Reading Berkeley

George Berkeley wrote the books we will be concerned with in the early years of the eighteenth century. He wrote for an early eighteenth‐century audience and not for a twenty‐first‐century audience. This means, as historians of philosophy are fond of pointing out, that there will be special challenges to readers of the twenty‐first century. We cannot hope to just pick up a work of Berkeley’s and read it through with understanding. The books Berkeley had been reading, against which he was measuring his own ideas, are not the same as the books being read now, the very nature of philosophy, what counts as philosophy, was different in the early eighteenth century than is the case today, and even the vocabulary in which Berkeley expressed his ideas is different from the way in which we use similar words today. And of course, the early eighteenth century presented a cultural milieu and political and social demands quite different from our own. All these and more represent significant challenges to the contemporary reader and so will have to be addressed in a book like this one that seeks to help a modern reader to understand historical work.

Berkeley himself, however, seemed to think that his work presented challenges to any reader, even one of his own time, thoroughly immersed in the culture existing when the books were written. In each of his two major works, Berkeley wrote prefaces in which he issued requests to his readers to help them overcome what he saw as difficulties peculiar to the books they will be reading. In the Preface to the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley urged his readers to impartially consider the truth of what he had written. In order to help them in this endeavor, he told his readers:

I make it my request that the reader suspend his judgment, till he has once at least, read the whole through with that degree of attention and thought which the subject matter shall seem to deserve.

(PHK, Preface, p. 23)

Berkeley’s advice is excellent. It is always a good idea to read a piece of writing through from beginning to end before rushing to judgment. But Berkeley also seems to think that there are special problems attached to reading a piece of philosophy such as the one he has written. Reading philosophy is hard. It is never the case that you can pick up a work of philosophy and read it through hastily and expect to understand it. Berkeley is aware that his work contains claims that are perhaps unusual and so will be very easily misunderstood. The remedy is to go slow, to pay attention to actual conclusions drawn, rather than what might immediately appear to follow, to see where the arguments lead and, in general, to read painstakingly and thoughtfully.

While Berkeley removed this Preface from later editions of the Principles, he did not back off his faith in the efficacy of the advice it contained, for he added a Preface to later editions of Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous giving similar, if more elaborate advice.

It remains, that I desire the reader to withhold his censure of these Dialogues, till he has read them through. Otherwise, he may lay them aside in a mistake of their design, or on account of difficulties or objections which he would find answered in the sequel. A treatise of this nature would require to be once read over coherently, in order to comprehend its design, the proofs, solution of difficulties, and the connexion and disposition of its parts. If it be thought to deserve a second reading; this I imagine, will make the entire scheme very plain: especially, if recourse be had to an Essay I wrote, some years since, upon vision, and the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Wherein divers notions are further pursued, or placed in different lights, and other points handled, which naturally tend to confirm and illustrate them.

(3D, Preface, p. 169)

Again, Berkeley is giving excellent advice to any reader. Naturally, no one likes to think that they are misunderstanding or misinterpreting what they read. Berkeley is saying that the procedure you need to follow in order to ensure that this is the case is, first, read the work through from beginning to end, so that you understand its structure, where the various proofs and arguments are heading, so that you can pin down exactly what claims are required, and how objections might be answered. Then when you have an understanding of the structure of the argument, read it through again a second time, so that you can work your way through what confusions remain. Finally, pay attention to other works written by the same author, which will augment your understanding or correct remaining misunderstandings.

