A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley

It is pleasing to note that three hundred years ago some twonk could seriously propose, as an antidote to the flawed argument of Locke, that material objects do not exist.

Why do I bring this up now? Because, this book is the written version of how that stupid question develops, if one doesn't deal with the inquisitor promptly, and firmly. I simply reply, 'Yes.' and move in the opposite direction as fast as my booze befuddled legs will take me. I must have something about me that draws these pseudo philosophers into my orbit because it has happened sufficiently often for me to develop a means of dealing with the situation. Have you ever been to one of those parties where, at about 1.30 a.m., some want-to-be intellectual who, like yourself, has imbibed too frequently and slept too infrequently, insinuates himself next to you and asks, 'If a tree falls in the forest, when nobody is there to hear does it make a sound?' It is also interesting that Berkeley appears to have anticipated the pseudo-spiritual abstract philosophy of German Idealists like Hegel of course, while anticipating it he was also against any such marriage of spirituality with abstract knowledge systems.Īs it stands, Berkeley was a worth while read and I may revisit this work in the future. Pantheism I do not support, so I have some reservations about Berkeley's philosophy, but it is well worth studying at least. It does seem that in the concluding remarks that Berkeley supports some kind of pantheism at least, some of his statements appear to strongly support that reading. It seems that there may be very current scientific support for Berkeley's supposition on some level. It is an interesting theory when one notes that quantum mechanics supports the notion that reality at the particle level does seem to presuppose an observer. Like other Idealists going back to Plato, Berkeley believed in a universal Spirit or Mind that necessitates that all reality is perceived and cannot exist apart from this perception. Some of his statements are ambiguous and can be wrenched from context and made to look like he supported the non-reality of the outside physical world, but, really, he denied the existence of matter in the philosophical sense of a substrate made up of abstracted accidents and qualities. I might, if I were to expand philosophy to include quasi-mystical writers of the same era, include Swedenborg, Hutchinson, Boehme and Sterry.īerkeley has often been misrepresented as being a philosopher that denied the existence of matter in the sense of real external objects. Out of 17th-early 18th century philosophers, Berkeley intrigues me as much as Leibniz does. Out of Spinoza, Locke, Descartes, Hume and Berkeley, I certainly found Berkeley the most interesting but, then, I am into Idealism, so it is to some degree understandable and indicates my bias really.

A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley