Celebrating Vincent Denard: A Life in Philosophy at Trinity

Emeritus Professor William Lyons reflects on the remarkable life of Vincent Denard, the oldest surviving member of the Department of Philosophy at Trinity. Born in 1923 in Bangor, County Down, Vincent’s story - from a Sizarship scholar to a lecturer in philosophy and classics – offers a fascinating look at student life and academic traditions at Trinity over the decades.

29 Jan 2025

VINCENT DENARD is the oldest surviving member of the Philosophy Department at Trinity College Dublin, and almost certainly one of the oldest surviving lecturers (professors) from the College.

He was born in 1923 in Bangor, County Down, a strongly Unionist and Protestant county. His family was of modest means, his father a painter and decorator and later a shopkeeper, and his mother a homemaker and mother. He had a brother and three sisters, with one of the latter being his twin.

He won a scholarship to Bangor Grammar School where he excelled at his studies, with mathematics and the classics being his particular strengths. He then won a Province-wide Exhibition in the Junior Certificate.

The head Master of Bangor Grammar at that time, George Wilkins, was a graduate of Trinity in the Classics. He encouraged Vincent to apply for a Sizarship in the classics at Trinity. Sizarships are Entrance Scholarships dating from the 17th century which provide students with free rooms and evening meals. They were awarded, in Vincent's time, on the basis of an examination in the June prior to the beginning of the relevant academic year that began in those days in September. Vincent was awarded a Sizarship in 1941 as well as a Junior Exhibition.

It marked the beginning of Vincent's residence in College, as student and later Junior Lecturer, for almost a quarter of a century. Ever afterwards his time as an undergraduate scholar living on campus provided some of his strongest and dearest memories of Trinity. He shared rooms with two other students one of whom had also been at Bangor Grammar. The room had no running water and no heating. A skip or college servant would bring water to his room each morning. Heating, when available, was turf that could be lit in a grate. Otherwise a student might take to wearing his ordinary clothes to bed in order to keep warm. Bathing was in the College bathhouse, the Iveagh Baths at the Botany Bay side of the Dining Hall. As Vincent admitted, he did not bathe every day. Food was the evening meal provided for all College scholars at Commons in the Dining Hall and lunch could be purchased at the buttery in the same building.

Heating, when available, was turf that could be lit in a grate. Otherwise a student might take to wearing his ordinary clothes to bed in order to keep warm...

There was a student Common Room in the Graduate Memorial Building where it was possible to read daily newspapers and some magazines or just chat with fellow inmates. This same building housed the rooms allocated to various student societies for their meetings. The most famous of these being the University Philosophical Society, a debating society founded by William 2 Molyneux in 1683.

Vincent was a member of The Metaphysical Society and The Classical Society. Vincent admitted that he was not sportif, though he did embrace the loneliness of the long distance runner and one year won the College 2 mile run. In later years he became a member of the Dublin University Central Athletics Committee. There was a College curfew at 10.00 pm. each evening when a resident had to "sign on". Permission to stay out late was possible, but rarely provided.

In the 1940s the total student body numbered around 500 with the majority drawn from Northern Ireland and most were resident in College and Protestant. Archbishop McQuaid did not withdraw his ban on Catholics entering Trinity until 1970, after being lobbied by Catholics on the staff of Trinity College. Not long afterwards student numbers more than doubled.

Vincent excelled in his studies at Trinity winning a Senior Exhibition as well as, in 1944, being made a Foundation Scholar. He graduated in 1945 with a Gold Medal in Classics and a Moderatorship (or four-year honours course BA) with First Class Honours in both Classics and Philosophy. He was the only member of his family up to that time to have received a university education. A few years later Trinity warded him a BLitt with First Class Honours for his research in Classics, though a lot of the work was done while he taught the classics for a short while at the University of Sheffield. The title of his B.Litt. thesis was "Cicero on Deity and the Universe".

The TCD Classics department at that time was small but very distinguished. William Bedell Stanford was the Professor of Greek and later Chancellor of the University. He was internationally known for his commentaries on Homer's Odyssey, Aristophanes Frogs and Sophocles Ajax. Donald Ernest Wormell, was an expert on the poetry of Pindar and collaborated with Herbert Parke, Professor of Ancient History, on a major work of research that culminated in the publication of the volume Delphic Oracle. Parke also managed to be at the same time Vice-Provost and Librarian.

In 1950 he was appointed a Junior Lecturer in Philosophy at Trinity, with a specialty in Ancient Philosophy. He once again lived in College.

