Abstract

In his two most famous works, the Principles and Dialogues, George Berkeley announces that he will refute atheism. These works are, however, devoted mainly to arguing against the existence of matter rather than for the existence of God. This oddity can be explained by appeal to the dominant philosophical understanding of atheism in Berkeley’s context, which was developed by Ralph Cudworth and influentially endorsed by Samuel Clarke. In his True Intellectual System of the Universe, Cudworth presented a detailed taxonomy and analysis of atheistic philosophical systems, arguing that such systems must put matter in the place of God, and must therefore be committed to the eternal existence of matter. Cudworth, and Clarke after him, therefore thought that the key to refuting atheism was to show that matter could not exist eternally. Berkeley’s immaterialism is a kind of shortcut to this goal: if the very notion of matter is incoherent, so that it cannot exist at all, then certainly it cannot exist eternally, leading to the collapse of atheistic philosophy.