George Berkeley

Berkeley, George 

Born Mar. 12,1685, near Kilkenny, Ireland; died Jan. 14, 1753, at Oxford. English philosopher; representative of subjective idealism.

Berkeley was born into an English gentry family. He studied at Dublin University. In 1734 he became bishop of Cloyne (Ireland).

Berkeley criticized the concept of matter as the material basis (substance) of bodies, the teaching of I. Newton on space as the receptacle of all natural bodies, and the teaching of J. Locke on the origin of concepts of matter and space. According to Berkeley, it is impossible to form general ideas of space and matter by abstracting from the particular properties of individual things: we do not have sensory perception of matter as such. Contrary to Locke, Berkeley asserted that our minds can form a general idea of a thing, but not a general idea of matter. Furthermore, a general idea of matter is entirely unnecessary in science or philosophy, because it adds nothing to the properties of things beyond what is given by sensory perception. Berkeley argued against the distinction between primary and secondary qualities: all qualities are secondary to the extent that their being is entirely attributable to the ability to be perceived.

Rejecting the being of matter, Berkeley recognized only the existence of spiritual being, which he divided into “ideas” and “spirits.” Ideas, subjective qualities perceived by us, are passive and involuntary; the content of our feelings and perceptions is absolutely independent of us. On the other hand, spirits are active and can be causes.

Attempting to escape the unavoidable consequences of subjective idealism that lead to solipsism, Berkeley contended that the perceiving subject is not alone and that a thing that one subject has ceased to perceive can be perceived by other subjects. But even if all subjects disappeared, things would continue to exist as the sum of ideas in the mind of god—the subject who exists eternally and who “inserts” into the consciousness of separate subjects the content of their sensations. Here Berkeley “approaches . . . objective idealism” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 18, p. 24). As Lenin showed in Materialism and Empirical Criticism, Berkeley’s philosophy was the prototype and one of the sources of the subjective idealist theory of bourgeois philosophy of the end of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century.

WORKS

The Works, vols. 1–9. London, 1948–57.
In Russian translation:
Traktat o nachalakh chelovecheskogo znaniia. St. Petersburg, 1905.
Opyt novoi teorii zreniia. Kazan, 1912.
Tri razgovora. . . . Moscow, 1937.

REFERENCES

Blonskii, P. P. Uchenie Berkli o real’nosti. Kiev, [1907].
Bogomolov, A. S. Kritika sub”ektivno-idealisticheskoi filosofii Dzh. Berkli. Moscow, 1959.
Luce, A. A. Berkeley’s Immaterialism. London, 1945.
Warnock, G. J. Berkeley. London, 1953.
Ritchie, A. D. G. Berkeley. [Manchester, 1967].

V. F. ASMUS