Anglican bishop and philosopher, born at Dysert Castle, Kilkenny, SE Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained, as fellow and tutor, until 1713. His most important books were published in these early years: Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). In these works he developed his celebrated claim that to be is to be perceived - that the contents of the material world are ideas that only exist when they are perceived by a mind. He became Dean of Londonderry (1724), but became obsessed with a romantic scheme to found a college in the Bermudas to promote the propagation of the Gospel among the American savages. After years of intensive lobbying in London for support he sailed for America with his newly married wife (1728) and made a temporary home in Rhode Island. He waited there nearly three years: the grants did not materialize, and the college was never founded. He returned first to London and then in 1734 became Bishop of Cloyne. His remaining literary work was divided between questions of social reform and of religious reflection.
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Western Philosophy 18th century philosophy |
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|---|---|
| Name: | George Berkeley |
| Birth: | 12 March 1685 |
| Death: | 14 January 1753 |
| School/tradition: | Idealism, Empiricism |
| Main interests: | Idealism, Empiricism |
| Influenced: | David Hume |
George Berkeley (IPA: /ˈbɑː(ɹ).kli/) (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley, was an influential Irish philosopher whose primary philosophical achievement is the advancement of what has come to be called subjective idealism, summed up in his dictum, "Esse est percipi" ("To be is to be perceived"). The theory states that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter". He wrote a number of works, the most widely-read of which are his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) (Philonous, the "lover of the mind", representing Berkeley himself and Hylas, named after the ancient Greek word for matter, representing the ideas of Locke).
The city of Berkeley, California is named after him, by virtue of it growing up around the university there that was named after him, but the pronunciation of its name has evolved to suit American English.
Life
Berkeley was born in County Kilkenny and grew up at Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, Ireland, the eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley.
In 1725 he formed the project of founding a college in Bermuda for training ministers for the colonies, and missionaries to the Indians, in pursuit of which he gave up his deanery with its income of £1100, and went to America on a salary of £100. On October 4, 1730, Berkeley purchased "a Negro man named Philip aged Fourteen years or thereabout." On June 11, 1731, "Dean Berkeley baptized three of his negroes, 'Philip, Anthony, and Agnes Berkeley' " (The bills of sale can be found in the British Museum (Ms.
Berkeley's sermons explained to the colonists why Christianity supported slavery, and hence slaves should become baptized Christians: "It would be of advantage to their [slave masters'] affairs to have slaves who should 'obey in all things their masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, as fearing God;' that gospel liberty consists with temporal servitude; and that their slaves would only become better slaves by being Christian" (Berkeley, Proposal, 347.
He lived at the plantation while he waited for funds for his college to arrive.
He remained at Cloyne until 1752, when he retired and went to Oxford to live with his son.
Contributions to philosophy
Berkeley's theorizing was empiricism at its most extreme. As a young man, Berkeley theorized that individuals cannot know if an object is, individuals can only know if an object is perceived by a mind. He stated that individuals cannot think or talk about an object's being but rather think or talk about an object's being perceived by someone; individuals cannot know any "real" object or matter "behind" the object as they perceive it, which "causes" their perceptions.
Under his empiricism, the object individuals perceive is the only object that they know and experience. If individuals need to speak at all of the "real" or "material" object, the latter in particular being a confused term which Berkeley sought to dispose of, it is this perceived object to which all such names should exclusively refer.
This raises the question whether this perceived object is "objective" in the sense of being "the same" for fellow humans, in fact if even the concept of other human beings, beyond individual perception of them, is valid. Berkeley argues that since an individual experiences other humans in the way they speak to him —something which is not originating from any activity of his own —and since they learn that their view of the world is consistent with his, he can believe in their existence and in the world being identical or similar for everyone.
It follows that:
Any knowledge of the empirical world is to be obtained only through direct perception.Theologically, one consequence of Berkeley's views is that they require God to be present as an immediate cause of all our experiences.
The philosophy of David Hume concerning causality and objectivity is an elaboration of another aspect of Berkeley's philosophy. As Berkeley's thought progressed, he may have almost entirely assimilated his theories to those of Plato, though this is far from certain. Luce, the most eminent Berkeley scholar of the twentieth century, constantly stressed the continuity of Berkeley's mature philosophy. This suggests a continuity between the Principles, Alciphron and the rest of Berkeley's philosophical works. The fact that the main works were re-issued just a few years before Berkeley's death without major changes also counts against any theory which attributes to him a volte-face.
Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarised in a limerick and reply by Ronald Knox;
When there's no one about in the Quad." Since observed by Yours faithfully, God."In reference to Berkeley's philosophy, Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, "I refute it thus."
Berkeley shows this in the Dialogues by saying we define an object by its primary qualities and its secondary qualities. Berkeley says that since two different objects (your hands) perceive the water to be hot and cold, then the heat is not a quality of the water.
Primary qualities are treated the same way. Berkeley 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 observer. Since an object is a different size to different observers, then size is not a quality of the object. Berkeley refutes shape with a similar argument, 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?
Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge was published three years before the publication of Arthur Collier's Clavis Universalis, which made assertions similar to those of Berkeley.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote of him: "Berkeley was, therefore, the first to treat the subjective starting-point really seriously and to demonstrate irrefutably its absolute necessity. I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 12)
The Analyst controversy
In addition to his contributions to philosophy, Bishop Berkeley was also very influential in the development of mathematics, although in a rather indirect sense.
Berkeley regarded his criticism of calculus as part of his broader campaign against the religious implications of Newtonian mechanics – as a defence of traditional Christianity against deism, which tends to distance God from His worshippers.
As a consequence of the resulting controversy, the foundations of calculus were rewritten in a much more formal and rigorous form using limits. It was not until 1966, with the publication of Abraham Robinson's book Non-standard Analysis, that the concept of the infinitesimal was made rigorous, thus giving an alternative way of overcoming the difficulties which Berkeley discovered in Newton's original approach.
Bibliography
Primary: Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: George Berkeley by Lisa Downing.
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