Among the many philosophical systems that recognize the primacy of the spiritual principle in the world of material things, the teachings of J. Berkeley and D. Hume stand somewhat apart, which can be briefly described as subjective idealism. The prerequisites for their conclusions were the works of medieval nominalist scholastics, as well as their successors - for example, the conceptualism of D. Locke, who claims that the general is a mental abstraction of frequently repeated signs of various things.
Based on the positions of D. Locke, the English bishop and philosopher J. Berkeley gave them his original interpretation. If there are only disparate, single objects and only the human mind, having caught the recurring properties inherent in some of them, singles out objects into groups and calls these groups by any words, then we can assume that there can be no abstract idea that is not based onon the properties and qualities of the objects themselves. That is, we cannot imagine an abstract person, but thinking "man", we imagine a certain image. Consequently, abstractions apart from our consciousness do not have their own existence, they are generated only by our brain activity. This is subjective idealism.
In the work “On the Principles of Human Knowledge”, the thinker formulates his main idea: “to exist” means “to be perceived”. We perceive some object with our senses, but does this mean that the object is identical to our sensations (and ideas) about it? The subjective idealism of J. Berkeley claims that with our sensations we “model” the object of our perception. Then it turns out that if the subject does not feel the cognizable object in any way, then there is no such object at all - just as there was no Antarctica, alpha particles or Pluto in the time of J. Berkeley.
Then the question arises: was there anything before the appearance of man? As a Catholic bishop, J. Berkeley was forced to leave his subjective idealism, or, as it is also called, solipsism, and move to the position of objective idealism. The Spirit, infinite in time, had in mind all things before their existence, and he makes them feel to us. And from all the variety of things and the order in them, a person should conclude how wise and good God is.
British thinker David Hume developed Berkeley's subjective idealism. Based on the ideas of empiricism - knowledge of the world through experience -the philosopher warns that our handling of general ideas is often based on our sensory perceptions of singular objects. But the object and our sensory representation of it are not always the same thing. Therefore, the task of philosophy is not to study nature, but the subjective world, perception, feelings, human logic.
The subjective idealism of Berkeley and Hume had a significant impact on the evolution of British empiricism. It was also used by the French enlighteners, and the installation of agnosticism in D. Hume's theory of knowledge gave impetus to the formation of I. Kant's criticism. The proposition about the "thing in itself" of this German scientist formed the basis of German classical philosophy. The epistemological optimism of F. Bacon and the skepticism of D. Hume later prompted philosophers to think about "verification" and "falsification" of ideas.
