Part Two:
George Berkeley’s
common sense
“The young Berkeley felt himself to be
a man with a reforming mission.
Philosophers of the past, and
especially the mathematicians and physicists
of the previous century, had, he
believed, so mingled truth with error, that our educated knowledge of the world
had become embarrassed with shameful contradictions …”.
Gavin Ardley
The following choice items from Gavin Ardley’s Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy
(1968) have been taken from various chapters of the book as summarised at:
When Berkeley admitted the relevance of common sense, he was
introducing a notion of philosophical investigation diametrically opposed to
the notion commonly accepted since Descartes. Under the Cartesian aegis we are
directed to search for the clear and distinct, and to put aside all that is
obscure, ill-defined, or in any way mysterious. Berkeley believed this search
to be vain and illusory: These metaphysicians of the way of ideas and
abstractions are not exploring the universe as it is; instead, they are
fabricating a new universe composed of clear and distinct elements. They
exclude mystery from their structure in the interest of clarity, but this
clarity is worthless, and the construction a mere imposture. Berkeley observed
that the quest for the clear and distinct generates its opposite: the other
face of the clear and distinct is the non-entity, as witness the empty concepts
of matter, absolute space, etc. A world rendered clear and distinct on the
surface has, beneath that shining surface, the blankness or opacity of the
irrational. The attempt to bring full light to one half of the world leaves the
other in total darkness. In excluding mystery, these metaphysicians have thrust
the world further away from us, rendered it paradoxical and absurd and
ultimately unknowable. They have made an image of the world after their own
likeness; and the image has feet of clay. ….
From this preliminary review of Berkeley’s intentions we
may better understand his words in praise of common sense.
We have seen that in matters of education,
pseudo-metaphysics has a positive, indeed indispensable, role in bringing our
minds to maturity. The proviso being that the situation in which
pseudo-metaphysics is allowed free play shall be one of antecedent strength and
resilience. We have seen too that for a brief space Berkeley tacitly subscribed
to this principle, as witness the dialectical composition of the body of the
Principles and the Three Dialogues. But for a brief space only: elsewhere his
attitude to pseudo-metaphysics tends to be simply negative and denunciatory; it
is absurd and nonsensical, it encourages infidelity, it corrupts reason and
common sense, and it hinders the progress of the sciences.
The ideas of sense,
observes Berkeley, come to us with sufficient regularity to admit of an
expectancy growing up by habit and custom, whereby on the occasion of one idea
we anticipate another. The first idea is then the sign of the second: “Ideas
which are observed to be connected with other ideas come to be considered as
signs, by means whereof things not actually perceived by sense are signified or
suggested to the imagination, whose objects they are, and which alone perceives
them” (T.V.V. 39). If there be a great variety of such arbitrary signs, closely
articulated together, they will constitute a language — artificial if it be of
human devising, but if instituted by the Author of Nature, then a natural
language (T.V.V. 40). The non-visual senses provide us with signs, but their
variety and articulation are not (except to some degree for sound) of a
sufficiently high order for the ensemble to be called a language. It is vision,
above all, (and in a minor degree sound) which provides us with a natural
language: “All signs are not language: not even all significant sounds, such as
the natural cries of animals, or the inarticulate sounds and interjections of
men. It is the articulation, combination, variety, copiousness, extensive and
general use and easy application of signs (all which are commonly found in
vision) that constitute the true nature of language” (Alc. iv, 12). Hence
Berkeley can say boldly “Vision is the language of the Author of Nature”
(T.V.V. 38), therein re-affirming the pioneer doctrine of the New Theory of
Vision. “Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that the proper objects
of vision constitute an universal language of the Author of Nature, whereby we
are instructed how to regulate our actions in order to attain those things that
are necessary to the preservation and well-being of our bodies, as also to
avoid whatever may be hurtful and destructive of them” (N.T.V. 147). Adding, on
later reflection, sound as the junior partner of vision in this divine sensible
language (T.V.V. 40).
The Berkeley of popular tradition, of learned jest and
limerick, is an eccentric figure, a ridiculous and unworldly metaphysician. The
Berkeley who emerges from his correspondence, and from a study of his
adventurous career, is a very different figure; one of those rare characters of
noble simplicity, such as Plato envisaged for his guardians; a robust
down-to-earth man, eminently sober, practical, and judicious; an independent
man, who hated cant and abject conformity; a man who delighted in the richness
and variety of things, and sympathised with all sorts and conditions of men; a
man of learning and piety, imbued with joyous reforming zeal and missionary
enterprise; yet no visionary or anarchist, rather one who disciplined his
abundant energies into the channels of enlightened common sense.
