Blackwell Reference Online

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George Berkeley was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1685 and took his BA at Trinity College, Dublin in 1704 when he was nineteen. He became a fellow at Trinity in 1707, and in the same year took religious orders. At about the same time, and continuing well into 1708, Berkeley kept a private notebook in which he worked out his views on vision, science, mathematics, and metaphysics. This notebook was first published in 1871, and is now known as the Philosophical Commentaries . It contains nearly 900 numbered entries of varying length. There followed in short order Berkeley's main works, first on vision in the Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), then on metaphysics in the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and finally the Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713). The Principles was conceived as a work in three parts, and Berkeley wrote all or most of the second part, only to lose the manuscript en route from Italy. He wrote the short monograph De Motu in 1721, and submitted it for a prize competition (he did not win). While in Newport, Rhode Island, starting in 1728, Berkeley wrote Alciphron , a work in the philosophy of religion which was published in 1734. He had journeyed to the New World bent on establishing a college in Bermuda, but crown funds were never provided, and he returned to Britain. Berkeley became Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, and spent ... log in or subscribe to read full text