Irish idealist philosopher and Anglican bishop (1685–1753)
An 18th-century Irish bishop who said matter doesn't exist — that tables and chairs are ideas in the mind, not stuff in the world — and built a philosophy so strange and tight it still won't go away.
George Berkeley published An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision in 1709, arguing that sight perceives light and colour, not material objects. A year later came A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, which flopped, so he rewrote it as Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in 1713 — a debate where Philonous, "lover of mind," dismantles the case for material substance. He challenged Newton's absolute space and time in De Motu (1721), prefiguring Einstein, then turned to Christian apologetics in Alciphron (1732) and a critique of calculus in The Analyst (1734) that reshap…
Sourced, dated quotes from George Berkeley
[Tar water] is of a nature so mild and benign and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate.
Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.
Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time's noblest offspring is the last.
In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point.
For no one's authority ought to rank so high as to set a value on his words and terms even though nothing clear and determinate lies behind them.
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