Abstract
“By the time of Immanuel Kant, Berkeley had been called, among other things, a sceptic, an atheist, a solipsist and an idealist. In our own day, however, the suggestion has been advanced that Berkeley is better understood if interpreted as a realist and man of common sense”.
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Notes
- 1.
Harry M. Bracken, The Early Reception of Berkeley’s Immaterialism. 1710–1733 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965), IX.
- 2.
George Berkeley’s works quoted in the text are: A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (TK), An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (NTV), Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (DHP), De Motu (DM), The Theory of Vision … Vindicated and Explained (TVV), Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher ( Alc); Siris ( Siris); Notebooks also known as the Philosophical Commentaries (PC). Main English edition: George Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. 9 vols. Eds A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1948–57.
- 3.
Fénelon, archbishop of Cambrai, exerted an important role in French philosophy and culture and his influence was extended until the XVIIIth century. Fénelon’s writings excited the worried reaction of Tournemine: in effect, in the editions of 1712 and 1713 of Démonstration de l’Existence de Dieu, he had underlined some elements dangerously close to Malebranchian theory. For this reason he tried to correct and mitigate them, adding a preface with the title Réflexion sur l’Atheisme to the 1713 edition.
- 4.
Ramsay was for a long time Fénelon’s personal secretary. In his work Philosophical Principles unfolded in a geometrical order (1748) there is one of the most important and crucial accusations of Spinozism concerning Berkeley. It is possible to get more information about the relationship between Ramsay and Fénelon in Albert Cherel, Un Aventurieur Religieux au XVIII e Siècle. Andrew Michael Ramsay (Paris: Libraire Académique Perrin e C., 1926).
- 5.
Bracken, The Early Reception, 109.
- 6.
Ibid., 110.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
Acta Eruditorum, Leipzig, 1727: 379–383.
- 9.
“Thus Berkeley gives a fairly plausible defence of his paradox of the non existence of matter. Whether it is true or not I leave others to judge; but as for its origin this Lycean Beast seems to me, despite the author’s dissembling, to have a sprung from a mingling of the philosophies of Descartes, Malebranche and Spinoza.” (Latin text, Ibid., 1).
- 10.
It is possible to find this opinion in the young Berkeley’s notebooks (see PC, Notebook A, entries nn. 825, 844, 845).
- 11.
In the Berkeleian works there are not many places in which Spinoza is quoted, but those rare examples have an unequivocal accusatory tone, as for example, this: “[...] those wild imaginations of Vanini, Hobbes and Spinoza, in a word the whole system of atheism is it not entirely overthrown by this single reflection on the repugnancy included in supposing the whole, or any part, even the most rude and shapeless of the visible world to exist without a mind?” (George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Second Dialogue), The Works vol. II, 213).
- 12.
Andrew Baxter, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, 2 vols. (London: Millar, 1733, 3rd ed., 1745).
- 13.
Ibid., 291.
- 14.
Ibid., vol. II, 258.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Ibid., vol. II, 248.
- 17.
Also Bracken underlined this aspect: “He sought to argue that God is the continuing source of all action and cohesion in the universe and that the evidence for His existence comes from the material world” (Bracken, The Early Reception, 34–35).
- 18.
Yet J. W. Yolton emphasised that Baxter wants to demonstrate both that God is uniquely responsible for action and movement and that there exists a being that is completely deprived of activity, but ready to receive forms, like matter. J. W. Yolton, Thinking Matter. Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 95–96.
- 19.
Baxter, An Enquiry, vol. I, 80.
- 20.
Ibid., vol. II, 43.
- 21.
McCracken-Tipton, Background Source Materials, 195.
- 22.
Baxter, An Enquiry, vol. I, 325–327.
- 23.
“This itself appeared to be the power of this immaterial Cause indefinitely impressed upon, and exerted in every possible part of matter”. Ibid., 322.
- 24.
Ibid., 239–240.
- 25.
Ibid., 262–263.
- 26.
See G. D. Enderson, Chevalier Ramsay (Toronto and New York: T. Nelson S., 1952); M. L. Baldi, Verisimile, non Vero. Filosofia e Politica in Andrew Michael Ramsay (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2002); M. L. Baldi, “Andrew Michael Ramsay. Ciclicità e Progresso nell’Antica Teologia alle Soglie dell’Illuminismo,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia XLIV (1989): 443–476 and “Confutazione di Spinoza e Pirronismo. La Via al Senso Comune di A. M. Ramsay,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 2 (1994): 215–261. See also D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology. Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1972): 231–239 and Cherel, Un Aventurieur Religieux, 1–64.
- 27.
Enderson, Chevalier Ramsay, 215.
- 28.
The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion Unfolded in a Geometrical Order by the Chevalier Ramsay Author of The Travels of Cyrus 2 vols. (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1748).
- 29.
Ramsay only refers to DHP without quoting TK.
- 30.
Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles, 243.
- 31.
Ibid., 244.
- 32.
Ibid., 245.
- 33.
We have to remember that the complete series of the Dialogues was never published. Now it is partially conserved in some manuscripts which belong to the Aix-en-Provence public library; only recently, M. L. Baldi published them in the book devoted to Ramsay that I quoted above.
- 34.
Ramsay, Voyages de Cyrus, ed. 1730, VI, 235–236. Here quoted from Baldi, Verisimile, non Vero, 356.
- 35.
Ramsay, Voyages de Cyrus, ed. 1730, VI, 238. Here quoted from Baldi, Verisimile, non Vero, 357.
- 36.
Ramsay, Extrait du 2 d Dial., here quoted from Baldi, Verisimile, non Vero, 442–443.
- 37.
Both quotations from Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles, 238.
- 38.
