BERKELEY'S RENOVATION OF PHILOSOPHY

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1 BERKELEY'S RENOVATION OF PHILOSOPHY

2 BERKELEY'S RENOVATION OF PHILOSOPHY by GAVIN ARDLEY MARTINUS NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1968

3 ISBN-13: DOl: / e-isbn-13: I968 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1968 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form

4 PREFACE 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 philosophy 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 epistemological arguments are legion. They commenced with the young Berkeley'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. Without an understanding of Berkeley's intentions, the interpretation of any passage becomes assimilated into the matters in which the critic happens to be interested at the time, instead of into the matters which concerned Berkeley. Hence these critical studies, however valuable they may be in themselves, are not always very relevant to the philosophy they purport to be examining. The danger of distortion through failure to take a synoptic view is especially present when dealing with Berkeley. For the young Berkeley (like Socrates before him) had an impish, almost Swiftian, humour,

5 VI PREFACE which he was not always successful in restraining, combined with a rare dash and gallantry. He is sometimes given to shocking his readers, provoking them back to common sense. If we consider only the shocks, and not the purpose of the shocks, we shall never enter Berkeley's world. Instead, we shall all the time be thinking of "the tree in the quad" and concluding that Berkeley is one of the most un-commonsensical philosophers who ever lived. Thereby missing the deeper truth which he is endeavouring to awaken within us. To achieve the necessary conspectus of Berkeley I have given primary attention to the range of his writings. I have indicated something of the character of the intellectual dogmas which he rebelled against. I have pointed out some of the alternative lines of rebellion taken by other philosophers in Berkeley's era. And I have endeavoured to show that Berkeley's revolt, while sometimes ragged and callow, had in it the seeds of a philosophy more truly humane, more rational, than the others. In this task, the greater part of modern critical writing on Berkeley is of less assistance than might be expected, for the aforementioned reason of episodic content and foreign orientation. But there is one gratifying exception: the researches of Luce and Jessop following the pioneer work of Fraser. These authors have succeeded for the first time in sketching at least the outlines of a coherent and credible portrait of Berkeley the philosopher. To their works the student of Berkeley must be profoundly indebted. And lastly, why should we now be concerned with Berkeley? The motive of the present work is not antiquarian. It springs rather from the conviction that the intellectual society of Berkeley is salutary for us, the more so because we belong to substantially the same historical cycle and Berkeley's enemies are our enemies. The I7th Century witnessed a giant eruption of pseudo-metaphysics, of intellectual hubris combined with intellectual poverty. (Something long preparing in the underworld of later medieval philosophy.) The effects of that explosion have lasted until this day. The revolt against metaphysics, which has gathered to a head in the 20th Century, seems to be in large measure a belated attempt to throw off the tyranny of the I7th Century. Like all reforms too long delayed, it has come blindly and without discrimination. The vital distinction between good and bad metaphysics is unrecognised. The modern reformers seem likely to leave us in a worse state than we were in before. Two centuries ago Berkeley put forward his modest proposals for a

6 PREFACE VII return to common sense and intellectual sanity. He was unheeded or derided. But now, with the chastening experience of contemporary reformers who succeed only in substituting one intellectual tyranny for another, we may have recourse with profit to Berkeley's 18th Century generosity and good sense. And through Berkeley we may be led to recover something of the original vitality which inspired Plato and Aristotle. Berkeley had no great architectonic gift. But he had a rarer gift: he had in him "the soul's love of wisdom" which, for Plato, is the root of the matter. Further, he had a good measure of the Aristotelian virtue of eutrapelia, the playful-seriousness of the mind; the virtue without which philosophy runs either to trifling or to over-earnestness. As a philosophic eutrapelos he joins a very select company. By entering into Berkeley's world we may participate in some degree in that graceful society. This book was written partly in Auckland (where an earlier draught of the first four chapters was published as a Bulletin by the University of Auckland in 1962), and partly during a Sabbatical Year at the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a singularly happy place for such an undertaking. There, in the early years of the Scots Enlightenment, Berkeley found his first appreciative circle in the members of the Rankenian Club. There, to this day, University and City continue to be an island of learning and humanity. lowe acknowledgements to Professor W. H. Walsh for according me the amenity of the Department of Logic and Metaphysics of Edinburgh University, and to the University Librarian for granting me the freedom of the noble library. I am especially indebted to Dr. George Davie for much good counsel on all things pertaining to Eighteenth Century Scots letters, and for much else besides. And to Professor Luce of Trinity College Dublin, and Professor Jessop of the University of Hull, I return thanks for their friendly encouragement. University of Auckland, New Zealand G.W.R.A.

