies initiated by the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690). This essay develops a wider typology of modes of philosophical quarrelling by focusing on a key debate — the issue of whether human nature came pre-endowed with innate ideas and principles, resulting in a moral consensus across mankind, or remained, on the contrary, dependent on reason to achieve moral insight, and, in practice, divided by diverse and irreconcilable cultural practices as a result of the force of custom and the limited purchase of reason. The essay ultimately concludes on the idea that we should not only attend to the genealogy of disputes but also to the morphology of disputation as a pra...

Perspectives on Politics, 2018

Ireland’s Education Yearbook, 2022

In this article, Professor Carey provides an assessment of Impact 2030, Ireland's strategy for re... more In this article, Professor Carey provides an assessment of Impact 2030, Ireland's strategy for research and innovation. The establishment of a new competitive funding agency represents an opportunity to confirm key commitments and to address challenges facing the research system. Launched in May 2022, Impact 2030 constitutes an ambitious statement of direction for Ireland in the domain of research and innovation. As the successor to Innovation 2020 (formulated in a time of economic crisis in 2015), the new Strategy prepared by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, responds to different circumstances and sets out plans across five pillars: the impact of research and innovation on economy, society and the environment; excellence; enterprise; talent; and our commitments to an all-island, EU, and global context.

Studi Lockiani, 2022

John Locke maintained a longstanding engagement with the practice of framing inquiries in order a... more John Locke maintained a longstanding engagement with the practice of framing inquiries in order advance knowledge in different domains. Influenced by Robert Boyle and the Royal Society, he devised questions on a wide range of topics, shared questionnaires, and wrote to individuals with specific queries, as his journals, notebooks and correspondence testify. Locke’s method coincides with attempts by natural historians to capture insights from travellers, armed with suitable questions for a variety of destinations. Little attention has been paid to Locke’s approach beyond valuable work by Peter Anstey. This article investigates Locke’s commitment to inquiries and modes of communicating them. It also discusses a neglected manuscript in which Locke outlines a brief set of inquiries devoted to religion. Thus he adapted the method of naturalists to advance the anthropological study of religious belief and enthusiasm in particular.

Journal of Scottish Thought

In his own time as much as in ours, the response to Francis Hutcheson's philosophy has concentrat... more In his own time as much as in ours, the response to Francis Hutcheson's philosophy has concentrated above all on his contribution to moral thought,

Annals of Science, 2013

John Locke intervened in two major debates in which the issue of species featured: (1) the questi... more John Locke intervened in two major debates in which the issue of species featured: (1) the question of whether species designations are based on real essences or only nominal essences (discussed in the Essay), and (2) the debate over the recoinage of English currency in the 1690s, in which Locke argued for a restoration of silver depleted by widescale clipping (discussed in his economic writings published between 1692-95). This article investigates Locke's position on the recoinage and considers alternative proposals in the period, including those which advocated the introduction of a 'new species' of money in the form of credit, based on land. Locke opened the space, philosophically, for innovations in defining money, but endorsed a narrower conception of money as silver by weight alone (not by its stamp or denomination). His rationale for doing so exposes his attachment to shared systems of measurement, intersubjective agreement, and ways of stabilizing meaning by reference to external criteria (in this case, the weight of silver, a measure that functioned internationally). This suggests a pattern of attempting to constrain the nominalism that his system otherwise foregrounded.

The Text Creation Partnership is not only revolutionizing research and teaching in early modern s... more The Text Creation Partnership is not only revolutionizing research and teaching in early modern studies, but also shaping the methodology and relevance of more traditional bibliographical projects such as critical editions. One of the most ambitious projects to draw upon the resources presented by the TCP is the Hakluyt Project. This paper will explore the Hakluyt Project's use of TCP, our reasons for choosing these resources over other options, and some of the problems we have had to solve. The Hakluyt Project is producing a critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (second edition, 1598-1600), the most important collection of English travel writing ever published covering European activity and ambition from the New World to Muscovy, the Levant, Persia, the East Indies and Africa. Originally published in three massive folio volumes (approx. 1.76 million words), the modern critical edition of T...

