The Enigma of Arthur Griffith
The Enigma of Arthur Griffith

Author: Colum Kenny

Publisher: Merrion Press

Published: 2020-01-14

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1785373161

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Almost a century after his untimely death in 1922, this lively and insightful new assessment explores the man Michael Collins described as ‘father of us all’ and reclaims Arthur Griffith as the founder of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Free State. Since his death when President of Dáil Éireann, Griffith’s role has often been misrepresented. Too radical for some, he was not militant enough for others. His legacy belongs to no single political party today. Colum Kenny argues that efforts to ‘other’ Griffith as ‘un-Irish’ raise uncomfortable questions about Irish identity. A dedicated activist and intellectual, as well as a skilled editor and balladeer, Griffith knew what it meant to be poor. He encouraged women to get involved in the struggle for Irish independence, and, unusually for his time, distinguished between Oscar Wilde’s private life and his work. Griffith’s complex relationships with Maud Gonne, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce are revealed here in significant new ways. The Enigma of Arthur Griffith brings the ‘father of us all’ into focus for a new generation.

Locating Europe
Locating Europe

Author: Rodolphe Gasché

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0253054869

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Is the idea of Europe outdated? The concept of European unity, the animating spirit of the European Union, seems increasingly fragile in the face of far-right populist movements. In Locating Europe , Rodolphe Gasché attempts to answer the question of how to think about Europe. Is it a figure, a concept, or an idea? Is there anything still compelling and urgent about the idea of Europe? By looking at phenomenologist and postphenomenological thinkers in the second half of the 20th century, Gasché reveals that Europe is more than just one geographical and cultural entity. The idea of Europe is based on common foundations: a distinctive conception of reason, of self-criticism, of responsibility, freedom, equality, human rights, and democracy, and it is these foundations that are under threat. In Locating Europe: A Figure, a Concept, an Idea? Gasché engages the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Jaspers, Karl Löwith, and others, focuses on the most significant philosophical representations of Europe, and explores the potential, and especially the limits, of the notion of Europe.

At Eden’s Door
At Eden’s Door

Author: David Rechter

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2022-12-15

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1802079246

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Leon Kellner was part of the intellectual and cultural elite of imperial Austria. Engaged in politics, a member of his regional parliament, and an essayist of repute, he was also a Zionist leader and confidant of Theodor Herzl. He created an institution for Jews’ cultural, educational, and social advancement modelled on London’s Toynbee Hall, which spread across east-central Europe to great effect. He was also an internationally recognized Shakespeare scholar. Yet for all this, today he is little known. How did someone born into a lower-middle-class Orthodox Jewish family from the province of Galicia come to gain such prominence in the Habsburg empire? Kellner’s is a thoroughly Habsburg Jewish story, spanning east and west and shaped by the empire’s history, politics, and culture. He was a singular character: a Galician Jew at home in Vienna and in Czernowitz, eyes towards Zion, yet content also in London, and never more so than when absorbed in the minutiae of Shakespeare’s texts. Kellner’s world was destroyed twice over: Habsburg Austria came to an end in 1918, east-central European Jewry in 1945. This biography recovers at least part of what was lost.