Who was George Berkeley?

George Berkeley (1685—1753) was an Irish Anglican bishop who made numerous contributions to philosophy, including the philosophy of religion, physics, and epistemology (the theory of knowledge). He is most famous for developing and defending a metaphysical view of idealism, which holds that reality consists not of matter but of spirits and that material things are merely perceived ideas.

George Berkeley was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, and educated at Trinity College in Dublin, where he studied and then built on the philosophical ideas of John Locke and René Descartes. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1707. Berkeley also served on the Trinity College staff as a tutor (1707), junior dean (1710), and junior Greek lecturer (1712).

In 1713, Berkeley left Dublin for London. He traveled throughout Europe for a season, developing numerous favorable acquaintances and gaining a reputation for scholarly knowledge, humility, and piousness. In 1721, Berkeley returned to Dublin as a divinity lecturer and senior lecturer at Trinity College. The following year, he began lecturing in Hebrew and serving as proctor at Trinity. In 1722, George Berkeley was appointed dean of Dromore, and in 1724 dean of Derry.

Eager to advance Protestantism, Berkeley spent three years in the American colonies (1728—1732). His goal was to establish a Protestant missionary college to train and send workers to Bermuda, where Roman Catholicism heavily influenced the native peoples. After the project failed to secure financing, George Berkeley returned to Ireland. In 1734, he was appointed bishop of Cloyne, a position he held for the remainder of his life.

Berkeley was married in 1728 to Englishwoman Anne Forster, the daughter of John Forster, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas. The couple had four children who lived into adulthood: sons Henry, George, and William and a daughter, Julia.

George Berkeley was a philosopher and apologist rather than a theologian. “The Christian religion,” he once preached, “was calculated for the Bulk of Mankind, and therefore cannot consist in subtle and nice Notions” (Sturch, R., “Berkeley, George (1685—1753),” New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, ed. Martin Davie et al., InterVarsity Press, 2016, p. 116).

According to Berkeley’s philosophy of idealism, reality consists only of minds (or spirits) and ideas. Nothing extramental or of “matter” exists. A spirit, for Berkeley, is essentially a mind like yours or mine. An idea, on the other hand, is what the spirit or mind perceives. Everything we see around us is only an idea (or a collection of ideas bundled together). Berkeley’s theory of immaterialism is often summarized by the Latin phrases esse est percipere (“to be is to perceive”) and esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”). In short, nothing exists except for spirits (which perceive) and ideas (which are perceived).

An illustration can help us understand Berkeley’s thinking better. Imagine sitting at the kitchen table with a ripe red apple on your plate. For Berkeley, the apple does not exist as matter or independent of the mind’s perceptions. Instead, the mind perceives several properties (or ideas) that combine to form a perception of the apple as an object. The mind perceives properties of redness, ripeness, of its “being an apple,” “sitting on your plate,” and so on. When all these ideas coalesce in your mind, you perceive an apple in front of you. Notice that an actual material apple is not what causes you to perceive an apple because the only things that exist are your mind and your perceptions.

In Berkeley’s view, saying “the apple exists” is the same as saying “I perceive an apple.” There is no way to separate “being” from “being perceived.” When we affirm that the apple (or any material thing) is real, we mean no more than that the apple is perceived.

Berkeley’s concepts aimed to answer some of the fundamental questions philosophers wrestled with in his day. Questions such as: How do we know the apple is in fact there? Can we prove the apple’s existence? The French philosopher Descartes would have said that we can indeed know the apple exists because God gave us our senses and would not deceive us. Others, including the Scottish philosopher David Hume, believed we could never know for sure that the apple was there because it is impossible to prove its existence without presuming the reliability of our perceptions.

Berkeley disagreed with Descartes, asserting that the apple could not exist independently of our perceptions. If God gave us our senses and would not allow us to be deceived, why, questioned Berkeley, would He sometimes permit us to be mistaken in our perceptions? How can we know the apple on our plate isn’t just a fake apple or a red ball shaped like an apple? If our perception is all that is real, held Berkeley, then this question poses no difficulty because our perception is all that exists for us anyway. Such a position leaves us no way to prove the apple is real. However, Berkeley wasn’t worried about this possibility since he defined existence exclusively in terms of the ideas that make up perceptions. “The apple exists” means “I perceive the apple.” For Berkeley, it is automatically true that the apple exists, and we don’t need to worry about whether it exists independently of our perceptions.

While only scratching the surface of Berkeley’s views, this illustrative summary provides enough insight to reveal significant problems from a biblical perspective. Genesis 1:1 states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible does not say God formed perceptions of the heavens and the earth. No, He created the heavens and the earth as distinct objects. Scripture affirms that the heavens and the earth exist independent of human observation or perception. Subsequent verses describe how God created living, material objects, including fish, birds, stars, the sun and moon, and plants. These created things came into existence in response to God’s creative influence. They genuinely exist regardless of our mind’s perception of them.

Although Berkeley was a Christian theist who offered proof of God’s existence, many of his philosophical views were contrary to the teachings of Scripture. While intended to protect against the skepticism of his day, Berkeley’s notions of idealism, immaterialism, and epistemological empiricism ignore crucial biblical truth and, therefore, should be rejected by Christians.

After being appointed bishop, George Berkeley continued to study and publish books on philosophy. However, his most significant philosophical works, all completed in early adulthood, include an Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision (1709), a Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713).

George Berkeley spent his final days in Oxford, England, with his wife, daughter, and son George, a senior student at Christ Church. Berkeley died on January 14, 1753, and was buried at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.