INTERNATIONAL BERKELEY SOCIETY
BISHOP GEORGE BERKELEY was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, on 12
March 1685. He made important contributions in the fields of
philosophy, mathematics, and economics. He is especially famous as the
author of the philosophical theory known as "immaterialism." He died in
Oxford, England, on 14
January 1753.
THE INTERNATIONAL BERKELEY SOCIETY (founded in 1975) holds
meetings, conferences, and symposia, and publishes the results of
scholarly research on both sides of the Atlantic and brings attention
and information, both old and new, about George Berkeley and his works.
President: Stephen Daniel (Texas
A&M University)
Past President: Lou Alfonso (Rhode
Island College, emeritus)
Vice-President: Timo Airaksinen (University
of Helsinki)
Secretary-Treasurer: Nancy Kendrick
(Wheaton College, Massachusetts)
Membership Secretary: Genevieve Migely
(Cornell College, Iowa)
Philosophy Associations Coordinator:
Margaret Atherton (University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee)
Recording Secretary: vacant
Archivist: Maureen Lapan (North
Kingston, RI)
Forthcoming Discussion
Venues and Conferences
- April 6-9, 2010, International
Berkeley Conference, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, celebrating the 300th anniversary
of the publication of Berkeley’s Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.
- Timo Airaksinen (Helsinki): “Visual Language: A Kantian Analysis”
- Margaret Atherton (Wisconsin-Milwaukee): “The Nature of Berkeleianism: Lessons Learned from PHK 1-33”
- Bertil Belfrage (Lund): “Berkeley’s Empiricist Concept of Thinking Substance”
- Laura Berchielli (Clermont-Ferrand): “Berkeley on Language in New Theory of Vision and Principles”
- Dominique Berlioz (Rennes-I): “Percipere and Concipere: Berkeley’s Way to Abstraction and Knowledge”
- Talia Mae Bettcher (California State, Los Angeles): “Berkeley’s Positive Notion of Substance”
- Martha Bolton (Rutgers): “ ‘The Most Abstract and Incomprehensible Idea of All’: Berkeley on Existence”
- Wolfgang Breidert (Karlsruhe): “God’s Role in Berkeley’s Philosophy”
- Richard Brook (Bloomsburg): “Berkeley and the Passivity of Ideas: A Look Again at PHK 25 and 26”
- Geneviève Brykman (Paris-X, Nanterre): “Berkeley et le scepticisme pyrrhonien”
- Sébastien Charles (Sherbrooke): “Activité et passivité de l’esprit selon Berkeley”
- Stephen Daniel (Texas A&M): “Berkeley’s Appropriation of Bayle’s Constitutive Skepticism”
- Georges Dicker (SUNY Brockport): “Berkeley’s Challenge”
- Keota Fields (Massachusetts-Darmouth): “Transcendental Arguments in Berkeley’s Immaterialism”
- Richard Glauser (Neuchâtel): “Revisiting Berkeley on the Sameness of What We Perceive”
- Petr Glombicek (Prague): “Berkeley’s Notion of Common Sense”
- Heta Aleksandra Gylling (Helsinki): “Prudentiality, Expediency and Afterlife”
- Jani Hakkarainen (Tampere): “Ideas Are Ideas: Of the Ontological Status of Berkeley’s Ideas”
- Marc Hight (Hampden-Sydney, Virginia): “The Myth of Privacy”
- James Hill (Prague): “Berkeley’s Notions: A Third Way between Empiricism and Innatism”
- Laurent Jaffro (Paris-I): “Berkeley on Assent and the Belief of Matter”
- Nancy Kendrick (Wheaton C, Mass.): “The Empty Amusement of Seeing: Berkeley on Causation and Explanation”
- George Pappas (Ohio State): “Berkeley and Epistemic Fallibilism”
- Silvia Parigi (Gaeta): “Berkeley and Boyle: Qualitative Corpuscularianism and the Laws of Nature”
- Ville Paukkonen: “Berkeley’s Likeness Principle”
- Luc Peterschmitt (Lille): “Berkeley’s Implicit Corpuscularianism in the Principles of Human Knowledge”
- Samuel Rickless (California, San Diego): “The Relation between Anti-Abstractionism and Idealism in Berkeley’s Metaphysics”
- Katia Saporiti (Zurich): “A Bet with High Stakes: Reflections on Berkeley’s Master Argument”
- Daniel Schulthess (Neuchâtel): “Berkeleyan Ideas and Profiles: An Inquiry in Perspective”
- Claire Schwartz (Aix-Marseille): “A New Scientific Methodology? Metaphysical Principles and Physical Laws in De Motu”
- Tom Stoneham (York): “Agency and Blind Agents”
- Reed Winegar (Pennsylvania): “Berkeley’s Escape from the Labyrinth”
The next meeting of the International Berkeley Society will be held during the conference. For more information, contact Richard Glauser.
