June 5th, 2017

The 18th-century critic, Samuel Johnson, once tried to refute the Irish philosopher George Berkeley’s view that nothing is material by kicking a rock. “Thus I refute him!” he reportedly declared. For a long time, I thought this proved that Johnson should have kept to literary criticism and left philosophy to the professionals. Berkeley’s view, after all, was that everything we perceive is an idea — rocks (and rock-kicking) sensations included.

Read the full article at The Stone here.

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