Archbishop McQuaid did not withdraw his ban on Catholics entering Trinity until 1970, after being lobbied by Catholics on the staff of Trinity College. Not long afterwards student numbers more than doubled...

At the beginning of the twentieth century Classics and Philosophy departments in most universities in Europe were still dominated, as they had been in the previous century, by scholars in the history of their subject. By the mid-century philosophy at Trinity was just undergoing the big change away from the history of philosophy being the dominant mode. The new approach entailed a focus also on key problems in a given subject area, and this 3 approach was influenced by what was happening in America and by the "Ordinary Language Philosophy" movement at Oxford.

When Vincent became a Junior Lecturer in Philosophy at Trinity in 1950, the incumbent of the only established chair in philosophy, the Professorship of Moral Philosophy 1837, was by protocol also Head of Department. The incumbent in 1950 was E. J. Furlong an "Ordinary Language" analytic philosopher in the same mould as the Oxford philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, whom he much admired.

Furlong's specialty was philosophy of mind and he produced well regarded books on memory and imagination. Furlong's predecessor, retired but still active in the department, was a reminder of the old approach. He was Arthur Aston Luce who had become a clergyman in the Church of Ireland after serving as a rifleman and being awarded an MC in the First World War.

Luce was an internationally known and respected scholar of the work of the famous Irish empiricist philosopher, George Berkeley, who had attended Trinity as both student and teacher. Besides editing Berkeley's works, Luce collected his letters and published a fine biography of him.

Vincent was a dedicated and generous member of the Philosophy Department and the College. He worked long hours and was always willing to do "unpaid overtime" or take on the tasks that others suddenly found they could not fit into their schedules. His initial brief was to teach and engage in research in ancient philosophy but was later given the task of providing some courses on Kant and Hegel. He was a very able administrator and besides his departmental administrative work, notably as exam officer, he was at one time also the editor of the College Calendar, the "Red Book" as it was known at that time, and Secretary of the Trinity Trust.

He was at one time also the editor of the College Calendar, the "Red Book" as it was known at that time, and Secretary of the Trinity Trust...

So for me, and many others, Vincent became a reliable source of information on all aspects of the governance of Trinity. When he first arrived, this governance was dominated by an oligarchy comprising the Provost and Senior Fellows of the College. It was only very slowly and gradually that a more democratic system evolved.

But 1957 brought a major change to his life. It was the year in which he met Anne Bramble. They married in 1965. Anne was a graduate of TCD and after a spell working at a student hostel in Leeds, returned to Dublin as an Assistant Warden at the women students' dormitory Trinity Hall, situated in Dartry. Soon afterwards she became the Warden of Trinity Hall and then the College's first Dean of Women Students.

In this latter role she set about bettering the lives of all the female students at Trinity. She had the Dining Hall open to women at all times and opened a Centre for Female Students at No 6 Parliament Square. Then she inaugurated on campus a Day Nursery for the children of female members of staff, with the premises financed by the Trinity Trust. She only retired from this role to become a full-time mother when she and Vincent adopted two boys, John and Hugh.

She had the Dining Hall open to women at all times and opened a Centre for Female Students at No 6 Parliament Square. Then she inaugurated on campus a Day Nursery for the children of female members of staff...

Vincent retired from College in 1991. He was a dedicated scholar of the classics and ancient philosophy, though he published very little. I recall travelling with him by train to a meeting of the Irish Philosophical Society in Galway. Once seated and the train on its way, I opened my newspaper and, after a quick glance at the headlines, turned to a close scrutiny of the football and cricket scores. Vincent opened a Loeb edition of Plato's dialogue, Critias, and guided by a bookmark he started reading where he had left off. A Loeb edition is one which has the original Attic Greek text on the left-hand page and its English translation on the right. Vincent told me that he read all of Plato's dialogues in chronological order and when finished, like those painting the Forth Bridge, he would start again.

Vincent told me that he read all of Plato's dialogues in chronological order and when finished, like those painting the Forth Bridge, he would start again...

His lectures, especially in his earlier days when student numbers were small, were like quiet ruminations out loud, sometimes punctuated by considerable gaps of silence, sometimes by a furtive chuckle or by a steady gaze upwards as if blessed with a vision of The Forms. It was like being taught by a Zen Master. Vincent is on record saying that there were only two places that he had ever hoped to work, Trinity College Dublin or the University of Edinburgh. He did not say why.