About this audiobook
George Berkeley’s A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, first published in 1710, is a seminal work in early modern philosophy that develops his theory of immaterialism, later also called subjective idealism. Written during a period of intense debate about the nature of reality and knowledge following the Scientific Revolution, Berkeley’s work challenges prevailing notions of matter advanced by thinkers like John Locke and Descartes. He argued that the existence of things depends on their being perceived, encapsulated in his famous dictum, “esse est percipi” (“to be is to be perceived”). This radical stance positioned him in opposition to materialist philosophy and sought to counter what he saw as skepticism and atheism emerging from mechanistic views of the world.
Berkeley (1685–1753) was an Irish philosopher, clergyman, and later Bishop of Cloyne, whose intellectual pursuits blended metaphysics with deep religious conviction. His ideas in Principles influenced later philosophers such as David Hume and, indirectly, Immanuel Kant, as well as strands of empiricism and idealist thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. While initially met with resistance, his immaterialism attracted renewed interest among modern philosophers exploring perception, language, and the philosophy of mind. The work’s enduring legacy lies in its challenge to common-sense assumptions about the material world and its role in shaping discussions on the limits of human knowledge, perception, and the relationship between mind, reality, and God.
