George Berkeley was born near Kilkenny, Ireland, and, although an Anglican of English descent, he emphatically considered himself to be Irish. He studied at Kilkenny College and in 1700 went on to Trinity College, Dublin. There he read Descartes, Newton, and Locke. In 1707, he became a Fellow of the College and was ordained in the Anglican church. The next six years were to be the most philosophically productive in his life. In 1709, he published his New Theory of Vision, and in the following year his most important philosophic work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. In 1711, he wrote Discourse on Passive Obedience. Two years later, he published a more popular exposition of the doctrine of his Principles in the form of Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. [The name Hylas is a derivation of hyle—“matter”—and Philonous the compound philo-nous—“lover of mind”—hence, the dialogues frame the debate of matter versus mind. Source: Ideas Clothed in the Mind of God.]
For the next eleven years, Berkeley traveled widely, visiting with many of the great thinkers of his day. He became Dean of Derry in 1724, though most of his energy at this time seems to have been given to the founding of a college in the Bermudas. With promises of financial support, he sailed for Rhode Island in 1728 to establish farms for supplying his future college with food. Berkeley spent two and a half years in Rhode Island with his new wife and friends, waiting for the 20,000 pounds the government had promised. When the funds never arrived, he finally gave up and returned to London.
In 1733, he published Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher, against the free-thinkers (agnostics), and in the following year The Analyst, a criticism of Newton. That same year, he was made Bishop of Cloyne. For the next eighteen years, he energetically served his remote, poor diocese. Among the works he wrote during this period are The Querist (1737), which used questions to propose public works and education as remedies to the crushing poverty he observed, and Siris (1744), an unusual work dealing with the medicinal value of tar water. In 1751, he lost his eldest son, and the next year he moved to Oxford, where another son was beginning his studies. On January 14, 1753, Berkeley died suddenly; he was buried at Christ Church, Oxford.
* * *
Like Locke before him, Berkeley accepted the empiricist doctrine that all we can know are ideas and that ideas come from perception or reflection. But Berkeley saw a problem in Locke’s assertion of an external world of material “substances” giving rise to perceptions. If all we can know are ideas, how can we know there is a world “out there” giving rise to our ideas? Locke had said that the primary qualities of an “external object” (such as extension and solidity) are “utterly inseparable” from the objects themselves, whereas this is not the case with secondary qualities (such as color, taste, etc.). But again, asked Berkeley, how can Locke know this? He cannot get “outside himself” to see which of his perceptions are actually a part of objects “out there.” Berkeley concluded that Locke’s philosophy will lead to skepticism, whereby we must admit that we cannot really know anything about the world “out there.”
To avoid this skepticism, Berkeley made the radical claim that there is no “out there,” or, more precisely, there is no matter. Berkeley’s position, which is called “idealism,” can be summed up in his famous phrase “esse is percipi”: to be is to perceived. What we call “bodies,” or physical objects, are simply stable collections of perceptions to which we give names such as “apples,” “trees,” and so on. These collections of perceptions have no existence apart from a perceiving mind. The answer to the famous conundrum “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” is that if no one is perceiving it, it not only does not make a sound, the tree does not even exist!
Does this mean that trees go out of existence when no one is left in the forest to perceive them and that they come back into existence when someone enters the forest to perceive them again? It would seem that Berkeley must accept this odd conclusion were it not for one important point: God never leaves the forest, and God is always perceiving the trees. By always holding all collections of perceptions in the divine mind, God ensures their continued existence and the perceived regularity in what we call “nature.” This point has been classically formulated in the following limericks:
There was a young man who said, “God,
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.”
REPLY:
“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Continues to be,
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully, God.”
Berkeley saw his philosophy as a common-sense attack on the metaphysical excesses of medieval Scholastics, Continental Rationalists, and even fellow empiricists such as Hobbes and Locke. Although Berkeley understood his philosophy to be common sense, his readers drew different conclusions. One prominent physician of his day claimed Berkeley was insane. The great Dr. Samuel Johnson dismissed Berkeley’s ideas with his famous “I refute Berkeley thus” and then he kicked a rock. Of course, this did not refute Berkeley at all. It only proved Johnson had not understood Berkeley’s point. Berkeley did not claim the non-existence of stones or that kicking a stone will not produce sensation. He claimed the rock did not exist apart from the perception of its solidity or the perception of pain when struck, and so on. An oft-repeated epitaph summarizes the general reaction to Berkeley: “His arguments produce no conviction, though they cannot be refuted.”
