Something-i-know-not-what

Berkeley on Locke on substance

Daniel Garber

pp. 23-42

in: Ernest Sosa (ed), Essays on the philosophy of George Berkeley, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

There is a story we tell our students about the so-called British Empiricists. According to that story, Locke began the program by calling the notion of substance into question. His characterization of substance as a 'something-I-know-not-what" that we merely suppose to underly the manifest qualities of things led Berkeley, it is claimed, to take the next step, deny that the notion of matter has any meaning at all, and in that way eliminate material substance altogether. Then Hume, seeing the ultimate implications of Locke's view, and the half-hearted way in which Berkeley extended Locke, went all the way and eliminated both mental and material substance. In this story, Locke and Hume are the heroes, Locke for noticing (if only confusedly) the problems with substance and Hume for seeing where Locke's position ultimately leads. But the story is not quite so flattering to Berkeley. While it makes a neat package of the British Empiricists, Berkeley's system comes out as an uncomfortable half-way house between Locke and Hume. This isn't to say that Berkeley isn't given credit for what he did. But history's judgment of Berkeley in this matter is not unlike the young Berkeley's somewhat patronizing remark about Locke: "Wonderful … that he could … see at all thro a mist y^t had been so long a gathering … This is more to be admir"d than y he didn't see farther." (PC, 567.) ¹

Cited authors

Hume David

Locke John

Berkeley George