Studies in Travel Writing, 2009

... Samson – turn their attention to different forms of travel within Europe. Most early modern t... more ... Samson – turn their attention to different forms of travel within Europe. Most early modern travel writing was written by and about journeys undertaken by men, but James focuses on a traveller unusual because of her gender, Isabella d'Este (1474–1539), Marchioness of Mantua. ...

The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) ... more The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The project aims to recover and reconstruct the transnational genre of travel advice literature, exploring its intellectual and cultural contexts, and illustrating its lasting importance. We are a collaborative international project based at the Moore Institute of the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Les voyages de Gulliver, 2000

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2004

RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...

Annals of Science, May 1, 1997

... the sea, any sweet water is to be found at the bottom', a phenomenon reporte... more ... the sea, any sweet water is to be found at the bottom', a phenomenon reported by the Dutch traveller Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. ... Transactions: Giving some Accompt o[' the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many Considerable Parts of the WorM. ...

British Journal For the History of Philosophy, 1997

The problem of diversity did not originate in the eighteenth century, but it arose with particula... more The problem of diversity did not originate in the eighteenth century, but it arose with particular force in a period when philosophers dedicated themselves to describing the fundamental contours of human nature. The question was how to reconcile the ...

Choice Reviews Online, Feb 1, 2012

In her literary-critical dialog, The Progress of Romance (1785), Clara Reeve traces the novel to ... more In her literary-critical dialog, The Progress of Romance (1785), Clara Reeve traces the novel to its ancient and Eastern romance origins, acknowledging the proliferation of prose (and verse) fiction across temporal, geographical, and cultural boundaries. The Progress marks one of the first English attempts to narrate a literary-critical history of the novel, and the scope of Reeve's project illustrates just how capacious that history could be. At the end of the eighteenth century, Reeve reached many of the same conclusions already advanced by the French clergyman and scholar Pierre Daniel Huet in the Traitté de l'origine des romans (1670), again subordinating the novel to a broader literary history. For Reeve, as for Huet, this history begins in antiquity; the novel is born of the ancient Mediterranean and its transcultural commerce. Whereas the idea of "progress" might strike us as teleological, Reeve's appendix signals the open-endedness of her work: she concludes with a history, also doubling as an oriental tale, first mediated by its medieval Arabic author and subsequently by its French and English translators. By advancing "The History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt," from the thirteenth-century Egyptian History of Murtada ibn al-Khafif, Reeve eschews the exclusionary preference for the English novel-particularly of the domestic realist variety-that would be exalted by future generations of critics. In France and in England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries alike, writers such as Huet and Reeve remind us, in their accounts of canon formation, that the category of the novel emerges only after the fact. Especially in the earlier part of the period, distinctions between "romance," "novel," and "history" were by no means clear, and the resulting fictions happily embraced generic fluidity and hybridity with seeming abandon. The apparent unruliness of prose fiction troubled eighteenthcentury critics and continues to confound their twenty-first-century counterparts. Although sales of other genres, especially history, far outpaced those of the novel, and

National Stereotyping, Identity Politics, European Crises, 2021

Paragraph, 2017

Philosophical antagonism and dispute — by no means confined to the early modern period — nonethel... more Philosophical antagonism and dispute — by no means confined to the early modern period — nonetheless enjoyed a moment of particular ferment as new methods and orientations on questions of epistemology and ethics developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Locke played a key part in them with controversies initiated by the Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690). This essay develops a wider typology of modes of philosophical quarrelling by focusing on a key debate — the issue of whether human nature came pre-endowed with innate ideas and principles, resulting in a moral consensus across mankind, or remained, on the contrary, dependent on reason to achieve moral insight, and, in practice, divided by diverse and irreconcilable cultural practices as a result of the force of custom and the limited purchase of reason. The essay ultimately concludes on the idea that we should not only attend to the genealogy of disputes but also to the morphology of disputation as a pra...

Perspectives on Politics, 2018

Ireland’s Education Yearbook, 2022

In this article, Professor Carey provides an assessment of Impact 2030, Ireland's strategy for re... more In this article, Professor Carey provides an assessment of Impact 2030, Ireland's strategy for research and innovation. The establishment of a new competitive funding agency represents an opportunity to confirm key commitments and to address challenges facing the research system. Launched in May 2022, Impact 2030 constitutes an ambitious statement of direction for Ireland in the domain of research and innovation. As the successor to Innovation 2020 (formulated in a time of economic crisis in 2015), the new Strategy prepared by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, responds to different circumstances and sets out plans across five pillars: the impact of research and innovation on economy, society and the environment; excellence; enterprise; talent; and our commitments to an all-island, EU, and global context.

