In An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721), George Berkeley made the following recommendation on the treatment of “freethinkers” such as infidels and dissenters: “Perhaps it may be no easy matter to assign a good reason why blasphemy against God should not be inquired into and punished with the same rigour as treason against the king.” Legally, this meant hanging, drawing and quartering for men, and drawing and burning for women. Berkeley had in mind fellow Irishman John Toland and others with unorthodox religious views.
This was cancel culture at its finest, and Berkeley loved it. An icon of free speech/academic freedom he was not. If your response to this opening is to think “that’s an unhelpful piece of ad hominem”, well, I’m in luck, because Berkeley loved arguing ad hominem even more than advocating hanging, so I’m just doing my Berkeleyan duty.
After extensive investigation and consultation, Trinity has decided to de-name its Berkeley Library. The library is a 1960s build and was named after Berkeley in 1978 to celebrate one of the university’s most noteworthy alumni. For newcomers to Berkeley, he is one of the pre-eminent European philosophers of the early modern period, positioning him alongside luminaries such as René Descartes and John Locke. He’s best known for a philosophical position called immaterialism – the view that no mind-independent, material bodies exist. So, in a sense, everything is mental. His arguments for it are surprisingly powerful, but that didn’t stop his being ridiculed by contemporaries. Dr Johnson famously kicked a stone and said “I refute him thus”.
[ Dublin hotel inadvertently adopts name of slavery advocateOpens in new window ]
Berkeley thought immaterialism was common sense, but wasn’t put off by people’s reactions or the widespread sense that they were out of step with the scientific understanding of the time. And this wasn’t restricted to immaterialism; Berkeley argued for radical and unpopular views, including the idea that sense experience was literally God talking to you and that calculus, a crowning achievement of 17th-century science, was tantamount to fake news.
Less frequently discussed, but poignant for the specific issue of Trinity’s legacy issues on this island, is that he also suggested slavery for the Irish peasantry, including children
The discussion about the library has been principally concerned with the fact that Berkeley owned slaves (while living in America) and probably advanced the cause of slavery by advocating for its consistency with Christianity. Less frequently discussed, but poignant for the specific issue of Trinity’s legacy issues on this island, is that he also suggested slavery for the Irish peasantry, including children.
Many upset by cancel culture feel it’s mistaken to chastise centuries-old figures for what were common sins in their day. There’s a version of this that makes sense to me. If you are an 18th-century peasant with little connection to the wider world and legitimate fear of going against socially acceptable views, it seems unfair for us in this hyper-connected and diverse modern world to pontificate over so different a set of opportunities. It’s easy to hold the wrong views when you know few alternatives and are under immense pressure to conform.
Berkeley is unusual in the sense that he travelled widely for a man of the period (two Grand Tours and a stint in America) and was completely unabashed in expressing unconventional views. We know Berkeley had contact with abolitionist Quakers in America. He was also uniquely positioned with respect to anti-Catholicism and Irish hardship – he was friends with Alexander Pope and was surrounded by the Irish poor in Cork. Berkeley had both access to the good arguments and a neck made of brass.
Trinity was not built for the majority of people on the island, serving a very special function in educating an elite pool of Anglo-Irish young men. The modern Trinity much better reflects the country and its values have changed with the times. Name changes like this one represent important developments in institutional values and reflect changing society, and they are not typically accompanied by equivalent redactions from curricula or research ventures. Of course, academics are getting better at probing the connections between personal failings and philosophical issues, and alerting students to topics where biographical details may be an important pretext for understanding a philosophical idea, but I know of no colleague who has faced pressure to change their teaching on any of these historical figures. Berkeley studies is flourishing: we are still discovering new, fascinating aspects of his thought all the time.
It’s easy to hold the wrong views when you know few alternatives and are under immense pressure to conform
Equally, name changes are primarily symbolic acts. Symbols are important (this is another hugely central theme to Berkeley’s philosophy) and the messages we send to our students and staff, overt or otherwise, can impact their understanding of their place within the community. Unfortunately, symbolic gestures are not always accompanied by more substantial institutional reform or action to minimise harmful historical legacies. But they are not in tension with them. The retain-and-explain approach Trinity has taken, whereby a stained-glass element will remain in the library for the purpose of providing opportunity for discussion, seems to me an important way of avoiding a situation whereby renaming the library allows everyone to sweep under the rug ugly parts of history. Tours of Trinity shouldn’t shy away from the reality of the university’s origins and the activities of its early alumni.
[ Unthinkable: How do you know you actually exist?Opens in new window ]
Talk of “cancelling” people started as a kind of joke, deriving some mirth from the idea that a person could be cancelled in the same way as a ferry service or cup final. Renaming a building does no harm to the important parts of Berkeley’s legacy. His value is in his ideas, and they remain central to conventional philosophy curricula and the subject of intense discussion by specialists and newcomers alike; they do not magically enter the hearts and minds of people walking into appropriately named buildings.
Dr Clare Moriarty is an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, writing about Berkeley’s philosophical and mathematical views.