GEORGE BERKELEY (1685-1753)
This thinker, whose maxim is 'ESSE EST PERCIPI', elevates the Empirical philosophy of John Locke.
Actually, for Berkeley, the truth of things lies in the fact that they are perceived. His conclusion on the matter is that THERE IS NO MATTER, given that matter can't act upon the spirit; it can't produce anything 'immaterial' (ideas).
Moreover, since this can't happen, according to him, proving the existence of 'nothing', there are only two certain things (with this, the famous 'Cogito ergo sum' of Descartes is definitely destroyed):
1. GOD (the source of ideas)
2. THE MIND— solipsism (only ones mind is sure to exist)
BERKELEY
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow. And it seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them.- I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term exists, when applied to sensible things. The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed- meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour, that is, it was smelt; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch.
This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible. Their ‘esse’ is ‘percepi’, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.
(extracts of ‘Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’
by George Berkeley)
