George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley (
Bishop of Cloyne
The Bishop of Cloyne is an episcopal title that takes its name after the small town of Cloyne in County Cork, Republic of Ireland. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is a separate title; but, in the Church of Ireland, it has been united with other ...
of the
Anglican
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...
) – was an
Anglo-Irish
Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the establis ...
philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "
subjective idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do no ...
" by others). This theory denies the existence of
material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are
idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
s
perceived
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
by the
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of
abstraction
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstr ...
, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.
[
In 1709, Berkeley published his first major work, '' An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision'', in which he discussed the limitations of human vision and advanced the theory that the proper objects of sight are not material objects, but light and colour. This foreshadowed his chief philosophical work, '']A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (commonly called ''Treatise'') is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley's contemporary ...
'', in 1710, which, after its poor reception, he rewrote in dialogue form and published under the title '' Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'' in 1713. In this book, Berkeley's views were represented by Philonous (Greek: "lover of mind"), while Hylas ("hyle
In philosophy, hyle (; from grc, ὕλη) refers to matter or stuff. It can also be the material cause underlying a change in Aristotelian philosophy. The Greeks originally had no word for matter in general, as opposed to raw material suitable ...
", Greek: "matter") embodies the Irish thinker's opponents, in particular John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
.
Berkeley argued against Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
's doctrine of absolute space, time and motion
In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and mea ...
in '' De Motu''[''Berkeley's Philosophical Writings'', New York: Collier, 1974, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-22680] (''On Motion''), published 1721. His arguments were a precursor to the views of Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach ...
and Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
. In 1732, he published ''Alciphron
Alciphron ( grc-gre, Ἀλκίφρων) was an ancient Greek sophist, and the most eminent among the Greek epistolographers. Regarding his life or the age in which he lived we possess no direct information whatsoever.
Works
We possess under the ...
'', a Christian apologetic
Apologetics (from Greek , "speaking in defense") is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their beliefs against critics and ...
against the free-thinkers, and in 1734, he published '' The Analyst'', a critique of the foundations of calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
, which was influential in the development of mathematics.
Interest in Berkeley's work increased after World War II because he tackled many of the issues of paramount interest to philosophy in the 20th century, such as the problems of perception, the difference between primary and secondary qualities, and the importance of language.
Biography
Ireland
Berkeley was born at his family home, Dysart Castle
Dysart Castle is a castle ruins and property just outside Thomastown in County Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland, Ireland.
History
It is best known as the childhood home of George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher for whom Berkeley, California and ...
, near Thomastown
Thomastown (), historically known as Grennan, is a town in County Kilkenny in the province of Leinster in the south-east of Ireland. It is a market town along a stretch of the River Nore which is known for its salmon and trout, with a number of ...
, County Kilkenny
County Kilkenny ( gle, Contae Chill Chainnigh) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the South-East Region. It is named after the city of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the local authority for the cou ...
, Ireland, the eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet
A cadet is an officer trainee or candidate. The term is frequently used to refer to those training to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. Its meaning may vary between countries which can include youths in ...
of the noble family of Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
whose ancestry can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon period
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...
and who had served as feudal lords and landowners in Gloucester
Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east ...
, England. Little is known of his mother. He was educated at Kilkenny College
Kilkenny College is an independent Church of Ireland co-educational day and boarding secondary school located in Kilkenny, in the South-East of Ireland. It is the largest co-educational boarding school in Ireland. The school's students are mainly ...
and attended Trinity College Dublin
, name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin
, motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin)
, motto_lang = la
, motto_English = It will last i ...
, where he was elected a Scholar in 1702, being awarded BA in 1704 and MA and a Fellowship in 1707. He remained at Trinity College after completion of his degree as a tutor and Greek lecturer.
His earliest publication was on mathematics, but the first that brought him notice was his '' An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision'', first published in 1709. In the essay, Berkeley examines visual distance, magnitude, position and problems of sight and touch. While this work raised much controversy at the time, its conclusions are now accepted as an established part of the theory of optics.
The next publication to appear was the ''Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (commonly called ''Treatise'') is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley's contemporary J ...
'' in 1710, which had great success and gave him a lasting reputation, though few accepted his theory that nothing exists outside the mind. This was followed in 1713 by '' Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'', in which he propounded his system of philosophy, the leading principle of which is that the world, as represented by our senses, depends for its existence on being perceived.
For this theory, the ''Principles'' gives the exposition and the ''Dialogues'' the defence. One of his main objectives was to combat the prevailing materialism
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...
of his time. The theory was largely received with ridicule, while even those such as Samuel Clarke
Samuel Clarke (11 October 1675 – 17 May 1729) was an English philosopher and Anglican cleric. He is considered the major British figure in philosophy between John Locke and George Berkeley.
Early life and studies
Clarke was born in Norwich, ...
and William Whiston
William Whiston (9 December 166722 August 1752) was an English theologian, historian, natural philosopher, and mathematician, a leading figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton. He is now probably best known for helping to inst ...
, who did acknowledge his "extraordinary genius," were nevertheless convinced that his first principles were false.
England and Europe
Shortly afterwards, Berkeley visited England and was received into the circle of Addison
Addison may refer to:
Places Canada
* Addison, Ontario
United States
*Addison, Alabama
*Addison, Illinois
*Addison Street in Chicago, Illinois which runs by Wrigley Field
* Addison, Kentucky
*Addison, Maine
*Addison, Michigan
*Addison, New York
...
, Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
and Steele
Steele may refer to:
Places America
* Steele, Alabama, a town
* Steele, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Steele, Kentucky, an unincorporated community
* Steele, Missouri, a city
* Lonetree, Montana, a ghost town originally called Steele ...
. In the period between 1714 and 1720, he interspersed his academic endeavours with periods of extensive travel in Europe, including one of the most extensive Grand Tours of the length and breadth of Italy ever undertaken. In 1721, he took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...
, earning his doctorate in divinity
Divinity or the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to, or proceeding from a deity.[divine ...](_blank)
, and once again chose to remain at Trinity College Dublin, lecturing this time in Divinity and in Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
. In 1721/2 he was made Dean of Dromore
The Dean of Dromore has responsibility for Dromore Cathedral in the Diocese of Down and Dromore in the Church of Ireland.
Deans of Dromore
*1693/4 Isaac Plume
*1609 William Todd
*1621 Thomas Wilson
*1622 John Wall
*1623 Robert Dawson
*1628/9 W ...
and, in 1724, Dean of Derry
The Dean of Derry is based at St Columb's Cathedral, Derry in the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe in the Church of Ireland.
The current Dean of Derry is Raymond Stewart. He was appointed to the cathedral in December 2016 and inaugurated on 28 March ...
.
In 1723, following her violent quarrel with Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...
, who had been her intimate friend for many years, Esther Vanhomrigh
Esther Vanhomrigh or Van Homrigh (known by the pseudonym Vanessa; c. 1688 – 2 June 1723), an Irish woman of Dutch (ethnic group), Dutch descent, was a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift. Swift's letters to her were published ...
(for whom Swift had created the nickname "Vanessa") named Berkeley her co-heir along with the barrister Robert Marshall; her choice of legatees caused a good deal of surprise since she did not know either of them well, although Berkeley as a very young man had known her father. Swift said generously that he did not grudge Berkeley his inheritance, much of which vanished in a lawsuit in any event. A story that Berkeley and Marshall disregarded a condition of the inheritance that they must publish the correspondence between Swift and Vanessa is probably untrue.
