History of Modern Philosophy: From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present TimeFalckenberg, Richard
Philosophy
History of Modern Philosophy: From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time
Falckenberg, Richard
Philosophy, Modern -- History
dependent, inert, variable beings, which are in a constant process of
becoming) consists alone in their appearance to spirits and their being
perceived by them. Incogitative, hence passive, beings are neither
substances, nor capable of producing ideas in us. Those ideas which we do
not ourselves produce are the effects of a spirit which is mightier than
we. With this a second inconsistency was removed which had been overlooked
by Locke, who had ascribed active power to spirits alone and denied it to
matter, but at the same time had made the former affected by the latter. If
external sense is to mean the capacity for having ideas occasioned by the
action of external material things, then there is no external sense. A
third point wherein Locke had not gone far enough for his successor,
concerned the favorite English doctrine of nominalism. Locke, with his
predecessors, had maintained that all reality is individual, and that
universals exist only in the abstracting understanding. From this point
Berkeley advances a step further, the last, indeed, which was possible in
this direction, by bringing into question the possibility even of abstract
ideas. As all beings are particular things, so all ideas are particular
ideas.
[Footnote 1: Cf. also Fraser's _Berkeley_ (Blackwood's Philosophical
Classics) 1881; Eraser's _Selections from Berkeley_, 4th ed., 1891; and
Krauth's edition of the _Principles_, 1874, with notes from several
sources, especially those translated from Ueberweg.--TR.]
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