Introduction

Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher is George Berkeley’s most substantial work in philosophical theology. It was written either largely or entirely in 1729–31, during his stay in Rhode Island, where he was awaiting funds from the English Parliament for his projected college in Bermuda. The college was to educate and train missionaries, becoming, as he expressed it in his Proposal (1724), a ‘Fountain…of Learning and Religion’ that would purify the ‘ill-manners and irreligion’ of the American colonies. ¹ For this purpose Berkeley had bought a farm near Newport, which was to be the college’s mainland base. Some of the scenes in Alciphron are probably drawn from local scenery. Thus Dialogue II takes place near a beach, overlooking the ocean, in ‘a hollow glade, between two rocks’—which is supposed to be the so-called ‘Hanging Rocks’, near Newport, where Berkeley is said to have composed much of Alciphron. ² By the middle of 1731, however, Berkeley received definite word from England that the £20,000 granted by Parliament was not to be paid. Accepting the failure of his missionary project—the central cause of his career—Berkeley returned disappointed to London in late 1731. In February 1732 Alciphron was published, its first section alluding to the ‘miscarriage’ of his project: ‘the affair which brought me into this remote corner of the country…[with] a great loss of time, pains, and expense.’ ³