Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

Deeply original, inspiring to some, abhorrent to others, George Berkeley’s philosophy of immaterialism is still influential three hundred years after the publication of his most widely read book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.  Berkeley published the Dialogues because of the unenthusiastic reception of his Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710.  He hoped the use of the dialogue format would win a more favorable hearing, but unfortunately for Berkeley, the response was every bit as scathing as the reception of his previous work. In recent decades, Berkeley’s work has been recognized as an excellent introduction to the English philosophy of the eighteenth century, and to philosophy in general.  This edition of the dialogues is accessibly organized by David Hilbert and John Perry.

David Hilbert is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  



John Perry is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he taught from 1974 to 2008, and from the University of California, Riverside, where he taught from 2008 to 2014. He has written books and articles on semantics (including pioneering work on situation semantics, with Jon Barwise), personal identity, the philosophy of language consciousness and other philosophical topics. He is the recipient of numerous awards for teaching and research, including honorary degrees from Doane College, the University of the Basque Country, and Bochum University. He is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI).