George Berkeley

Born in 1685, George Berkeley was an Anglo-Irish philosopher, writer, and clergyman who became one of the central figures of early modern philosophy. He is most closely associated with immaterialism or subjective idealism, the view that what we call material objects do not exist independently of perception.

Berkeley studied and later taught at Trinity College Dublin, and he went on to serve in the Church of Ireland, eventually becoming Bishop of Cloyne. His major works include A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, books in which he challenged the idea of matter and argued that reality is inseparable from minds and ideas.

What makes Berkeley enduringly interesting is the way he combined philosophy, religion, and plainspoken argument. Even readers who disagree with him often find his questions hard to shake: how do we know a world exists beyond what we perceive, and what exactly do we mean when we call something “real”?