Berkeley George

Berkeley, George, Bishop of Cloyne, was born in 1685 at Dysart-on-the-Nore, Kilkenny, where he received his early education, going subsequently to Trinity College, Dublin. Graduating B.A. in 1704, and M.A. in 1707, he was chosen a fellow of his college and ordained a deacon in 1709, the year in which appeared his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. This was followed in 1710 by an amplification of the argument for his new theory in a Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge, and in 1713 by Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous - a more popular exposition. Meanwhile Berkeley had come to London in 1712, and in 1713 was presented by Swift at Court. As chaplain to Lord Peterborough he travelled on the Continent, and again as tutor to the son of Dr. Ashe. In 1721 he was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Grafton, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1722 he held the positions of Dean of Dromore, Hebrew lecturer, and senior proctor at the university. In 1723 he was left a legacy by Miss Vanhomrigh, Swift's "Vanessa," whom he met only once at dinner, and in 1724 the rich deanery of Derry fell to his lot. He now became enthusiastic over the founding of a college in the Bermudas for the benefit of the American heathen, and he set out for Rhode Island to carry out his scheme. The subscriptions that had been promised him were not forthcoming, and after a few years of waiting, spent in study, Berkeley came home and published in 1733 Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, in execution his finest work. It is an examination of the various forms of freethought in the light of his own theory of perception. In 1734 he was made Bishop of Cloyne, where he remained 18 years, retiring in 1752 to Oxford, where, in 1753, he died, and was interred in the cathedral of Christ Church. In addition to the works mentioned, and some mathematical and theological writings, Berkeley also produced in 1744 Siris, Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar Water.

The current psychological doctrine that perception, especially by sight, consists very largely of inference based on past experience is due in great measure to Berkeley's theory of vision. But he is more important as the first great English idealist. Locke had held that material objects are known to us only through "ideas" or images caused by their action on our minds through our sense-organs. Berkeley pointed out that this view involved absurdities; material objects are known only in terms of mind, and there is and can be no evidence that they exist apart from mind. But we know that ideas can be excited in a mind, by itself or by other minds (e.g. through language). Thus Berkeley concluded that the ideas ordinarily referred to material objects are due to the direct action of a supreme mind, the Deity, wherein they subsist when human beings are not perceiving them. This doctrine received an important sceptical development from David Hume (q.v.). and was combated by Beattie and Reid. It is taken up in the current idealist theory, that the whole system of Nature is essentially rational, the product of spirit,. and that instead of mind being a product or function of matter, material phenomena are modes of a Divine mind. But it was long grotesquely misunderstood as implying the non-existence of what is ordinarily called matter. Thus Dr. Johnson professed to refute it by kicking a stone.