Studi Lockiani, 2022

John Locke maintained a longstanding engagement with the practice of framing inquiries in order a... more John Locke maintained a longstanding engagement with the practice of framing inquiries in order advance knowledge in different domains. Influenced by Robert Boyle and the Royal Society, he devised questions on a wide range of topics, shared questionnaires, and wrote to individuals with specific queries, as his journals, notebooks and correspondence testify. Locke’s method coincides with attempts by natural historians to capture insights from travellers, armed with suitable questions for a variety of destinations. Little attention has been paid to Locke’s approach beyond valuable work by Peter Anstey. This article investigates Locke’s commitment to inquiries and modes of communicating them. It also discusses a neglected manuscript in which Locke outlines a brief set of inquiries devoted to religion. Thus he adapted the method of naturalists to advance the anthropological study of religious belief and enthusiasm in particular.

Journal of Scottish Thought

In his own time as much as in ours, the response to Francis Hutcheson's philosophy has concentrat... more In his own time as much as in ours, the response to Francis Hutcheson's philosophy has concentrated above all on his contribution to moral thought,

Annals of Science, 2013

John Locke intervened in two major debates in which the issue of species featured: (1) the questi... more John Locke intervened in two major debates in which the issue of species featured: (1) the question of whether species designations are based on real essences or only nominal essences (discussed in the Essay), and (2) the debate over the recoinage of English currency in the 1690s, in which Locke argued for a restoration of silver depleted by widescale clipping (discussed in his economic writings published between 1692-95). This article investigates Locke's position on the recoinage and considers alternative proposals in the period, including those which advocated the introduction of a 'new species' of money in the form of credit, based on land. Locke opened the space, philosophically, for innovations in defining money, but endorsed a narrower conception of money as silver by weight alone (not by its stamp or denomination). His rationale for doing so exposes his attachment to shared systems of measurement, intersubjective agreement, and ways of stabilizing meaning by reference to external criteria (in this case, the weight of silver, a measure that functioned internationally). This suggests a pattern of attempting to constrain the nominalism that his system otherwise foregrounded.

The Text Creation Partnership is not only revolutionizing research and teaching in early modern s... more The Text Creation Partnership is not only revolutionizing research and teaching in early modern studies, but also shaping the methodology and relevance of more traditional bibliographical projects such as critical editions. One of the most ambitious projects to draw upon the resources presented by the TCP is the Hakluyt Project. This paper will explore the Hakluyt Project's use of TCP, our reasons for choosing these resources over other options, and some of the problems we have had to solve. The Hakluyt Project is producing a critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (second edition, 1598-1600), the most important collection of English travel writing ever published covering European activity and ambition from the New World to Muscovy, the Levant, Persia, the East Indies and Africa. Originally published in three massive folio volumes (approx. 1.76 million words), the modern critical edition of T...

Studies in Travel Writing, 2009

... Samson – turn their attention to different forms of travel within Europe. Most early modern t... more ... Samson – turn their attention to different forms of travel within Europe. Most early modern travel writing was written by and about journeys undertaken by men, but James focuses on a traveller unusual because of her gender, Isabella d'Este (1474–1539), Marchioness of Mantua. ...

The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) ... more The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The project aims to recover and reconstruct the transnational genre of travel advice literature, exploring its intellectual and cultural contexts, and illustrating its lasting importance. We are a collaborative international project based at the Moore Institute of the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Les voyages de Gulliver, 2000

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2004

RefDoc Bienvenue - Welcome. Refdoc est un service / is powered by. ...

Annals of Science, May 1, 1997

... the sea, any sweet water is to be found at the bottom', a phenomenon reporte... more ... the sea, any sweet water is to be found at the bottom', a phenomenon reported by the Dutch traveller Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. ... Transactions: Giving some Accompt o[' the Present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many Considerable Parts of the WorM. ...

