BERKELEY, George (Berkeley George)

(1685-1753)
Born near Tomastauna (County Kilkenny, Ireland) 12 March 1685. He studied at the College in Kilkenny, then at Trinity College in Dublin, where he subsequently taught. In 1713 he moved to London and through the first philosophical writings - Experience a new theory of vision (An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, . 1709), . Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge (Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, . 1710) and Three conversation between Hylas and Filonusom (Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, . 1713), . as well as wit and charm has been recognized in the light of the London,
. He became a priest in 1710. Traveled to Europe in 1713-1721, in 1724 he was appointed Dean of Derry. Approximately Berkeley in 1723 set about trying to establish a college for Indians in Bermuda. Expecting a positive decision on the grant for this project (which has never been realized), . He was forced to remain in Newport in Rhode Island c 1728 to 1731, . where he did work Alsifron, . or Small philosopher (Alciphron; or, . The Minute Philosopher, . 1732),
. In 1734 Berkeley was appointed Bishop of Kloynskim in Dublin, where he created his last major work - Seyris, or chain of philosophical reflection and research (Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries, 1744). In 1752 he retired and moved with his family in Oxford. Berkeley died in Oxford on Jan. 14, 1753.
The philosophy of Berkeley, which had strong religious overtones, was at the same time the expression of a new, rapidly displacing the scholasticism of the spirit, born of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke, and Newton. Berkeley tried to overcome skepticism and atheism is fashionable and a doctrine which would harmoniously new philosophy and spiritualism.

Convinced of the human capacity for knowledge, Berkeley, like Locke, emphasized the importance of sensory experience as a source of knowledge. However, . in contrast to Locke and materialism, . He argued, . that all qualities - not only the secondary (eg, . color), . but also the primary (eg, . extended), . that Locke considered to be independent from the consciousness of material substance, . - Are only the product of sensuality, he also argued, . that the idea of matter as a 'reality', . existing over and above the primary and secondary qualities, . can not be derived from experience,
. The main mistake of all philosophy, according to Berkeley, is the wrong abstraction. For example, a false idea is the 'material substance' Locke. Exist (ie. be real), he concluded, - means to be perceived or to perceive. Sensible objects, or as he called them to Berkeley, 'ideas' can not be made inert senseless matter, they are the consequence of active substance incorporeal spirit, ideas can not exist in the 'not receptive substance'. From: matter outside the experience of the nonlinearity and contradictory. However, the 'matter as the term can be left to indicate the particular case of the organization of ideas'. Nature is an ordered sequence of ideas generated by the World Spirit, and the laws of nature are 'the rules or methods by which this Spirit gives us the idea of feeling'.

In fact there are only 'ghosts', which are of two kinds: a finite minds and the World Mind (God). On the spirits we have no idea, because ideas are passive and inactive, and they can not be grasped that acts. Spirit is not knowable directly in sense experience, but only through its manifestations. On the Spirit we have only 'concept', but such a notion, in contrast to the concept of matter, is not controversial.

In the works of the late period of Berkeley is no longer emphasizes the importance of sensory experience. In the third dialogue, he expands the concept of perception to the concept of comprehension, but in Seyrise already asserts that knowledge is the understanding. Finally, leaving and understanding, Berkeley, wrote about our complete dependence on the spiritual world in which we exist as finite beings.