In 1725, he began the project of founding a college in Bermuda
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, anthem = "God Save the King"
, song_type = National song
, song = " Hail to Bermuda"
, image_map =
, map_caption =
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, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name =
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for training ministers and missionaries in the colony, in pursuit of which he gave up his deanery with its income of £1100.
Marriage and America
In 1728, he married Anne Forster, daughter of John Forster, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas
The chief justice of the Common Pleas for Ireland was the presiding judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, which was known in its early years as the Court of Common Bench, or simply as "the Bench", or "the Dublin bench". It was one of the s ...
, and his first wife Rebecca Monck. He then went to America on a salary of £100 per annum. He landed near Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...
, where he bought a plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
at Middletownthe famous "Whitehall
Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It is the main ...
". Berkeley purchased several enslaved Africans
The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and i ...
to work on the plantation. It has been claimed that "he introduced Palladianism
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and ...
into America by borrowing a design from illiamKent's ''Designs of Inigo Jones'' for the door-case of his house in Rhode Island, Whitehall." He also brought to New England John Smibert
John Smibert (rarely spelled Smybert; ; 24 March 1688 – 2 April 1751) was a Scottish-born painter, regarded as the first academically trained artist to live and work regularly in British America.
Career
Born in Edinburgh on 24 March 1688, Smi ...
, the Scottish artist he "discovered" in Italy, who is generally regarded as the founding father of American portrait painting. Meanwhile, he drew up plans for the ideal city he planned to build on Bermuda. He lived at the plantation while he waited for funds for his college to arrive. The funds, however, were not forthcoming. "With the withdrawal from London of his own persuasive energies, opposition gathered force; and the Prime Minister, Walpole grew steadily more sceptical and lukewarm. At last it became clear that the essential Parliamentary grant would be not forthcoming" and in 1732 he left America and returned to London.
He and Anne had four children who survived infancy: Henry, George, William and Julia, and at least two other children who died in infancy. William's death in 1751 was a great cause of grief to his father.
Episcopate in Ireland
Berkeley was nominated to be the Bishop of Cloyne
The Bishop of Cloyne is an episcopal title that takes its name after the small town of Cloyne in County Cork, Republic of Ireland. In the Roman Catholic Church, it is a separate title; but, in the Church of Ireland, it has been united with other ...
in the Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...
on 18 January 1734. He was consecrated as such on 19 May 1734. He was the Bishop of Cloyne until his death on 14 January 1753, although he died at Oxford (see below).
Humanitarian work
While living in London's Saville Street, he took part in efforts to create a home for the city's abandoned children. The Foundling Hospital
The Foundling Hospital in London, England, was founded in 1739 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." The word "hospital" w ...
was founded by royal charter
A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, bu ...
in 1739, and Berkeley is listed as one of its original governors.
Last works
His last two publications were ''Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tarwater, And divers other Subjects connected together and arising one from another'' (1744) and ''Further Thoughts on Tar-water'' (1752). Pine tar
Pine tar is a form of wood tar produced by the high temperature carbonization of pine wood in anoxic conditions (dry distillation or destructive distillation). The wood is rapidly decomposed by applying heat and pressure in a closed container; th ...
is an effective antiseptic and disinfectant when applied to cuts on the skin, but Berkeley argued for the use of pine tar as a broad panacea for diseases. His 1744 work on tar-water sold more copies than any of his other books during Berkeley's lifetime.
He remained at Cloyne until 1752, when he retired. With his wife and daughter Julia, he went to Oxford to live with his son George and supervise his education. He died soon afterwards and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford
Christ Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the Anglican diocese of Oxford, which consists of the counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. It is also the chapel of Christ Church, a college of the University of Oxford. This dual r ...
. His affectionate disposition and genial manners made him much loved and held in warm regard by many of his contemporaries. Anne outlived her husband by many years, and died in 1786.
Contributions to philosophy
The use of the concepts of "spirit" and "idea" is central in Berkeley's philosophy. As used by him, these concepts are difficult to translate into modern terminology. His concept of "spirit" is close to the concept of "conscious subject" or of "mind", and the concept of "idea" is close to the concept of "sensation" or "state of mind" or "conscious experience".
Thus Berkeley denied the existence of matter as a metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
substance, but did not deny the existence of physical objects such as apples or mountains ("I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with mine eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny, is that which philosophers call matter or corporeal substance. And in doing of this, there is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it.", ''Principles'' #35). This basic claim of Berkeley's thought, his "idealism", is sometimes and somewhat derisively called "immaterialism" or, occasionally, subjective idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is a form of philosophical monism that holds that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do no ...
. In ''Principles'' #3, he wrote, using a combination of Latin and English, ''esse is percipi'' (to be is to be perceived), most often if slightly inaccurately attributed to Berkeley as the pure Latin phrase ''esse est percipi''. The phrase appears associated with him in authoritative philosophical sources, e.g., "Berkeley holds that there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, ''esse est percipi (aut percipere)''—to be is to be perceived (or to perceive)."[Downing, Lisa,]
George Berkeley
, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
Edward Nouri Zalta (; born March 16, 1952) is an American philosopher who is a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He received his BA at Rice University in 1975 and his PhD fro ...
(ed.). Retrieved 21 August 2013.
Hence, human knowledge is reduced to two elements: that of spirits and of ideas (''Principles'' #86). In contrast to ideas, a spirit cannot be perceived. A person's spirit, which perceives ideas, is to be comprehended intuitively by inward feeling or reflection (''Principles'' #89). For Berkeley, we have no direct 'idea' of spirits, albeit we have good reason to believe in the existence of other spirits, for their existence explains the purposeful regularities we find in experience ("It is plain that we cannot know the existence of other spirits otherwise than by their operations, or the ideas by them excited in us", ''Dialogues'' #145). This is the solution that Berkeley offers to the problem of other minds
The problem of other minds is a philosophical problem traditionally stated as the following epistemological question: Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds? The problem is that knowledge of ...
. Finally, the order and purposefulness of the whole of our experience of the world and especially of nature overwhelms us into believing in the existence of an extremely powerful and intelligent spirit that causes that order. According to Berkeley, reflection on the attributes of that external spirit leads us to identify it with God. Thus a material thing such as an apple consists of a collection of ideas (shape, color, taste, physical properties, etc.) which are caused in the spirits of humans by the spirit of God.
Theology
A convinced adherent of Christianity, Berkeley believed God to be present as an immediate cause of all our experiences.
Here is Berkeley's proof of the existence of God:
As T. I. Oizerman explained:
Berkeley believed that God is not the distant engineer of Newtonian machinery that in the fullness of time led to the growth of a tree in the university quadrangle. Rather, the perception of the tree is an idea that God's mind has produced in the mind, and the tree continues to exist in the quadrangle when "nobody" is there, simply because God is an infinite mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
that perceives all.
The philosophy of David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
concerning causality and objectivity is an elaboration of another aspect of Berkeley's philosophy. A.A. Luce, the most eminent Berkeley scholar of the 20th century, constantly stressed the continuity of Berkeley's philosophy. The fact that Berkeley returned to his major works throughout his life, issuing revised editions with only minor changes, also counts against any theory that attributes to him a significant volte-face
Volte-face ( or ) is a total change of position, as in policy or opinion; an about-face.
