Abstract

This dissertation defends Berkeley's spirit-based Idealism by way of providing an interpretation of the fundamental distinction of his metaphysics, the "active/passive" distinction. I argue that Berkeley developed a distinctively normative reading of "activity" and "passivity" during the exploration of the limits of Lockean-style empiricism recorded in his preparatory notebooks, the Philosophical Commentaries, limits that became especially apparent in connection with the notion of the self or "spirit". After considering and rejecting a proto-Humean "bundle theory" of the self, Berkeley formulated the irreducibly normative conception of "spirit" characteristic of all his published works. In Berkeley's hands, 'spirit' is what Locke would have called a "forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit." The active/passive distinction consequently concerns one's responsibility for something: If a spirit is "active" with respect to X, then X is dependent upon that spirit's will, and, correlatively, it is responsible, answerable, or accountable for X. If a spirit is "passive" with respect to X, then it is not responsible for X. Since Berkeley's idealism is notoriously a spirit-based ontology, the consequences of these understandings were sweeping and dramatic. In the balance of the dissertation I pursue the implications of this interpretation with respect to Berkeley's view of semantics, ontological commitment, knowledge of other minds, and freedom and determinism