In George Berkeley: A Philosophical Life, Tom Jones provides a comprehensive account of the life and work of the preeminent Irish philosopher of the Enlightenment. From his early brilliance as a student and fellow at Trinity College Dublin to his later years as Bishop of Cloyne, Berkeley brought his searching and powerful intellect to bear on the full range of eighteenth-century thought and experience.
Jones brings vividly to life the complexities and contradictions of Berkeley’s life and ideas. He advanced a radical immaterialism, holding that the only reality was minds, their thoughts, and their perceptions, without any physical substance underlying them. But he put forward this counterintuitive philosophy in support of the existence and ultimate sovereignty of God. Berkeley was an energetic social reformer, deeply interested in educational and economic improvement, including for the indigenous peoples of North America, yet he believed strongly in obedience to hierarchy and defended slavery. And although he spent much of his life in Ireland, he followed his time at Trinity with years of travel that took him to London, Italy, and New England, where he spent two years trying to establish a university for Bermuda, before returning to Ireland to take up an Anglican bishopric in a predominantly Catholic country.
Jones draws on the full range of Berkeley’s writings, from philosophical treatises to personal letters and journals, to probe the deep connections between his life and work. The result is a richly detailed and rounded portrait of a major Enlightenment thinker and the world in which he lived.
Awards and Recognition
- A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
"What Jones has revealed is the fascinating combination of chaos and coherence laced through Berkeley’s life."—Alex Dean, Prospect Magazine
"[Tom] Jones…presents Berkeley’s life through his voluminous writings, the views of his friends and family, and the opinions of those who encountered him and his writings. The result is a big book, packed with quotations from Berkeley’s works, excerpts from letters, records of journeys and activities , and details about Berkeley’s social an personal life and the people in it. Reading it requires stamina, but the rewards is a better acquaintance with a man who, as the subtitle of the book indicates, lived a life under the influence of his philosophy."—Janna Thompson, Australian Book Review
"Tom Jones has written a superb biography about the mind of a reactionary, a powerful thinker whose curiosity about the world was shaped by his religious and political conservatism."—Sean Sheehan, Prisma
"There is so much to like about Tom Jones’s George Berkeley: A Philosophical Life. This new biography is an impressive effort to unearth the whole man: Jones leaves no page unturned, no sermon unsummarized, no piece of Berkelean writing, however obscure, unrevisited. . . . this monumental work will likely remain the book on Berkeley for some time."—Costica Bradatan, Times Literary Supplement
"Magisterial."—David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
"Jones’ book is a product of titanic labor and meets the highest standards of intellectual biography. Jones suggests new interpretations of some of Berkeley’s thoughts and notes, finds new biographical materials, and offers a comprehensive approach to the whole body of Berkeley’s thought."—Artem Besedin, Berkeley Studies
"Jones’s biography could not have arrived at a better time, just as public debates on the active participation of Irish people in empire and the slave trade proliferate and intensify. . . . It is easy to “de-commemorate” a thinker . . . it is much more difficult to critically engage with their thought and to gauge their influence, all while remaining conscious of their shortcomings. In this, as in much else, Jones provides a model."—Adam Coleman, Dublin Review of Books
"Scholars in early modern philosophy and intellectual history, and of course Berkeley scholars, will welcome the book."—Takaharu Oda, Eighteenth Century Ireland
“George Berkeley has found a worthy, dispassionate, and acute biographer in Tom Jones. His book—mature and judicious in tone, precisely and economically expressed—is bound to prove bracingly controversial as well as illuminating. As a biographer, Jones has few equals, but as a writer of philosophical biography he sets new standards.”—Brian Young, University of Oxford
“Tom Jones’s excellent book makes a major contribution to our understanding of George Berkeley and eighteenth-century intellectual life. Jones’s recognition of the ways in which Berkeley’s thought is simultaneously revolutionary and conservative is astute and compelling.”—Kenneth L. Pearce, Trinity College Dublin
