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- Title
Berkeley's Argument for the Existence of God in the Alciphron dialogue.
- Authors
MUREŞAN, VLAD
- Abstract
One of the latest works of George Berkeleg the neglected dialogue Alciphron develops - among other philosophical contributions- an innovating argument for the existence of God, during a debate with a character standing for a "free-thinker" representative of the Enlightenment critique of religion. The argument has three stages: 1. against the claim that we can only accept perceptible proof, he constrains Alciphron to admit that the soul, as an invisible principle governing the motions of the body cannot be perceived but is real nevertheless. 2. in the same way we infer an invisible principle as the mover of the visible body, we must infer an invisible principle as the mover and unifying agent of all the coherent material masses and motions exhibited by nature. 3. finally, against the objection that I can believe in somebody's invisible soul because it is speaking to me face to face, Euphranor (=Berkeley) develops a most innovative theory of the visual language: the rational Agent governing the word has arranged things in regularities that combine themselves exactly like a language: this visual language speaks to our eyes, instead of speaking to our ears, but it speaks nevertheless.
- Subjects
BERKELEY, George, 1685-1753; PROOF of God; ALCIPHRON; FREETHINKERS; FREE thought; ENLIGHTENMENT; EUPHRANOR, 4th century B.C.
- Publication
Transylvanian Review, 2013, Vol 21, p125
- ISSN
1221-1249
- Publication type
Article