The expression comes from the French language.
In the context of politics a volte-face is, in modern English, often referred to as a U-turn or a flip-f ...
.
Relativity arguments
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
(Berkeley's intellectual predecessor) states that we define an object by its primary and secondary qualities. He takes heat as an example of a secondary quality. If you put one hand in a bucket of cold water, and the other hand in a bucket of warm water, then put both hands in a bucket of lukewarm water, one of your hands is going to tell you that the water is cold and the other that the water is hot. Locke says that since two different objects (both your hands) perceive the water to be hot ''and'' cold, then the heat is not a quality of the water.
While Locke used this argument to distinguish primary from secondary qualities, Berkeley extends it to cover primary qualities in the same way. For example, he says that size is not a quality of an object because the size of the object depends on the distance between the observer and the object, or the size of the observer. Since an object is a different size to different observers, then size is not a quality of the object. Berkeley rejects shape with a similar argument and then asks: if neither primary qualities nor secondary qualities are of the object, then how can we say that there is anything more than the qualities we observe?
Relativity is the idea that there is no objective, universal truth; it is a state of dependence in which the existence of one independent object is solely dependent on that of another. According to Locke, characteristics of primary qualities are mind-independent, such as shape, size, etc., whereas secondary qualities are mind-dependent, for example, taste and colour. George Berkeley refuted John Locke's belief on primary and secondary qualities because Berkeley believed that "we cannot abstract the primary qualities (e.g shape) from secondary ones (e.g colour)". Berkeley argued that perception is dependent on the distance between the observer and the object, and "thus, we cannot conceive of mechanist material bodies which are extended but not (in themselves) colored". What perceived can be the same type of quality, but completely opposite from each other because of different positions and perceptions, what we perceive can be different even when the same types of things consist of contrary qualities. Secondary qualities aid in people's conception of primary qualities in an object, like how the colour of an object leads people to recognize the object itself. More specifically, the colour red can be perceived in apples, strawberries, and tomatoes, yet we would not know what these might look like without its colour. We would also be unaware of what the colour red looked like if red paint, or any object that has a perceived red colour, failed to exist. From this, we can see that colours cannot exist on their own and can solely represent a group of perceived objects. Therefore, both primary and secondary qualities are mind-dependent: they cannot exist without our minds.
George Berkeley was a philosopher who was against rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
and "classical" empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
. He was a " subjective idealist" or "empirical idealist", who believed that reality is constructed entirely of immaterial, conscious minds and their ideas; everything that exists is somehow dependent on the subject perceiving it, except the subject themselves. He refuted the existence of abstract objects that many other philosophers believed to exist, notably Plato. According to Berkeley, "an abstract object does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental"; however, this argument contradicts with his relativity argument. If "esse est percipi", (Latin meaning that to exist is to be perceived) is true, then the objects in the relativity argument made by Berkeley can either exist or not. Berkeley believed that only the minds' perceptions and the Spirit that perceives are what exists in reality; what people perceive every day is only the idea of an object's existence, but the objects themselves are not perceived. Berkeley also discussed how, at times, materials cannot be perceived by oneself, and the mind of oneself cannot understand the objects. However, there also exists an "omnipresent, eternal mind" that Berkeley believed to consist of God and the Spirit, both omniscient and all-perceiving. According to Berkeley, God is the entity who controls everything, yet Berkeley also argued that "abstract object do not exist in space or time". In other words, as Warnock argues, Berkeley "had recognized that he could not square with his own talk of ''spirits'', of our minds and of God; for these are perceivers and not among objects of perception. Thus he says, rather weakly and without elucidation, that in addition to our ideas we also have ''notions''—we know what it means to speak of ''spirits'' and their operations."
However, the relativity argument violates the idea of immaterialism. Berkeley's immaterialism argues that "esse est percipi (aut percipere)", which in English is to be is to be perceived (or to perceive). That is saying only what perceived or perceives is real, and without our perception or God's nothing can be real. Yet, if the relativity argument, also by Berkeley, argues that the perception of an object depends on the different positions, then this means that what perceived can either be real or not because the perception does not show that whole picture and the whole picture cannot be perceived. Berkeley also believes that "when one perceives mediately, one perceives one idea by means of perceiving another". By this, it can be elaborated that if the standards of what perceived at first are different, what perceived after that can be different, as well. In the heat perception described above, one hand perceived the water to be hot and the other hand perceived the water to be cold due to relativity. If applying the idea "to be is to be perceived", the water should be both cold and hot because both perceptions are perceived by different hands. However, the water cannot be cold and hot at the same time for it self-contradicts, so this shows that what perceived is not always true because it sometimes can break the law of noncontradiction. In this case, "it would be arbitrary anthropocentrism to claim that humans have special access to the true qualities of objects". The truth for different people can be different, and humans are limited to accessing the absolute truth due to relativity. Summing up, nothing can be absolutely true due to relativity or the two arguments, to be is to be perceived and the relativity argument, do not always work together.
New theory of vision
In his ''Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision'', Berkeley frequently criticised the views of the Optic Writers, a title that seems to include Molyneux
Molyneux (; Old French: ''De Molines'' or ''De Moulins'') is a French surname. The surname has been linked primarily to a large French family that settled in Lancashire, England. By the 14th century the Molyneux family had split into three mai ...
, Wallis, Malebranche and Descartes. In sections 1–51, Berkeley argued against the classical scholars of optics by holding that: ''spatial depth, as the distance that separates the perceiver from the perceived object is itself invisible''. That is, we do not see space directly or deduce its form logically using the laws of optics. Space for Berkeley is no more than a contingent expectation that visual and tactile sensations will follow one another in regular sequences that we come to expect through habit.
Berkeley goes on to argue that visual cues, such as the perceived extension or 'confusion' of an object, can only be used to indirectly judge distance, because the viewer learns to associate visual cues with tactile sensations. Berkeley gives the following analogy regarding indirect distance perception: one perceives distance indirectly just as one perceives a person's embarrassment indirectly. When looking at an embarrassed person, we infer indirectly that the person is embarrassed by observing the red colour on the person's face. We know through experience that a red face tends to signal embarrassment, as we've learned to associate the two.
The question concerning the visibility of space was central to the Renaissance perspective tradition and its reliance on classical optics in the development of pictorial representations of spatial depth. This matter was debated by scholars since the 11th-century Arab polymath and mathematician Alhazen
Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen (; full name ; ), was a medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age from present-day Iraq.For the description of his main fields, see e.g. ("He is one of the prin ...
(al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham) affirmed in experimental contexts the visibility of space. This issue, which was raised in Berkeley's theory of vision, was treated at length in the ''Phenomenology of Perception'' of Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
, in the context of confirming the visual perception of spatial depth (''la profondeur''), and by way of refuting Berkeley's thesis.
