The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21Berkeley, George
Philosophy
The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
Berkeley, George
Philosophy -- Early works to 1800
The Kantian and post-Kantian Idealism that is characteristic of the
nineteenth century has recalled attention to Berkeley, who had produced
his spiritual philosophy under the prevailing conditions of English
thought in the preceding age, when Idealism in any form was uncongenial.
In 1869 the book of _Principles_ was translated into German, with
annotations, by Ueberweg, professor of philosophy at Königsberg, the
university of Kant. The Clarendon Press edition of the Collected Works of
Berkeley followed in 1871. In 1874 an edition of the _Principles_, by Dr.
Kranth, Professor of Philosophy in the university of Pennsylvania,
appeared in America, with annotations drawn largely from the Clarendon
Press edition and Ueberweg. In 1878 Dr. Collyns Simon republished the
_Principles_, with discussions based upon the text, followed by an
appendix of remarks on Kant and Hume in their relation to Berkeley.
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The book of _Principles_, as we have it, must be taken as a systematic
fragment of an incompletely developed philosophy. Many years after its
appearance, the author thus describes the conditions:—“It was published
when I was very young, and without doubt hath many defects. For though the
notions should be true (as I verily think they are), yet it is difficult
to express them clearly and consistently, language being framed for common
use and received prejudices. I do not therefore pretend that my books can
teach truth. All I hope for is that they may be an occasion to inquisitive
men of discovering truth(467).” Again:—“I had no inclination to trouble
the world with large volumes. What I have done was rather with the view of
giving hints to thinking men, who have leisure and curiosity to go to the
bottom of things, and pursue them in their own minds. Two or three times
reading these small tracts (_Essay on Vision_, _Principles_, _Dialogues_,
_De Motu_), and making what is read the occasion of thinking, would, I
believe, render the whole familiar and easy to the mind, and take off that
shocking appearance which hath often been observed to attend speculative
truths(468).” The incitements to further and deeper thought thus proposed
have met with a more sympathetic response in this generation than in the
lifetime of Berkeley.
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