Berkeley E-Book

Daniel E. Flage

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Classic Thinkers series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 415

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Irish philosopher George Bishop Berkeley was one of the greatest philosophers of the early modern period. Along with David Hume and John Locke he is considered one of the fathers of British Empiricism. Berkeley is a clear, concise, and sympathetic introduction to George Berkeley’s philosophy, and a thorough review of his most important texts. Daniel E. Flage explores his works on vision, metaphysics, morality, and economics in an attempt to develop a philosophically plausible interpretation of Berkeley’s oeuvre as whole.

Many scholars blur the rejection of material substance (immaterialism) with the claim that only minds and things dependent upon minds exist (idealism). However Flage shows how, by distinguishing idealism from immaterialism and arguing that Berkeley’s account of what there is (metaphysics) is dependent upon what is known (epistemology), a careful and plausible philosophy emerges.

The author sets out the implications of this valuable insight for Berkeley’s moral and economic works, showing how they are a natural outgrowth of his metaphysics, casting new light on the appreciation of these and other lesser-known areas of Berkeley’s thought.

Daniel E. Flage’s Berkeley presents the student and general reader with a clear and eminently readable introduction to Berkeley’s works which also challenges standard interpretations of Berkeley’s philosophy.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1: Berkeley's Life and Writings

Why Study Berkeley Today?

Early Life

Bermuda and Rhode Island

Bishop of Cloyne

On Reading Berkeley

2: Vision

The Historical Context: Methods of Inquiry and Theories of Vision

Berkeley on Seeing Distance (NTV §§2–51)

Perception of Magnitude (NTV §§52–87)

Situation and Numerical Heterogeneity (NTV §§88–120)

Heterogeneity and the Universal Language of Vision (NTV §§121–158)

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

3: Abstraction

Historical Context

The Principal Arguments

Language

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

4: The Case for Idealism and Immaterialism in the Principles

The Case for Idealism (Sections 1–7)

The Attack on Matter (Sections 8–24)

Onward to Ordinary Objects (Sections 25–33)

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

5: Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

Background

Dialogue One

Dialogue Two

Dialogue Three

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

6: Minds: Yours, Mine, and God's

The Principles

Knowing Minds: Dialogue Three

Your Mind and God's

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

7: Moral Philosophy

Moral Theories

The Egoistic Notebooks

Passive Obedience

Alciphron

A Look Back; A Look Ahead

8: Economics and the Irish Condition

Eighteenth-Century Ireland and the South Sea Bubble

An Essay towards Preventing of the Ruin of Great Britain

The Querist

9: Concluding Remarks

Bibliography

Index

Classic Thinkers Series

J. M. Fritzman, Hegel

Bernard Gert, Hobbes

Dale E. Miller, J. S. Mill

A. J. Pyle, Locke

Andrew Ward, Kant

Copyright © Daniel Flage 2014

The right of Daniel Flage to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2014 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5633-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5634-2(pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8271-6(epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8250-1(mobi)

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To Ronald J. Glass

I am not without some hopes, upon the consideration that the largest views are not always the clearest, and that he who is short-sighted will be obliged to draw the object nearer, and may, perhaps, by a close and narrow survey discern that which had escaped far better eyes.

— George Berkeley

Acknowledgements

Books seldom leap fully grown from the head of Zeus. Typically authors work on them piecemeal, often before the thought of a book comes into mind. These bits and pieces are published as articles or read as conference papers. Eventually the author—or someone wiser than he—suggests that the dots posed by the articles be connected to form a unified whole, and a book is conceived. At least, that's how this book happened.

“Analysis in Berkeley's Theory of Vision,” in Berkeley's Lasting Legacy: 300 Years Later, edited by Timo Airaksinen and Bertil Belfrage (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011) anticipates the discussion of analysis in Chapter 2. It is published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Chapter 3 follows “Berkeley on Abstraction,” copyright © 1986 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc. This article first appeared in Journal of the History of Philosophy 24:4 (1986), 483–501. Reprinted with permission by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Chapter 4 is a reworking of “Berkeley's Epistemic Ontology: The Principles,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (2004): 25–60. Chapter 5 is closely associated with “Berkeley's Epistemic Ontology: The Three Dialogues,” in Stephen Daniel, editor, New Interpretations of Berkeley's Thought, Journal of the History of Philosophy Books (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2008), pp. 45–75. The discussion of Berkeley's argument for the existence of God in the Principles in Chapter 6 is a condensation of a paper I wrote with Ekaterina Ksenjek, “Berkeley, the Author of Nature, and the Judeo-Christian God,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (2012): 281–99, copyright 2012 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press. The discussion of ethical egoism in Chapter 7 is based on “Was Berkeley an Ethical Egoist?” Berkeley Studies 19 (2008): 3–18. The discussion of the natural law theory found in Passive Obedience is based upon a paper I presented at a Workshop on Berkeley's Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland in August 2010. The discussion of Berkeley's moral theory in Alciphron is based on a paper I presented at the International Berkeley Society Conference at L′Université de Sherbrooke, Longueuil, Quebec in June 2012. I wish to thank the publishers of these articles for permission to include modified versions of them in this book.