Berkeley wrote about the perception of size in addition to that of distance. He is frequently misquoted as believing in size–distance invariance—a view held by the Optic Writers. This idea is that we scale the image size according to distance in a geometrical manner. The error may have become commonplace because the eminent historian and psychologist E. G. Boring perpetuated it. In fact, Berkeley argued that the same cues that evoke distance also evoke size, and that we do not first see size and then calculate distance. It is worth quoting Berkeley's words on this issue (Section 53):
What inclines men to this mistake (beside the humour of making one see by geometry) is, that the same perceptions or ideas which suggest distance, do also suggest magnitude ... I say they do not first suggest distance, and then leave it to the judgement to use that as a medium, whereby to collect the magnitude; but they have as close and immediate a connexion with the magnitude as with the distance; and suggest magnitude as independently of distance, as they do distance independently of magnitude.
Berkeley claimed that his visual theories were “vindicated” by a 1728 report regarding the recovery of vision in a 13-year-old boy operated for congenital cataracts by surgeon William Cheselden. In 2021, the name of Cheselden's patient was published for the first time: Daniel Dolins. Berkeley knew the Dolins family, had numerous social links to Cheselden, including the poet Alexander Pope, and Princess Caroline, to whom Cheselden's patient was presented. The report misspelled Cheselden's name, used language typical of Berkeley, and may even have been ghost-written by Berkeley. Unfortunately, Dolins was never able to see well enough to read, and there is no evidence that the surgery improved Dolins' vision at any point prior to his death at age 30.
Philosophy of physics
"Berkeley's works display his keen interest in natural philosophy ..from his earliest writings (''Arithmetica'', 1707) to his latest (''Siris'', 1744). Moreover, much of his philosophy is shaped fundamentally by his engagement with the science of his time." The profundity of this interest can be judged from numerous entries in Berkeley's ''Philosophical Commentaries'' (1707–1708), e.g. "Mem. to Examine & accurately discuss the scholium of the 8th Definition of Mr Newton's Principia." (#316)
Berkeley argued that forces and gravity, as defined by Newton, constituted "occult qualities" that "expressed nothing distinctly". He held that those who posited "something unknown in a body of which they have no idea and which they call the principle of motion, are in fact simply stating that the principle of motion is unknown." Therefore, those who "affirm that active force, action, and the principle of motion are really in bodies are adopting an opinion not based on experience." Forces and gravity existed nowhere in the phenomenal world. On the other hand, if they resided in the category of "soul" or "incorporeal thing", they "do not properly belong to physics" as a matter. Berkeley thus concluded that forces lay beyond any kind of empirical observation and could not be a part of proper science. He proposed his theory of signs as a means to explain motion and matter without reference to the "occult qualities" of force and gravity.
Berkeley's razor
Berkeley's razor is a rule of reasoning proposed by the philosopher Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
in his study of Berkeley's key scientific work ''De Motu''. Berkeley's razor is considered by Popper to be similar to Ockham's razor but "more powerful". It represents an extreme, empiricist
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
view of scientific observation that states that the scientific method provides us with no true insight into the nature of the world. Rather, the scientific method gives us a variety of partial explanations about regularities that hold in the world and that are gained through experiment. The nature of the world, according to Berkeley, is only approached through proper metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
speculation and reasoning. Popper summarises Berkeley's razor as such:
A general practical result—which I propose to call "Berkeley's razor"—of erkeley'sanalysis of physics allows us ''a priori'' to eliminate from physical science all essentialist
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...
explanations. If they have a mathematical and predictive content they may be admitted ''qua'' mathematical hypotheses (while their essentialist interpretation is eliminated). If not they may be ruled out altogether. This razor is sharper than Ockham's: ''all'' entities are ruled out except those which are perceived.
In another essay of the same book titled "Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge", Popper argues that Berkeley is to be considered as an instrumentalist
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...
philosopher, along with Robert Bellarmine
Robert Bellarmine, SJ ( it, Roberto Francesco Romolo Bellarmino; 4 October 1542 – 17 September 1621) was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only ...
, Pierre Duhem
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (; 9 June 1861 – 14 September 1916) was a French theoretical physicist who worked on thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, and the theory of elasticity. Duhem was also a historian of science, noted for his work on the Euro ...
and Ernst Mach
Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach ( , ; 18 February 1838 – 19 February 1916) was a Moravian-born Austrian physicist and philosopher, who contributed to the physics of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach ...
. According to this approach, scientific theories have the status of serviceable fictions, useful inventions aimed at explaining facts, and without any pretension to being true. Popper contrasts instrumentalism with the above-mentioned essentialism and his own "critical rationalism
Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper on the basis that, if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it. Following Hume, Popper r ...
".
Philosophy of mathematics
In addition to his contributions to philosophy, Berkeley was also very influential in the development of mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, although in a rather indirect sense. "Berkeley was concerned with mathematics and its philosophical interpretation from the earliest stages of his intellectual life."
Berkeley's "Philosophical Commentaries" (1707–1708) witness to his interest in mathematics:
Axiom. No reasoning about things whereof we have no idea. Therefore no reasoning about Infinitesimals. (#354)
Take away the signs from Arithmetic & Algebra, & pray what remains? (#767)
These are sciences purely Verbal, & entirely useless but for Practise in Societys of Men. No speculative knowledge, no comparison of Ideas in them. (#768)
In 1707, Berkeley published two treatises on mathematics. In 1734, he published '' The Analyst'', subtitled ''A DISCOURSE Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician'', a critique of calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
. Florian Cajori
Florian Cajori (February 28, 1859 – August 14 or 15, 1930) was a Swiss-American historian of mathematics.
Biography
Florian Cajori was born in Zillis, Switzerland, as the son of Georg Cajori and Catherine Camenisch. He attended schools first ...
called this treatise "the most spectacular event of the century in the history of British mathematics." However, a recent study suggests that Berkeley misunderstood Leibnizian calculus. The mathematician in question is believed to have been either Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720.
From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, H ...
, or Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
himself—though if to the latter, then the discourse was posthumously addressed, as Newton died in 1727. ''The Analyst'' represented a direct attack on the foundations and principles of calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
and, in particular, the notion of fluxion
A fluxion is the instantaneous rate of change, or gradient, of a fluent (a time-varying quantity, or function) at a given point. Fluxions were introduced by Isaac Newton to describe his form of a time derivative (a derivative with respect to ti ...
or infinitesimal
In mathematics, an infinitesimal number is a quantity that is closer to zero than any standard real number, but that is not zero. The word ''infinitesimal'' comes from a 17th-century Modern Latin coinage ''infinitesimus'', which originally referr ...
change, which Newton and Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
used to develop the calculus. In his critique, Berkeley coined the phrase " ghosts of departed quantities", familiar to students of calculus. Ian Stewart's book ''From Here to Infinity'' captures the gist of his criticism.
Berkeley regarded his criticism of calculus as part of his broader campaign against the religious implications of Newtonian mechanicsas a defence of traditional Christianity against deism
Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning "god") is the Philosophy, philosophical position and Rationalism, rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that Empirical evi ...
, which tends to distance God from His worshipers. Specifically, he observed that both Newtonian and Leibnizian calculus employed infinitesimals sometimes as positive, nonzero quantities and other times as a number explicitly equal to zero. Berkeley's key point in "The Analyst" was that Newton's calculus (and the laws of motion based in calculus) lacked rigorous theoretical foundations. He claimed that
In every other Science Men prove their Conclusions by their Principles, and not their Principles by the Conclusions. But if in yours you should allow your selves this unnatural way of proceeding, the Consequence would be that you must take up with Induction, and bid adieu to Demonstration. And if you submit to this, your Authority will no longer lead the way in Points of Reason and Science.
