George Berkeley. To be is to be perceived
George Berkeley was born in Ireland in 1685. He came from a family of English immigrants. In 1700, he entered Trinity College in Dublin, where he was influenced by the ideas of John Locke and hated scholasticism. In 1707, he began teaching at the same college. 1707 can also be considered the beginning of his philosophical activity. Berkeley makes numerous (about 900 fragments) rough sketches, later published under the title “Philosophical Notes”. In these sketches, Berkeley, in particular, develops the theory of existence, set out in “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge” – Berkeley’s most famous work (1710). A year before the “Treatise”, he published another influential work – “An Essay on a New Theory of Vision”. In this work, Berkeley puts forward a thesis that is paradoxical at first glance – a creature deprived of touch could not judge the real properties of space. According to Berkeley, touch is the teacher of vision.