ABSTRACT

The road to solipsism, at least as it was created in Great Britain, began with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), took a sharp turn at the hands of George Berkeley, and, guided by David Hume, moved relentlessly toward its lonely end. Locke offered a theoretical picture of the natural world which fitted together nicely with current views in chemistry and physics and which, in large-scale features, is plausible even today. Berkeley attacked Locke's picture as rationally ill-founded and conceptually incoherent, basing his idealist alternative on subtle critical observations. Hume criticized Berkeley almost as effectively as Berkeley criticized Locke, making a powerful case for a "mitigated" skepticism that was nevertheless solipsistic. I shall discuss the contributions of Locke and Berkeley in this chapter, the revolutionary arguments of Hume in the chapter that follows.