Berkeley did not doubt that calculus produced real-world truth; simple physics experiments could verify that Newton's method did what it claimed to do. "The cause of Fluxions cannot be defended by reason", but the results could be defended by empirical observation, Berkeley's preferred method of acquiring knowledge at any rate. Berkeley, however, found it paradoxical that "Mathematicians should deduce true Propositions from false Principles, be right in Conclusion, and yet err in the Premises." In ''The Analyst'' he endeavoured to show "how Error may bring forth Truth, though it cannot bring forth Science". Newton's science, therefore, could not on purely scientific grounds justify its conclusions, and the mechanical, deistic model of the universe could not be rationally justified.
The difficulties raised by Berkeley were still present in the work of Cauchy
Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He w ...
whose approach to calculus was a combination of infinitesimals and a notion of limit, and were eventually sidestepped by Weierstrass
Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass (german: link=no, Weierstraß ; 31 October 1815 – 19 February 1897) was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern mathematical analysis, analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, ...
by means of his (ε, δ) approach, which eliminated infinitesimals altogether. More recently, Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson (born Robinsohn; October 6, 1918 – April 11, 1974) was a mathematician who is most widely known for development of nonstandard analysis, a mathematically rigorous system whereby infinitesimal and infinite numbers were reincorpo ...
restored infinitesimal methods in his 1966 book ''Non-standard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta ...
'' by showing that they can be used rigorously.
Moral philosophy
The tract ''A Discourse on Passive Obedience'' (1712) is considered Berkeley's major contribution to moral and political philosophy.
In ''A Discourse on Passive Obedience'', Berkeley defends the thesis that people have "a moral duty to observe the negative precepts (prohibitions) of the law, including the duty not to resist the execution of punishment."[Häyry, Matti.]
''Passive Obedience'' and Berkeley's Moral Philosophy
" Berkeley Studies 23 (2012): 3–13. However, Berkeley does make exceptions to this sweeping moral statement, stating that we need not observe precepts of "usurpers or even madmen" and that people can obey different supreme authorities if there are more than one claims to the highest authority.
Berkeley defends this thesis with deductive proof stemming from the laws of nature. First, he establishes that because God is perfectly good, the end to which he commands humans must also be good, and that end must not benefit just one person, but the entire human race. Because these commands—or laws—if practised, would lead to the general fitness of humankind, it follows that they can be discovered by the right reason—for example, the law to never resist supreme power can be derived from reason because this law is "the only thing that stands between us and total disorder". Thus, these laws can be called the laws of nature, because they are derived from God—the creator of nature himself. "These laws of nature include duties never to resist the supreme power, lie under oath ... or do evil so that good may come of it."
One may view Berkeley's doctrine on Passive Obedience as a kind of 'Theological Utilitarianism', insofar as it states that we have a duty to uphold a moral code which presumably is working towards the ends of promoting the good of humankind. However, the concept of 'ordinary' Utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.
Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different charact ...
is fundamentally different in that it "makes utility the one and only ''ground'' of obligation"—that is, Utilitarianism is concerned with whether particular actions are morally permissible in specific situations, while Berkeley's doctrine is concerned with whether or not we should follow moral rules in any and all circumstances. Whereas Act Utilitarianism
Act utilitarianism is a utilitarian theory of ethics that states that a person's act is morally right if and only if it produces the best possible results in that specific situation. Classical utilitarians, including Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart M ...
might, for example, justify a morally impermissible act in light of the specific situation, Berkeley's doctrine of Passive Obedience holds that it is never morally permissible to not follow a moral rule, even when it seems like breaking that moral rule might achieve the happiest ends. Berkeley holds that even though sometimes, the consequences of an action in a specific situation might be bad, the general tendencies of that action benefit humanity.
Other important sources for Berkeley's views on morality are ''Alciphron
Alciphron ( grc-gre, Ἀλκίφρων) was an ancient Greek sophist, and the most eminent among the Greek epistolographers. Regarding his life or the age in which he lived we possess no direct information whatsoever.
Works
We possess under the ...
'' (1732), especially dialogues I–III, and the ''Discourse to Magistrates'' (1738)." ''Passive Obedience'' is notable partly for containing one of the earliest statements of rule utilitarianism
Rule utilitarianism is a form of utilitarianism that says an action is right as it conforms to a rule that leads to the greatest good, or that "the rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of which ...
.
Immaterialism
George Berkeley’s theory that matter does not exist comes from the belief that "sensible things are those only which are immediately perceived by sense." Berkeley says in his book called ''The Principles of Human Knowledge'' that "the ideas of sense are stronger, livelier, and clearer than those of the imagination; and they are also steady, orderly and coherent."[Berkeley, George. "Principles of Human Knowledge." The Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Anchor Books, 1974, pp. 151–62.] From this we can tell that the things that we are perceiving are truly real rather than it just being a dream.
All knowledge comes from perception; what we perceive are ideas, not things in themselves; a thing in itself must be outside experience; so the world only consists of ideas and minds that perceive those ideas; a thing only exists so far as it perceives or is perceived.[Buckingham, Will. "To Be Is To Be Perceived". ''The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained'', DK Publishing, New York, 2011, pp. 138–41.] Through this we can see that consciousness is considered something that exists to Berkeley due to its ability to perceive. "'To be,' said of the object, means to be perceived, 'esse est percipi'; 'to be', said of the subject, means to perceive or 'percipere'." Having established this, Berkeley then attacks the "opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from being perceived". He believes this idea to be inconsistent because such an object with an existence independent of perception must have both sensible qualities, and thus be known (making it an idea), and also an insensible reality, which Berkeley believes is inconsistent. Berkeley believes that the error arises because people think that perceptions can imply or infer something about the material object. Berkeley calls this concept ''abstract ideas''. He rebuts this concept by arguing that people cannot conceive of an object without also imagining the sensual input of the object. He argues in ''Principles of Human Knowledge'' that, similar to how people can only sense matter with their senses through the actual sensation, they can only conceive of matter (or, rather, ideas of matter) through the idea of sensation of matter. This implies that everything that people can conceive in regards to matter is only ideas about matter. Thus, matter, should it exist, must exist as collections of ideas, which can be perceived by the senses and interpreted by the mind. But if matter is just a collection of ideas, then Berkeley concludes that matter, in the sense of a material substance, does not exist as most philosophers of Berkeley's time believed. Indeed, if a person visualizes something, then it must have some colour, however dark or light; it cannot just be a shape of no colour at all if a person is to visualize it.[Urmson, J. O., et al. "The Attack on Matter". ''British Empiricists'', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, pp. 106–24.]
Berkeley's ideas raised controversy because his argument refuted Descartes' worldview, which was expanded upon by Locke, and resulted in the rejection of Berkeley's form of empiricism by several philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Locke's worldview, "the world causes the perceptual ideas we have of it by the way it interacts with our senses." This contradicts with Berkeley's worldview because not only does it suggest the existence of physical causes in the world, but in fact, there is no physical world beyond our ideas. The only causes that exist in Berkeley's worldview are those that are a result of the use of the will.