I wish to thank Phil Cummins, Ron Glass, Bertil Belfrage, Marc Hight, and the members of the International Berkeley Society for numerous discussions that helped clear some of the fog surrounding my understanding of Berkeley.

I am indebted to Emma Hutchinson of Polity Press, who suggested that I write this book. Without her encouragement, this book would not have been written. I wish to thank Emma, Pascal Porcheron, and David Winters for their editorial hand-holding during the writing. And I wish to thank Polity Press's readers for their comments on the original project and an early version of the manuscript.

Finally, I wish to thank my family for their continued love and encouragement.

Abbreviations

References to Berkeley's writings will be made parenthetically using the following set of abbreviations:

A x:y p. zAlciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, Dialogue x, section y, page z in The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, volume 3.B-J x §yCorrespondence with Samuel Johnson, letter x, section y.Cor. xThe Correspondence of George Berkeley, page x.DHP xThree Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, volume 2, page x.DM xDe Motu section x.Guardian x:yGuardian number x, page y in Works, volume 7.Intro. §xIntroduction to A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, section x.N x1707–1708 notebooks (sometimes known as Philosophical Commentaries), entry number x.NTV §xAn Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, section x.PHK §xA Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, section x.Q xThe Querist (1750 edition), query x.RGB xAn Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain, in The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, volume 6, page x.SER x:ySermon number x, page y in Works, volume 7.Siris §xSiris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar-water and divers other Subjects connected together and arising One from Another, section x.TVV §xThe Theory of Vision, or Visual Language shewing the immediate Presence and Providence of a Deity Vindicated and Explained, section x.Works x:yThe Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, edited by A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 volumes, volume x:page y.Since we shall cite John Locke's Essay and the works of René Descartes with some regularity, we shall also make the following citations parenthetically:CSM x:yRené Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch; correspondence translated in part by Anthony Kenny, three volumes, volume x:page y.Locke, Essay x.y.zJohn Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book x, Chapter y, Section z.

1

Berkeley's Life and Writings

George Berkeley (pronounced Bark-lee) was the second head of the eighteenth-century philosophical trinity known as the British Empiricists.1 As the middle figure in time, Berkeley is often treated as the least significant of the three. He could not claim the great philosophical insight of John Locke (1632–1704), who argued that experience and reasoning based upon experience were sufficient to justify the new sciences of Galileo and Isaac Newton. Nor, we are told, could he claim the rigid consistency of David Hume (1711–1776), who argued that our claims to knowledge based on experience alone lead to skepticism and that there are no better grounds for claiming the existence of immaterial substance than there are for claiming the existence of material substance. One of the purposes of this book is to show that, even if taken as a halfway point in the development of British Empiricism, Berkeley's philosophy is interesting and significant in its own right.

Why Study Berkeley Today?

“But,” you might say, “Berkeley died in 1753. That's more than 260 years ago. Why read him today?”

Historical texts—anything written before you write—are the data that philosophers use to develop their own positions. Philosophers examine these texts carefully and critically. They mine these texts for arguments and develop their own positions either by developing the arguments further or showing that the arguments fail. For example, if you wanted to defend the claim that everything that exists either is a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind—idealism—you would want to read the great idealists of the past. If their arguments are successful, you might incorporate similar arguments into your defense of idealism. If those arguments fail, you'll want to show why they fail and show why your arguments are stronger. Berkeley was an idealist. The only way to discover what arguments he presented is by carefully reading his texts.

Idealism is not popular in the twenty-first century. Materialism—the philosophical theory that everything that exists is material or depends upon matter for its existence2—is more often proposed now. Berkeley provided criticisms of the doctrine of material substance. So, if you want to defend philosophical materialism, it is incumbent upon you to show that Berkeley's arguments fail.

Historians of philosophy and historians of ideas read Berkeley for different reasons. Historians might be fascinated by a particular issue, or a particular period, or a particular figure. Just as a military historian might find the development and use of particular weapons fascinating, a historian of ideas might be interested in the development of utilitarian theories in ethics. Such a one might read Berkeley to see whether he is part of that tradition, and if he is not, how the natural law tradition of Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) and Aquinas (1225–1274) evolved into the utilitarian tradition of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1821) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).