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Berkeley and Buber: an Epistemological Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1971

David S. Forth
David S. Forth
Affiliation:
East Stroudsburg State College.
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Extract

George Berkeley and Martin Buber are philosophers whose views one might not expect to find being discussed in one and the same essay. Nevertheless, in what follows I hope to show that a comparison of their epistemologies reveals substantial similarities, both methodological and doctrinal. The ground for such a comparison lies in the religious orientation of these two very different philosophers. It is an orientation each has emphasized more than once, both in his philosophical and in his less formal writings.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 690 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1971

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References

1 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. R. Gregor Smith (2 ed., New York, 1958), pp. 75–76, 101, 106; see also pp. 33, 63. References to the German text, in Die Schriften über das dialogische Prinzip (Heidelberg, 1954), are indicated by the abbreviation S. in subsequent citations.

2 Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher (1732) IV, 7–15, contains the fullest discussion of this important theory. Also see An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (3rd and 4th eds., 1732), 147, 152; The Theory of Vision or Visual Language shewing the immediate Presence and Providence of a Deity Vindicated and Explained (1733), 38, 40, 43. Cf. A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710, rev. ed. 1734), I, 44. All references to Berkeley’s writings are to the A.A. Luce, T.E. Jessop edition of the Works (Nelson, London: 1948–1957, 9 vols); citations are of Berkeley’s (or the editors’) section numbers, where available.

3 I and Thou, p. 11, S. 15: “Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.”

4 Berkeley’s “New Principle”, which he seems to have hit on about half way through his first notebook (see Philosophical Commentaries, 279, 280), and to which he gave the form cited above in entry 429. See also Prin. I, 2–3; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713, revised in 1734), III (Works, vol. 2, pp. 234ff.)

5 “Replies to my Critics,” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. P.A. Schilpp and Maurice Friedman (La Salle, Illinois, 1967), p. 693.

6 Prin. I, 89; Three Dialogues, III (Works, vol. 2, p. 231). It should be noted that Berkeley carefully distinguishes knowledge (in terms of “notions”) of minds from perceptual knowledge (in terms of “ideas”).

7 Berkeley has some interesting hints about the possibilities of notional knowledge of relations that might have been developed in this connection, although it is admittedly not with this in mind that he mentions relations as distinct both from ideas and minds; see Prin. I, 89.

8 “Without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man.” I and Thou, p. 34, S. 38.

9 Austin, J. L., How to do Things with Words (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar, Lecture VIII; cf. Wm. P. Alston, “Linguistic Acts,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April, 1964) and Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1964), Ch. 2.

10 Prin. Introduction, 20; see the very similar comment about signs in general, Altiphron VII, 14, and his comment to Johnson (Letter, March 24, 1730, Works, vol. 2, p. 293) to the effect that we fall into philosophic muddles (specifically, here, concerning time) by “not considering the true use and end of words, which as often terminate in the will as in the understanding, being employed rather to excite, influence, and direct action, than to produce clear and distinct ideas.” If it be objected that when Berkeley speaks of “communi- eating” or “producing” ideas he is referring to a perlocutionary act, not an illocutionary one, I can only reply that he seems to have in mind the same distinction as Austin and Alston seem to have in mind (namely, between a use of words which does and one which does not “terminate in the will” of some other party).

11 See Berkeley’s brief discussion of this point in Alciphron IV, 12.

12 Prin. I, 147; for Berkeley’s idea that we have the ability to move our own bodies, see Philosophical Commentaries 548, Alciphron IV, 5, Dialogues III (Works, vol. 2, p. 237), Prin. I, 116 (and Jessop’s note ad loc.).

13 I and Thou, pp. 27–28, S. 31. I have slightly revised Gregor Smith’s translation to bring out more clearly Buber’s point that the “inborn Thou” is not itself a relation, but the presupposition of and potentiality for relation.

14 This seems to me, at any rate, the meaning of the obscure sentence: “Inscrutably comprehended, we come to life in the streaming omni-mutuality. (Unerforschlich einbegriffen leben wir in der strömenden All-Gegenseitigkeit.)” I and Thou, p. 16, S. 20. At least my translation is no more fanciful than Gregor Smith’s: “We live our lives inscrutably included within the streaming mutual life of the universe.” It is not the universe as such that is characterized by “streaming omni-mutuality,” but only the life of dialogue.

15 Dialogue, in Between Man and Man trans. R.G. Smith (Boston, 1955), p. 21, Die Schriften, S. 156.

16 See the section thus entitled in Dialogue (Between Man and Man, p. 3). The German phrase is “Das mitteilende Schweigen” (S. 127).

17 “By the πò νûν I suppose to be implied that all things, past and to come, are actually present to the mind of God, and that there is in Him no change, variation or succession.” Letter to Johnson, March 24, 1730, Works vol. 2, p. 293.

18 See Prin. I, 32, 65–66, and Alciphron IV, 14.

19 “Existence is percipi or percipere.” Phil. Comm. 429. Entry 429a adds, after percipere, “or velle i. e. agere.”

20 Emmanuel Levinas, “Buber and Theory of Knowledge” in The Philosophy of Martin Buber, ed. Schilpp and Friedman, p. 134–5.