ABSTRACT
George Berkeley’s social thought has been overlooked. This paper is an investigation of Berkeley’s social thought, particularly as it is grounded upon Berkeley’s quite explicit, but neglected, social theory, which is revealed in an essay written by Berkeley in 1713 for Steele’s short-lived Guardian. The major purpose of the paper has been to show that Berkeley had a social theory, that this social theory arose within a definable social and intellectual context, and that it provided the basis for theoretical and practical elaboration in a number of later writings and projects in Berkeley's life. Specifically, it has suggested that there is unity among what are usually considered Berkeley’s “minor” and “occasional” pieces, and it has implied that Berkeley was much more consistently concerned with social theory than has generally been acknowledged. Since Berkeley thinks of man’s sociability as analogous to Newton’s “mutual attraction” or gravity, it is interesting to note that Newton originally thought of gravity or attraction as “sociability.”.
