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The Distrustful Philosopher: Berkeley Between the Devils and the Deep Blue Sea of Faith

Abstract

There are different kinds of studies of Berkeley. Some focus on specific areas of his thought; some provide overviews.Of the overviews, some are arranged according to the chronology of his individual works; others are arranged according to topics.Internal, analytic studies examine the cogency of his arguments and show how different interpretations of his texts handle criticisms raised by recent commentators; historical studies describe the background assumptions that inform his thinking.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage, 1974), trans. and ed. by W. Kaufmann; see number 344; for Berkeley’s own personal commitment to the truth, see the last section of Siris (Works, vol. 5, p. 164).

  2. 2.

    See the end of Alciphron, where Berkeley traces the source of irreligious freethinking to scepticism; see Works, vol. 3, 316–329. In short, irreligion is bad but scepticism is worse, because it is scepticism that produces irreligion and not vice versa.

  3. 3.

    When Berkeley says ‘just where we were’, I take it that he means back in the initial commonsense or ordinary condition that he characterizes as calm and serene. I think this reading is supported by, for example, the very last paragraph of the DHP, but especially paragraph seven of the Preface to the DHP, where Berkeley speaks of taking his readers on a ‘curcuit through so many refined and unvulgar notions, [in which] they should at last come to think like other men: yet [he says] this return to to the simple dictates of nature, after having wandered through the wild mazes of philosophy, is not unpleasant’, since a man can ‘reflect with pleasure on the many difficulties and perplexities he has passed through…’ ( Works, vol. 2, 168.) Also see Works, vol. 9, p. 153 for a note to the same effect.

  4. 4.

    In his Ductor Dubitantium, or Rule of Conscience (London: Royston, 1660); quoted in I. Macalpine and R. Hunter, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry (London: Oxford University Press, 1963) 163–165.

  5. 5.

    All references to Sextus Empiricus are to Selections from the Major Writings of Sextus Empiricus (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), ed. by Philip P. Hallie; see 35–42.

  6. 6.

    Berkeley’s representation of the sceptic might seem to be closer to the Academic Sceptics, according to whom we can’t know the real nature of anything. They differ from the Pyrrhonian sceptic, who says that he doesn’t at present know any such thing. But here again there is no evidence that I know of that the Academic sceptic suffered from his scepticism or this invincible ignorance.

  7. 7.

    For all references to and quotations from Bayle, see Richard Popkin’s edition of the Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991); see 196–197.

  8. 8.

    Quotations from Descartes are from The Philosophical Writing of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), trans. and ed. by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch; see vol. 1, p. 223. In his 16th Objection to Descartes, Hobbes points out that the imperfection of deception does not consist in the falsity of what is said but in the harm done by the deceiver; hence we do not blame a doctor for deceiving patients for the sake of their health. Hence Descartes’s argument does not follow; see vol. 2, 136.

  9. 9.

    Quotations from Malebranche are from Malebranche: Philosophical Selections (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), ed. by Steven Nadler; see 77–85.

  10. 10.

    See Locke, Essay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), ed. by Peter Nidditch, 563.

  11. 11.

    Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, 197–198.

  12. 12.

    See my Berkeley: Experimental Philosophy (London: Phoenix, 1997) esp. pp. 13–14, and G. A. Johnston, The Development of Berkeley’s Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1923), 331–332.

  13. 13.

    In his Spinoza Reviv’d (London: J. Matthews, 1709), William Carroll described Spinoza as ‘an eruption from hell’, 34.

  14. 14.

    Also see Guardian number 130, where Berkeley says that it is ‘plain that no one could mistake Thought for Motion, who knew what Thought was.’ Hence Berkeley concludes that the materialistic freethinkers should be regarded as machines or automata and hence spoken of ‘in the neuter Gender, using the Term it for him.’ See The Guardian (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1982), ed. by John C. Stephens, 435.

  15. 15.

    The Goldsmith memoir is reproduced in George Berkeley: Eighteenth-Century Responses (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989, ed. by D. Berman, vol. 1, 172.

  16. 16.

    I am grateful to Dr Marek Tomecek for reading an earlier draft of this essay and for providing helpful suggestions on it.

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Berman, D. (2010). The Distrustful Philosopher: Berkeley Between the Devils and the Deep Blue Sea of Faith. In: Parigi, S. (eds) George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 201. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9243-4_10

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