Fifteen years ago this month, I first encountered Father Fergal O'Connor. I was a fresh-faced politics undergraduate at UCD. He was a celebrated philosopher nearing the end of his lecturing days.
Not that I knew of his credentials then. I had merely signed up to his course because I'd heard he was an easy marker. And it was true! He used to give his students the questions for his exam papers in advance - a small subversive act against an educational system of which he was so critical all his professional life.
I still have the notes from that first tutorial (Well, they're not the sort of thing you throw away). He arrived into the room - a fragile-looking man, bent over from arthritis - and began talking. I can vouch for the fact that within less than an hour, he had done irreparable damage to at least one student's smug sense of self-importance - and I'm sure others suffered similarly.
"We are dealers in second-hand ideas and we don't even know it." It was one of many phrases that I found myself rapidly jotting down as he questioned successive sacred cows - from the idea of historical progress to the belief that we are autonomous individuals imbued with inalienable human rights.
One statement I found particularly arresting - and I look upon it with shame all these years later (as it has more than a hint of truth) - was his claim that: "At the age of 20, we adopt principles and then take them, unquestioningly, through life."
I relay my experiences here not for the benefit of people who knew Fr O'Connor. They will be more than familiar with his enigmatic talents. I address those who never had the privilege of hearing "Father Ferg" speak because, in his recent passing, Ireland has lost not just one of its foremost educators but a profound voice of reason in an increasingly fractured and malfunctioning society.
In a rare interview in 1994, to an in-house UCD magazine, Fr O'Connor predicted many of the ills facing us today, among them the increasing commercialisation of third-level institutions, the Belfield college among them.
"Higher education has simply become a breeding ground for the professions," he said. "The great loss in this development is that universities will cease to be critics of society. You see it in America where the universities are so dependent on the military and on industry for grants that they have lost their critical independence."
He continued: "I can see us developing a more and more radical individualism with great cost to society ultimately. That is the reality of Western culture. You can see it in all areas of life. People retreat into the nuclear family because the standards of consumption they have defined for themselves are so high that they cannot be shared. That degree of commitment to a high standard breeds indifference and selfishness and it also breeds problems in the area of care for the elderly, so the State has to assume that care."
Fr O'Connor foresaw not just an absence of "joined-up thinking" in politics but an absence of thinking. Perhaps his most recurrent argument related to the separation - an untenable separation, in his view - of "facts" from "values" within public discourse. He rightly pinpointed a trend towards handing over the running of society to technicians, consultants and other "experts" who supposedly gave us unbiased information when, in fact, "all information is interest-laden" (as I recorded Fr O'Connor saying in those early lectures).
What was really radical about his message, however, was the emphasis he placed on personal responsibility. Reflecting, no doubt, his own Christian convictions, he suggested people should look inwardly first before blaming others, or more vaguely "the system", for society's ills. Thus, he roundly condemned citizens who believed morality to be a private matter, as well as students who "just see their studies as a means to an end".
I say all this with a certain degree of caution, knowing Fr O'Connor's philosophy could not be reduced to a few crude principles. As Dr Joe Dunne wrote, in an essay for Questioning Ireland (Institute of Public Administration, 2000), a book published in celebration of Fr Fergal's career, the Dominican priest never provided "ready answers" to students who wished to know his mind. He was, after all, a believer in independent thought rather than the adoption of "formulas" for life, arguing (as I recorded at another lecture) that "a principled man is meant to be a good man but he is more likely to be a bigot".
In fact, his own values were perhaps best expressed through his actions rather than his words - his dedicated work for homeless girls in Dublin, for whom he established a hostel at Sherrard Street, and his care for unmarried mothers through the pioneering support group Ally at a time when such women were social pariahs.
Exactly a week before he died, I did something I had promised myself I would do for a long time. I wrote to Fr O'Connor to tell him how grateful I was for his tutoring, and how fortunate I've always felt for having attended his lectures - even though I may well have failed to apply the wisdom within them.
I'm sorry now that I left it so late. I have been guilty, perhaps like many others in our society, of failing properly to respect those selfless teachers in our midst, teachers like Fr Fergal.
It is never too late to change, however, and I observe with optimism a comment he made in the last lecture of his course, as recorded in my college notes. Paraphrasing his beloved Plato, he told us: "The individual can have true wisdom if he is capable of listening."