“A Notion of the True System of the World”: Berkeley and his Use of Plato in Siris
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Peter D. Larsen
Abstract
This paper considers Berkeley’s use of Plato in Siris. Berkeley’s engagement with ancient thinkers in Siris has been a source of puzzlement for many readers. In this paper I focus on Siris § 266. In particular, I consider why Berkeley says of the Platonists that they “distinguished the primary qualities in bodies from the secondary” and why, given his own well-known misgivings about the distinction, he characterizes this as part of a “notion of the true system of the world.” I argue that in Siris Berkeley accepts a distinctive form of corpuscularianism, and that he thinks a distinction between primary and secondary qualities follows from this. I further argue that in § 266, and elsewhere in Siris, Berkeley engages in a careful reading of Plato’s Timaeus, which he uses to bolster his defense of the compatibility between corpuscularianism and his immaterialist idealism.
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- Der kosmologische Gottesbeweis des Ralph von Battle. Rekonstruktion, Kritik und Einordnung
- “A Notion of the True System of the World”: Berkeley and his Use of Plato in Siris
- Leibniz on the Grounds of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Book Reviews
- Reydams-Schils, Gretchen, Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus – Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception and Christian Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, ix + 243 pp.
- Specht, Rainer (ed.), Christian Wolff: Disquisitio philosophica de loquela. Philosophische Untersuchung über die Sprache. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und Kommentar. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2019. xliii + 388 pp. (Philosophische Bibliothek 727).
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle
- Aristotle on How Pleasure Perfects Activity (Nicomachean Ethics x.5 1175a29-b14): The Optimising-View
- Ethics as Medicine: Moral Therapy, Expertise, and Practical Reasoning in al-Ghazālī’s Ethics
- Der kosmologische Gottesbeweis des Ralph von Battle. Rekonstruktion, Kritik und Einordnung
- “A Notion of the True System of the World”: Berkeley and his Use of Plato in Siris
- Leibniz on the Grounds of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
- Book Reviews
- Reydams-Schils, Gretchen, Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus – Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception and Christian Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2020, ix + 243 pp.
- Specht, Rainer (ed.), Christian Wolff: Disquisitio philosophica de loquela. Philosophische Untersuchung über die Sprache. Lateinisch-Deutsch. Übersetzung und Kommentar. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2019. xliii + 388 pp. (Philosophische Bibliothek 727).