Berkeley's theory relies heavily on his form of empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
, which in turn relies heavily on the senses. His empiricism can be defined by five propositions: all significant words stand for ideas; all knowledge of things is about ideas; all ideas come from without or from within; if from without it must be by the senses, and they are called sensations (the real things), if from within they are the operations of the mind, and are called thoughts. Berkeley clarifies his distinction between ideas by saying they "are imprinted on the senses," "perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind," or "are formed by help of memory and imagination." One refutation of his idea was: if someone leaves a room and stops perceiving that room does that room no longer exist? Berkeley answers this by claiming that it is still being perceived and the consciousness that is doing the perceiving is God
In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...
. (This makes Berkeley's argument hinge upon an omniscient
Omniscience () is the capacity to know everything. In Hinduism, Sikhism and the Abrahamic religions, this is an attribute of God. In Jainism, omniscience is an attribute that any individual can eventually attain. In Buddhism, there are diffe ...
, omnipresent
Omnipresence or ubiquity is the property of being present anywhere and everywhere. The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to describe ...
deity.) This claim is the only thing holding up his argument which is "depending for our knowledge of the world, and of the existence of other minds, upon a God that would never deceive us." Berkeley anticipates a second objection, which he refutes in ''Principles of Human Knowledge''. He anticipates that the materialist may take a representational materialist standpoint: although the senses can only perceive ideas, these ideas resemble (and thus can be compared to) the actual, existing object. Thus, through the sensing of these ideas, the mind can make inferences as to matter itself, even though pure matter is non-perceivable. Berkeley's objection to that notion is that "an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure". Berkeley distinguishes between an idea, which is mind-dependent, and a material substance, which is not an idea and is mind-independent. As they are not alike, they cannot be compared, just as one cannot compare the colour red to something that is invisible, or the sound of music to silence, other than that one exists and the other does not. This is called the likeness principle: the notion that an idea can only be like (and thus compared to) another idea.
Berkeley attempted to show how ideas manifest themselves into different objects of knowledge:
Berkeley also attempted to prove the existence of God throughout his beliefs in immaterialism.[
]
Influence
Berkeley's ''Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (commonly called ''Treatise'') is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley's contemporary J ...
'' was published three years before the publication of Arthur Collier
Arthur Collier (12 October 1680September 1732) was an English Anglican priest and philosopher who wrote about the non-existence of an absolute external world.
Early life
Collier was born at the rectory of Steeple Langford, Wiltshire. He entered ...
's ''Clavis Universalis'', which made assertions similar to those of Berkeley's. However, there seemed to have been no influence or communication between the two writers.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
once wrote of him: "Berkeley was, therefore, the first to treat the subjective starting-point really seriously and to demonstrate irrefutably its absolute necessity. He is the father of idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ide ...
...".['']Parerga and Paralipomena
''Parerga and Paralipomena'' (Greek for "Appendices" and "Omissions", respectively; german: Parerga und Paralipomena) is a collection of philosophical reflections by Arthur Schopenhauer published in 1851. The selection was compiled not as a summa ...
'', Vol. I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 12
Berkeley is considered one of the originators of British empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
. A linear development is often traced from three great "British Empiricists", leading from Locke through Berkeley to Hume.
Berkeley influenced many modern philosophers, especially David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
. Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (; 7 May ( O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scottish philosopher. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he wa ...
admitted that he put forward a drastic criticism of Berkeleianism after he had been an admirer of Berkeley's philosophical system for a long time. Berkeley's "thought made possible the work of Hume and thus Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemolo ...
, notes Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found applicat ...
." Some authors draw a parallel between Berkeley and Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
.
When Berkeley visited America, the American educator Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
visited him, and the two later corresponded. Johnson convinced Berkeley to establish a scholarship program at Yale, and to donate a large number of books as well as his plantation to the college when the philosopher returned to England. It was one of Yale's largest and most important donations; it doubled its library holdings, improved the college's financial position and brought Anglican religious ideas and English culture into New England. Johnson also took Berkeley's philosophy and used parts of it as a framework for his own American Practical Idealism school of philosophy. As Johnson's philosophy was taught to about half the graduates of American colleges between 1743 and 1776, and over half of the contributors to the ''Declaration of Independence ''were connected to it, Berkeley's ideas were indirectly a foundation of the American Mind.
Outside of America, during Berkeley's lifetime his philosophical ideas were comparatively uninfluential. But interest in his doctrine grew from the 1870s when Alexander Campbell Fraser
Alexander Campbell Fraser (3 September 1819 – 2 December 1914) was a Scottish theologian and philosopher.
Life
He was born in the manse at Ardchattan, Argyll, the son of the parish minister, Rev Hugh Fraser, and his wife, Maria Helen Camp ...
, "the leading Berkeley scholar of the nineteenth century", published ''The Works of George Berkeley''. A powerful impulse to serious studies in Berkeley's philosophy was given by A. A. Luce and Thomas Edmund Jessop, "two of the twentieth century's foremost Berkeley scholars", thanks to whom Berkeley scholarship was raised to the rank of a special area of historico-philosophical science. In addition, the philosopher Colin Murray Turbayne
Colin Murray Turbayne (7 February 1916 – 16 May 2006) was an Australian philosopher and an internationally recognized authority on the writings of George Berkeley. He spent most of his thirty five year academic career at the University of Ro ...
wrote extensively on Berkeley's use of language as a model for visual, physiological, natural and metaphysical relationships.
The proportion of Berkeley scholarship, in literature on the history of philosophy, is increasing. This can be judged from the most comprehensive bibliographies on George Berkeley. During the period of 1709–1932, about 300 writings on Berkeley were published. That amounted to 1.5 publications per annum. During the course of 1932–79, over one thousand works were brought out, i.e., 20 works per annum. Since then, the number of publications has reached 30 per annum. In 1977 publication began in Ireland of a special journal on Berkeley's life and thought (''Berkeley Studies
''Berkeley Studies'' (''Berkeley Newsletter'' until December 2007) is an annual on-line academic journal established in 1977. It publishes scholarly articles on anything related to George Berkeley. The journal also gives news of the last events in ...
''). In 1988, the Australian philosopher Colin Murray Turbayne
Colin Murray Turbayne (7 February 1916 – 16 May 2006) was an Australian philosopher and an internationally recognized authority on the writings of George Berkeley. He spent most of his thirty five year academic career at the University of Ro ...
established the International Berkeley Essay Prize Competition at the University of Rochester
The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees.
The University of Roc ...
in an effort to advance scholarship and research on the works of Berkeley.
Other than philosophy, Berkeley also influenced modern psychology with his work on John Locke's theory of association and how it could be used to explain how humans gain knowledge in the physical world. He also used the theory to explain perception, stating that all qualities were, as Locke would call them, "secondary qualities", therefore perception laid entirely in the perceiver and not in the object. These are both topics today studied in modern psychology.
Appearances in literature
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and Peerage of the United Kingdom, peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and h ...
's ''Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' ...
'' references immaterialism in the Eleventh Canto:
When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,'
And proved it—'t was no matter what he said:
They say his system 't is in vain to batter,
Too subtle for the airiest human head;
And yet who can believe it? I would shatter
Gladly all matters down to stone or lead,
Or adamant, to find the world a spirit,
And wear my head, denying that I wear it.