British Journal For the History of Philosophy, 1997

The problem of diversity did not originate in the eighteenth century, but it arose with particula... more The problem of diversity did not originate in the eighteenth century, but it arose with particular force in a period when philosophers dedicated themselves to describing the fundamental contours of human nature. The question was how to reconcile the ...

The unfolding coronavirus crisis has revealed deep structures of inequality manifested in the dea... more The unfolding coronavirus crisis has revealed deep structures of inequality manifested in the death toll in the United States and other countries. This seminar examines patterns of racism and legacies of slavery that have informed the pandemic, especially in the US and UK. Panelists: Eric Foner, Enrico Dal Lago, Koritha Mitchell, and Kerry Sinanan.

Moore Institute website, 2020

A tribute to Tim Robinson on his passing at age 85.

The use of computing technology in humanities scholarship has grown dramatically in recent years ... more The use of computing technology in humanities scholarship has grown dramatically in recent years thanks to collaboration between humanists and IT specialists. One particular field where this collaboration has been fruitful and dynamic is early-modern scholarly correspondence. Digital technology has offered a range of opportunities for the encoding, conservation and analysis of letters as a means of reconstructing and visualizing correspondence networks. In the past few years, open source projects, such as Mapping the Republic of Letters (Stanford), Cultures of Knowledge (Oxford), Electronic Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation), have substantially contributed to making these letters accessible. This conference invites us to consider the major contributions that digital tools provide to better understand the Republic of Letters. The workshop will critically engage with the question of how digital resources can contribute to a more constructive reading of the past. Beyond the appeal of engaging and interactive graphs, is the use of technology changing the way we interpret early-modern history?
The transnational and multidisciplinary workshop aims to generate scholarly debates on these questions. It will gather scholars working on correspondence and network projects to discuss methods and research tools, to foster collaboration and to explore the potential of these projects. In addition to showcasing important projects, we will ask if it is possible to envisage a large-scale, common scheme to integrate/merge all these various projects in a single platform of early modern correspondence and networks; and if not, what are the main constraints (funding, copyrights, data protection, languages, divergent ideas, dissimilar software and tools).
The workshop will bring together leaders of well-known early modern correspondence projects and experts in the use of digital tools for historical research to discuss these issues.

The conference marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), England's... more The conference marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), England's pioneering promoter of overseas exploration, commerce, and expansion

The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is an online database of European travel advice literature (Ars apo... more The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is an online database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The project aims to recover and reconstruct the transnational genre of travel advice literature, exploring its intellectual and cultural contexts, and illustrating its lasting importance. We are a collaborative international project based at the Moore Institute of the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Please follow link.

Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of 2... more Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of 24 essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. Best known as editor of The Principal Navigations (1589; expanded 1598-1600), Hakluyt was a key figure in promoting English colonial and commercial expansion in the early modern period. He also translated major European travel texts, championed English settlement in North America, and promoted global trade and exploration via a Northeast and Northwest Passage. His work spanned every area of English activity and aspiration, from Muscovy to America, from Africa to the Near East, and India to China and Japan, providing up-to-date information and establishing an ideological framework for English rivalries with Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands.

This volume resituates Hakluyt in the political, economic, and intellectual context of his time. The genre of the travel collection to which he contributed emerged from Continental humanist literary culture. Hakluyt adapted this tradition for nationalistic purposes by locating a purported history of 'English' enterprise that stretched as far back as he could go in recovering antiquarian records. The essays in this collection advance the study of Hakluyt's literary and historical resources, his international connections, and his rhetorical and editorial practice. The volume is divided into 5 sections: 'Hakluyt's Contexts'; 'Early Modern Travel Writing Collections'; 'Editorial Practice'; 'Allegiances and Ideologies: Politics, Religion, Nation'; and 'Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing'. The volume concludes with an account of the formation and ethos of the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, which has continued his project to edit travel accounts of trade, exploration, and adventure.

