Early modern · 1685–1753
Who influenced George Berkeley?
Influences and legacy
Pushed empiricism to its idealist edge: to be is to be perceived.
George Berkeley was influenced by John Locke, and went on to influence Thomas Reid and David Hume. That is 3 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: John Smibert, Public domain See the whole map
Who was George Berkeley?
George Berkeley, Anglican Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, founded immaterialism, later called subjective idealism: there is no material substance, and things like tables and chairs are ideas in a mind, so they cannot exist unperceived. Schopenhauer called him the father of idealism, and Kant and Hume read him closely.
His Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) argued that the proper objects of sight are light and colour, not material things. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) was poorly received, so he recast it as Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). He also attacked Newton's absolute space and time in De Motu and the foundations of calculus in The Analyst.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced George Berkeley?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- John Locke 1632–1704
Who did George Berkeley influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on George Berkeley.
- Thomas Reid 1710–1796
- David Hume 1711–1776
The line of teachers behind George Berkeley
The longest documented line of influence ending at George Berkeley runs 16 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from George Berkeley
Indirect influences
- Through John Locke: René Descartes
The second generation
- Through David Hume: Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham
Contemporaries of George Berkeley
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of George Berkeley, with no direct line between them.
- Montesquieu 1689–1755
- Christian Wolff 1679–1754
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Giambattista Vico 1668–1744
- Émilie du Châtelet 1706–1749
George Berkeley by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 2
- Thinkers upstream
- 57
- Thinkers downstream
- 109
- Wikipedia languages
- 87 — #19 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Schools and lineages
- Empiricists: John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume
Questions about George Berkeley
- Who influenced George Berkeley?
- John Locke.
- Who did George Berkeley influence?
- Thomas Reid and David Hume.
- When did George Berkeley live?
- 1685–1753. The map files George Berkeley under the early modern period.
- How rare is the George Berkeley card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on George Berkeley in 87 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- René Descartes 1596–1650
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- John Locke 1632–1704