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American people, American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his bes ...
humorously references Berkeley in Chapter 20 of Mardi
''Mardi: and a Voyage Thither'' is the third book by American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1849. Beginning as a travelogue in the vein of the author's two previous efforts, the adventure story gives way to a romance story, ...
(1849), when outlining a character's belief of being on board a ghostship:
And here be it said, that for all his superstitious misgivings about the brigantine; his imputing to her something equivalent to a purely phantom-like nature, honest Jarl was nevertheless exceedingly downright and practical in all hints and proceedings concerning her. Wherein, he resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley–truly, one of your lords spiritual—who, metaphysically speaking, holding all objects to be mere optical delusions, was, notwithstanding, extremely matter-of-fact in all matters touching matter itself. Besides being pervious to the points of pins, and possessing a palate capable of appreciating plum-puddings:—which sentence reads off like a pattering of hailstones.
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
references Berkeley's philosophy in the third episode of ''Ulysses
Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature.
Ulysses may also refer to:
People
* Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name
Places in the United States
* Ulysses, Kansas
* Ulysse ...
'' (1922):
Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now!
In commenting on a review of ''Ada or Ardor
''Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle'' is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969.
''Ada'' began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra." In 1965, he began to see a ...
'', author Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
alludes to Berkeley's philosophy as informing his novel:
And finally I owe no debt whatsoever (as Mr. Leonard seems to think) to the famous Argentine essayist and his rather confused compilation "A New Refutation of Time." Mr. Leonard would have lost less of it had he gone straight to Berkeley and Bergson. (''Strong Opinions'', pp. 2892–90)
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...
, in the part of his ''Life of Samuel Johnson
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy tran ...
'' covering the year 1763, recorded Johnson's opinion of one aspect of Berkeley's philosophy:
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is untrue, it is impossible to refute it. I shall never forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it,– "I refute it ''thus''."
Commemoration
Both the University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, and the city of Berkeley, California, were named after him, although the pronunciation has evolved to suit American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
: ( ). The naming was suggested in 1866 by Frederick H. Billings
Frederick H. Billings (September 27, 1823 – September 30, 1890) was an American lawyer, financier, and politician. He is best known for his legal work on land claims during the early years of California's statehood and his presidency of the ...
, a trustee of the then College of California
The College of California was a private college in Oakland, California. It is a predecessor of the public University of California system. It was established in 1853 as the Contra Costa Academy. In 1868, it merged with the nascent Agricultural, ...
. Billings was inspired by Berkeley's ''Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America'', particularly the final stanza: "Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four Acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the day; Time's noblest offspring is the last."
The Town of Berkley, currently the least populated town in Bristol County, Massachusetts
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in S ...
, was founded on 18 April 1735 and named after the renowned philosopher. It is located 40 miles south of Boston and 25 miles north of Middletown, Rhode Island.
A residential college
A residential college is a division of a university that places academic activity in a community setting of students and faculty, usually at a residence and with shared meals, the college having a degree of autonomy and a federated relationship wi ...
and an Episcopal seminary at Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
also bear Berkeley's name, as does the Berkeley Library at Trinity College Dublin
, name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin
, motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin)
, motto_lang = la
, motto_English = It will last i ...
.
Berkeley Preparatory School in Tampa, Florida, a private school affiliated with the Episcopal Church, is also named for him.
"Bishop Berkeley's Gold Medals" are two awards given annually at Trinity College Dublin
, name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin
, motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin)
, motto_lang = la
, motto_English = It will last i ...
, "provided outstanding merit is shown", to candidates answering a special examination in Greek. The awards were founded in 1752 by Berkeley.Prizes and Other Awards
''Trinity College Dublin – Calendar 2016–17'', p. 369. Retrieved 16 April 2017.
An Ulster History Circle blue plaque commemorating him is located in Bishop Street Within, city of Derry.
Berkeley's farmhouse in Middletown, Rhode Island, is preserved as Whitehall Museum House, also known as Berkeley House, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 1970. St. Columba's Chapel, located in the same town, was formerly named "The Berkeley Memorial Chapel," and the appellation still survives at the end of the formal name of the parish, "St. Columba's, the Berkeley Memorial Chapel".
Writings
Original publications
* ''Arithmetica'' (1707)
* ''Miscellanea Mathematica'' (1707)
* ''Philosophical Commentaries'' or ''Common-Place Book'' (1707–08, notebooks)
* '' An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision'' (1709)
* ''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
''A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge'' (commonly called ''Treatise'') is a 1710 work, in English, by Irish Empiricist philosopher George Berkeley. This book largely seeks to refute the claims made by Berkeley's contemporary ...
'', Part I (1710)
* ''Passive Obedience, or the Christian doctrine of not resisting the Supreme Power'' (1712)
* '' Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous'' (1713)
* ''An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain'' (1721)
* '' De Motu'' (1721)
* ''A Proposal for Better Supplying Churches in our Foreign Plantations, and for converting the Savage Americans to Christianity by a College to be erected in the Summer Islands'' (1725)
* ''A Sermon preached before the incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts'' (1732)
* '' Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher'' (1732)
*
* ''The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language, shewing the immediate presence and providence of a Deity, vindicated and explained'' (1733)
* '' The Analyst: a Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician'' (1734)
* ''A Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics, with Appendix concerning Mr. Walton's vindication of Sir Isaac Newton's Principle of Fluxions'' (1735)
* ''Reasons for not replying to Mr. Walton's Full Answer'' (1735)
* ''The Querist, containing several queries proposed to the consideration of the public'' (three parts, 1735–37).
* ''A Discourse addressed to Magistrates and Men of Authority'' (1736)
* ''Siris, a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries, concerning the virtues of tar-water'' (1744).
* ''A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cloyne'' (1745)
* ''A Word to the Wise, or an exhortation to the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland'' (1749)
* ''Maxims concerning Patriotism'' (1750)
* ''Farther Thoughts on Tar-water'' (1752)
* ''Miscellany'' (1752)
Collections
* ''The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. Late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland. To which is added, an account of his life, and several of his letters to Thomas Prior, Esq. Dean Gervais, and Mr. Pope, &c. &c.'' Printed for George Robinson, Pater Noster Row, 1784. Two volumes.
* ''The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne: Including Many of His Writings Hitherto Unpublished; With Prefaces, Annotations, His Life and Letters, and an Account of His Philosophy''. Ed. by Alexander Campbell Fraser
Alexander Campbell Fraser (3 September 1819 – 2 December 1914) was a Scottish theologian and philosopher.
Life
He was born in the manse at Ardchattan, Argyll, the son of the parish minister, Rev Hugh Fraser, and his wife, Maria Helen Camp ...
. In 4 Volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901.
*
Vol. 1
*
Vol. 2
*
Vol. 3
*
Vol. 4
* ''The Works of George Berkeley.'' Ed. by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop. Nine volumes. Edinburgh and London, 1948–1957.
* Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. ''From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics'', 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press.
** 1707. ''Of Infinites'', 16–19.
** 1709. ''Letter to Samuel Molyneaux'', 19–21.
** 1721. ''De Motu'', 37–54.
** 1734. ''The Analyst'', 60–92.
See also
* List of people on stamps of Ireland
This is a list of people on stamps of Ireland, including the years when they appeared on a stamp.
