Principles of Human Knowledge is George Berkeley's landmark work of early modern philosophy, setting out his famous challenge to material substance and his theory that reality is known through perception, mind, and ideas. Written in response to the philosophical problems left by Locke, scepticism, and debates over the nature of knowledge, Berkeley argues that the objects of human experience are not mind-independent matter, but ideas perceived by minds. The result is one of the boldest and most influential arguments in the history of empiricism: esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived.
First published in 1710, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge examines perception, abstraction, language, causation, spirit, God, scepticism, and the limits of human understanding. Berkeley's immaterialism was controversial from the beginning, but its force lies in the precision of its challenge: if all that is known is known through experience, what warrant remains for a material world existing outside all perception? The treatise remains essential for readers of metaphysics, epistemology, early modern philosophy, empiricism, and the philosophical debate over mind and reality.
For students and general readers of classic philosophy, Principles of Human Knowledge is a concise but demanding work: clear in style, radical in implication, and central to the intellectual line running from Locke through Berkeley to Hume and later modern philosophy.
George Berkeley (1685-1753) was an Irish philosopher, Anglican bishop, and one of the major figures of early modern empiricism. Educated at Trinity College Dublin, Berkeley became known for his forceful critique of material substance and for the doctrine later called immaterialism or subjective idealism. His major philosophical works include A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, and An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, all of which helped shape later debates in metaphysics, epistemology, perception, language, mind, and religious philosophy.Berkeley's philosophy stands between Locke and Hume in the development of British empiricism. He accepted the central importance of experience while rejecting the idea that experience gives access to an independently existing material substance. Instead, he argued that the world known to human beings consists of ideas perceived by minds, sustained ultimately by God. His thought remains essential for readers of classic philosophy, early modern philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, idealism, empiricism, and the history of philosophical arguments about perception and reality.
