There is
more to Berkeley than meets the eye. Given the fact that he can be read
in so
many various ways, many of which do not overlap, this shows how his
work has
stood the test of time. One of the contemporary schools of reading
George
Berkeley (1685-1753) makes him out to be primarily an epistemologist or
a
philosopher of language who can be applied to contemporary debates.
Another way
of reading Berkeley is seeing his De Motu
(1721) as a defense of the
corpuscularian theory of matter. A third popular way of seeing Berkeley
is as a
‘bridge’ figure between Locke and Hume who is placed somehow into the
British
empiricist ‘school’ despite the fact that he was greatly influenced by
the
French philosophers Malebranche and Bayle. However, when I as an
historian of
early modern philosophy and history of ideas read Berkeley’s work
itself in its
context, it seems much broader and expansive than these narrow debates.

Costica
Bradatan in The Other Bishop Berkeley
avoids these
contemporary readings of Berkeley. He scarcely mentions Locke or Hume
and does
not even go so far as to enter any of the contemporary analytical
debates
regarding Berkeley’s thought. In fact, the Berkeley one reads of in
Bradatan’s
book is so other that one scarcely
recognizes him: Berkeley the Platonist, Berkeley the modest, Berkeley
the
alchemist, Berkeley the Utopian. Yet this is certainly a fascinating if
not
obscure Berkeley. Bradatan claims that, in his book, he wishes “to do
justice to the historical truth, as far as this is possible, by
pointing to the
existence of another Berkeley, as
it
were, one in general unaccounted for in the mainstream analytic
scholarship”
(3). The question then that really comes to the fore here is whether
Bradatan’s
way of seeing Berkeley is the real Berkeley.

“Is this not
a useless undertaking, to dig up earlier
opinions about things and go into them at length? Is this fruitless
business …
not ultimately a flight from what is today required of us?” Bradatan,
using these questions from Heidegger as a framework for his book, says
that
reading Berkeley in light of earlier epochs such as that of Ancient and
Medieval Platonism is a reading that is absolutely missing in the
contemporary
Berkeley literature. However, Bradatan does not think he has presented
an
infallible method here. He advocates
“methodological
pluralism.” He explicitly says (17) that it would be foolish to see
this
book, or any other book for that matter, as offering “the whole truth”
about Berkeley. “It has not been my intention in this book to replace
the
existing manner of treating Berkeley’s philosophy…” but to
“supplement”
it (193-4).

Each of the
chapters of this book take up a different issue,
which in my mind are very difficult to tie together: Chapter one reads
Berkeley
as a Platonist. Chapter two sees him in light of ‘philosophy as
palimpsest’
(something of Bradatan’s making, perhaps influenced by Derrida) or
archetypal
knowledge. Chapter three takes up the Liber
Mundi, providing a history of this metaphor (i.e. text of the
world to be
read and a reader to read it) from the Bible through Foucault, locating
Berkeley within this tradition. Chapter four presents the alchemical
tradition,
in which Berkeley’s Siris (1744)
can
be read. Chapter five situates Berkeley within the Christian apologetic
tradition. Chapter six tells the story of Berkeley’s “Bermuda Project.”
Finally, chapter seven experimentally compares Berkeley to the Cathars.