Because no Irish stamps were designed prior to 1929, the first Irish stamps issued by the Provisional Government of Ireland were the then-current B ...
* Solipsism
Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known an ...
* "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a short story by the 20th-century Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in the Argentinian journal '' Sur'', May 1940. The "postscript" dated 1947 is intended to be anachronistic, se ...
"
* Yogacara
Yogachara ( sa, योगाचार, IAST: '; literally "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga") is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through t ...
and consciousness-only
Yogachara ( sa, योगाचार, IAST: '; literally "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga") is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through ...
schools of thought
References
Sources
Bibliographic resources
* Jessop T. E., '' Luce A. A.'
''A bibliography of George Berkeley''
2 edn., Springer, 1973.
* Turbayne C. M. ''A Bibliography of George Berkeley 1963–1979'' in
Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays
– via Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
, Manchester, 1982. pp. 313–29.
''Berkeley Bibliography (1979–2010)''
– A Supplement to those of Jessop and Turbayne by Silvia Parigi.
''A Bibliography on George Berkeley''
– About 300 works from the 19th century to our days.
Philosophical studies
* Daniel, Stephen H. (ed.), ''Re-examining Berkeley's Philosophy'', Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
* Daniel, Stephen H. (ed.), ''New Interpretations of Berkeley's Thought'', Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008.
* Dicker, Georges, ''Berkeley's Idealism. A Critical Examination'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
* Gaustad, Edwin. ''George Berkeley in America''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
* Pappas, George S., ''Berkeley's Thought'', Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
* Stoneham, Tom, ''Berkeley's World: An Examination of the Three Dialogues'', Oxford University Press, 2002.
* Warnock, Geoffrey J., ''Berkeley'', Penguin Books, 1953.
* Winkler, Kenneth P., ''The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
;Attribution
*
Further reading
* p. 349.
*
*
*
*
** "Shows a thorough mastery of the literature on Berkeley, along with very perceptive remarks about the strength and weaknesses of most of the central commentators. ... Exhibits a mastery of all the material, both primary and secondary ..." Charles Larmore, for the Editorial Board, ''Journal of Philosophy''.
** R. Muehlmann is one of th
Berkeley Prize Winners
* Edward Chaney (2000), 'George Berkeley's Grand Tours: The Immaterialist as Connoisseur of Art and Architecture', in E. Chaney, ''The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance'', 2nd ed. London, Routledge.
*
*
* Costica Bradatan (2006), ''The Other Bishop Berkeley. An Exercise in Reenchantment'', Fordham University Press, New York
* New Interpretations of Berkeley's Thought. Ed. by S. H. Daniel. New York: Humanity Books, 2008, 319 pp. .
** For reviews see:
*
Reviewed by Marc A. Hight
, Hampden–Sydney College
gr, Ye Shall Know the Truth
, established =
, type = Private liberal arts men's college
, religious_affiliation = Presbyterian Church (USA)
, endowment = $258 million (2021)
, president = Larry Stimpert
, city = Hampden Sydney, Virginia
, cou ...
*
Reviewed by Thomas M. Lennon
– Berkeley Studies
''Berkeley Studies'' (''Berkeley Newsletter'' until December 2007) is an annual on-line academic journal established in 1977. It publishes scholarly articles on anything related to George Berkeley. The journal also gives news of the last events in ...
19 (2008):51–56.
;Secondary literature available on the Internet
* Most sources listed below are suggested b
Dr. Talia M. Bettcher
in ''Berkeley: a Guide for the Perplexed'' (2008). See the textbook'
description
*
* Luce, A. A
''Berkeley and Malebranche. A Study in the Origins of Berkeley's Thought''
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934 (2nd edn, with additional Preface, 1967).
* Russell B. Berkeley // Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
''A History of Western Philosophy'' is a 1946 book by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was criticised for Russell's over-generalization and omission ...
3:1:16 (1945)
*
** Reviewed by: Désirée Park. ''Studi internazionali filosofici'' 3 (1971):228–30; G. J. Warnock
Sir Geoffrey James Warnock (16 August 19238 October 1995) was an English philosopher and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Before his knighthood (in the 1986 New Year Honours), he was commonly known as G. J. Warnock.
Life
Warnock was born ...
. ''Journal of Philosophy'' 69, 15 (1972):460–62; Günter Gawlick "Menschheitsglück und Wille Gottes: Neues Licht auf Berkeleys Ethik." ''Philosophische Rundschau'' 1–2 (January 1973):24–42; H. M. Bracken. ''Eighteenth-Century Studies'' 3 (1973): 396–97; and Stanley Grean. ''Journal of the History of Philosophy'' 12, 3 (1974): 398–403.
* Tipton, I. C.
Berkeley, The Philosophy of Immaterialism
' London: Methuen, 1974.
** "Ian C. Tipton, one of the world's great Berkeley scholars and longtime president of the International Berkeley Society. ... Of the many works about Berkeley that were published in the twentieth century, few rival in importance his ''Berkeley: The Philosophy of Immaterialism'' ... The philosophical insight, combined with the mastery of Berkeley's texts, that Ian brought to this work make it one of the masterpieces of Berkeley scholarship. It is not surprising therefore that, when the Garland Publishing Company brought out, late in 1980s, a 15-volume collection of major works on Berkeley, Ian's book was one of only two full-length studies of Berkeley published after 1935 to be included" (Charles J. McCracken. In Memoriam: Ian C. Tipton // The Berkeley Newsletter 17 (2006), p. 4).
* Winkler, Kenneth P.
Berkeley: An Interpretation
'. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1989.
*
* Berman, David.
George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man
'. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
*
''The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley''.
(EPUP, Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
). Ed. by Kenneth P. Winkler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
* Daniel, Stephen H., ed.
''Reexamining Berkeley's Philosophy''
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.
* Roberts, John
''A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley''
(EPUP, Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
). New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. – 172 p.
*
Reviewed by Marc A. Hight
, University of Tartu
The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...
/Hampden–Sydney College
gr, Ye Shall Know the Truth
, established =
, type = Private liberal arts men's college
, religious_affiliation = Presbyterian Church (USA)
, endowment = $258 million (2021)
, president = Larry Stimpert
, city = Hampden Sydney, Virginia
, cou ...
External links
George Berkeley
at th
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)
*
in th
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Berkeley's Philosophy of Science
in th
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
International Berkeley Society
* ttp://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/Images%20of%20Berkeley/Berk_life.htm Berkeley's Life and Works
*
*
*
Another perspective on how Berkeley framed his immaterialism
Original texts and discussion concerning ''The Analyst'' controversy
*
Contains more easily readable versions of New Theory of Vision, Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues, and Alciphron
* .
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20101209154705/http://epistemelinks.com/Main/TextName.aspx?PhilCode=Broa Electronic Texts for philosopher Charlie Dunbar(1887–1971):
* Broad, C. D.br>Berkeley's Argument About Material Substance
New York: 1975 (Repr. of the 1942 ed. publ. by the British Academy, London.)
* Broad, C. D.br>Berkeley's Denial of Material Substance
– Published in: ''The Philosophical Review'' Vol. LXIII (1954).
Rick Grush
syllabu
* Berkeley's (1734
''The Analyst''
– digital facsimile.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berkeley, George
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