George Berkeley. Alciphron/Siris. Tradução, apresentação e notas de Jaimir Conte. São Paulo: Editora da Unesp, 2022. O volume reúne traduções de duas obras de George Berkeley, “Alciphron, ou o filósofo minucioso” e “Siris”. “Alciphron” é estruturado como um diálogo filosófico entre quatro personagens, no qual Berkeley combate os argumentos dos chamados “livres-pensadores” (como Mandeville ou Shaftesbury), fazendo uma apologia do Cristianismo. Já “Siris” é tanto um tratado sobre as virtudes medicinais da água de alcatrão quanto uma visão (...) do filósofo das cadeias do ser, explorando a gradual ascensão que vai do mundo dos sentidos e da mente, até chegar ao sobrenatural e a Deus, a essência trina. (shrink)

Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732) is Berkeley's main work of philosophical theology and a crucial source of his views on meaning and language. This edition contains the four most important dialogues and a selection of critical essays and commentaries reflecting the response of such writers as Hutcheson, Mill and Antony Flew. The only single edition currently in print, it argues that Alciphron has a more important place both in the Berkeley canon and in early modern philosophy than (...) is generally thought. (shrink)

Ma contribution repère et évalue la présence des thèses de Mandeville dans l’Alciphron. Ce travail a déjà entrepris par Paulette Carrive, qui produisait un diagnostic sévère sur les « distorsions » de Berkeley. J’examine trois thèmes : les manipulations politico-cléricales (Alc. I), l’utilité et les bienfaits des vices (Alc. II), l’honneur (Alc. III). Sur le premier thème, je cherche à montrer que Mandeville n’est pas le seul visé : c’est sans doute une synthèse de la conception d’au moins trois (...) libres penseurs sur l’association du priestcraft et du satecraft (Toland, Collins et Mandeville) que livre Berkeley. Sur le second thème, je montre que la caricature opérée par Berkeley dans sa retranscription du « paradoxe » de Mandeville ne se situe pas dans son illustration initiale, par Lysiclès, mais dans les outrances auxquelles le conduit la contre-offensive d’Euphranor : c’est faute de pouvoir répondre à ses objections que Lysiclès en vient à prétendre que Mandeville aurait encouragé les crimes et recommandé les plaisirs sensuels. Sur le troisième thème, je montre que la pensée de Mandeville se retrouve à la fois dans la bouche des « petits philosophes » (description de l’honneur) et dans celle du pieux Criton (incompatibilité de l’honneur avec la vertu et la religion). Même si Berkeley dissimule cette seconde présence, je ne conclus pas à sa mauvaise foi sur ce point. De même que Berkeley a peut-être sincèrement interprété la thèse de Mandeville sur l’utilité du vice comme sa défense, et l’a présentée en conséquence, de même, Berkeley a pu vouloir faire connaître à son lecteur où se situait à ses yeux la véritable pensée de Mandeville sur l’honneur. (shrink)

In Alciphron (1732) Berkeley engages in extensive criticism of the Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Berkeley’s criticism of the Earl is remarkably aggressive. It culminates in §§12-14 of the Third Dialogue, where Berkeley launches a vicious personal attack against Shaftesbury, under the name of ‘Cratylus’. In this way the third dialogue differs radically in tone from Berkeley’s other philosophical works and has been viewed with shock and derision. In this paper I will show that Berkeley names Shaftesbury (...) ‘Cratylus’ because he wants to impute the kind of self-deception against the Earl that Plato vividly describes in the dialogue Cratylus. This, moreover, is the key to correctly understanding Berkeley’s argument against Shaftesbury’s moral theory, which is an attack on a pernicious form of moral subjectivism, rather than an attack on virtue ethics, as is commonly thought. (shrink)

(2002). Emotive meaning and Christian mysteries in Berkeley’s Alciphron. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 401-411. doi: 10.1080/09608780210143218.

