New Studies in Berkeley's Philosophy (review)

178 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY books from the Masham moiety of the library of John Locke" (p. 61), the ones he speculated earlier (p. vi) might turn up presumably being ones not included in the Masham collection. Our good fortune is limited to having the records of what must have been most of Locke's books. The Library o] John Locke, handsomely produced by the Oxford University Press, is a careful, detailed listing and account of what is known of Locke's library and his book habits. It is a welcome addition to the growing library of books on Locke. JoH~ W. YOLTO~ York University, Toronto New Studies in Berkeley's Philosophy. Edited by Warren Steinkraus. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1966. Pp. v ~ 172 + Bibliography 180.) There are thirteen essays in this contribution to Berkeleian scholarship, all of which are informative even though they are not of equal merit. Although there is no stated underlying theme which is the unifying principle of this particular collection, there are two obvious characteristics shared by these essays: they are, generally speaking, sympathetic to Berkeley and tend to emphasize the theistic aspects of his philosophy. The authors who have contributed to this series of essays appear to have been selected in order to show the international character of the interest in Berkeley's philosophical investigations. With the exception of D. M. Datta's article "The Objective Idealism of Berkeley" (which previously appeared in expanded form in The Monist, XLIII), all of the articles on Berkeley's thought are presented for the first time in this book. Since it would not be possible to do justice to each of the essays, I will focus attention upon a few representative ones. In the first essay, A. A. Luce's "Berkeley's New Principle Completed," there is a discussion of Berkeley's extension of the "principle" esse est percipi in order to include the ostensible "act" of perception (esse est percipere), the possible object of perception (esse est posse percipi), and the possible "act" of perception (esse ese posse percipere). This essay seems to be a paraphrase of a section in Luce's The Dialectic o] Immaeerialism which was published in 1964. Relying primarily on the notebooks of Berkeley's youth, the Philosophical Commentaries, Luce argues once more in favor of a thesis which he appears to have held for some time: that Berkeley is a species of common-sense realist whose philosophical views do not conflict with the common-sense beliefs of unphilosophical men. Berkeley saw that the rather narrow principle esse est percipi had to be expanded in order to include the act of perception (even though Berkeley rarely, if ever, refers to perception as active). "Esse is percipi is incomplete. To cover active existence Berkeley himself made the necessary addition to it: esse est percipere (or velle or agere)" (p. 6). Although Luce quotes with approval this relationship between perception and volition (or action), Berkeley's later writings indicate that he came to believe that "to exist" meant "to will, to act." It is quite possible to say that Berkeley's analysis of perception involves him in serious difficulties precisely because he did not clearly show that perception is, in any sense, an activity (in the Sir/s, he explicitly refers to perception as a pass/on, that which is suffered or endured). At any rate, Luce's essay is clear and straightforward; but it is not particularly illuminating to those who are already familiar with his earlier writings on Berkeley. In the second and eighth essays (Inn T. Ramsey's "Berkeley and the Possibility of an Empirical Metaphysics" and T. E. Jessop's "Berkeley as Religious Apologist") there are specific discussions of what Ramsey calls Berkeley's empirical theism. Ramsey argues that the concept of notion plays a significant role in Berkeley's theism. Finite individuals have a notion of themselves as active, a knowledge derived from "reflexion" or a certain internal consciousness (conscientia quadam interna). Just as we have a notion of our self or spirit, so, too, do we have a notion of God whose activity is disclosed or revealed in the multiplicity of "ideas" (sense data) which constitute the...