David Bartha
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GOD, WORLD AND ARCHETYPES: A VOLUNTARIST INTERPRETATION OF BERKELEY’S PHILOSOPHY by David Bartha Submitted to Central European University Department of Philosophy In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Supervisor: Michael Griffin CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2019 GOD, WORLD AND ARCHETYPES 1 COPYRIGHT NOTICE I hereby declare that the dissertation contains no materials accepted for any other degrees in any other institutions, and no materials previously written and/or published by another person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical reference, etc. CEU eTD Collection 2 ABSTRACT ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I seek to contribute to our growing understanding of the constructive side of Berkeley’s thought by focusing on those theologically-motivated metaphysical tendencies in his works that point to the significance of the divine will. Through systematically investigating topics like the role God’s will plays in creating and maintaining the world as well as his relationship to nature and its laws, I will try to show that the voluntarist inclinations are not accidental or incidental but form an essential and coherent aspect of his philosophy. I aim to substantiate that God’s absolutely free volitional activity is so fundamental in his thought that voluntarism can be seen as what informs and motivates his quite idiosyncratic views about various crucial issues, such as the divine nature, the physical world, the laws of nature, the role of science or the divine archetypes. Since voluntarism is primarily a view about the divine nature, emphasising the conceptual and metaphysical priority of God's will over his intellect, first—in chapter 2—I turn to Berkeley’s theological views, trying to show that his standpoint on the divine attributes and the proper language we are to use to characterize God is best interpreted as voluntarist. Granted that Berkeley indeed speaks about the divine psychology, especially about the first person of the Trinity, like a theological voluntarist it is still essential to ask whether his theology is reflected in his views on the created world, the laws of nature and how science should be conducted. Accordingly, I will investigate—in chapter 3—Berkeley’s positive views on the physical world, and argue that his philosophy of nature, emphasizing the contingency of the laws of nature, goes further in a characteristically voluntarist vein than is minimally required or trivially implied by his immaterialist metaphysics. The last stage of my interpretation—chapter 4—concerns the highly controversial issue as to the role the divine archetypes fulfil in Berkeley’s system. CEU eTD Collection My chief objective in this part is to show that Berkeley’s take on archetypes, despite all the interpretations suggesting the contrary opinion, not only fits with a voluntarist interpretation of his philosophy, but in fact reveals his deep commitment to anti- intellectualism. GOD, WORLD AND ARCHETYPES 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 I.1. Methodological Issues ............................................................................................. 7 I.2. The Failure of the Current Interpretative Schemes ............................................ 9 I.3. Why Voluntarism? ................................................................................................. 14 I.4. The Definitions of Theological Voluntarism ..................................................... 18 I.5. The Relation of Voluntarism to Empiricism, Rationalism, Occasionalism and Immaterialism ......................................................................................................... 27 I.6. Is Berkeley a Voluntarist? ..................................................................................... 32 Berkeley’s Voluntarist Theology: Divine Nature and Attributes ....................................... 37 II.1. Divine Attributes in the Notebooks ....................................................................... 40 II.2. The Notion of God in his Early Works (Theory of Vision, Principles and Three Dialogues) .................................................................................................................. 51 II.3. Self-knowledge and God in the Three Dialogues, Some Sermons and the Siris.. 62 II.4. The Analogical Knowledge of God in the Alciphron IV. .................................. 69 II.5. Divine Psychology, Malebranche and Voluntarism in the Siris....................... 81 Berkeley’s Voluntarist Conception of Nature .................................................................... 103 III.1. Berkeley’s Criticism of Modern Science and Physical Causation.................. 105 III.2. Continuous Creation ........................................................................................... 113 III.3. The Divine Language Theory ............................................................................ 123 III.4. Laws of Nature and Eternal Truths .................................................................. 133 III.5. The Origin of Order in Nature, the Simplicity Principle and Collier........... 161 The Two-World Theory and the Problem of Archetypes ................................................ 171 IV.1. Intellectualism and the Two-world Theory ...................................................... 173 IV.2. Objectivity, Continuity and Divine ideas ......................................................... 179 IV.3. Berkeley’s Archetypes and His Criticism of Malebranche ............................. 192 IV.4. Archetypes, Imagination and Pain ..................................................................... 203 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 222 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 226 CEU eTD Collection 4 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Hoc volo, sic iubeo: sit pro ratione voluntas Juvenal It is widely held by historians of philosophy that George Berkeley occupies an important place in the canon of early modern thinkers primarily, if not entirely, due to his criticism of Locke’s theory of perception and to his denial of material substance. However, his positive conception of the physical world and its theological underpinning received much less scholarly attention, let alone appreciation.1 Until quite recently, when interpreters were willing to discuss the positive side of his philosophy, they were almost exclusively concerned with his scarce philosophy of mind.2 In the hope of showing in this dissertation that there is much more to Berkeley’s positive philosophy in its own right, I seek to contribute to our growing understanding of the constructive side of his thought by focusing not on the perhaps more familiar questions concerning his epistemology or theory of mind but on those theologically-motivated metaphysical tendencies in his works that point to the significance of the divine will. Through systematically investigating topics like the role God’s will plays in creating and maintaining the world as well as his relationship to nature and its laws, I will try to show that the voluntarist inclinations are not accidental or incidental but form an essential and coherent aspect of Berkeley’s philosophy. I aim to substantiate the significance of a voluntarist reading by pointing out that he did not merely endorse the widely accepted doctrine that God’s will 1 John Foster (1985, for instance) might be cited as a notable exception, but his interest is more philosophical than strictly historical or scholarly. Of course, many other interpreters seek to change this situation in various ways, see, for instance, the works of Winkler, especially his book (Winkler 1989), but also the Cambridge Companion edited by him (Winkler 2005), Stoneham 2002 or Roberts 2007. While Roberts 2007 is concentrating on Berkeley’s ‘mental realism’ referring to his philosophy of spirits (see also Roberts 2013), I will say more on Berkeley’s constructive theory of the physical world and its relation to God. Pearce 2017a (especially chapter 9.) also provides a new approach to Berkeley’s physical world, but not CEU eTD Collection through the lens of his theological commitments, but of his philosophy of language. 2 And even with respect to this limited area of investigation they either claim to have found an inconsistent system full of elementary flaws or restrict themselves to the task of proving its logical consistency with Berkeley’s critical philosophy (see for instance Turbayne 1982 and 1991 or Atherton 1991). Of course, this tendency has also been changing a bit, as more and more start devoting their attention to Berkeley’s constructive ideas concerning, for example, consciousness or self-knowledge, see Bettcher 2008 or Winkler 2011b. GOD, WORLD AND ARCHETYPES 5 plays some role in creating and sustaining the world. Rather God’s absolutely free volitional activity is so fundamental in his thought that voluntarism can be seen as what informs and motivates his quite idiosyncratic views about various crucial issues, such as the divine nature, the physical world, the laws of nature, the role of science or the divine archetypes.3 No one has provided a comprehensive voluntarist interpretation of