Biography of George Berkeley

Dr Tom Jones has written a new intellectual biography of George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher, churchman and educational and social reformer. Kenneth Pearce of Trinity College Dublin has called it 'a major contribution to our understanding of George Berkeley and eighteenth-century intellectual life'. Tom engages with Berkeley's immaterialism, his travels in Europe and America, his missionary Christianity, and his commitment to improving the lives of others through founding and reforming institutions and social practices. The book discusses Berkeley's support for social and political subordination, including his ownership of enslaved people, and places his thinking in the context of his personal and institutional commitments. George Berkeley: A Philosophical Life is available from Princeton University Press.

To mark the publication of the book, at 1pm on 19 May 2021, Tom will be in conversation with Kenneth Pearce online at the Trinity Long Room Hub. The conversation will centre on Berkeley's life, connections to Trinity and Ireland, and his relationship to colonialism as he moved between the 'new' world and the 'old'. Bookings for the event can be made on the Trinity Long Room Hub events page.