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E-mail: bartybegley@gmail.com

 Biography

I'm working as a barrister in Dublin, doing a bit of everything, but with a strong interest in employment law. 

But I didn't start out as a lawyer.

My first degree was a BA in English & Sociology/Politics in Galway, and then an MA in English. After finishing the MA, I went to France for a short trip, and never came back. In Montpellier, I discovered philosophy, and did the BA and MA. 

I published a book-length translation and study of John Toland and then went to Dresden for a couple of years, where I studied German literature and some philosophy, and published a number of literary translations.

An MA in translation in Leeds led to a job working in Paris as a translator of Renault engineering manuals for a couple of years (others sat writing poetry in Montmartre cafes; I sat reading about automotive engineering). I did manage to write some short stories, which won some awards, came back to Ireland, and promptly got back into philosophy, more by way of trying to remember or figure out how to think than anything else. I fell in love with Spinoza (as one does) and was lucky enough to get an Irish Research Council grant to write a PhD on his work. 

I've done some philosophy translations out of early-modern Latin and have continued learning other languages.

I was an IRC postdoctoral fellow in DCU, working on the various methods of defending free speech, and how they are affected by political circumstances.  Out of that came a new understanding of how Spinoza had in fact been influenced by political circumstances of in his writing. 

In my teaching, I've gone back to my philosophical roots, teaching French philosophy in French at University College Cork, on the issues of education, social class, and social control, hoping to maybe pass on some of the sense of the excitement of French intellectual life which I had when I lived there.

When Covid came, and while still teaching part-time, I was able to study for the LLB at UCC. I loved it and got to work with a number of great initiatives: the Irish Climate Bar; the Traveller Justice and Equality Project; and the Irish Legal Information Initiative.

And I found I liked the intellectual striving that happens in courtrooms and the working out of the essence of court decisions, so from the LLB it was the Barrister-at-law degree in King's inns.

So now the aim is to be able to use all this to help in some way, and to keep learning. 

  Publications.

  Book

  Barty Begley. Le Christianisme sans mystères, commentary and translation into French of Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) by John Toland. Neuchâtel (Switzerland): Arbre d’or, 2007.

  Peer reviewed articles

"Spinoza, Before and After the Rampjaar" European Legacy, Volume 27, 2022 - Issue 6. LINK

"Naturalism and its political dangers: Jakob Thomasius against Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. A study and the translation of Thomasius’ text," The Seventeenth Century, August, 2018. (LINK)

“John Toland’s conjecture on the first invention of typographic printing as inspired by Cicero: text and context,” History of European Ideas, 42:3 (2016): pp. 320-328. LINK

"John Toland’s 'On the manner, place and time of the death of Giordano Bruno of Nola', translated from the Latin and annotated" Journal of Early Modern Studies, 3:2 (2014): pp. 103–115.  LINK 

 “Selective Memory: A comparative study of three translation software tools”, in The Linguist Magazine, vol. 46.2, April 2007.

Book chapter

Barty Begley. “La tristesse du traducteur” in Anne Marie Costalat-Founeau (ed.), Sujet, Langage et Complexité. Paris: Harmattan, 2001.

Encyclopedia entry

"Jakob Thomasius"  in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers, 2020 (DOI: 10.5040/9781350999992.0009 ).

Short stories: awards

Galway Cúirt New Writing Award for “Hurling and Football” (2006)

Aidan Higgins Award for “From an Abandoned Trip, Years Ago” (2007)

Irish Arts Council award for short stories (2008)

Literary translations

Poems and short stories, in various reviews, by François Villon, Charles Nodier, Jules Vallès, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Hebbel, Justus Möser and Heinrich von Kleist

Book reviews

The Art of Bible Translation, Robert Alter  (Princeton UP, 2019) in Style 2020  (54.1) (DOI: 10.5325/style.54.1.0122 )

Idleness: A Philosophical Essay, Brian O’Connor (Princeton UP, 2018) in Books Ireland Jan/Feb 2019.

Rousseau’s Constitutionalism: Austerity and Republican Freedom, Eoin Daly. Hart.

Evaluating Parental Power: An Exercise in Pluralist Political Theory, Allyn Fives. Manchester UP. 

Northern/Irish feminist judgments: judges’ troubles and the gendered politics of identity, Máiréad Enright, Julie McCandless, and Aoife O’Donoghue (eds.). Hart.

("Philosophy Roundup" in Books Ireland May/June 2018) LINK

Critical Elitism: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Problem of Expertise, Alfred Moore (Cambridge UP, 2017) in Philosophy in Review, May 2018. LINK

The Political Economy of the Irish welfare state: Church, State and Capital , Fred Powell (Policy Press, 2017) , in History Ireland Jan./Feb. 2018. LINK

Crime, Violence and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Kyle Hughes and Donald M. MacRaild. (Liverpool UP 2017) in Books Ireland Jan/Feb. 2018. LINK

Ireland in an Imperial World: Citizenship, Opportunism, and Subversion. Eds. Timothy McMahon, Michael de Nie, Paul Townend )Palgrave Macmillan 2017), in Books IrelandSept./Oct 2017. LINK

Drink and Culture in Nineteenth-century Ireland: The Alcohol Trade and the Politics of the Irish Public House, Bradley Kadel. (I.B. Tauris, 2015), in Books Ireland, July/August 2016. LINK

The Literature of the Arminian Controversy: Religion, Politics and the Stage in the Dutch Republic, Freya Sierhuis (Oxford University Press. 2015), in The Seventeenth Century, Sept. 2016. LINK 

The Royalist Republic: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Anglo- Dutch Public Sphere, 1639-1660, Helmer J. Helmers (Cambridge: Cambridge        University Press, 2015), in Journal of Dutch Literature Vol 7, No 1 (2016) LINK

The young Spinoza: a metaphysician in the making, edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Oxford University Press, 2015, in  The International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, vol 72.2 2015 . LINK

Christianity not Mysterious, ed. P. McGuinness et al. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1997, in The Irish Times, 21 February 1998.

   Academic Funding Awards

2017-2019 Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship

2015: University College Cork Strategic Research Fund

2012-2015 Irish Research Council, PhD Fellowship

Conference Organisation

"Choosing Directions in a Republic". DCU June 28th 2018.  (Keynote Jonathan Israel: Princeton IAS)

The 2nd Irish Early Modern Conference (co-organized with Ian Leask of DCU) took place at All Hallows College in Dublin on Friday December 9th, 2016. (The first edition was held in UCC in 2014.)

 In May 2015 I organised a Spinoza Symposium with Susan James and Andrew Youpa as speakers and a number of respondents.  

In 2014, I organised the First Irish Early Modern Conference, which was held in Cork, gathering Early Modern scholars from Ireland and abroad. 

 Conference contributions and symposia

2019 "Authority and freethinking in the  work of Jakob Thomasius, Spinoza’s earliest critic," Neo-Latin Symposium, University College Cork, April 13

2018 “Walter Lippmann and elite rule,” Choosing directions in a republic, Dublin City University, June 28. 

2017 "Getting at politics through beauty (a discussion of the interplay of environmental aesthetics and historical awareness)". University Of Antwerp, Nov. 16.

2017 "Catching frogs in the swamp: Jakob Thomasius' fear of independent thinking", What were the Early-Moderns Afraid of?, University Of Antwerp, June 8-9

2017 "The change in Spinoza's critique of censorship from the Theological-Political Treatise to the Political Treatise", Enlightenment and Free Speech, Jagiellonian University in Krakow May 19-20

  2015 "Models and direct good and bad in Spinoza’s Ethics", British Society for the History of Philosophy Conference, York.

  2014 “Who is Spinoza's free man?” Irish Early Modern Conference, Cork    

  2013 “Is this a banana I see before me?: The Perky experiments, Spinoza and Macbeth: or when the imagination is right.” UCC philosophy symposium  

  2013 “Healthy social conflict in Spinoza.” UCC Graduate school conference

  2012 “Rhetoric and the passions in Spinoza.”  UCC Graduate school conference

  2012 “The eidetic in Chapter 4 of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations.” Irish Phenomenological Circle Workshop

  2011 “Deriving Human Rights From Human Duties.” UCC Graduate school conference

Languages

French (professional translator; fluent - I can teach in this language), German (professional translator), Italian (good reader and speaker), Latin (good reader, average speaker), Spanish (good reader and speaker), Dutch (good reader, average speaker), Irish/Gaelic (average reader and speaker), Ancient Greek (basic reader) 

Academic translation and editing

I have translated numerous articles from French and German of philosophy, psychology and politics texts, and edited a large number of articles and books in the same areas.

Teaching

2019-2022 UCC

French philosophy through French

(Autumn 2018 DCU)

Introduction to Epistemology (1st year)

Reading Plato (3rd year)

(Autumn 2018 NUI Maynooth)

Modern Philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche)

(Spring 2018 DCU)

Theories of religion: Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Logic for Business Ethics

(2014-15 UCC Philosophy Department)

PH2030: History of Philosophy: Spinoza's Ethics

Guest Lecture: MA/MSc. Death and dying

(2013-14 UCC Philosophy Department)

  PH2001 History of Philosophy: Spinoza's Ethics

Guest Lectures

  PH3001 History of Philosophy: Kant's CPR: introduction to transcendental philosophy.

  PH2017 Feminist Philosophy: Descartes & Poullain de la Barre: cartesianism & women.

(2012-13 UCC Philosophy Department)

  PH2022 Great Books: Spinoza’s Ethics.

  Undergraduate Philosophy Writing Workshop

Guest lectures

  PH2001 History of Philosophy: Descartes: The ontological proof of God

  PH3001 History of Philosophy: Kant: The transcendental dialectic.

(2011-12 UCC Philosophy Department)

  Undergraduate tutor

1996-1997 (UCG English Department)

  Undergraduate tutor and examiner for modules on Renaissance Studies (EN 209), Victorian Literature (EN 309), 19th Century Literature (EN 309), and Criticism and Theory (EN 215)

Education

LLB (University College Cork) 

PhD in Philosophy (University College Cork) Dissertation title: Spinoza on method and freedom 

MA in Translation: French and German (University of Leeds) (1st class hons)

MA in Philosophy (Université Montpellier III) (1st class hons equivalent)

BA in Philosophy  (Université Montpellier III)

MA in English (University College Galway) (1st class hons)

BA in English and Sociology & Politics (University College Galway)