In this article I consider George Berkeley's Alciphron from the standpoint of the literary techniques and rhetorical procedures employed, as evidence for placing this composition within the tradition of Christian apologetic rhetoric. The argument develops around three main issues: 1) Berkeley's employment of the traditional rhetorical tool of attacking his opponents using their own weapons; 2) Berkeley's resort to a perennial tradition of pre‐Christian or non‐Christian wisdom, in order to validate his Christian‐theistic claims; and 3) Berkeley's ‘argument from utility’. (...) These three theses are discussed in light of the history of Christian apologetic rhetoric, with references to the works of St. Augustine, St. Justin Martyr, Origen, St. Thomas Aquinas and other Christian authors. (shrink)

The character of Lysicles in Berkeley’s Alciphron represents a familiar form of amoralism, namely the person who is not susceptible to reason on moral matters, who refuses to be moved by moral arguments. It is thus puzzling why Berkeley lets Lysicles leave the dialogues untouched by all the debate that has been going on for seven days. This creates an exegetical puzzle: why does Berkeley introduce this character if he will then fail to persuade him? My solution to the (...) exegetical puzzle is of historical interest, for it suggests that Berkeley is aware of the limits of rational argument in moral discourse, that he sees some of the flaws in the great Enlightenment project of universal reason. But that is not the primary purpose of the paper, for I do not think Berkeley would have found it a satisfying philosophical solution: he would have wanted to show that even if Lysicles cannot have his mind changed by reason alone, his failing is a cognitive one rather than a mere brute difference with which philosophy and reason cannot engage. So the second half of the paper shows how Berkeley’s theory of religious language in the seventh dialogue of the book does in fact provide the resources for showing that Lysicles has a cognitive failing, that he is unreasonable because there is something he doesn’t know. (shrink)

The phonetic evolution of the Greek language which, towards the end of the Hellenistic period, substituted for the quantitative rhythm, based on the opposition of duration of the syllables, a rhythm based on the distance between stressed syllables, allowed the emergence of new poetic processes which followed after the traditional metrics: the equality of number of accents between several cola and the echoes between stress-related clausulae. The analysis of some of Alciphro’s bucolic letters from this point of view reveals that (...) they are sorts of poèmes en prose organized in isotonic stanzas, with isotony of cola and recurring clausulae in close echoes. This discovery reveals the really artistic character of these letters. It also supplies a criterion of choice between variants or conjectures when the text is corrupted. (shrink)

Berkeley’s most detailed discussion of the philosophy of language appears in _Alciphron_. Although Berkeley’s discussion is motivated by problems about religious language raised by John Toland, his response is not to develop a theory of religious language as a special case but rather to defend a general theory of language and show that the meaningfulness of these religious utterances is a consequence of that theory. The theory Berkeley adopts holds that words get to be meaningful when they are used according (...) to conventional rules as part of a public social practice aiming at practical ends. Berkeley does not endorse a sharp distinction between emotive and cognitive language, but rather holds that one and the same word is typically associated with a wide variety of rules, which may instruct users not only to have ideas but also to feel emotions or perform a variety of linguistic or non-linguistic actions. (shrink)

A acusação de entusiasmo é um dos temas mais paradoxais da polêmica entabulada por Berkeley no Alciphron contra o livre-pensamento. Com efeito, o entusiasmo designa tradicionalmente uma forma de iluminação religiosa aparentemente incompatível com as pretensões do livre-pensamento à racionalidade crítica. Ora, essa acusação não se dirige aos principais deistas como Toland e Collins (antes qualificados como racionalistas obstinados) mas principalmente a Shaftesbury, cuja análise inovadora do entusiasmo como paixão universal, criativa ou destrutiva segundo o temperamento do indivíduo, é (...) recusada por Berkeley. Este artigo quer mostrar que a recusa de Berkeley traz subentendida uma concepção da razão como disciplina educativa heterônoma e que ela reenvia a uma imagem tradicional do homem, cuja natureza só é bestial antes ou sem a educação religiosa, contra a reavaliação do papel epistemológico e moral conferido pela análise shaftesburiana do entusiasmo ao desejo e ao sentimento individuais. Freethinking: an Enthusiasm of Reason?In the polemic raised by Berkeleys Alciphron against Freethinking, one of the most paradoxical topics is the accusation of enthusiasm. For enthusiasm traditionnally means a kind of religious illumination seemingly incompatible with the critical rationalism the freethinkers pretend to assume. Now this accusation is not raised against the foremost british deists like Toland and Collins (rather dismissed as rationalistic bigots), but against Shaftesbury, whose new analysis of enthusiasm as a universal passion, creative or destructive following only the temper of the individual, is strongly rejected by Berkeley. This papers aim is to show that Berkeleys rejection of this modern sense of enthusiasm involves a traditional and conservative conception of reason as an heteronomous, educational discipline of man, whose nature would only be bestial before -or withoutreligious education, against the new epistemological and moral role given to desire and sentiment by Shaftesburys analysis of enthusiasm. (shrink)

