George Berkeley

Providing a comprehensive picture of both the life and total thought of George Berkeley, this book integrates his philosophy with the important other "religious" side to him. Some of the topics covered include Berkeley's philosophical strategy, his account of immortality, his Jacobitism, his emotive theory of religious mysteries and the motivation of his "Siris" (1744). Also distinctive is the attention paid to the Irish context of his thought, his symbolic frontispieces and portraits, and recent discoveries concerning his life and writings. It illuminates Berkeley as a much deeper and more human thinker than the usual picture of him as a starry-eyed idealist with every virtue under heaven.