ABSTRACT
George Berkeley never had much patience with atheism, and we shall see that while throughout his life his interests ranged very widely, the one predominant concern was his opposition to those whose writings tended to undermine religious belief. Berkeley had become convinced that an infusion of tar offered the hope of being a panacea, and he devoted himself to perfecting a recipe and subjecting the medicine to trials. Judgements on Berkeley’s character and on his doings have tended to polarize at extremes. Berkeley’s concern for the physical well-being of his fellow-men was matched by his concern for what he conceived of as their moral and spiritual well-being. The chapter argues that the approach from ordinary usage and the psychological approach both fail to prove what Berkeley would like to prove, and that if there is life in the philosophical approach this depends on certain supposedly agreed truths which are in fact highly dubious.
