George Berkeley

George Berkeley (12 Mar 1685 - 14 Jan 1753, and pronounced: “Barkly”) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher who advanced a theory of “Immaterialism”, seen as a powerful “Subjective Idealism”, Berkeley argued we can directly know only our own Sensation and Idea of an Object. The notion of “Matter”, for example, is an Idea dependent upon being Perceived by the Mind, which Berkeley described as “esse est percipi”, or “to be is to be perceived.” His development in The Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713), where Philonous and Hylas represented Berkeley and John Locke, as well as his 1734 The Analyst, itself a critique of the Infinitesimal in the Calculus of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, offers highly influential ideas in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind and Mathematics.

He was known as the “Good Bishop Berkeley”, and University of California, Berkeley, as well as Berkeley, California, were named after George Berkeley, suggested in 1866 by a trustee of then College of California, Frederick Billings. Berkeley College and Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University also bear his name, as does the Berkeley Library at Trinity College, Dublin. Frederick Billings was inspired by Berkeley's Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America, particularly the final stanza:

Life and Works

Berkeley was born in Dysart Castle near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland, eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley. He was educated at Kilkenny College and attended Trinity College in Dublin, completing a Master's degree in 1707. Berkeley remained at Trinity as a tutor and lecturer in Greek, and his earliest publication was the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), in which he examined Visual Distance, Magnitude, Position and problems of Sight and Touch. Though controversial at the time, the work has since been accepted as an established step in a theory of Optics.

'In the following Treatise and Three Dialogues, Berkeley developed his fuller system, the leading principle being that the World as represented to our Sense depends on that representation for its Existence - a much misunderstood theory. Berkeley was denying the prevailing Cartesian “Materialism of the day, but was ridiculed by Samuel Clarke and William Whiston, who neither acknowledged Berkeley's “extraordinary genius,” nor fully understood its implications as a challenge to the assumptions that objects have any meaning in themselves, apart from their usefulness to us.

Visting England, Berkeley was received into the circle of Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and Richard Steele, and from 1714-20, took extensive travels in Europe, including an extensive grand tour Italy. By 1721, Berkeley took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland, earning his Doctorate in Divinity and remained at Trinity College, becoming Dean of Derry. By 1725, he founded a college in Bermuda, training ministers for the British Colonies, then married Anne Forster, daughter of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. They went to America near Newport, Rhode Island, bought a plantation, known as Whitehall. Back in London, on Saville Street, he helped create a home for abandoned children, the Foundling Hospital, in 1739, and Berkeley is listed as one of its original governors. In 1734, he was appointed Bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and soon published Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher, directed against the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and Bernard de Mandeville, then The Querist.

His last two publications celebrated the virtues of “tar-water”, maded from pine tar, arguing its use as an effective antiseptic and disinfectant for the skin, and also as a broad panacea for disease in general. His 1744 book on the medical benefits of tar-war was his best-selling book during his life. Berkeley died in 1752 and was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Berkeley's affectionate personality and genial manners earned him love warm regard from many of his contemporaries.

Berkelean Philosophy

Even as a young man, Berkeley theorized that we can never really know what an Object is, but can only know if an Object is perceived by our Mind. We cannot know about any the Matter “behind” the Object, which may “cause” our perceptions, but does not constitute them. Whether the perceived Object is “objective”, or “the same” for all of us is unclear, but is the very concept of “other” human beings beyond our perception of them even valid? Berkeley answered the problem by seeing that we experience how others speak to us, and like Descartes, that is not originating from any desire of of our own. Thus, we can believe in their Existence and the World being identical, or similar, for everyone perceiving it.

Theologically, one consequence Berkeley required was that a “Supreme Being” needed to be present as an immediate cause, or Ultimate Perceiver of all our Experience. This is not a “distant engineer”, as Isaac Newton argued, but a view of our Perception of a tree being an Idea in a Supreme Being's own Mind, as it is produced in ours. The tree continues to exist when no one is there, simply because there is an Infinite Mind perceiving all Things. This blend of Plato and René Descartes has perplexed philosophers ever since. David Hume developed a Skepticism of Causality and Objectivity partly in response to Berkeley, and Immanuel Kant developed a whole new “Transcendental Idealism” as a result of them both. Ronald Knox, with an anonymous reply, had at least been humorous about it:


