The unconscious origin of Berkeley's philosophy

The aims of this illuminating book, in which the author uses the psycho-analytic technique to interpret the life and thought of George Berkeley, one of our greatest philosophers, are “to interest psycho-analysts in philosophy, which is perhaps the strangest of all the creations of the human mind, and to interest philosophers in psycho-analysis, which they may find illuminating in their own field”. The book has a further philosophical aim: there is no full exposition of Berkeley’s metaphysic that utilises the results of recent scholarship, and Mr. Wisdom here makes a serious attempt to fill this gap. He gives a detailed account and some critical discussion of recent research on the actual nature of Berkeley’s philosophy, and considers various aspects of Berkeley’s life, while close attention to his life and philosophy enables Mr. Wisdom to provide a full psychoanalytical interpretation of his philosophical conceptions. Mr. Wisdom says in his Preface that the idea of psycho-analysing the writings of a philosopher arose from a theory he had formed about the nature of metaphysics; it was also inspired by the celebrated applications of psycho-analysis made in other fields by Dr. Ernest Jones.