Berkeley's Three Dialogues New Essays

by Storrie, Stefan

• ISBN13: 9780198755685
• ISBN10: 0198755686
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-03-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This is the first volume of essays devoted to Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, a classic of early modern philosophy. Leading experts examine all the central issues in Berkeley's work. The Three Dialogues is a dramatization of Berkeley's philosophy in which the two protagonists Hylas and Philonous debate the full range of Berkeleyan themes: the rejection of material substance, the nature of perception and reality, the limits of human knowledge, and his approach to the perceived threats of skepticism, atheism and immorality. When Berkeley presented his first statement of his immaterialist philosophy in the Principles of Human Knowledge three years earlier he was met with incredulity - how could a sane person deny the existence of matter? Berkeley felt that a new approach was needed in order to bring people over to his novel point of view. This new effort was the Three Dialogues. In the preface to the Three Dialogues Berkeley stated that its aim was to "treat more clearly and fully of certain principles laid down" in the Principles. Esteem for Berkeley's work has increased significantly in recent decades, and this volume will be the starting-point for future research.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Stefan Storrie
2. Sensible Qualities and Secondary Qualities in the First Dialogue, Lisa Downing
3. Some Issues in Berkeley's Account of Sense Perception, Tom Stoneham
4. Berkeley on the Objects of Perception, Jennifer Smalligan Marusic
5. Berkeley's Semiotic Idealism, Keota Fields
6. Berkeley's Argument for the Existence of God in the Three Dialogues, Samuel Rickless
7. Berkeley on Continuous Creation: Occasionalism Contained, Sukjae Lee
8. The Active Self and Perception in Berkeley's Three Dialogues, James Hill
9. Berkeley on God's Knowledge of Pain, Stephen H. Daniel
10. A Puzzle in the Three Dialogues and Its Platonist resolution, John Russell Roberts
11. On the Scope of Berkeley's Idealism in the 1734 Edition of the Three Dialogues, Stefan Storrie
12. Matter, God, and Nonsense: Berkeley's Polemic Against the Freethinkers in the Three Dialogues, Kenneth L. Pearce
13. Hey, What's the Big Idea? Berkeley and Hume on Extension, Local Conjunction, and the Immateriality of the Soul, Don Garrett