The problem of divine attributes was one of the most intensely debated topics in the 17-18th century Irish philosophy. Simply put, the problem revolves around the ontological question (i) whether human and divine attributes differ in degree or in kind, and the semantical (ii) how we ought to describe these divine attributes by means of our human language. While there was a consensus that analogies play a key role in solving the semantical problem there was a controversy about the kind (...) of speech they allow for. Especially, it was contested if using analogies for divine predication allows for a separate kind of speech, i.e. allows us to speak neither literally nor metaphorically but analogically. The aim of my paper is to contextualize George Berkeley's position on the problem of divine attributes as developed in § 21 of the IV. Dialogue in Alciphron.More specifically and contrary to what most scholars hold, I argue Berkeley fails to follow Cardinal Cajetan with remarkable closeness. Despite paraphrasing parts of Cajetan's De Nominum Analogia in § 21, the solution Berkeley advances is closer to the position of John Duns Scotus – and hence, ironically, with the position Cajetan aimed to reject. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to reconstruct Anthony Collins’ challenge to the authority of orthodox Anglican figures, which arises due to arguments Collins develops in his Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710) and Discourse on Free-Thinking (1713). In addition to shedding light on a hitherto underappreciated argument by Collins, my reconstruction allows me to propose a solution to the interpretive problem posed by §§16–22 of the fourth dialogue of Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732). While it has been acknowledged that Collins (...) looms large in the background of these sections, Berkeley’s argumentative strategy has remained perplexing to commentators, particularly his references to several Scholastic thinkers. I argue that we can make sense of Berkeley’s strategy and references if we appreciate that these sections are intended to evade Collins’ challenge. (shrink)

I love information upon all subjects that come in my way, and especially upon those that are most important. Thus boldly declares Euphranor, one of the defenders of Christian faith in Berkley’s Alciphron (Berkeley, (1732), Dialogue 1, Section 5, Paragraph 6/10). Evidently, information has been an object of philosophical desire for some time, well before the computer revolution, Internet or the dotcompandemonium (see for example Dunn (2001) and Adams (2003)). Yet what does Euphranor love, exactly? What is information? The (...) question has received many answers in different fields. Unsurprisingly, several surveys do not even converge on a single, unified definition of information (see for example Braman 1989, Losee (1997), Machlup and Mansfield (1983), Debons and Cameron (1975), Larson and Debons (1983)). (shrink)

Margaret Atherton asks the provocative question whether Berkeley has a theory of meaning. Commentators have defended the notion that Berkeley adopts a Lockean ‘ideational’ theory of meaning, whereby a word is meaningful if and only if it signifies an idea in the mind of the speaker, and various ‘non-ideational’ readings of his theories of meaning, including precursors to the ‘use’ theory of meaning made famous by Wittgenstein. Against this trend in recent scholarship, Atherton argues that attention to the context in (...) which Berkeley was writing, along with close textual analysis of the places where Berkeley is said to develop his theory of meaning (especially the draft introduction to the Principles and Alciphron) reveal that, strictly speaking, it is not right to attribute a ‘theory’ of meaning to him at all. (shrink)

Recent political events suggest that there is more political, religious, and moral division than many had previously realized. Since people on all sides think they’re in the right, mitigating division is in everyone’s interest. But overcoming division requires changing minds, and changing minds requires advocacy. These considerations raise important questions in the epistemology of advocacy. In particular, who are the best advocates? After making some general remarks about the epistemology of advocacy, I explore the thought, found in Berkeley’s dialogue (...) class='Hi'>Alciphron, that an important variable to consider when assessing advocates is whether they are converts. I argue that this is indeed an important variable to consider, as certain kinds of converts can avoid some attempts to dismiss advocates. However, non-converts score better than converts in other respects. I conclude by suggesting that empirical work must be done to assess the role conversion plays in assessing advocates. (shrink)

