A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

Introduction

Berkeley published the book in Dublin in 1710, at the age of 25, as “Part I”; a second part was never published, and he said he lost its manuscript in Italy. A long introduction attacks the doctrine of abstract ideas, using Locke’s example of a general idea of a triangle. The main text, in 156 numbered sections, argues that the objects of perception are ideas, that ideas exist only in minds, and that the order of nature is the language in which God speaks to us. Because the book was little understood, Berkeley restated its theses more accessibly in the “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous” (1713).

Connections

Criticizes

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding1689 · John Locke

Taken up in

• A Treatise of Human Nature1739 · David Hume

Criticized in

• An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense1764 · Thomas Reid
• Essays on the Perception of an External Universe1827 · Mary Shepherd
• The Refutation of Idealism1903 · G. E. Moore