An Analysis Of The Ideas In Berkeley 's Philosophy

“Idea” is one of the two major categories in Berkeley’s philosophy. For a long time, his ideas were misunderstood by Chinese scholars. Many people simply ascribed his philosophy to subjective idealism by his proposition “To be is to be perceived”, they also ignored the rational factors in his philosophy. By analyzing the “idea” in The Principle of Human Knowledge, this essay holds that Berkeley’s early attitude against the Abstract is the inevitable result from his sticking to John Lock’s empiricism. And therefore we can not classify his theory into subjective idealism. Being greatly influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Descartes, Berkeley gave up “idea” and replaced it with “appearance” in his late life and changed the theory of knowledge. By carefully rereading his text and reanalyzing the concept of idea, the essay concludes that he translated from empiricism to rationalism, but Berkeley was still a constant objective idealist.