Berkeley, George
Name: George Berkeley
Achievements: A bishop, scientist and major philosopher
Born: March 12, 1685; Dysert Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland
Died: January 14, 1753; Oxford, England (Aged 67)
Field & Discipline: Philosophy
Language: English
Father: William Berkeley
Mother: Unknown
Siblings: Robert (younger brother)
Spouse: Anne Forster (1701-86, m. 1728)
Children: Henry (1729-51); unnamed daughter (1730-31); George (b. 1733); John (b.
& d. 1735); William (1736-51); Julia (b. 1738); Sarah (1739-40)
Education: Kilkenny College (1696-1700); Trinity College, Dublin (1700-07)
Major Work:
“Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge” (1710)
Life & Times:
Berkeley graduated with a BA in 1704, then stayed at Trinity studying privately, waiting for a fellowship vacancy. Early in 1705, he began to write a series of notes on philosophical topics, now known as “The Philosophical Commentaries,” published 1871, in which he worked out the basis of his new and revolutionary views.
His primary goal was to overcome the widespread, fashionable scepticism and atheism of the time, and to establish a philosophy compatible with both the new philosophy and Christianity.
Berkeley argued that the idea of matter as "real,” over and above the primary and secondary qualities, could not be truly abstracted from the sense object. The fault in all philosophy, Berkeley believed, had been false abstraction, and to him [disagreed with] Locke's* material substance was precisely that. Following these arguments came his celebrated claim that "to be is to be perceived.” What he meant was that the contents of the material world were "ideas" that only existed when they were perceived by a mind.
It followed that matter or material existence apart from experience was inconceivable and contradictory. The perceived object, though, did not cease to exist when not perceived by man, as it continued to be perceived by God.
Berkeley went further, to argue that "ideas" couldn’t be produced by inert senseless matter, but had to be caused by an incorporeal active substance or spirit, and within this scheme "Nature" was the ordered succession of such "ideas,” produced by the Universal Spirit.
The laws of nature, he asserted, being "the set of rules or established methods wherein the mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of sense.” It was spirits alone, of which there were two kind, finite minds and a Universal mind, God, which truly exist.
As well as developing his philosophy, Berkeley made critical studies of time and vision. In 1707 he published his first work, “Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica,” probably a fellowship thesis, and the same year he was elected a fellow of Trinity College.
He held this fellowship for 17 years, acting as librarian (1709), junior dean
(1710-11), and tutor and lecturer in divinity, Greek, and Hebrew. In 1709, Berkeley published his first important work, “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision.”
Berkeley mainly examined how we perceive by sight the distance, size and position of objects. He attempted to show the mind-dependence of our "ideas" derived from sight, by explaining their "arbitrary" though constant connection with the more primary "ideas" of touch, by analogy with the way in which written words "signify" speech.
In 1709 Berkeley became a deacon, and the following year, he was ordained to the priesthood and published his most important work, the “Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I.”
In it, he argued, with characteristic clarity, a philosophy of immaterialism, or "idealism,” claimed that there was no external, material world, that houses, trees, and the like were simply collections of "ideas,” and that it was God who produced "ideas" or "sensations" in our minds.
Knowing that such a claim could be seen as outrageous, Berkeley elaborated his argument in the firm belief that his "immaterialism" was the only hope of defeating scepticism and of understanding the status of scientific explanations.
In April 1713 he went back to London, where he met and mixed with [knew] Joseph Addison*, [knew] Pope*, who credited him with "ev'ry virtue under heav'n,” [knew] Arbuthnot* and [knew] Steele*, for whom he wrote articles for “The Guardian” against the freethinkers. He was also presented to the English court by [a pal of] Swift*, where with his exceptional wit and personal charm he quickly became a favourite.
The same year, Berkeley published his “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,” which defended and reinforced the main argument of the “Principles” in a more accessible, literary form.
In November 1713, on Swift's recommendation, Berkeley went to Sicily as chaplain to Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough, until 1714, and in November 1716 he embarked on a four-year period of European travel, as tutor to the only son of Bishop St. George Ashe.
In 1721 Berkeley returned to Ireland as chaplain to the Duke of Grafton, earned his Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity and a year later was appointed Dean of Dromore.
In 1723, Hester van Homrigh, Swift's "Vanessa,” died, leaving Berkeley half her property, and the following year he was appointed Dean of Derry, ending his 24-year connection with Trinity College.
During this period, far from settling down, Berkeley had been, from 1722, considering a scheme to found a college in Bermuda for the education and "the propagation of the gospel among the American savages.”
In 1728, Parliament passed a contingent grant of £20,000, and in August he married Anne Forster, a month before setting sail with his new wife for America. They settled in Newport, Rhode Island, where they bought a farm and built a house named "Whitehall.” Berkeley helped found a philosophical society there, and preached at the Trinity Church.
The promised grant never arrived, so, in October 1731, donating his house, one thousand books and supplies to Yale College, he and his wife went back to England.
On his return, Berkeley began writing prolifically again, producing, in response to an attack in a newspaper on his old “Essay on Vision,” which had been appended “Alciphron,” his “The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language, Vindicated and Explained” (1733).
This fine work brought the metaphysics, or theory of being of the “Essay on Vision” into line with the “Principles of Human Knowledge” and added Berkeley's doctrine of cause, admitting defects in the premises of the original “Essay.”
In 1734 Berkeley was appointed Bishop of Cloyne in Dublin, where he lived for 18 years until August 1752, when he resigned to be near his second son, George, a senior student at Christ Church, Oxford.
Berkeley went to live in Holywell Street, Oxford, where he died suddenly while listening to his wife read from the Bible, and was buried in the nave at Christ Church, Oxford.
Extra Connections: His work related to that of [work related to] Thomas Young*.
He knew [knew] Voltaire*
Was critiqued by [critiqued by] Bayes*
[influenced] T H Huxley* wrote about him.
Assessment: A major philosophical figure.
Oneliner: George Berkeley, major philosopher
Bibliography:
- Berman, David, George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.