Berkeley's Renovation of Philosophy

by Gavin Ardley

Overview

In this work I have endeavoured to see Berkeley in his contemporary setting. On the principle that philosophy is ultimately about men, not about abstract problems, I have tried to see Berkeley the philosopher as an expression of Berkeley the man. When this is done, what is perennial in the philosophy may be discerned in and through what is local and temporal. Berkeley then emerges as a pioneer reformer; not so much an innovator as a renovator; one who set out to rescue phi­ losophy from the enthusiasms of the preceding age; one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle. Critical studies of some of the more striking of Berkeley's epistemo­ logical arguments are legion. They commenced with the young Berke­ ley's first appearance in print, and have continued to this day. But whether they take the form of professions of support for Berkeley, or of bald refutations of Berkeley's supposed fallacies, or whether, like the contemporary "analytical" studies of Moore, Warnock, and Austin, they are subtle exposures of alleged deeply concealed logical muddles, they all tend to share one common characteristic: they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley's intentions. It is the intentions which control the whole, and give the right perspective in which to view the various items.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789401182119
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	01/01/1968
Edition description:	1968
Pages:	179
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

I. Nature.- I. The Problem of the Exact Sciences.- II: Mathematics and Nature.- (1) The consistency ofBerkeley’s philosophy.- (2) Berkeley’s critique of the received mathematical philosophy of Nature.- (3) The immaterialist principle.- (4) The rejection of Enthusiasm and Scepticism.- (5) Appearance is reality.- (6) The status of the esse percipi principle.- (7) Common sense realism.- (8) No primary/secondary quality bifurcation.- (9) The rejection of “matter”.- (10) The source of the current errors.- (11) Cosmos.- (12) Nature is essentially qualitative.- (13) The operative function of mathematics and physics.- (14) The employment of number.- (15) The employment of geometry.- (16) The function of natural philosophy.- (17) Renovating the sciences.- (18) Some modern discussions bearing on the esse percipi principle.- III. The Anthropocentric Character of Space, Time, and Motion.- (1) The levels of treatment.- (2) Relative and Absolute.- (3) Berkeley’s various aims.- (4) The perplexities of false abstraction.- (5) Visual Perception.- (6) The interweaving of sensible extension time and motion with other sensations.- (7) Public standards of space, time, and motion.- (8) The Selection of Standards.- (9) Primary and Secondary Qualities.- (10) The liberation of space, time, and motion.- IV. The Analogy of the Grammar of Nature.- (1) Signs and visual language.- (2) The consistent working of Nature.- (3) The Grammar of Nature.- (4) A hierarchy of knowledge.- (5) The employment of the grammar of Nature.- (6) Our knowledge of natural grammar is imperfect and incomplete.- (7) The rigidity of the grammar of Nature, and the flexibility of the language of Nature.- (8) The teleological universe.- (9) The liberation of thought achieved by Berkeley.- II. Common Sense.- V. Berkeley’s Intentions.- (1) The Unity of Berkeley’s career.- (2) “A gentleman and man of sense”.- (3) Redeeming the time.- (4) External and internal criticism.- (5) The danger of premature system.- VI. The two Kinds of Metaphysics.- (1) Berkeley’s allegiance to common sense.- (2) Metaphysics v common opinion.- (3) Common sense and metaphysics.- (4) Plato as the prototype.- (5) Berkeley and Plato.- VII. Philosophical Scruples: Their Cause and Cure.- (1) Scruples as the bane of philosophy.- (2) The absurd.- (3) The sceptical philosophy and its critics.- (4) Ambiguities in the sceptical philosophy.- (5) Berkeley and Hume: the capacity of the human understanding.- (6) Berkeley and the modern therapeutic analysts.- VIII. The Rôle of Common Sense.- (1) The defence of common sense.- (2) Berkeley’s appreciation of common sense.- (3) Berkeley’s discovery of common sense.- (4) Berkeley’s statements about the role of common sense.- (5) Recourse to the vulgar.- IX. The Potentiality of Common Sense.- (1) The adamantine core of common sense.- (2) Common sense as inchoate wisdom.- (3) Common sense as intelligence and ius naturale.- (4) Making a cosmos.- (5) Does Berkeley do justice to common sense?.- (6) Common sense and anthropocentricity.- (7) Privacy and Society.- X. Berkeley’s Dialectic.- (1) All things to all men.- (2) Is Berkeley a sceptic?.- (3) Paradox.- (4) Emergence from tribe.- (5) Berkeley as rhetorician.- (6) Remembrance of old things.- (7) Berkeley as metaphysician.- III. Mystery.- XI. The Mysterious Universe.- (1) Berkeley as hierophant.- (2) The change of mood.- (3) Education.- (4) Berkeley as a charismatic.- XII. The Exact Sciences.- (1) The power of myths.- (2) “Hypotheses non fingo”.- (3) An interim analysis.- (4) The inside view.