Excellent advice, as I have said. Inasmuch as it is advice Berkeley himself provides to his readers, it would seem that any reader of Berkeley, in justice to the author, ought to heed this advice. Such advice, moreover, might be particularly helpful as an antidote to our modern culture, which tends to think in article‐length chunks and by means of easily regimented arguments. It can be a little too tempting to pull out easily named pieces of argument and discuss them without attention to the context in which they appear, and many contemporary philosophers writing on Berkeley have fallen prey to this temptation. Berkeley addresses his advice to readers, however, and not to critics or expositors like myself, and it is not obvious how critics and authors of books like this one should follow his advice. It would seem that the most natural way to help readers to read Berkeley’s work in the way in which he wished them to do would be to write traditional commentaries, step‐by‐step discussions of what appears in his texts, elucidating each move that he makes in the service of his overall argument. Surely, this is what he would want us to do? The last part of his advice in Three Dialogues, to take into account other books he has written, complicates things for the would‐be commentator, however. This is because the theory laid out in both Principles and Three Dialogues is pretty much the same theory, but the argument structure of each book is quite different. Philosophers writing about Berkeley therefore have a choice of pulling together a single theory, calling upon what is written in each book to explain that theory, in which case they will not be respecting the different argument structures, or they can give pride of place to each argument in turn, at the cost of repetition. Most philosophers have chosen the first approach, but, in light of the great store Berkeley set in reading his books sequentially from beginning to end and paying attention to the argument, I have chosen the second approach for this book. I have tried to abide by his advice and, in discussing his work, after a preliminary chapter on some issues in An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision¹ to go through, first, the Principles and then Three Dialogues in commentary form. One advantage to this approach is that I have been able to pay attention to the ways in which the books supplement and not just repeat one another. More importantly however, what I have written here is the result of the task I set myself, to do a slow read through each book, in which I did not write about a paragraph until I was clear in my mind how that paragraph followed from the preceding one, and how it fit into the prevailing goals of the section of writing I was working on. I will leave it to the reader to decide how useful the result is, but I do want to say that, for myself, I found such a slow read to be both interesting and illuminating. Passages I had thought I understood for years revealed themselves to be saying something different. For, while Berkeley recommends two readings, in the case of complex texts like his, there is always something new to discover, no matter how many times you have read them. While I hope others will find interesting and illuminating the interpretation that my slow reading process allowed me to come up with, the goal I am most dedicated to is that of encouraging readers of Berkeley and others to follow his advice for doing good reading. Take it as a whole, take it slow, never jump to conclusions, and always be thoughtful.

George Berkeley was born on 12 March 1685 in Ireland, in or near Kilkenny. His father, William, came from an English Staffordshire family, and has been described as a gentleman farmer, and his mother, although this is not certain, may have been an Elizabeth Southerne, daughter of a Dublin brewer. This seems to leave the possibilities for his nationality somewhat open, but there is no doubt that Berkeley did, in fact, identify Ireland as his nation. In his early notebooks, the Philosophical Commentaries, he refers to Isaac Newton as being of a “neighbouring nation” and more than once uses the phrase “we Irish.” However, the “we” with whom Berkeley identified was, most likely, a severely limited group, namely, the Protestant upper class who were at that time ruling Ireland and who found the mercantile restrictions imposed by the English Parliament irksome.¹ Much later, writing in The Querist, Berkeley illustrates the ambiguous nature of his “we.” There, wanting to establish the common interests of England and Ireland, he asks: “Whether we are not as much Englishmen as the children of old Romans, born in Britain, are still Romans?” (Works, VI, 112) Berkeley's understanding of his national identity was that of a member of a particular class in a particular context. Thus, in assessing the background against which Berkeley wrote his various works, it is necessary to recognize the specific context in which he grew up as a member of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. But it is equally important to recognize the very cosmopolitan life enjoyed by a member of what was a highly cosmopolitan milieu.

Berkeley's life divides itself up neatly into three periods. From his birth in 1685 to 1713, when he moved to London, Berkeley's life is centered in Ireland. In the middle period, 1713–1734, his life is geographically much more varied. Although he did return occasionally to Dublin, for the most part Berkeley either lived in London, or traveled remarkably widely, either on the European continent, or most notably to North America, where he lived for three years in Newport, Rhode Island. For the last period of his life, 1734–1753, Berkeley returned to Ireland, living chiefly at the site of his bishopric, in Cloyne. At the very end of his life, however, he and his family left Ireland to go to Oxford to be near his son, George, who was studying there. It was in Oxford that Berkeley died, and is the place where he is buried. In each of these periods, Berkeley led the life of a Man of Letters, writing and publishing frequently, although, as will be seen, in each of these periods. Berkeley typified a different style in which one could be a Man of Letters in the eighteenth century.

