A Critical Review on the Book

Hesamifar, Abdurrazzaq

doi:10.30465/crtls.2022.34929.2136

A Critical Review on the Book "Berkeley: An Introduction"

Document Type : Research

Author

Abdurrazzaq Hesamifar

Professor of Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Imam Khomeini International University, Qazvin, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30465/crtls.2022.34929.2136

Abstract

George Berkeley, an empiricist philosopher of the 18^th century, regards corporeal things as perceptions or ideas (subjective idealism) from one side, and from another side, he denies the existence of material things, and he confirms only the presence of the soul (objective idealism). In "Berkeley: An Introduction", Jonathan Dancy, has tried to give an outlook of Berkeley's philosophy, which pursues the analytic philosophers' procedure, contains an analysis of the main constituents of his thought by having a critical view, and shows its prominent and weak points. The significant innovation of this book is in introducing Berkeley's view on scientific explanation as a scientific and, at the same time teleological explanation. He says that he has gotten to this point by reconstructing Berkeley's thoughts rather than just studying these books. This paper aims to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of some authors' criticisms against Berkeley's thought and to show some defects of his analysis. In addition, the Persian translation of the book will be assessed and criticized.

Keywords

Empiricism

Instrumentalism

Soul

Idealism

Idea

Realism

Berkeley

Subjects

Philosophy

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