Ibid., 239.
- 39.
Ibid., 241.
- 40.
Ibid., 241.
- 41.
Ibid., 243.
- 42.
In the collage of quotations from Berkeley’s DHP here proposed by Ramsay we can read: “The eternal, omnipresent mind, says he, which knows and comprehends all things, exhibits them to our view in such a manner and according to such laws, as he himself has ordained, and are by us called the laws of nature. All things exist in the divine mind from eternity. When things are said to begin or end their existence, we do not mean this with regard to God, but the creatures. All objects are eternally known by God, or which is the same thing have an eternal existence in his mind: but when things before imperceptible to created spirits are by a decree of God made perceptible, then they are said to begin a real existence with respect to created minds. By creation therefore, nothing else can be understood but that the several parts of the world already existent from all eternity in the divine mind, become gradually perceptible to finite spirits endued with proper faculties.” (Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles, 243).
- 43.
G. Brykman, “Berkeley, Lecteur et Critique de Spinoza,” Recherches sur le XVII ème Siècle, Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Cahiers de l’Equipe de Recherche, n. 75 (1978): 175. Of the same author, (whose studies about the relationship Berkeley-Spinoza are still an unavoidable point of reference) see also: G. Brykman, dir. “Berkeley et le Cartésianisme,” Le Temps Philosophiques, Université Paris X, Nanterre (1997); “Berkeley et l’Intérieur Absolu des Choses,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’ Étranger, 4 (1980): 421–425; “Berkeley on “Archetype”, in Essays on the Philosophy of George Berkeley, ed. E. Sosa, (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987): 103–112; Berkeley. Philosophie et Apologétique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1984); “Berkeley: sa Lecture de Malebranche à travers le Dictionnaire de Bayle,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, n. 4 (1975): 496–514; “Du Commencement Introuvable de l’Immatérialisme,” Les Études Philosophiques, n 1 (1980): 385–397; “Le Model Visuèl de la Conaissance chez Berkeley,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’ Étranger, n. 4 (1983): 427–441; “Microscopes and Philosophical Method in Berkeley,” in Berkeley. Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. C. Turbayne (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982): 69–82.
- 44.
As to the relation between Bayle and the English cultural world, see L. P. Courtines, Bayle’s relations with England and the English (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938). From the Dictionnaire it is possible to grasp the complete knowledge that Bayle had of England and a very interesting list of the English authors and their works. One ought to delve further into the complex relation between Berkeley and Bayle, but the limits of this article do not allow it. Cf. G. Brykman, “Berkeley: sa Lecture de Malebranche à travers le Dictionnaire de Bayle,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, n. 4 (1975): 496–514.
- 45.
Both quotations are from Ramsay, The Philosophical Principles, 241.
- 46.
Ibid., 247.
- 47.
Ibid., 190.
- 48.
Ibid., 384.
- 49.
Ibid., 244.
- 50.
Ibid., 244–245.
- 51.
Ibid., 242.
- 52.
Ibid., 181.
- 53.
Ibid., 239.
- 54.
Ibid., 245.
- 55.
Robert Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, wherein the Doctrine of the Trinity is considered in the Light of Nature and Reason... (London, 1751). See the works of D. Berman, George Berkeley. Idealism and the Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), and “Berkeley, Clayton and An Essay on Spirit,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXII (1971): 367–378. The author is convinced that commentators always undervalued not only the Irish philosophical tradition, but also the influence that it had on Berkeley (Berman, Idealism and the Man, 9).
- 56.
Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, 1–2.
- 57.
Ibid., 2.
- 58.
Berman suspected that Clayton appropriated some of the ideas of Siris (as, in effect, Clayton admitted in a pamphlet published in 1754). Cf. Berman, Idealism and the Man, 185–186.
- 59.
Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, 10.
- 60.
Cf. Yolton, Thinking Matter, 97–98.
- 61.
Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, 27–28. At the end of the book, Clayton discussed the concept of God in the old way; he tried to demonstrate that Plato’s and Pythagoras’ philosophies are very close to the old Egyptian doctrines which often defined divinity as a Mind, Reason, Wisdom. It is very interesting to observe that sometimes we can also find these definitions in Siris.
- 62.
Ibid., 6.
- 63.
Ibid., 8.
- 64.
“Clayton accepts the independence of mind and body. [...] Therefore Clayton believes every piece of matter has united to it an individual spirit, which governs and effects its movements. His theory might be described as a pluralistic version of occasionalism.” Berman, Idealism and the Man, 182.
- 65.
Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, 50.
- 66.
Ibid., 31–32.
- 67.
Berman emphasises that monism, as the main peculiarity of the Berkeleian doctrine, had been highlighted also in an article published in the Literary Journal of Dublin in 1745; in that text the author (whose initials D. G. S. could indicate Dean Gervais, one of the most important of Berkeley’s friends and correspondents) quoted Siris, above all the paragraph n. 239 in which he said that all the reality depends on the immediate action of an Incorporeal Agent who moves and disposes of all the things according to His rules.
- 68.
Clayton, An Essay on Spirit, 85.
- 69.
D. Berman, Idealism and the Man, 183: “If the monism, in this sense, of Malebranche and Berkeley is right, then clearly Clayton’s pluralism is wrong.”
- 70.
The text, published in Edinburgh (1751) by Kineaid and Donaldson is quoted in its entirety in D. Berman (ed.), Eighteenth-Century Responses, 2 vols. (New York & London: Garland, 1989): vol. II, 237–269.
- 71.
Brykman, Berkeley, Lecteur et Critique de Spinoza, 177.
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Menichelli, C. (2010). Was Berkeley a Spinozist? A Historiographical Answer (1718–1751). 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_12
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