Showing results for "George" in Modern

Children, if they are to grow up as citizens, must learn a good deal that their parents could not teach them even if they had the necessary time. The statesman must make provision for this teaching or he will presently find himself faced with the impossible task of maintaining civilization with savages instead of citizens

Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, or simply Three Dialogues, is a 1713 book on metaphysics and idealism by George Berkeley. The book was written as a response to the criticism of his work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Berkeley faced opposition from many philosophers who held to the Platonic view. He argues that sensible qualities like color, sound, temperature and even shape are not inherent in matter, but are ascribed and understood by the mind.

Berkeley uses the Socratic mode of inquiry in "Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous" to question fundamental beliefs about knowledge and reality. These dialogues are between Hylas (whose name is derived from the ancient Greek word for matter) and Philonous, whose name means "lover of mind." The new physical sciences developed in the seventeenth century supported the materialism proposed by Thomas Hobbes and several other philosophers. This worldview proclaimed that all of reality consists of nothing but matter in motion, thus promoting atheism and ethical skepticism.