Mark Dooley

Mark Dooley
Mark Dooley in 2013, giving a lecture in France
Born	(1970-01-12) 12 January 1970 Dublin
Occupation	Academic, writer, journalist
Nationality	Irish
Alma mater	University College Dublin
Subject	Philosophy, religion
Notable awards	John Henry Newman Scholar in Theology 1999–2002
Website
drmarkdooley.com

Mark Dooley is an Irish philosopher, writer, journalist, public speaker and academic. He is also a regular radio broadcaster and guest of TV shows, and has in addition served as a speech writer. He has led a journalistic and an academic career simultaneously. He is a specialist of continental philosophy, philosophy of religion and theology. He wrote a study of Søren Kierkegaard's ethical, religious and cultural insights, and then moved on to interrogating conceptions of God and ethics. He then published a monograph on Roger Scruton and a collection of Scruton's texts, and was called by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland to write about the ways forward for the Irish Catholic Church in the wake of the abuse revelations.

Education

Mark Dooley grew up in Dublin where he attended the Synge Street CBS. He studied history and philosophy at University College Dublin (BA attained 1991, and MA in Philosophy 1993). He earned his Doctorate in Philosophy in 1997 from UCD. His doctoral thesis was published by Fordham University Press, New York, as The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard’s Ethics of Responsibility(2001).

Academic career

Dooley was a Lecturer in the philosophy department of University College Dublin between 1992 and 2003. Between 1999 and 2002, he was John Henry Newman Scholar in theology, having won a scholarship conferred upon him by the National University of Ireland, the first recipient of the award in theology. Dooley was a Visiting Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of the Maynooth University in 1998 and 1999, and returned as Lecturer between 2006 and 2011.

Journalistic and broadcasting career

Dooley is a regular broadcaster on Ireland's national radio (RTE, Newstalk, Today FM). Since 2002, Dooley has contributed to The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, The Sunday Independent, The Irish Examiner, Prospect Magazine and The Dublin Magazine. Since 2006, Dooley has worked as a cultural and political columnist for the Irish Daily Mail.

Crisis in the Irish Catholic Church

According to Dooley, his exposing the sources of the moral crisis in Ireland's national seminary led to priests from various countries asking him to write a book in which he would articulate the way forward for the Irish Catholic Church.

Why be a Catholic? (2011), a book which contains auto-biographical elements, has an account of Dooley's own reappropriation of his Catholic faith. Eoghan Harris reviewed it in the Sunday Independent in those terms: "Why Be a Catholic? courageously confronts what must be done if Catholicism is to survive as a religion of redemption. And while I think of myself as an atheist [...] I found Dooley's book free of special pleading. Unlike some Catholic apologists, Dooley does not perfunctorily acknowledge the suffering of children before rushing on to defend the Church: he dwells on the horror of what has happened. But when he finally turns to the reform of the Roman Catholic Church, he makes sense. A priest, he tells us, is not merely a social worker with a collar. He has to be first and foremost a holy man." The book was also welcomed by the Catholic press: ‘This is a timely book that seeks to revitalise a faith that it all too apt to flag in this time of crisis. Dooley faces up to the clerical sex-abuse scandals, but shows us a church that still keeps the flame of faith alive... [his] heartfelt plea deserves to be heard.' (The Tablet) 'Mark Dooley is well qualified to get to the heart of the matters that trouble so many today: why bother with being a Catholic?’ (The Irish Catholic)

Books

• Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1999), co-edited with Richard Kearney, an overview of debates about contemporary European ethical thought
• The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility (Fordham University Press, 2001)
• Questioning God (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001; ISBN 978-0253214744), edited with Michael J. Scanlon and John D. Caputo, collection of fifteen essays on God and forgiveness
• A Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in Focus (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003; ISBN 978-0791456880), an edited collection of essays on John D. Caputo
• Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001), translated with Michael Hughes
• The Philosophy of Derrida (London: Acumen Press, 2006; Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007), co-edited with Liam Kavanagh
• Roger Scruton: The Philosopher of Dover Beach (London & New York: Continuum, 2009)
• The Roger Scruton Reader (London & New York: Continuum, 2009), collection of texts by Scruton
• Why be a Catholic? (London & New York: Continuum, 2011)
• Moral Matters. A Philosophy of Homecoming (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), loosely based on his weekly column in the Irish Daily Mail.

External links

• Mark Dooley's website