Andrew Baxter: Critic of Berkeley

Abstract

Andrew Baxter, as we have had occasion in the last chapter to note, has been regarded as the author of the first extended criticism in English of Berkeley’s philosophy,¹ yet that criticism itself has received little attention.² This chapter is devoted to an examination of the material contained in a section of Baxter’s Enquiry ³ entitled “Dean Berkeley’s scheme against the existence of matter and a material world examined, and shewn inconclusive.” The section is interesting in that it reveals to us the sort of impact Berkeley’s Principles had on a metaphysician of some ability and influence living in a world, so far as he could see, dominated on the one hand by a Malebranchian type of rationalism, on the other by Baylean Pyrrhonism, with Locke seen as leaning towards the latter. In his either/or intellectual milieu, the revolution advanced in the Principles would find no place.