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16 May 202022 August 2023

Note | Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism

George Berkeley’s epistemology is monism of perception, immaterialism or subjective idealism. Berkeley criticized John Locke’s premise of objective existence of external things.

Human mind is a free and active thing can produce and erase ideas. But vivid ideas come to mind directly, a man can’t produce or erase them at will like imagination. Direct ideas should come from the other side. Berkeley thought that these direct ideas are produced by the God as the most free and active spirit than human spirits. First of all, ideas are created and sent by the God.

Berkeley thought, to investigate ideas in detail, we can certify the existence of the God.

But to think the cause of ideas is the external existence of the God must be an insufficient theory of epistemology equal to John Locke.

References

Jean-François Revel, Histoire de la philosophie occidentale (Nil Éditions, 1994)

Luc Ferry & Claude Capelier, La plus belle histoire de la philosophie (Éditions Points, 2014)

Roger-Pol Droit, Une brève histoire de la philosophie (Flammarion, 2008)

Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy (Simon & Schuster, 1972)

Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy (Yale University Press, 2011)

Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy (Routledge, 2002)

Gen Kida, History of Anti-Philosophy (Kodansha Academic Library, 2000)

Seiji Takeda & Ken Nishi, The First Histoty of Philosophy: To Think Profoundly (Yuhikaku, 1998)

Shigeto Nuki, Illustrated & Standard History of Philosophy (Shinshokan, 2008)

Shigeto Nuki, Philosophy Map (Chikuma New Books, 2004)

Sumihiko Kumano, The History of Western Philosophy: From The Modern Ages to The Present Day (Iwanami New Books, 2006)

Thierry Paquot & François Pépin, Dictionnaire Larousse de la Philosophie (Éditions Larousse, 2011)

Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition Revised), (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Thomas Mautner, The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Penguin Books, 2005)

Timeline of Entire History of Philosophy

Homer (Late 8th or early 7th century BC)

Hesiod (between 750 – 650 BC) Theogony

Thales of Miletus (626/623 – 548/545 BC, Ionian/Milesian School, Naturalism)

Anaximander (610 – 546 BC, Ionian/Milesian School, Naturalism)

Pythagoras (570 – 495 BC, Italian/Pythagorean)

Xenophanes (570 – 475 BC, Italian)

Heraclitus (535 – 475 BC, Ionian/Ephesian)

Parmenides (515 – 450? BC, Italian/Eleatic)

Zeno of Elea (495 – 430 BC, Italian/Eleatic)

Empedocles (494 – 434 BC, Pluralist)

Anaxagoras (510 – 428 BC, Pluralist, Natural Philosophy)

Protagoras (490 – 420 BC, Sophist)

Democritus (460 – 370 BC, Atomism, Materialism)

Socrates (470 – 399 BC)

399 BC – Socrates was executed by drinking hemlock. His pupil Plato watched it.

387 BC – Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) founded the Academy.

335 BC – Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) founded Lyceum.

Pyrrho (360 – 270 BC, Pyrrhonism, Skepticism)

Epicurus (341 – 270 BC, Epicureanism)

Zeno of Citium (334 – 262 BC, founder of the Greek Stoic school)

Cicero (106 – 43 BC, Academic Skepticism, Roman Stoicism)

Lucretius (99 – 55 BC, Epicureanism, Atomism, Materialism)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC – AD 65, Roman Stoicism)

Epictetus (50 – 135, Roman Stoicism)

Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180, Roman Stoicism)

Plotinus (205 – 280, Neoplatonism) The Enneads

400 – Confessions by Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430, Augustinianism, Neoplatonism)

413 – 427 – City of God by Augustine

523 – The Consolation of Philosophy by Flavius Boethius (480? – 524, Neoplatonism)

1265 – 1273 – Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas (1224 – 1274, Scholasticism)

1513 – The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (Renaissance philosophy, Classical realism, Republicanism)

1517 – Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther (1483 – 1546)

1520 – On the Freedom of a Christian by Luther

1580 – Essais by Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592, Renaissance humanism, Renaissance skepticism)

1618 – Novum Organum by Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626, Renaissance philosophy, Empiricism)

1637 – Discourse on the Method by René Descartes (1596 – 1650, Continental rationalism)

1641 – Meditation on the First Philosophy by Descartes

1651 – Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679, Social contract, Classic realism, Empiricism)

1670 – Pansées by Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662, Jansenism, Christian humanism)

1677 – Ethics by Baruch Spinoza (1632 -1677, Continental rationalism, Monism)

1689 – A Letter Concerning Toleration, Two Treatises of Government by John Locke (1632 – 1704, Empiricism, Social contract, Liberalism)

1690 – An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by Locke

1709 – An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision by George Berkeley (1685 – 1753, Empiricism, Subjective idealism)

1710 – A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by Berkeley

1714 – Monadology by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716, Continental rationalism, Relationalism)

1748 – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume (1711 – 1776, Empiricism, Skepticism)

1750 – Discourse on the Arts and Sciences by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778, Enlightenment, Social contract, Romanticism)

1754 – Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men by Rousseau

1755 – Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804, German idealism, Transcendental idealism) began lecturing at the University of Königsberg.

1762 – The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right by Rousseau

1763 – Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire (1694 – 1778, Lumières, Philosophes, Deism)

1770 – Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) became a professor of the University of Königsberg.

