Immaterialism: Doubting the Outside World from Descartes to Berkeley

by Kirk Watson (Translator/Editor), George Berkeley, Nicolas Malebranche

In l’Année Philosophique of 1893, F. Pillon labeled “radical idealism or immaterialism, the doctrine that denies extended substance, matter” as “the true philosophy” of the 19th century. Immaterialism was the teaching of Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753), offered as the direct opposite of materialism, the best intellectual weapon against atheism and skepticism: in brief, minds and their ideas are the only reality. There is no unthinking, unperceived material substratum: everything that exists does so only because it is perceived, whether the observer is an individual “spirit” or God himself.

But, Berkeley didn’t invent it from nothing. Pillon adds that this doctrine “has its direct source in writings from the end of the previous century”. This book tells the origin story of immaterialism; here are collected the principal texts in which this doctrine originated, evolved, ripened.

The first four below are new translations from the French:

-René Descartes: Meditation VI, from MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY, 1641
-Nicolas Malebranche: Elucidation 6, from THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH, 1678
-François de Lanion: MEDITATIONS ON METAPHYSICS, 1684
-“Delaube”: from MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE RELIGIONS, AND ON HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, ~1715
-John Norris: from AN ESSAY TOWARDS THE THEORY OF THE IDEAL OR INTELLIGIBLE WORLD, 1701
-Arthur Collier: CLAVIS UNIVERSALIS, 1713
-George Berkeley: A TREATISE CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, 1710

285 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 26, 2021