This conception gives an instance of the difficulties which appear in regard to these questions, and which Berkeley wished to escape from in a quite original way. The inconsistency in this system God has again to make good; He has to bear it all away; to Him the solution of the contradiction is left. In this idealism, in short, the common sensuous view of the universe and the separation of actuality, as also the system of thought, of judgments devoid of Notion, remain exactly as before;plainly nothing in the content is altered but the abstract form that all things are perceptions only.(8)Such idealism deals with the opposition between consciousness and its object merely, and leaves the extension of the conceptions and the antagonisms of the empirical and manifold content quite untouched; and if we ask what then is the truth of these perceptions and conceptions, as we asked formerly of things, no answer is forthcoming. It is pretty much a matter of indifference whether we believe in things or in perceptions, if self-consciousness remains possessed entirely by finalities; it receives the content in the ordinary way, and that content is of the ordinary kind. In its individuality it stumbles about amid the conceptions of an entirely empirical existence, without knowing and understanding anything else about the content: that is to say in this formal idealism reason has no content of its own.
As to what Berkeley further states in respect of the empirical content, where the object of his investigation becomes entirely psychological, it relates in the main to finding out the difference between the sensations of sight and feeling, and to discovering which kind of sensations belong to the one and which to the other. This kind of investigation keeps entirely to the phenomenal, and only therein distinguishes the various sorts of phenomena; or comprehension only reaches as far as to distinctions. The only point of interest is that these investigations have in their course chiefly lighted on space, and a dispute is carried on as to whether we obtain the conception of distance and so on, in short all the conceptions relating to space, through sight or feeling. Space is just this sensuous universal, the universal in individuality itself, which in the empirical consideration of empirical multiplicity invites and leads us on to thought (for it itself is thought), and by it this very sensuous perception and reasoning respecting perception is in its action confused. And since here perception finds an objective thought, it really would be led on to thought or to the possession of a thought, but at the same time it cannot arrive at thought in its completion, since thought or the Notion are not in question, and it clearly cannot come to the consciousness of true reality. Nothing is thought in the form of thought, but only as an external, as something foreign to thought.
David Hume (next section) - Contents1. Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Schriften des Bischofs Berkeley (in Berkeley's philosph.
Werk. Pt. I. Leipzig, 1781), pp. 1, 45; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 86-90.
2. Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. pp. 90, 91; The Works of George Berkeley, Prof. Fraser's edition (Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous), Vol. I. p. 264, seq. et passim.
3. Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 92, 93; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. p. 279 seq.
4. Buhle, ibidem, pp. 91, 92; Berkeley, ibidem, pp. 288 seq., 300 seq. et passim.
5. Buhle, ibidem, pp. 93, 94; Berkeley, ibidem, pp. 289, 308. seq.
6. Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 94, 95; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. pp. 308, 335.
7. Buhle, ibidem, pp. 96-99; Berkeley, ibidem, p. 325, seq. et passim.
8. Cf. Berkeley, ibidem, passim.
Section Two: Period of the Thinking Understanding Chapter II. - Transition Period, A Idealism & Scepticism 2. HUME.
We must add to what has preceded an account of the Scepticism of Hume, which has been given a more important place in history than it deserves from its intrinsic nature; its historic importance is due to the fact that Kant really derives the starting point of his philosophy from Hume.
David Hume was born in 1711 at Edinburgh and died there in 1776. He held a librarian's post in that town for some time, then he became secretary to the Embassy in Paris; for quite a long period, indeed, he moved in diplomatic circles. In Paris he came to know Jean Jacques Rousseau and invited him to England, but Rousseau's terribly distrustful and suspicious nature very soon estranged the two. (1) Hume is more celebrated as a writer of history than through his philosophic works. He wrote: “A Treatise of human nature,” 3 vols., 1739, translated into German by Jacob, Halle, 1790, 8vo; likewise “Essays and Treatises on several subjects,” 2 vols. (Vol. 1. containing “Essays moral, political and literary,” printed for the first time in Edinburgh, 1742; Vol. II.
containing an “Inquiry concerning human understanding” a further development of the Treatise, and first printed separately in London, 1748, 8vo). In his “Essays,” which contributed most to his fame as far as the philosophic side is concerned, he treated philosophic subjects as an educated, thoughtful man of the world would do - not in a systematic connection, nor showing the wide range which his thoughts should properly have been able to attain; in fact in some of his treatises he merely dealt with particular points of view.
