Overview

George Berkeley was considered ""the most engaging and useful man in Ireland in the eighteenth century"". This hyperbolic statement refers both to Berkeley’s life and thought; in fact, he always considered himself a pioneer called to think and do new things. He was an empiricist well versed in the sciences, an amateur of the mechanical arts, as well as a metaphysician; he was the author of many completely different discoveries, as well as a very active Christian, a zealous bishop and the apostle of the Bermuda project. The essays collected in this volume, written by some leading scholars, aim to reconstruct the complexity of Berkeley’s figure, without selecting ""major"" works, nor searching for ""coherence"" at any cost. They will focus on different aspects of Berkeley’s thought, showing their intersections; they will explore the important contributions he gave to various scientific disciplines, as well as to the eighteenth-century philosophical and theological debate. They will highlight the wide influence that his presently most neglected or puzzling books had at the time; they will refuse any anachronistical trial of Berkeley’s thought, judged from a contemporary point of view.

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From the reviews: Parigi's anthology brings together thirteen heretofore-unpublished essays on some of the lesser-known aspects of Berkeley's thought. ... Parigi's own piece aims to shed light on the underlying theory of science she sees operating in Siris. ... Parigi deserves credit for compiling a respectable anthology and in guiding the expansion of the essays from standard conference paper fare to the (mostly) well-written pieces they are. It is a solid addition to the growing library of work on Berkeley specifically and the early Modern period more generally. (S. Seth Bordner, Philosophy in Review, Vol. XXXII (4), 2012)

Author Information

Silvia Parigi, Ph. D. in Philosophy and History of Science, is Professor in charge of History of Science at the University of Cassino. She is the author of Il Mondo visibile. George Berkeley e la ""perspectiva"" (1995), editor/translator of a wide Italian collection of Berkeley’s works, (1996) and co-editor of Studi sull’entusiasmo (2001). Her articles include studies on the history of theories of vision and perception from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, Giacomo Leopardi’s epistemology, ancient and modern views on oculus fascinans. Currently working on the modern history of the concepts of spirit and effluvium, she is also in the editorial board of Berkeley Studies.

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