George Berkeley

George Berkeley was born in southern Ireland in 1685. After studying at Trinity College, he became a teacher of theology in 1707. As a philosopher, he is regarded as a major representative of empiricism and the English Enlightenment. In his principal work, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision? No. 1710, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, he argued that an external world independent of perception could not exist; this position is associated with the maxim “To be is to be perceived.” He developed the argument further in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). In 1728, Berkeley travelled to Rhode Island to establish a college in Bermuda, but the promised state funding did not materialize. He became Bishop of Cloyne in 1734 and died in Oxford in 1753.