- 28th December 2009, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting, New York, IBS
Session
- 17th-20th August 2009, International Berkeley Conference, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
- 19th February 2009, American Philosophical Association, Central Division Meeting, Chicago, IBS Session
- 28th December 2008, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division Meeting,
Philadelphia, PA, IBS Session
- 26th-28th June 2008, Newport, Rhode Island, International Berkeley Conference
- 17th April 2008, Chicago, IL, American Philosophical Association, Central Division Meeting, IBS Session
- 7th-8th March 2008, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, sponsored by the Edinburgh Philosophy Society
-
29th December 2007, Baltimore, MD,
American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division meeting, IBS
Session
- 5th-8th
September 2005, Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu,
Estonia
- 20th-23rd
October 2003, Department of Philosophy at the University of Rennes
-
April 3rd-5th 2003, Texas A&M University, College
Station, Texas (link to the Texas
A&M Berkeley conference website)
Membership
You are cordially invited to become a member
of the Society, which was founded to enable its members to share their
interest in George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, the eminent philosopher
and theologian and to be aware of his impact on philosophy, theology,
science, and culture of western civilisation, both past and present.
The annual dues are US $15. Money should be sent in US dollars
only, together with your address and institutional affiliation (if any)
to the IBS at Texas A&M University, at the address below. For your
convenience, you may wish to pay your dues online
using a major credit card (Visa, Master Card, Discover, American
Express), or you may use the attached Membership
Form.
Members are also invited to
donate any amount to the
Society’s
research fund for translations, book subventions,
conferences, and other projects that enhance Berkeley scholarship.
Those who donate $10 or more to this fund receive a DVD of “The
Dean of
Thin Air,”
an hour-long PBS-produced movie about George Berkeley.
We cannot process checks in any
currency other than American dollars. Members in other countries are
encouraged to make payments online using a credit card.
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The International Berkeley Society
Department of Philosophy
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4237
U.S.A.
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Whitehall
You are also invited to add a voluntary
donation of $5 to your subscription to support the valued but
impoverished Berkeley library (click for
holdings) in our Study Center at the Berkeley Museum House in Whitehall. Please send your donation with the annual subscription to
Texas A&M at the above address. Whitehall was built by Berkeley
as his home while he and his family lived in Rhode Island, and is shown
on the right. It is open for visitors throughout the year.
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Whitehall Museum House
311 Berkeley Avenue,
Middletown,
Rhode Island RI 02840,
U.S.A.
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Click on picture
for enlargement
and details.
(Photo: I.C. Tipton.)
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The Berkeley Briefs and Berkeley
Studies (formerly Berkeley Newsletter)
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The Berkeley Briefs is
an annual publication of the IBS. It includes news items and other
announcements of interest to the Society and its members. Click here for the latest issue.
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Berkeley Studies is an
annual on-line journal. It contains scholarly articles, short research
notes, abstracts of conference papers, book reviews, and bibliographic
updates of the latest work on Berkeley. In December 2007, the Berkeley
Newsletter officially became Berkeley
Studies. Click here
to go to the Berkeley Studies
website.
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Although Berkeley Studies receives occasional
assistance from the IBS, its editorial operations are independent from
the Society.
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A short narrative of the IBS from its
foundation in 1975 to the present day, compiled by Ian C. Tipton (at
left, at the Texas A&M conference), and Maureen Lapan and
Raymond W. Houghton (at right, at the Rennes conference).
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An online 'bookshop' for books by, or about,
George Berkeley. These pages have links to external web sites that can
take orders for books via the internet. The main file lists all
Berkeleian books that are believed to be in print, or at least still
available, in English. A second file lists Berkeleian books in other
languages. This file is initially rather limited, but will be
expanding. A third file, for reference, lists recent books that are
currently out of print.
The bulletin board of the International
Berkeley Society exists for the following aims:
- To display announcements of the Society
- To display any other announcements that
may be relevant to anyone with an interest in George Berkeley
- Open discussion on topics pertaining to
George Berkeley
Click here
to check for the most recent messages. (After it opened up in February
2000, the bulletin board took a while to overcome the chicken-and-egg
problem: nobody wants to make contributions to a discussion in which
there are not yet any other discussants! Now, however, there is a
growing number of ongoing conversations, and you are encouraged to join
in!)
Berkeley travelled widely from his home town
of Kilkenny, Ireland: he lived in Dublin, Cloyne, London, and Oxford at
different times; he travelled through Europe, with extended stays in
Italy and France; and he spent four seminal years in Rhode Island,
U.S.A. On this page, we are accumulating information about sites that
are of significance in Berkeley's life.
You may like to know that Whitehall, Berkeley's house in Rhode
Island (1729-1731), is open to the public at the following times:
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· 1st July until the
end of August
· six days a week
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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(Click on picture for
enlargement.)
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See our Whitehall
page for more details on the times of opening.
On this page we list hypertext links to:
- General introductions to Berkeley and his
work
- Scholarly papers and articles.
- Historical web sites
- Online texts of Berkeley's writings
You may also be interested in our web rings page.
Berkeley scholars may like to be aware of
the Turbayne essay prize, which is run by the Philosophy Department at
the University of Rochester. The page at this site provides some
background information, whereas official details have been placed by
John Bennett at the following address:
Visitors counted by WebCounter since 9th June 2000: 
© International Berkeley Society, 2000.
:
see modification history.
Maintained by sdaniel@philosophy.tamu.edu
.
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