Background

George Berkeley was born on March 12, 1685, at his family home, Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, the eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley. Little is known of his mother.

Education

Berkeley was educated at Kilkenny College and then, in 1700, at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was elected a Scholar in 1702, earning a bachelor's degree in 1704 and completing a master's degree in 1707.

In 1721, George Berkeley took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland, earning his doctorate in divinity.

Career

Berkeley was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1710, but he remained associated with Trinity College until 1724 (after completing his doctorate, he became a Senior Fellow in 1717, and then became a tutor and lecturer in Greek), although he was not continuously in residence.

His most widely-read works ("A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" of 1710, and "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous" of 1713) were published at a relatively early age, during his Trinity College years, and he spent much of the rest of his life defending them. In 1713, he went to London to arrange publication of the second of these, and there he befriended some of the intellectual lights of the time, including Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Alexander Pope. From 1714 to 1720, he interspersed his academic endeavors with periods of extensive travel throughout Europe.

In 1721, Berkeley took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland, earned his doctorate in Divinity, and once again chose to remain at Trinity College, Dublin, lecturing on Divinity and Hebrew. In 1724, he was made Dean of Derry and moved away from Trinity, but in 1725 he gave up this position to pursue plans to found a seminary for training missionaries in Bermuda. After 1728, Berkeley moved to Rhode Island in America and bought Whitehall Plantation, where he wrote the bulk of "Alciphron" (his defense of Christianity against free-thinking). But, when the money for his proposed missionary college did not materialize, he moved back to London in 1732, where he was one of the original governors of the Foundling Hospital, a home for the city's abandoned children.

In 1734, Berkeley was appointed Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, an economically poor Anglican diocese in a predominantly Roman Catholic country, where he remained for the next 18 years (and during which time he produced a work on mathematics and calculus, and two popular books on the medical benefits of pine tar). In 1752, he retired to Oxford to live with his son, George. However, but he died soon on January 14, 1753, and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

Achievements

• George Berkeley was an Anglican bishop and philosopher, whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others).
  
  Berkeley is honoured together with Joseph Butler with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (United States) on June, 16.
  
  Berkeley was the namesake of the city of Berkeley, California, which is perhaps most famous as the home of the prestigious university.

Works

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  • The George Berkeley Collection: 5 Classic Works

    (This work contains: A Treatise Concerning the Principles ...)

    2014
  • Collected Works of George Berkeley

    (Author’s works include: an essay towards a new theory of ...)

    2013
  • Philosophical Works: Including the Works on Vision

    (This volume contains a selection of Berkeley's most impor...)

    1993
  • The Empiricists: Locke: Concerning Human Understanding; Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge & 3 Dialogues; Hume: Concerning Human Understanding & Concerning Natural Religion

    (The rise and fall of British Empiricism is philosophy's m...)

    1960
  • Short Works of George Berkeley

    (Author’s works include: Querist; A Essay Towards a New Th...)

    2007
  • Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous

    (Bishop Berkeley (1685 - 1753) was one of the great Britis...)

    1988
  • A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge 2012
  • Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous 2012
  • The Analyst A Discourse Addressed To An Infidel Mathematician 2010
  • Querist 2012

Views

George Berkeley developed a theory he called "immaterialism" (conceived as it was in opposition to the prevailing Materialism of the time), although it was later referred to by others as Subjective Idealism. The theory propounds the view that reality consists exclusively of minds and their ideas, and that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas, not the objects themselves. The position that the mind is the only thing that can be known to exist (and that knowledge of anything outside the mind is unjustified) is known as Solipsism, and forms the root of the later doctrine of Phenomenalism. It can also be seen as an extreme type of Empiricism, whereby any knowledge of the empirical world is to be obtained only through direct perception.

Berkeley, recognizing the possible theological loopholes in his theory, argued that if he or another person saw a table, for example, then that table existed; however, if no one saw the table, then it could only continue to exist if it was in an infinite mind that perceives all, i.e. God. He further argued that it is God who causes us to experience physical objects by directly willing us to experience matter (thus avoiding the extra, unnecessary step of creating that matter).

So, Berkeley's view of reality might be summed up as follows: there exists an infinite spirit (God) and a multitude of finite spirits (humans), and we are in communication with God via our experience. Thus, what we take to be our whole experience of the world is analogous to God's language, God's way of talking to us, and all the laws of science and Nature we see around us are analogous to the grammar of God's language. There is, then, in this theory, no need to postulate the existence of matter at all, as all reality is effectively mental.

Quotations: "If we admit a thing so extraordinary as the creation of this world, it should seem that we admit something strange, and odd, and new to human apprehension, beyond any other miracle whatsoever."

"The only things we perceive are our perceptions."

"In vain do we extend our view into the heavens, and pry into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity; we need only draw the curtain of words, to behold the fairest tree of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of our hand."

Interests

• christianity, metaphysics, epistemology, language, mathematics, perception

Connections

On August 1, 1728, George Berkeley married Anne Forster, daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He and Anne had four children who survived infancy: Henry, George, William and Julia, and at least two other children who died in infancy.

Father:

William Berkeley

William Berkeley was a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley.

Brother:

Robert Berkeley

Wife:

Anne Berkeley (Forster)

Son:

George Berkeley, Jr.

Son:

Henry Berkeley

Son:

William Berkeley

Daughter:

Julia Berkeley

References

• Berkeley: Philosophical Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) George Berkeley (1685 - 1753) was a university teacher, a missionary, and later a Church of Ireland bishop. This edition provides texts from the full range of Berkeley's contributions to philosophy, together with an introduction by Desmond M. Clarke that sets them in their historical and philosophical contexts.
  2009
• George Berkeley Alciphron in Focus: "Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher" in Focus (Philosophers in Focus) eBook: David Berman, David Berman: Gateway Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732) is Berkeley's main work of philosophical theology and a crucial source of his views on meaning and language. This edition contains the four most important dialogues and a selection of critical essays and commentaries reflecting the response of such writers as Hutcheson, Mill and Antony Flew.
  2013
• A Metaphysics for the Mob: The Philosophy of George Berkeley George Berkeley notoriously claimed that his immaterialist metaphysics was not only consistent with common sense but that it was also integral to its defense. In this work the author, John Roberts, argues that understanding the basic connection between Berkeley's philosophy and common sense requires that we develop a better understanding of the four principle components of Berkeley's positive metaphysics: The nature of being, the divine language thesis, the active/passive distinction, and the nature of spirits.
  2007
• Berkeley's Thought In this highly original account of Bishop George Berkeley's epistemological and metaphysical theories, the author, George S. Pappas, seeks to determine precisely what doctrines the philosopher held and what arguments he put forward to support them.
  2000
• Berkeley's World: An Examination of the Three Dialogues Tom Stoneham offers a clear and detailed study of Berkeley's metaphysics and epistemology, as presented in his classic work Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, originally published in 1713 and still widely studied. Stoneham shows that Berkeley is an important and systematic philosopher whose work is still of relevance to philosophers today.
  2003
• George Berkeley: A study of his life and philosophy
  1962
• The development of Berkeley's philosophy 1923
  1923
• Sight and Touch: An Attempt to Disprove the Received (or Berkeleian) Theory of Vision
  1864
• The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (Dover Books on Mathematics)
  1959
• George Berkeley: A Reappraisal
  1967