Contents: Introduction, Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt; Section I Hakluyt in Context: Hakluyt's London: discovery and overseas trade, Anthony Payne; From the History of Travayle to the history of travel collections: the rise of an early modern genre, Joan-Pau Rubiés. Section II Early Modern Travel Collections: A world seen through another's eyes: Hakluyt, Ramusio, and the narratives of the Navigationi e Viaggi, Margaret Small; Three tales of the New World: nation, religion, and colonialism in Hakluyt, de Bry, and Hulsius, Sven Trakulhun; Hakluyt in France: Pierre Bergeron and travel writing collections, Grégoire Holtz; 'Honour to our nation': nationalism, The Principal Navigations and travel collections in the long 18th century, Matthew Day; Richard Hakluyt and the visual world of early modern travel narratives, Peter C. Mancall. Section III Editorial Practices: '[T]ouching the state of the country of Guiana, and whether it were fit to be planted by the English': Sir Robert Cecil, Richard Hakluyt and the writing of Guiana, 1595-1612, Joyce Lorimer; Richard Hakluyt's two Indias: textual sparagmos and editorial practice, Nandini Das; Forming the captivity of Thomas Saunders: Hakluyt's editorial practices and their ideological effects, Julia Schleck; Framing 'the English nation': reading between text and paratext in The Principal Navigations (1598-1600), Colm MacCrossan; 'The strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia': Hakluyt and censorship, Felicity Stout. Section IV Allegiances and Ideologies, Politics, Religion, Nation: ‘We (upon peril of my life) shall make the Spaniards ridiculous to all Europe’: Richard Hakluyt’s ‘discourse’ of Spain, Francisco J. Borge; Balance of power and freedom of the seas: Richard Hakluyt and Alberico Gentili, Diego Pirillo; Richard Hakluyt and the demands of Pietas Patriae, David A. Boruchoff; ‘To deduce a colonie’: Richard Hakluyt’s Godly mission in its contexts, c.1580-1616, David Harris Sacks; Hakluyt’s multiple faiths, Matthew Dimmock. Section V Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing: ‘His dark materials’: the problem of dullness in Hakluyt’s collections, Mary C. Fuller; ‘To pot straight way wee goe’: Robert Baker in Guinea, 1562-64, Bernhard Klein; Hakluyt, Purchas, and the romance of Virginia, Daniel Carey; ‘Accidentall restraints’: straits and passages in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations, Elizabeth Heale; Hakluyt’s Oceans: Maritime Rhetoric in The Principal Navigations, Steve Mentz; Hakluyt’s legacy: armchair travel in English Renaissance drame, Claire Jowitt. Coda: The legacy of Richard Hakluyt: reflections on the history of the Hakluyt Society, Roy Bridges; Works cited; Index.

JOURNAL OF SCOTTISH THOUGHT, 2016

JOURNAL OF SCOTTISH THOUGHT -- Volume 7 -- Published by the Research Institute of Irish and Sco... more JOURNAL OF SCOTTISH THOUGHT --
Volume 7 --
Published by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies --
University of Aberdeen --
2016 --
ISSN 1755 9928 --

Editor: Endre Szécsényi --

© The Contributors -- --

OPEN ACCESS (see the link below)

This volume of The Journal of Scottish Thought developed from a conference hosted by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen and part-funded by the European Commission by virtue of a Marie Curie Fellowship held at the University of Aberdeen by Endre Szécsényi. -- --

