Berkeley's Defense Of Common Sense

In the preface to the three dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,Berkeley states that his aim is to rescue those who fall into skepticism and return to common sense.This is a far cry from the usual image of Berkeley.This paper tries to suspend the previous stereotypes,retrace the ideas of Berkeley,with his preface to the maintenance of common sense as a clue,comb his discourse.Berkeley thought that the vulgar lived peacefully along the path of common sense;the learned,on the other hand,fall into skepticism and even oppose religion and advocate atheism,it is argued that Berkeley's aim to maintain common sense is not to construct a theoretical system for common sense,but to remove those theories that affect common sense of the common people in order to maintain religion.For those scholars who have fallen into skepticism,save them by their own theory.This paper divides Berkeley's attempt to return scholars from paradox to common sense into three steps :(1)from abstract use of language to everyday use;(2)from the physical stimulation of the mind to the perception of the mind;(3)from atheism to religion.In short,Berkeley argued that the sensible world was the real world,and that it was unquestionable,common sense.However,some scholars believe that there is an essential material world behind the world,which is contrary to common sense.The reason for this tendency of scholars is language,which is used for daily communication,while ordinary people follow common sense and do not fall into skepticism.However,language is deceptive,it dissimilates human beings to a kind of abstract ability and makes some scholars fall into meaningless disputes.These scholars who espoused the theory of abstraction developed a tendency toward atheism by claiming the existence of an essential material world independent of man.This tendency towards atheism corroded the inherent religious knowledge,which Berkeley could not accept.Berkeley tried to attack those scholars who had fallen into skepticism on behalf of the common people,to rescue them from the natural laws of common sense.The purpose of this paper is to show that Berkeley's attempt to maintain common sense is based on his belief,and to prove the belief of common sense by philosophical logic is redundant.Lenin's criticism of Berkeley as anti-common sense was deeply rooted in the domestic people,but he did not get to the point of Berkeley's problem.Finally,this paper tries to show that Berkeley's defense of common sense may only be a strategy,so we should do not be too obsessed with a proposition and everyone should return to life,to their current common sense.