1685–1713

Berkeley's education began in Kilkenny, at the Duke of Ormonde's school, later and to this day called Kilkenny College, and termed by A.A. Luce, the “Eton of Ireland.”² At the age of 15, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, an institution with which he was to be connected for much of the first part of his life. The curriculum there was quite standard for its time; Luce says that Berkeley studied mathematics, logic, philosophy, and languages, especially Latin and Greek, and in Berkeley's case, French and Hebrew. The curriculum, if standard, was not as stultifying as William Molyneux, Locke's friend, found it a generation earlier, when philosophy instruction was dominated by Aristotelian commentaries and disputations. Thanks to the efforts of men like Molyneux, works of recent origin such as Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding formed part of the curriculum. Many of those associated with Trinity, starting with Molyneux himself, who represented Trinity in Parliament, Provosts, such as St George Ashe, later bishop of Clogher, and Peter Browne, as well as men like William King, archbishop of Dublin, a former fellow of Trinity and an official visitor for Trinity, were energetic contributors to current debate. Berkeley therefore came of age at a time of rich intellectual activity.

Berkeley took his BA in 1704 and, while waiting for a fellowship vacancy, worked on some mathematical issues, the results of which he published in 1707 as Arithmetica and Miscellanea Mathematica. He was a successful competitor for a fellowship in 1707 and took his MA a month later. He was ordained deacon in 1709 and priest in 1710. While he undertook various tasks in the college, including librarian, junior dean, Greek lecturer, divinity lecturer, senior proctor, and Hebrew lecturer, he also devoted time to the preparation of the works that have subsequently secured his reputation. We can trace the course of Berkeley's research in connection with these works through notebooks that he kept beginning in 1707.³ While these notebooks have proved endlessly fascinating to Berkeley scholars, one of the most concrete pieces of information they provide is a good account of the reading Berkeley was doing during this period that he was preparing his major works. One clear fact that emerges was that Berkeley was reading widely during the time he was working with his notebooks. We find some 22 names mentioned between one and three times. These comprise a varied group that include those now classified as philosophers, and also mathematicians and physicists, but, with very few exceptions, limited to works written within the past 50–100 years.⁴ Berkeley was not in any serious sense framing his work against a wider historical context but instead restricting his attention to his contemporaries and their immediate predecessors. This general impression is further supported when we turn our attention to those thinkers Berkeley mentioned a significant number of times. By far the greatest number of references are to John Locke. At 71 references, there are four times as many references to Locke than to any other person. The nearest contenders are: Descartes and Cartesianism with 16 references, Isaac Newton also at 16, Malebranche with 15, and Hobbes with 13. What emerges is that the influences on Berkeley were many and even those who were most important to Berkeley were encountered as part of a wider group of thinkers. It would be a mistake to think of Berkeley as reacting to only one thinker, even one as important to him as Locke.

With the aid of this extensive reading, Berkeley produced his three major works. In 1709, he published his first significant work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, rapidly followed in 1710 by A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, originally designed as Part I of what was intended to be a much longer work. Instead of completing this project immediately, Berkeley reworked and extended the material in the Principles in a book that he hoped would make his ideas easier to understand and accept, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.⁵ Berkeley took this with him in manuscript when he traveled to London and had it published there in 1713. These three volumes, the ones that will be taking up our attention here, form the basis of Berkeley's philosophical reputation to this day, and consist, first, of an account of the nature of vision, followed by two different versions of Berkeley's characteristic immaterialism.

The sole remaining work from Berkeley's Trinity period was a pamphlet, Passive Obedience, published in 1712, based on some sermons preached that year. In Passive Obedience, Berkeley argues that the negative duty not to rebel against legitimate authority ought to be regarded as a moral law, inasmuch as such a duty can be shown to have a necessary connection with the universal wellbeing of mankind, the goal we can take God to have established for all our actions. Such a duty should be understood to be exceptionless. Just as God establishes the laws of nature to be exceptionless, since it is of greater benefit that these laws hold universally, even if, in some immediate instance their consequence be damaging, so it is, in the long run, of greater benefit that moral laws be respected without exception, even if a particular application might be judged harmful. This publication, arguing against the Whiggish (and Pro‐Hanoverian) position of a limited right to rebellion, earned Berkeley the reputation as a Jacobite, a supporter of the Stewart cause, even though in a slightly later pamphlet, Advice to Tories Who Have Taken Oaths, published in 1715, Berkeley used very similar arguments to abjure Tory clergymen to uphold their oath to George I and the Hanoverian succession.