1780 – An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation by Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832, Utilitarianism)

1781 – Critique of Pure Reason (1st edition) by Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804)

1788 – Critique of Practical Reason by Kant

1790 – Critique of Judgment by Kant

1794/1795 – Foundations of the Science of Knowledge by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814, German idealism)

1800 – System of Transcendental Idealism by Friedrich Schelling (1775 – 1854, German idealism, Natural philosophy)

1807 – The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Hegel (1770 – 1831, German idealism, Absolute idealism)

1809 – Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom by Schelling (Identity philosophy)

1817 – Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences by Hegel (German idealism, Absolute idealism)

1830 – 1842 Course of Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857, Positivism)

1831 – Hegel died.

1841 – Schelling returned to the lecture on the Berlin University. (Jena Romanticism, Positive philosophy)

1844 – The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860, Metaphysical voluntarism, Philosophical pessimism)

1848 – Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx (1813 – 1883) & Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895)

1849 – The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855, Christian existentialism)

1859 – On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882, Science of evolution)

1862 – First Principles by Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903, Positivism, Evolutionism, Social Darwinism)

1867 – Capital. Volume I by Karl Marx (Historical materialism, Marxism)

1872 – The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900, Philosophy of life, Anti-nihilism, Perspectivism)

1884 – The Foundations of Arithmetic by Gottlob Frege (1848 – 1925, Analytic philosophy, Philosophy of mathematics, Mathematical logic)

1885 – Capital. Volume II by Karl Marx

1886 – Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche

1900 – The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel (1858 – 1918, Philosophy of life, Neo-Kantianism)

1911 – An Inquiry into the Good by Kitaro Nishida (1870 – 1945, Kyoto School, Meontology)

1913 – Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology by Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938, Phenomenology)

1916 – Husserl transferred to the University of Freiburg. Heidegger met Husserl and during 1920 and 1923, Heidegger was served as an assistant of Husserl.

1921 – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951, Philosophy of language, Correspondence theory of truth, Logical positivism)

1927 – Being and Time by Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976, Existentialism, Existential phenomenology)

1928 – Heidegger became a Professor of the University of Freiburg, successor to Husserl.

1929 – Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947, Process philosophy, Process theology)

1933 – Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg in April 1933, but he resigned in April 1934.

1935 – The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper (1902 – 1994, Analytic philosophy, Critical rationalism)

1936 – The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology by Husserl

1942 – The Structure of Behavior by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961, Phenomenology, Embodied phenomenology)

1944 – Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) & Max Horkheimer (1895 – 1973) (Frankfurt School, Critical theory)

1945 – The Open Society and Its Enemies by Popper

Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty

1947 – Introduction to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojève (1902 – 1968, Neo-Hegelianism, Existential phenomenology)

1949 – The Need for Roots by Simone Weil (1909 – 1943, Christian socialism, Modern Platonism)

1953 – Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein (Philosophy of language, Ordinary language philosophy)

Introduction to Metaphysics by Heidegger

1954 – The Question Concerning Technology by Heidegger

1958 – The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975, Political philosophy)

1959 – Discourse On Thinking by Heidegger

1960 – Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 – 2002, Hermeneutics, Hermeneutic phenomenology)

1961 – Totality and Infinity by Emmanuel Levinas (1906 – 1995, Phenomenology, Jewish philosophy)

1962 – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere by Jürgen Habermas (1929 – , Frankfurt School)

1965 – For Marx by Louis Althusser (1918 – 1990, Structural Marxism)

1966 – The Order of Things by Michel Foucault (1926- 1984, Structuralism)

1967 – Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena by Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004, Post-structuralism, Deconstruction)

1972 – Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) & Félix Guattari (1930 – 1992) (Post-structuralism, Postmodernism)

1980 – A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze & Guattari

1981 – The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas

Note | Locke’s Empiricist Epistemology

Criticism of Notion of Innate Ideas

John Locke’s question about epistemology or metaphysics was what is our origin of knowledge of nature and moral. Also what things we can be certain they are knowledge.

Locke denied the rationalist notion of innate ideas. The reason of the notion of innate ideas is all men already have ideas by nature. But Locke thought children don’t know complex ideas like law of contradiction or law of excluded middle. Even ideas of justice or the God should be known or made by knowledge or thinking. All of ideas must be made by men through a path. Locke named the path experience .

Locke’s Epistemology

Sensations such as white, sweet and rough we feel by the five senses, Locke called impression . The stuff, temporary impression is fixed, Locke called idea .

Human mind at birth is a tabula rasa (blank slate). Sense and reflection as workings of mind describe ideas on tabula rasa. Sense produces ideas about external things such as white, black, hot or cool. Reflection produces ideas about function of mind such as thinking, perception or will.

Ideas given by sense and reflection, are named simple ideas . The mind makes a complex idea by some simple ideas.

Locke confirmed intuitive knowledge and demonstrative knowledge based on mutual comparison among ideas are certain, and established the basis of empirical science.

Substance and Primary Quality / Secondary Quality

Locke limited certain knowledge is made by ideas on the range of perception.

Although Locke insisted substances and the God are exist in the outside of mind. Primary quantities are objective qualities such as solid body, extension or motion. Secondary qualities are qualities of which primary qualities affect a mind and associated by/in mind.

Locke’s notion of substances and qualities may be a remain of Descartes’ dualism or his desire for the truth (correspondence between subject and object).