Taking up the
last two chapters of this book as examples,
I will look at how Bradatan reads Berkeley. The first example concerns
Berkeley’s
Bermuda Project–a utopian “happy island” where Berkeley dreamt of
starting a theological and fine arts college. Leaving the old world
(i.e.
Europe) behind, his utopic search for an earthly paradise was to
eschatologically instantiate the perfect society. In describing this
search, “Berkeley
used generously winged words to express this sense of perfection and
astonishment…The islands seems unusually full of wonders and
blessings,
abundantly supplied with natural resources as useful as they are
beautiful.”
By looking at his Bermuda project in light of the tradition of
“medieval mirabilia” where
medieval,
Renaissance, and early modern travel literature accounted for “amazing”
accounts of “happy islands” (147-8), Bradatan provides a splendid
example of how the contemporary Berkeley literature avoids such aspects
of
Berkeley’s life. In fact, many of Berkeley’s contemporaries as well as
his 20^th
century biographers thought of him as a nut. His concern with tar water
in the Siris and his dream for
Bermuda were
just symptoms of his idealistic immaterialism. But within his search
for the
perfect island to begin his school, a place that he would ironically
never
visit, there is nevertheless a dose of enchanting awe: “The island is
more
than land-and-water, as it acquires something that neither land nor
water as
such has: the capacity to provoke in us a greater fascination,
curiosity, and awe.
Indeed, islands always attract us because, among other things, islands
cause in
us a distinct feeling of the sublime: a sense of greatness and of
danger at the
same time” (149). In reading this chapter, Bradatan’s utopian reading
of
Berkeley’s ‘Bermuda Project’ is a bit exaggerated. I doubt Berkeley
ever once
thought of himself as a Utopian while trying to find a school in
Bermuda. A
dreamer, yes, but not at all like Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers
Travels or Thomas More’s Utopia,
both of which were criticisms of the social and political
ills of their time. Berkeley actually went to North America and tried
to
be  an optimist in
starting his school–living
there for nearly three years waiting for the funds to come from
England. Just
because he did not succeed does not make him a Utopian.

In the final
chapter, Bradatan provides a different
example of experimental reading. How might Berkeley be seen in the
tradition of
the Cathars? A heretical movement influenced by ancient Gnosticism and
Manichaeanism, the Cathars believed that the material world was created
by
Satan and is evil. Due to this view of the universe, “at every moment
of
his life, man felt he was wanted by and fought over by God and the
Devil”
(178). However, Bradatan writes, “I am
in no way saying that
Catharism is at the origin of Berkeley’s denial of matter.” (173) Then,
few pages later: “Almost needless to say, Berkeley is not a Dualist
thinker in the proper and full sense of the world” (184) or “I am not
saying that Berkeley could be related to the Cathars by virtue of some
fundamental similarity of their ultimate metaphysical principles.”
(184).
Bradatan simply “look[s] at Berkeley’s denial of matter experimentally,
from the standpoint of the Cathar doctrines on matter.” (173). While
this
reading is a very creative one, it is not very helpful. One learns more
about
the history of Catharism than Berkeley. A reading that
makes more
historical sense is Harry Bracken’s reading of Berkeley as an ‘Irish
Cartesian.’
There is one mention of Berkeley as an Irishman in chapter 3, alongside
the
medieval philosopher Johannes Scottus Eriugena, but nothing more is
said about
this.

On the one
hand, Bradatan’s book succeeds as ‘an exercise
of reenchantment.’ As a work in the history of ideas, it also succeeds:
one
learns about the traditions of archetypal knowledge, the Liber
Mundi, alchemy, Catharism, etc. Indeed, it is clearly written
and accessible to any educated reader and does not use particularly
technical
language without explanation. On the other hand, as a book on the
‘real’
Berkeley, while this book is on to something, it does not quite get at
the
heart of what Berkeley (and perhaps Bradatan) was trying to say nor
does it
adequately articulate the historical ethos in which Berkeley lived.
Furthermore, I find these seven chapters seven more
ways of seeing Berkeley, but one virtue of Platonism is its
unity, which these readings do not have. Bradatan nevertheless lives up
to his
aim of supplementing the existing literature convincingly showing the
existence
of an ‘other Bishop Berkeley.’

Acknowledgement:
A sincere thanks to Costica Bradatan for his comments, criticisms, and
suggestions on earlier versions of this review.

[Editor’s
note: this review, published Thursday September 20, 2007, replaces the
one
published earlier.]

©
2007 Michael
Funk Deckard

Michael Funk
Deckard has taught at North Central College
and Wheaton College in the United States. He is currently completing
his
doctorate on eighteenth-century philosophy at the Catholic University
of
Leuven, Belgium.

Categories: Philosophical