* * *
Berkeley’s major work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, is reprinted here (complete) using the revised text of 1734. [That is, reprinted in Modern Philosophy, Vol. III from where this web excerpt was taken, not reprinted here on this website.]
For general introductions to Berkeley, see G.J. Warnock, Berkeley (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1953); Harry M. Bracken, Berkeley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974); J.O. Urmson, Berkeley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l982)—part of the Past Masters series, now reprinted in the combined volume John Dunn et al., eds., The British Empiricists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); David Berman, George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); David Berman, Berkeley (London: Routledge, 1999); and George S. Pappas, Berkeley’s Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). For interesting but difficult discussions of Berkeley’s arguments, see George Pitcher, Berkeley (London: Routledge, 1977) or Kenneth Winkler, Berkeley: An Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). For collections of essays, see Gale W. Engle and Gabriele Taylor, eds., Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1968); Cohn M. Turbayne, ed., Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); John Foster and Howard Robinson, eds., Essays on Berkeley: A Tercentennial Celebration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); and D.M. Armstrong and C.B. Martin, Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays (Hamden, CT: Garland, 1992)—a reprint of the second half of Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968).
P7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
Dem.: This is clear from 1A4. For the idea of each thing caused depends on the knowledge of the cause of which it is the effect.
Cor.: From this it follows that God’s [actual] power of thinking is equal to his actual power of acting. I.e., whatever follows formally from God’s infinite nature follows objectively in God from his idea in the same order and with the same connection.
Schol.: Before we proceed further, we must recall here what we showed [in the First Part], viz, that whatever can be perceived by an infinite intellect as constituting an essence of substance pertains to one substance only, and consequently that the thinking substance and the extended substance are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute, now under that, So also a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways. Some of the Hebrews seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God’s intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same.
For example, a circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the same things follow one another.
When I said [before] that God is the cause of the idea, say of a circle, only insofar as he is a thinking thing, and [the cause] of the circle, only insofar as he is an extended thing, this was for no other reason than because the formal being of the idea of the circle can be perceived only through another mode of thinking, as its proximate cause, and that mode again through another, and so on, to infinity. Hence, so long as things are considered as modes of thinking, we must explain the order of the whole of nature, or the connection of causes, through the attribute of Thought alone. And insofar as they are considered as modes of Extension, the order of the whole of nature must be explained through the attribute of Extension alone. I understand the same concerning the other attributes.
So of things as they are in themselves, God is really the cause insofar as he consists of infinite attributes. For the present, I cannot explain these matters more clearly.
P8: The ideas of singular things, or of modes, that do not exist must be comprehended in God’s infinite idea in the same way as the formal essences of the singular things, or modes, are contained in God’s attributes.
Dem.: This Proposition is evident from the preceding one, but is understood more clearly from the preceding scholium.
Cor.: From this it follows that so long as singular things do not exist, except insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes, their objective being, or ideas, do not exist except insofar as God’s infinite idea exists. And when singular things are said to exist, not only insofar as they are comprehended in God’s attributes, but insofar also as they are said to have duration, their ideas also involve the existence through which they are said to have duration.
Schol.: If anyone wishes me to explain this further by an example, I will, of course, not be able to give one which adequately explains what I speak of here, since it is unique. Still I shall try as far as possible to illustrate the matter: the circle is of such a nature that the rectangles formed from the segments of all the straight lines intersecting in it are equal to one another. So in a circle there are contained infinitely many rectangles that are equal to one another. Nevertheless, none of them can be said to exist except insofar as the circle exists, nor also can the idea of any of these rectangles be said to exist except insofar as it is comprehended in the idea of the circle. Now of these infinitely many [rectangles] let two only, viz. [those formed from the segments of lines] D and E, exist.
Of course their ideas also exist now, not only insofar as they are only comprehended in the idea of the circle, but also insofar as they involve the existence of those rectangles. By this they are distinguished from the ideas of the other rectangles.
Excerpts above, with the exception of the heading introducing Spinoza taken from the margins scrawled in my book in lieu of class notes, all taken from the fourth edition of Modern Philosophy, Vol. III edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann. The introduction to Berkeley is from pages 293–295; the excerpt from Spinoza’s Ethics comes from pages 144–146. The 5th Edition of Modern Philosophy, Vol. III is now available. Spinoza’s Ethics can be read in its entirity online, beginning here. The illustration of Spinoza’s circles/rectangles comes from the second half of the online link just listed, converted to grayscale using the wonderful open-source program GIMP (for Windows).
Table of Contents | Home | About | Newsletter | Forum | Misc. | Contact | Search | Links | Random Page
.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.
