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Berkeley and Stillingfleet

I'm increasingly convinced that the debate between Locke and Stillingfleet is important background to Berkeley. Berkeley, like Stillingfleet, thinks that Locke's philosophy leads to 'Socinian scruples' (PHK 95). Furthermore, even in the early works, Berkeley seems to be attacking the 'free-thinkers' (DHP, Pref.), but the only writer he quotes is Locke. This was the behavior Locke complained about in Stillingfleet. Stillingfleet was attacking 'the gentlemen of the new way of reasoning', who, according to Stillingfleet, denied the Trinity (the main target was John Toland), but only Locke is ever quoted.

In addition to the fact that the Locke-Stillingfleet correspondence was very widely discussed during the time Berkeley was studying at Trinity, there are two pieces of circumstantial evidence from Berkeley's early works which suggest that he had the Locke-Stillingfleet correspondence in mind. The first occurs at PHK 34, where Berkeley considers the objection that if his view is correct, "all that is real and substantial in nature is banished out of the world." The Locke-Stillingfleet correspondence started as Locke's response to Stillingfleet's claim in his Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity that the 'gentlemen of the new way of reasoning' had "almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world." Much of the correspondence consists of Locke complaining that he doesn't even know what this means.

Second, in DHP, Berkeley uses a cherry as an example of a sensible object (L&J p. 249). The same example is used throughout the Locke-Stillingfleet correspondence.