B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S C I E N C E & P H I L O S O P H Y 2 0 2 3 5 FIRST EDITION OF BERKELEY’S INFLUENTIAL ALCIPHRON: OR, THE MINUTE PHILOSOPHER, 1732 5. BERKELEY, George. Alciphron: Or, the Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues. Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion, against Those Who Are Called Free-thinkers. London: J. Tonson, 1732. Two volumes. Octavo, contemporary full tan speckled calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, red morocco spine labels. Housed in a custom cloth clamshell box. $2200 Rare first edition of Berkeley’s important anonymously published philosophical defense of Christianity, bound together with (as issued) a later edition of his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, handsomely bound. Berkeley “was an important link… between the period of Descartes and Locke and that of Hume and Kant… He also anticipated many of the ideas of 20th-century philosophers of science” (DSB). Berkeley also “formulated views that Ernst Mach and his 20th-century followers have advocated. Furthermore, although he did not himself adopt it, he briefly formulated the theory of the physical world known as phenomenalism” (Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Alciphron is “a set of dialogues located notionally in England, but drawing much of the landscape description from Rhode Island [Berkeley lived and preached in New England for three years], which was to sell well and stimulate controversy after his return [in 1731]. In this, theist and immaterialist combine their defenses against a medley of intellectual trends (derived primarily but not exclusively from Locke, Bernard Mandeville, and the third earl of Shaftesbury) that Berkeley regarded as obstructive to religion. The work includes Berkeley’s second foray into moral philosophy” (ODNB). “The principle which underlay all Berkeley’s philosophical writing was based on a rejection of all speculation, such as Locke’s, about the meaning and necessity of matter as a primal necessity to any theory of human understanding. Briefly, Berkeley maintained that no existence is conceivable or possible which is not conscious spirit or the ideas of which such a spirit is conscious. This presupposes complete equation of subject and object: no object can exist without a Mind to conceive it. Without the pre-existence of the Mind, matter and substance, cause and effect, can have no meaning… it is a measure of Berkeley’s greatness that the difficulties in his theory have been the subject matter of later philosophical thinking… In 1732, he published Alciphron, a series of dialogues in which he applied his principles to refute the current forms of free-thinking, and in the following year he became Bishop of Cloyne. Here he occupied himself with pastoral work and continued his controversial writing. He died at Oxford while on a visit to England” (PMM). Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709 and appended here at the end of Volume II, as issued, certainly signaled the authorship of Alciphron. “Reckoned by Brett’s History of Psychology to have been ‘the most significant contribution to psychology produced in the 18th century,’ being ‘the first instance of clear isolation and purely relevant discussion of a psychological topic’” (DSB). Interiors clean and fine, bindings with only faint discoloration, fine and quite handsome.
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