Berkeley's 'Principles of Human Knowledge'

Alasdair Richmond is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

"Richmond's Reader's Guide is the perfect companion for those students approaching Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge for the first time. In a clear, unpretentious and often unobtrusively witty style, Richmond takes the reader through the work paragraph by paragraph, explaining its meaning, often by appeal to Berkeley's notebooks and other works. He asks the reader stimulating questions to help them engage with the text, and usefully sketches Berkeley's intellectual background and the fortunes of the work's reception. This is a book truly written with students in mind, and all the better for that." - Dr Peter Kail, University of Oxford, UK

• Preface Note on the Text of the Principles Abbreviations 1. Context i. Biography ii. Berkeley's Philosophical Background 2. Overview of Themes 3. Reading the Text The Principles - Introduction (§§1-25) The Principles - Part One (§§1-156) The Objects and Subject of Knowledge: Ideas and Spirit (§§1-3) Unperceived Existence: "a nicer strain of abstraction" (§§4-7) Problems for Materialism (§§8-17) A Cartesian 'Dream' Argument (§§18-21) The 'Master Argument' (§§22-24) From the Inertness of Ideas to the Existence of God (§§25-33) Philosophical Objections to Immaterialism, and Replies (§§34-81) Religious Objections to Immaterialism and Replies (§§82-4) Further Advantages of Immaterialism (§§85-100) "Two great provinces of speculative science" (§§101-107) The Attack on Absolute Space (§§108-17) Mathematics (§§118-34) Other Minds (§§135-47) The Divine Language of Nature (§§148-156) 4) Reception and Influence 5) Guide to Further Reading Index Notes