In Georges Dicker's new book, the latest in his distinguished series of critical commentaries on modern philosophers, Berkeley's idealism is meticulously reconstructed but also sternly criticized. The book's title figure is Berkeley, but its real hero is Locke, whose version of what Dicker calls “mainstream [early] modern philosophy”—a realism of the material world, conceived of in corpuscularian terms—is expounded and usefully updated in the chapters composing part 1 (chapters 1–3, 7–63). Dicker sees Berkeley as a largely reactive philosopher. This reactivity is most evident in part 3 of the book (chapters 7–10, 147–203), where Dicker examines what he calls Berkeley's “indirect” arguments for idealism. These are arguments against mainstream realism; they include some of the arguments that Berkeley himself labeled “a posteriori,” because they draw intolerable consequences—or what he saw as intolerable consequences—from realist commitments. Berkeley's reactivity is a constant presence even in part 2 of the book, where Dicker...

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