7 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ABBREVIATIONS v XIII I. Nature CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF THE EXACT SCIENCES 3 CHAPTER II : MATHEMATICS AND NATURE 9 (I) The consistency of Berkeley's philosophy 9 (2) Berkeley's critique of the received mathematical philosophy of Nature 10 (3) The immaterialist principle II (4) The rejection of Enthusiasm and Scepticism 12 (5) Appearance is reality 13 (6) The status of the esse percipi principle 14 ( 7) Common sense realism 15 (8) No primary/secondary quality bifurcation 16 (9) The rejection of "matter" 17 (10) The source of the current errors 17 (II) Cosmos 18 (12) Nature is essentially qualitative 19 (13) The operative function of mathematics and physics 20 (14) The employment of number 21 (15) The employment of geometry 22 (16) The function of natural philosophy 24 (17) Renovating the sciences 25 (18) Some modern discussions bearing on the esse percipi principle 26 CHAPTER III. THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC CHARACTER OF SPACE, TIME, AND MOTION 30 (I) The levels of treatment 30 (2) Relative and Absolute 31 (3) Berkeley's various aims 32

8 x TABLE OF CONTENTS (4) The perplexities of false abstraction 33 (5) Visual Perception 35 (6) The interweaving of sensible extension time and motion with other sensations 35 (7) Public standards of space, time, and motion 37 (8) The Selection of Standards 39 (9) Primary and Secondary Qualities 40 (10) The liberation of space, time, and motion 41 CHAPTER IV. THE ANALOGY OF THE GRAMMAR OF NATURE 43 (I) Signs and visual language 43 (2) The consistent working of Nature 44 (3) The Grammar of Nature 44 (4) A hierarchy of knowledge 46 (5) The employment of the grammar of Nature 47 (6) Our knowledge of natural grammar is imperfect and incomplete 48 (7) The rigidity of the grammar of Nature, and the flexibility of the language of Nature 49 (8) The teleological universe 50 (9) The liberation of thought achieved by Berkeley 51 II. Common Sense CHAPTER V. BERKELEY'S INTENTIONS 55 (I) The Unity of Berkeley's career 55 (2) "A gentleman and man of sense" 55 (3) Redeeming the time 58 (4) External and internal criticism 60 (5) The danger of premature system 61 CHAPTER VI. THE TWO KINDS OF METAPHYSICS 64 (I) Berkeley's allegiance to common sense 64 (2) Metaphysics v common opinion 67 (3) Common sense and metaphysics 69 (4) Plato as the prototype 71 (5) Berkeley and Plato 73 CHAPTER VII. PHILOSOPHICAL SCRUPLES: THEIR CAUSE AND CURE 77 (I) Scruples as the bane of philosophy 77 (2) The absurd 80 (3) The sceptical philosophy and its critics 84 (4) Ambiguities in the sceptical philosophy 86

9 TABLE OF CONTENTS XI (5) Berkeley and Hume: the capacity of the human understanding 88 (6) Berkeley and the modern therapeutic analysts 90 CHAPTER VIII. THE ROLE OF COMMON SENSE 96 (I) The defence of common sense 96 (2) Berkeley's appreciation of common sense 99 (3) Berkeley's discovery of common sense 100 (4) Berkeley's statements about the r6le of common sense 103 (5) Recourse to the vulgar 106 CHAPTER IX. THE POTENTIALITY OF COMMON SENSE 108 (I) The adamantine core of common sense 108 (2) Common sense as inchoate wisdom 109 (3) Common sense as intelligence and ius naturale 114 (4) Making a cosmos 117 (5) Does Berkeley do justice to common sense? 120 (6) Common sense and anthropocentricity 124 (7) Privacy and Society 129 CHAPTER X. BERKELEY'S DIALECTIC 133 (I) All things to all men 133 (2) Is Berkeley a sceptic? 134 (3) Paradox 135 (4) Emergence from tribe 136 (5) Berkeley as rhetorician 138 (6) Remembrance of old things 140 (7) Berkeley as metaphysician 143 III. Mystery CHAPTER XI. THE MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSE (I) Berkeley as hierophant (2) The change of mood (3) Education (4) Berkeley as a charismatic CHAPTER XII. THE EXACT SCIENCES (I) The power of myths (2) "Hypotheses non fingo" (3) An interim analysis (4) The inside view INDEX

10 ABBREVIA TIONS Works Ale. An. D.F.T.M. D.M. H.P. N.T.V. P.e. Pro T.V.V. = Luce and Jessop edition Aleiphron = Analyst = Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics = De Motu Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. New Theory of Vision Philosophical Commentaries (ed. Luce) Principles of Human Knowledge Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained Page references to the Three Dialogues are to Works ii. Berkeley's Letters are in Works viii, except the letters to Johnson which are in Works ii. The De Motu is cited in Luce's translation (Works iv).

IMAGINATION AND REASON IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, VICO, ROUSSEAU, AND KEATS

IMAGINATION AND REASON IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, VICO, ROUSSEAU, AND KEATS IMAGINATION AND REASON IN PLATO, ARISTOTLE, VICO, ROUSSEAU, AND KEATS AN ESSAY ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF EXPERIENCE by J. J. CHAMBLISS II