author
George Berkeley
1685–1753
Best known for arguing that reality is inseparable from perception, this Irish philosopher and bishop turned a simple question about what we can know into one of the most famous debates in modern thought. His work on vision, knowledge, and the nature of matter still sparks discussion centuries later.
6 Audiobooks
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
by George Berkeley
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists
by George Berkeley
An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision
by George Berkeley
The Querist Containing Several Queries Proposed to the Consideration of the Public
by George Berkeley
The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
by George Berkeley
About the author
Born in Ireland in 1685, George Berkeley became an Anglican clergyman, later serving as Bishop of Cloyne. He studied and taught at Trinity College Dublin, and he built his reputation early with bold, original writing on vision and philosophy.
Berkeley is most famous for defending what is often called immaterialism or idealism: the view that what we call the material world does not exist independently in the way people usually assume. In works such as An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, he challenged the idea of matter and argued that the world we experience is known through minds and ideas.
He was not only a philosopher but also a writer interested in science, religion, and education. Berkeley spent time in America in the 1720s while pursuing plans for a college in Bermuda, and he remained an important public and religious figure until his death in Oxford in 1753. His thought went on to shape later debates in metaphysics, perception, and the philosophy of religion.