Berkeley’s two most obvious targets in Alciphron are Shaftesbury and Mandeville. However, as numerous commentators have pointed out, there is good reason to think Berkeley additionally targets Anthony Collins in this dialogue. In this paper, I bolster David Berman’s claim that “Collins looms large in the background” of Dialogue VII, and put some meat on the bones of Raymond Martin and John Barresi’s passing suggestion that there is a connection between the Clarke-Collins Correspondence, Alciphron, and the objection that (...) Berkeley raises regarding persons and their persistence conditions therein. Specifically, I argue that we have evidence that Berkeley’s objection to consciousness-based views of personal identity, as found in VII.8, is a response to a challenge that Collins raises to Clarke in “An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defense of his Letter to Mr. Dodwell.” This is significant not just because this objection is usually—and consistently—taken to be an objection to Locke, but also because Berkeley’s objection works against Collins’s theory of personal identity in a way that it doesn’t against Locke’s. (shrink)

In this paper, our purpose is to show what George Berkeley really said about ethics and the background conditions of religious life. The point is that true happiness is only possible in a religious sense; it means happiness in afterlife. The major threat to this is freethinking, or what we see as emerging enlightened modernism. His rather quixotic fix against freethinking shows the man as he is behind all the conventional panegyrics. He is a real Anglican soldier who anticipated but (...) never admitted a critical defeat in the most important of all battles. Interest in George Berkeley’s life’s work has been exceptionally selective. Yet his revolutionary immaterialism is only an early episode in his struggles towards a better society and religious life for all the people, regardless of their denomination. From this point of view, Alciphron is central. But he also develops his ethical ideas in his various minor writings, which have been largely overlooked. (shrink)

George Berkeley’s (1685–1753) condemnation of freethinking arose from the social, political, and, above all, moral repercussions that he believed this heterogeneous group was bringing about in British society. In the first part of this paper, I set out the challenges posed by the freethinking movement, drawing extensively on Berkeley’s Alciphron. In the second part, I address both the reasons behind his aversion to freethinking and his response, which involved advocating for the union of Church and state and while rejecting (...) secular governance. This analysis relies primarily on lesser-known works from Berkeley’s socio-political writings. The paper argues that Berkeley’s opposition to freethinkers was driven by his concern for the public good and his belief that the Christian religion, particularly in its Anglican tradition, was the most effective means to achieve it. (shrink)

To understand Berkeley´s philosophy it is important to know his conception of God, and for that it is necessary to study, among other works, the dialogue Alciphron. This dialogue stands out both its apologetic character and, especially, for developing novel arguments in defense of God, just outlined in previous works. In this paper I analyze which I consider are the three main arguments or apologetic resources in Alciphron, namely, the visual language, the use of analogy and the role (...) of Christian religion. // Para entender la filosofía de Berkeley es imprescindible conocer su concepción de Dios, y para ello es necesario estudiar, entre otras obras, el diálogo Alcifrón. Éste destaca tanto por su carácter apologético como, sobre todo, por desarrollar novedosos argumentos en defensa de Dios apenas esbozados en obras anteriores. En este artículo analizo los que considero que son los tres principales argumentos o recursos apologéticos del Alcifrón, a saber, el lenguaje visual, el uso de la analogía y la función de la religión cristiana. (shrink)

Na presente investigação, contrapondo o Sócrates de Platão com a figura de Sócrates que emerge a partir dos textos e da doxografia referente aos socráticos, apresento duas hipóteses sobre quem foi a mestra erótica de Sócrates. De um lado, a hipótese doxográfica geral dos socráticos que apontam Aspásia como sua mestra erótica, uma vez que Ésquines e Xenofonte, discípulos de Sócrates, bem como outros filósofos e doxógrafos posteriores à época clássica (Alciphron, Ateneu, Cícero, Filóstrato, Luciano, Máximo de Tiro, Plutarco, (...) Sinésio, Victorino), retratam Aspásia como a mestra de Sócrates nas artes eróticas. De outro lado, a inovação platônica que apresenta Diotima como a verdadeira guia erótica de Sócrates. Busco demonstrar a importância da sacerdotisa de Mantineia no Banquete, já que Diotima está associada diretamente a novidade platônica do éros filosófico. Na sequência, indico os possíveis motivos desse deslocamento (substituir Aspásia por Diotima como figura central do éros filosófico e guia erótica de Sócrates) realizado por Platão, com enfoque em como estes motivos vinculam-se a aspectos essenciais das novidades eróticas propostas por Platão. Por fim, questiono se esta estratégia platônica, que limita a sabedoria de Aspásia a só um dos assuntos pelos quais era conhecida (retórica), não seria mais uma das camuflagens que a filosofia fez com as heranças sofísticas, em especial, das feitiçarias retórico-eróticas aspasianas que influenciaram profundamente o socratismo. (shrink)