In these first chapters (I–IV) we shall be concerned for
the most part with Berkeley’s critique of the exact sciences, and his
reflections on human knowledge as they arose out of his reading of Locke and
Newton. In fact, the young Berkeley had meditated a great deal about other
philosophical issues, and had read other authors, notably Malebranche and Bayle
(oblique references to these French philosophers abound in the Philosophical
Commentaries, the Principles and the Three Dialogues), Nevertheless, it was on
Newton’s natural philosophy that Berkeley concentrated his attention in the
early published works; and to attain a conspectus of Berkeley’s endeavours it
is appropriate to confine attention at first to this element. Later, we shall
look at Berkeley’s work in a more ample setting.
The principle
of immaterialism once established, not only are paradoxes immediately connected
with the notion of matter eliminated, but many other paradoxes and distorted
presentations, not at first evidently associated with matter, are found to
dissolve away: “Matter being once expelled out of Nature, drags with it so many
sceptical and impious notions, such an incredible number of disputes and
puzzling questions —” (Pr. 96). Not least amongst these are the puzzles raised
by mathematical physics regarding space, time, and motion.
The metaphysical extravagances of the Seventeenth Century
provoked a reaction. Men such as Fenelon and Buffier in France, Berkeley in
Ireland, Reid and his circle in Scotland, and, in a paradoxical way, David
Hume, rose up to advance the claims of common sense.1 But they did so in
radically different ways: and it soon became apparent that some of the
proffered explications of common sense had within them vices similar to those
which they were intended to extirpate.
In a revealing jotting of his youth
(apparently an addendum to the Note Books) Berkeley writes: “He that would win
another over to his opinion must seem to harmonize with him at first and humour
him in his own way of talking. From my childhood I had an unaccountable turn of
thought that way.” (Works ix, p. 153).
The young Berkeley felt himself to be a
man with a reforming mission. Philosophers of the past, and especially the
mathematicians and physicists of the previous century, had, he believed, so
mingled truth with error, that our educated knowledge of the world had become
embarrassed with shameful contradictions (P.C. 679, Pr. Intro. 1). The problem
was, how best to set it right, without incurring too much hostility and so
bringing the reform to nought: “People will say, ‘I am young, I am an upstart,
I am a pretender, I am vain …’” (P.C. 465). Great caution, therefore, must be
exercised: “Mem.”, notes Berkeley, “Upon all occasions to use the utmost
modesty. To confute the mathematicians with the utmost civility and respect.
Not to style them Nihilarians, etc.” (P.C. 633). He resolved on the plan of
correcting men’s mistakes without altering their language. “This makes truth
glide into their souls insensibly” (P.C. 185).1 Accordingly, he adopted current
popular terms such as “idea” and “in the mind,” but gave them new tacit
meanings.2 The results of these tactics were not, on the whole, what the author
intended. He had a few discerning readers, but for the most part he has been
thought an ingenious sophist, a subjective idealist, or, latterly, a positivist
and a forerunner of the positivistic interpretation of the sciences.
The illiterate bulk of mankind,
observes Berkeley, walk the highroad of plain common sense (Pr. Intro. 1). They
follow sense and instinct, and thus remain easy and undisturbed, because
familiarity breeds accountability and comprehension. Illiterate men are not
unreflective, but rather the reverse. They do not enjoy the benefits of
literacy; but neither do they suffer from its evils. The illiterate bulk of
mankind have never heard sceptical doubts voiced; or if they have so heard they
shrug off such reasonings. Illiterate reflections may be eccentric; but they
will not be absurd.
Berkeley was not actuated by any sentimental attachment
to common sense. Rather did he regard criticised common sense as something
ultimately inescapable, try as we may. In men at their best the nature of
common sense is most patent. But the force of common sense is most clearly
exhibited at the opposite pole: that men at their worst and most perverse
cannot escape it. They betray its presence at every moment in practice, (cf.
VI, 3.) Long ago, Plato pointed to something analogous in his argument for the primacy
of morality: robbers are immoral in their external dealings, but must perforce
be moral in their internal dealings. (Rep. 351 f.) St. Augustine summed up the
situation on one pungent phrase: “No vice, however unnatural, can pull nature
up by the roots” (De Civ. Dei, xix, 12).
We are little accustomed in modern
times to think of philosophy in terms of play. With few exceptions,
philosophers in the last few centuries are conspicuous for their gravity. If a
lighter touch enters their writings it is rather as a douceur with which to
punctuate argument. To charge a philosopher with playing games is to condemn
his activity as trivial and futile.
