Michael D. Higgins - When Ideas Matter

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The President of Ireland since 2011, when he was elected by a final tally of almost 57% of the votes, Michael D. Higgins has used his time in office to set out a vision of what he calls an ethical Republic.

In a series of remarkable and urgent speeches, which are anything but the bland commentaries of a ceremonial head of state, Michael D. Higgins has entreated his fellow citizens to consider what makes the good life. He has asked how human rights, an active and empowered citizenry, womens equality and the right to health and a life free of corrosive anxiety might be achieved. He has highlighted the plight of refugees. And he has criticized the ways in which work is becoming dehumanized, in a process that treats people as mere means to the creation of a more efficient market society.

This book collects some of Higginss most striking and thoughtful interventions in a great variety of settings, from workplaces and universities to the glittering environs of Windsor Castle, where he was the first Irish President to be welcomed by a British monarch.

It was in response to interest and requests from a number of members of the public, some of whom had either attended, or read about, some of my public addresses, and had asked where they might be found, that I agreed to the suggestion that publication of a selection of speeches might be worthwhile.

Those chosen are selected from a very much larger number that I have delivered since my inauguration as President of Ireland, on November 11th 2011. They were chosen by the editors of this volume to whom I am grateful.

For their assistance in preparation of those speeches chosen, may I thank those staff who worked within the ras, and others from outside, who have contributed by suggestion, draft, amendment and, above all, with the challenging task of interpreting my handwriting. For all of my speeches, those included here and others, I of course take full and sole responsibility.

In doing so I want to say just a word about the speeches which have been chosen by the editors. If you sense a concern with the intellectual and social crisis, you are correct. Simply recognising the challenges of the deep changes of our times is, I believe, insufficient. We need to create the capacity to understand, critique and offer options and alternatives to those changes, ones that will sustain and deepen democracy. It is important to sustain, claim or defend a space of discourse that allows for this, and draw such shared conclusions from that understanding that it will be emancipatory for humanity.

My journey to being President of Ireland has been a long, complex and informative experience. Given the background that I brought to my present position I regard it as a further privilege that I had the opportunity to deliver these speeches. Words are a great gift. They are all the power that some people, and often even entire peoples and classes have. To be given the opportunity to offer a critique of current circumstances, with their threats and their possibilities, is a great privilege. I am grateful for that privilege and I respect it. Words matter.

Soon after my inauguration, I said that I would seek to make my tenure a Presidency of ideas. In truth what I have written I would have sought to write, irrespective of circumstance. What the speeches contain are just my response to current circumstances, no more than that, and they are offered, in humility, as invitations to a shared discourse and debate.

For some who live and struggle in an unequal world, ideas and words are all they have at their disposal. Their ideas express their common humanity, their aspirations for what is fair, just, and emancipatory. They constitute what is, for them, the realm of hope.

In the course of preparing and delivering some of the speeches which follow I have often found myself thinking in this year of commemoration 2016 of those who dreamed of and struggled for Irish Independence a century ago, among them my father, John Higgins.

During this year I have often thought of his hard life, his illness and his death, accompanied by a fall into poverty, an experience shared by so many former participants in the birth of the State of which I now have the honour to be President.

For such people social security and health care were far from sufficient, in their ageing years, in the Republic for which they gave so much of the energy of their young lives. I think too of my mother who shared his views with a quiet fortitude and my sisters who emigrated when they were twenty years old, and my brother who kept his courage in challenging circumstances. So much has been achieved in modern Ireland but our fully inclusive, equal version of a republic is very much an unfinished task.

My own family, Sabina, Alice Mary, Michael, John and Daniel have shared all the public life that has led up to the position I now fill. The discussion of public affairs and public rhetoric has been central to their experience of our lives together. We have had great friends, allies, comrades. To them all I dedicate this book.

I have come to regard the ethics of friendship as the beautiful, most enduring prospect that remains available to this and coming generations. Discussing, debating, making the case for change, is best achieved within the ethics of friendship. To all those who welcomed me to their causes, I am so grateful.

I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of my agent Jonathan Williams, my editor Neil Belton and his skilful and patient colleagues Georgina Blackwell, Clmence Jacquinet, Simon Hess and Declan Heeney. I am also grateful to Declan Kiberd for his friendship and advice. For use of their work may I thank artists Brian Bourke and Ger Sweeney.

I hope that you find what follows of interest and continue the debate on the issues they raise.

There is so much more to be said, so much more reflection to be made, for a world not merely made better than before, but built on a freedom that will release the joy of a shared life on our fragile planet.

Beir beannacht

M ICHAEL D. H IGGINS

The opportunity to write an introduction to a new edition of When Ideas Matter enables me to reflect, not just on events since its publication, but also allows me to assess how the observations made in the speeches have been confirmed or contradicted, or whether they need to be revised. On re-reading the substance of what I wrote, I would not fundamentally change the message, the appeal contained therein. However, the fragmentation in thought and policy that I addressed, the absence of connection in our present circumstances between philosophical work, moral concern and the emancipatory potential of the social sciences, has only deepened.

The pages that follow thus continue to embody my hopes and anxieties, my sense of intellectual disappointment at the situation in which we find ourselves, as well as my recognition of the real achievements in matters of peace-making and progress, however slow, towards equality. These concerns are reflected in the different papers I have delivered since I was inaugurated as President of Ireland on the 11th of November 2011. This new introduction also gives me the opportunity to reflect on the response I have had to these papers, delivered to public audiences who were invited to become part of a wider debate about a discourse adequate to our times, including a critical reorientation of the language of politics and economics. In this paperback publication, my invitation is repeated.