Six of the papers presented here were originally delivered in the symposium ‘Hutcheson and the Emergence of Modern Aesthetics’ held at the University of Aberdeen on 23–24 January 2015. Inspired by the success of this event, the participants decided to publish their papers together in a special issue of this journal, under the title of ‘Francis Hutcheson and the Origins of the Aesthetic’. To their enterprise, Emily Brady (Edinburgh), Bálint Gárdos (Budapest), and Richard Glauser (Neuchâtel) contributed with further papers. The present collection is not supposed to offer a unified re-interpretation of Hutcheson’s aesthetics, instead, it shows that there are historical and theoretical potentials in Hutcheson’s aesthetics which have remained partly or fully unexploited in the scholarship, and it maintains the plurality of approaches to an intellectual achievement which played a crucial role in the emergence of modern aesthetic thinking. Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) wrote the first philosophical aesthetics in Europe in 1725. The first part of his 'Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue' is consensually regarded as his par excellence aesthetics which systematized some fundamental ideas of Lord Shaftesbury (whom Hutcheson explicitly mentioned as his main source of inspiration in the subtitle of the first edition), and applied the epistemological lessons drawn from John Locke’s philosophy. Three major features of his aesthetics proved lasting in the reception: the conception of ‘inner sense’ or ‘the sense of beauty’ as a special aesthetic sense of the human mind; his general formula of beauty in objects as ‘unity amidst variety’; and the claim of the tight relationship between aesthetics and morality which is emphasized already in the structure of his 'Inquiry' whose first part contains the theory of the sense of beauty, while the second that of moral sense. Since Hutcheson was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1730 to his death, it is not surprising that the large proportion of his oeuvre deals with moral philosophy; his posthumously published magnum opus is 'The System of Moral Philosophy' (1755). Still, beside the first part of his 'Inquiry', he also wrote three philosophical letters on laughter for the Dublin Journal (1725) which are customarily and rightly considered significant contribution to contemporary “aesthetic” thinking. With these works and several passages from other writings, especially in the Anglo-American scholarship, Hutcheson has become an indispensable and canonical figure in the narratives of the history of modern aesthetics. The authors of this special issue show the multiple layers and the profoundness of Hutcheson’s aesthetic thinking, which is unduly neglected in its received interpretations, as well as the diversity of its inspirational sources, and the complexity of its reception. As such, they either rectify or complement the viewpoints of the mainstream literature. In so doing, they put Hutcheson’s aesthetic thinking into different contexts, and exploit various relationships between this eminent Scottish philosopher and a wide range of other authors, like Cicero, John Calvin, Franco Burgersdijk, Adriaan Heereboord, George Turnbull, Joseph Addison, Charles-Louis de Villette, Edmund Burke, David Hume, Archibald Alison, Thomas Reid, W. B. Yeats, Herbert J. C. Grierson, I. A. Richards, and some prominent figures of contemporary environmental aesthetics, to mention only a few. -- --

Endre Szécsényi --
University of Aberdeen --
May 2016

Studies in Travel Writing, 12.1, 1-5

To mark the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616), the El... more To mark the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616), the Elizabethan travel editor and promoter of overseas exploration, and the first to lecture in modern geography at Oxford.

RTÉ Brainstorm, 2021

We can only hope that we have seen the last, ugly stand in the regime of Donald Trump. On Wednesd... more We can only hope that we have seen the last, ugly stand in the regime of Donald Trump. On Wednesday the 6th of January, two forces-nefarious came together: Republican lawmakers prepared to advocate overturning a democratic election, and rampaging members of the Trumposphere motivated by a mixture of rage, cultlike devotion, and QAnon conspiracies-Together they expressed the essence of the Trumpian moment, by turns ludicrous, calculated, dangerous and inept.

RTÉ Brainstorm, 2020

There is nothing Donald Trump fears more than being labelled a "loser". But after an inept campai... more There is nothing Donald Trump fears more than being labelled a "loser". But after an inept campaign built on the foundation of a wilfully divisive presidency, that is precisely what awaits him next week. His original plan, to ride to re-election on a tale of economic triumph, collided with Covid-19. The disease also put paid to the planned narrative of renewed American greatness -not so easy to reconcile with a record death toll and massive infection levels. The great blame shifter who long eluded the consequences of his actions deserves an ignominious fate.

The Irish Times, 2020

Institutions and not just attitudes need to be challenged for there to be meaningful reform.

Irish Humanities Alliance website, 2020

Metaphors have been hard at work during the crisis – particularly in the pronouncements of politi... more Metaphors have been hard at work during the crisis – particularly in the pronouncements of politicians seeking to shape our understanding of the moment and in defining their own role in the response (e.g. as a wartime leader, claimed by President Trump). Boris Johnson has been the most lavish fashioner of metaphors in his public statements. But we see it even in the "science" in ways that have escaped attention - in graphs, charts, and tables that substitute reality with a representation.

The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) ... more The Art of Travel, 1500-1850, is a database of European travel advice literature (Ars apodemica) from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The project aims to recover and reconstruct the transnational genre of travel advice literature, exploring its intellectual and cultural contexts, and illustrating its lasting importance. We are a collaborative international project based at the Moore Institute of the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Please follow link to database https://artoftravel.nuigalway.ie/