This is the most comprehensive critical and philosophical biography we have of George Berkeley. Berkeley is, of course, best known to philosophers for his immaterialism—the notion that only spirits and their ideas exist, which takes Locke's empiricism to extremes. Tom Jones admits puzzlement that a young, religious, and conservative philosopher would embrace and defend such a “doctrine” (as Berkeley labeled it). Still, Jones’ mining of Berkeley's juvenile publications, letters, and notebooks is illuminating. In Berkeley's early philosophical texts, such as the New Theory of Vision (1709), Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), and Three Dialogues (1713), the arguments are already there, and Berkeley never backed down. In chapter 2, Jones sets out the basic arguments very well, especially those aspects of Berkeley's doctrine that rely on the distinction between things of which we have a non-sensible “notion” or “intuition” (such as God's mind or our own) and sensible ideas. Berkeley was groomed for a clerical life beginning with his fellowship at the small but influential Trinity College, Dublin, where he made connections with William Molyneux and William King. He studied the usual humanities and languages curriculum but also natural philosophy and mathematics. In math, he puzzled over inscrutable problems of infinity, and in natural philosophy, he speculated about the shape of the Earth and optics. Jones provides a lucid account of Berkeley's empiricist optics, especially the incommensurability between visible and tactile space.

Soon after the early works, Berkeley committed himself to the advancement of the Anglican religion (in Ireland, and abroad in Europe and eventually Bermuda and New England). His long Italian sojourn, which accompanied a Tory diplomatic mission, afforded Berkeley the opportunity to study Continental languages as well as painting, architecture, and music. He also wrote and delivered sermons on religion and the common good. It is somewhat surprising that Jones has little to say about Berkeley's infamous loss of the planned “Part Two” of the Principles while in Italy. In any event, as Jones documents, Berkeley's mission was never exactly philosophical or humanitarian; he was confident in his own faith and in the naturalness and value of social hierarchy, with people like himself at or near the top. This comes out clearly in Berkeley's (self-proclaimed) “condescending” attitude to the indigenous people of the New World and his apology for the American slave trade (233ff). Also of interest are Berkeley's observations on the low (Catholic) and even “dirty” Irish (218). Unfortunately, Jones gives only glancing attention to Berkeley's de Motu (1721), which was composed during this period and has had a profound influence in the philosophy of science. He devotes many more pages to Berkeley's contemporaneous, slightly weird fixation with tarantulas.

Berkeley was married to Anne Forster in 1728 after a deliberate search. George urged his friends to pursue a prudent marriage and parenthood: “choose her by reputation . . . choose first and love after” (305). Anne bore seven children; several died young. Both Berkeleys proclaimed the virtues of marriage, especially for pragmatic and social benefits, but Jones suggests that they might themselves have suffered marital strife. Shortly after marrying, the Berkeleys voyaged to British America. The heart of the book, and perhaps Berkeley's life, are his years in the New World and his preoccupation with a Bermuda educational scheme. He campaigned energetically for his “Bermuda Project,” as exemplified by a text, Proposal (1725), in which he foregrounded the civilizing of the natives of Bermuda, the West Indies, and America. And he planned assiduously for a Bermuda college, modeled on Trinity College, Dublin. George and Anne hoped Bermuda would become a locus of fine art. While his fundraising was not a total failure, Berkeley never garnered the funds necessary to establish a new college ab initio. He abandoned the Bermuda project shortly after arriving in Rhode Island (1729).

Berkeley did, however, exert a lasting impact on nascent colleges in America, especially Yale, Columbia, and Pennsylvania. In Connecticut, he established close ties with Samuel Johnson—a philosophical pioneer at Yale and, later, the founder of Columbia (originally King's College) in New York—and in Philadelphia he did the same with Benjamin Franklin. Jones touches on the Berkeley-Johnson connection. But it is unfortunate that we don't learn much of Berkeley's immense influence upon early American philosophy. As Berkeley scholar Kenneth Winkler has suggested in his Isaiah Berlin Lectures, Berkeley's idealism is an originating and persistent theme in American philosophy.

While still in Rhode Island, Berkeley resumed his dedicated attack on freethinking and deism. The brilliant dialogue Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher (1732) attempted to “one-up” the freethinkers for their narrow conception of human nature and human flourishing. Somewhat later, after repatriating to the bishopric of Cloyne, Berkeley wrote Siris (1744), which articulated his pragmatic semantics. Jones explains this late development of Berkeley's philosophy of language very clearly. After Siris, and well-ensconced at Cloyne, Berkeley composed the anti-Newtonian treatise The Analyst (1734). As Jones observes, Berkeley's campaign against infinitesimals, as mere “abstractions,” was nearly lifelong (399). Throughout the 1740s, Berkeley persevered in his social and political defense of Protestant Christianity, in opposition to Catholicism and freethinking. Jones comments unflatteringly on the “limitations of Berkeley's capacity for role reversal—to think himself into the position of other people” (428). Like his occasional correspondent, Benjamin Franklin, Berkeley was an advocate and practitioner of early rising. His strictness in this and other life choices, betrays a hard-heartedness that is inconsistent with a fulsome “philosophical life.” Berkeley participated in social causes, such as Irish agriculture, as well as sectarian religious politics, as in the Querist (1735–1737). And he continued his long-standing interest in painting, botany, and the therapeutic effects of tar-water. Jones’ penultimate chapter makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of Berkeley's conception of the laws of nature and God's role therein. Shortly after vacating the Cloyne bishopric in 1751, Berkeley resettled at Oxford. There, he studied meteorology and fire, but himself expired in 1753.

We should be grateful to Jones and Princeton University Press for this formidable biography. It will give anyone interested in Berkeley and his times an exacting portrait of a complicated and impressive life.