George Berkeley
1685 – 1753 · Kilkenny, Ireland
An Irish bishop who argued that there is no such thing as matter: to be is to be perceived.
Key ideas
Berkeley took empiricism to a startling conclusion. All we ever experience are ideas: colours, sounds, shapes, textures. The notion of a material substance existing behind them, unperceived, is not just unknowable but incoherent. For ordinary objects, to be is to be perceived (esse est percipi). Objects do not vanish when no human looks at them, because God perceives everything continuously.
He meant this as a defence of common sense against skepticism: if objects just are collections of ideas, there is no gap between appearance and reality for a sceptic to exploit. His arguments return in modern discussions of the simulation argument and the brain in a vat.
“Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.”
George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, §3 (1710)
Life, briefly
Berkeley studied at Trinity College Dublin and published his main philosophical works before he was thirty. He spent three years in Rhode Island trying to found a college in Bermuda, a project that collapsed when promised funding never arrived. He became Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. The city of Berkeley in California is named after him.
Major works
- A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
- Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)
- An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709)
Schools of thought
Appears in
Further reading
- EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: George Berkeley
- WikipediaGeorge Berkeley