The Works of George Berkeley Part One

by George Berkeley, George Newenham Wright (Translator)

1843. Part One of Two. Including his letters to Thomas Prior, Esq., Dean Gervais, Mr. Pope, etc., etc. to which is prefixed an account of his life. George Berkeley was one of the three most famous eighteenth century British Empiricists along with John Locke and David Hume. He is best known for his motto, esse is percipi, to be is to be perceived. He was an idealist: everything that exists is either a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind. He was an immaterialist: matter does not exist. He accepted the seemingly outrageous position that ordinary physical objects are composed solely of ideas, which are inherently mental. He wrote on vision, mathematics, Newtonian mechanics, economics, and medicine as well as philosophy. In his own time, his most often-read works concerned the medicinal value of tar-water. And in a curious sense, he was the first great American philosopher. Contents Volume One: Life of Bishop Berkeley; Letters, etc.; Of the Principles of Human Knowledge; Synoptical Table of Contents; Introduction; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous; An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision; and Alciphron:or the Minute Philosopher, in Seven Dialogues. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. Other volumes in this set are ISBN(s): 1417922281.

Genres: Philosophy

540 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2004

About the author

George Berkeley (/ˈbɑːrklɪ/;[1][2] 12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) — known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne) — was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers, and as a result cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

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Reviews

[Derrick Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Luce and Jessop volumes are worth tracking down. Berkeley writes with simplicity that makes him easy to follow and understand.