Written in an accessible style and assuming no previous knowledge of Berkeley, this book can be read as a companion to Berekeley`s Principles and Dialogues.
Dicker provides an in-depth analysis of the mainstream views against which Berkeley was reacting.
Demonstrates the ways in which Berkeley`s arguments in the Principles and Dialogues dovetail with one another.
Makes new criticisms of Berkeley`s positive metaphysics.
Relates Berkeley`s work both to current Berkeley scholarship and to live issues in contemporary analytic philosophy.
In George Berkeley`s two most important works, the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, he argued that there is no such thing as matter: only minds and ideas exist, and physical things are nothing but collections of ideas. In defense of this idealism, he advanced a battery of challenging arguments purporting to show that the very notion of matter is self-contradictory or meaningless, and that even if it were possible for matter to exist, we could not know that it does; and he then put forward an alternative world-view that purported to refute both skepticism and atheism.

Using the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy, Georges Dicker here examines both the destructive and the constructive sides of Berkeley`s thought, against the background of the mainstream views that he rejected. Dicker`s accessible and text-based analysis of Berkeley`s arguments shows that the Principles and the Dialogues dovetail and complement each other in a seamless way, rather than being self-contained. Dicker`s book avoids the incompleteness that results from studying just one of his two main works; instead, he treats the whole as a visionary response to the issues of modern philosophy- such as primary and secondary qualities, external-world skepticism, the substance-property relation, the causal roles of human agents and of God. In addition to relating Berkeley`s work to his contemporaries, Dicker discusses work by today`s top Berkeley scholars, and uses notions and distinctions forged by recent and contemporary analytic philosophers of perception. Berkeley`s Idealism both advances Berkeley scholarship and serves as a useful guide for teachers and students.
Readership: Professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students studying Berkeley`s philosophy.