Samuel Johnson was less kind, and once blocked his eyes as he kicked a heavy stone while others looked on. “I refute Berkeley, thus!” Johnson laughed, believing that his not looking at the stone meant his toe could not have been hurt, when it was. However, Berkeley later replied that Dr. Johnson perceived the stone with his eyes, his foot, and even heard it with his ears. The Existence of the stone consisted exclusively of Dr. Johnson's perceptions, in a way, and what the stone materially consisted of might very well be entirely different in construction to what Johnson perceived. A more subtle view of this Idealism is to realize that Material Existence may not be affected by our Perception, but rather the presumed ontological Existence by which we “read” Matter as Objects. Spinoza and Leibniz would develop this subtlety.

While John Locke had said we define an Object by its Primary and Secondary Qualities, taking Heat as an example of a Secondary Quality, if we 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, our hands will report the lukewarm water is both cold and hot at the same time. Since two different hands perceive the water at different temperatures, the temperature is not a Quality of the water, but of the Understanding. Berkeley extended this to Primary Qualities in the same way, arguing Size is not a Quality of an Object, either, since Size depends on the distance between Observer and Object, or even the Size of the Observer. This idea, among those from Gottfried Leibniz, Arthur Collier and others, was clearly further developed by Immanuel Kant and later in Theories of Relativity. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in his “Parerga and Paralipomena” that 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.”

Works by Berkeley

• Philosophical Commentaries (1707-08, notebooks)
• An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709)
• A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I (1710)
• Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)
• De Motu (1721)
• Alciphron: or the Minute Philosopher (1732)
• The Theory of Vision or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained (1733)
• The Analyst (1734)
• The Querist (1735-37)
• Siris (1744)

Scholarship by M.R.M. Parrott

Synthetic A Priori: Philosophical Interviews Interviews, Discussion ©1998-1999 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: 99,00,02,08,11 Published by rimric press 0-9662635-6-1 | 978-0-9662635-6-5 232 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Both Prefaces, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

Further Reading

Secondary Literature

• Ewald, William B., ed., 1996. From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, 2 vols. Oxford Uni. Press.
• Berkley, George 1707. Of Infinites, 16-19.
• -- 1709. Letter to Samuel Molyneaux, 19-21.
• -- 1721. De Motu, 37-54.
• -- 1734. The Analyst, 60-92.
• Jessop T. E., Luce A. A. A bibliography of George Berkeley. 2 edn., Springer, 1973. ISBN 9024715776, ISBN 9789024715770
• Turbayne C. M. A Bibliography of George Berkeley 1963-1979, Berkeley: Critical and Interpretive Essays. Ed. by C. M. Turbayne. Manchester. 1982. P. 313-329.
• Parigi, Silvia. Berkeley Bibliography (1979-2008) - A Supplement to those of Jessop and Turbayne
• A bibliography on George Berkeley - about 300 works from XIX century to our days
• Tomy C. A., Varadarajan N. A bibliography on George Berkeley
• 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
• Parrott, M.R.M., books on Berkeley and other philosophers, including “Synthetic A Priori” (1999)

Additional Links

• George Berkeley article by Daniel E. Flage in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• International Berkeley Society
• Berkeley Studies (formerly the Berkeley Newsletter) - annual bulletin concerning update events in Berkeley Scholarship. Issues has become available for download and viewing (see: Bertil Belfrage “Senior Editor's Note” in The Berkeley Newsletter 16).
• A list of the published works by and about Berkeley as well as online links
• Berkeley's Life and Works
• Works by George Berkeley in free audio format from LibriVox
• Another perspective on how Berkeley framed his immaterialism
• Original texts and discussion concerning The Analyst controversy
• More easily readable versions of Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues, and Alciphron
• An extensive compendium of online resources, including a gallery of Berkeley's images
• A version of Berkeley's PHK condensed and rewritten for faster reading.
• Electronic Texts for philosopher Charlie Dunbar BROAD (1887-1971):
• Berkeley's Argument About Material Substance N. Y., 1975 (Repr. of the 1942 ed. publ. by the British Academy, London.)
• Berkeley's Denial of Material Substance, Published in: The Philosophical Review Vol. LXIII (1954).
• Rick Grush syllabus Empiricism (J. Locke, G. Berkeley, D. Hume)