Philosophers of the Enlightenment

About this book

"According to a conventional historiographical scheme, John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume each made a distinctive contribution to the linear development of British empiricist philosophy. The essays in this book argue that, when these thinkers are situated in the context of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment and their responses to the philosophical climate of the age are considered, the standard historiographical scheme must be revised." "Since Locke's attempt to establish the limits of human knowledge was based on an empiricist criterion of meaning, he retains his position as an inspirational figure in the empiricist philosophical tradition. Locke's vague and ambivalent synthesis also became the springboard from which more radical enlightened successors elaborated their destructive critiques of the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions concerning the order and purpose of existence. For his part, Hume deployed the empiricist criterion of meaning in a more consistent manner than Locke. But the critical, sceptical and naturalistic conclusions which Hume extracted from the Lockean sourcebook also ensured his acceptance in the ranks of the French philosophes and therefore in the cultural vanguard of the age." "Rather than being an exponent of an empiricist criterion of meaning, Berkeley reacted vigorously against the narrow empiricism of the heralds of Enlightenment who consigned the formative philosophical and religious experiences of European culture to an earlier immature stage of human development. From Berkeley's perspective, scepticism, atheism and materialism were the inescapable consequences of the decadent enlightened project. Berkeley's works testify to his disillusionment with the enlightened project and his desire to reinstate what he saw as the indispensable spiritual, intellectual and moral wellsprings of European culture and civilization."--BOOK JACKET.