Berkeley and Kant

Abstract This chapter surveys some of the most important issues concerning Kant’s relation to Berkeley. Early critics of the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason (1781) accused Kant of Berkeleyanism, which prompted him to repudiate his predecessor in later writings from the 1780s. However, as many readers have noticed, Kant’s remarks about Berkeley seem curiously off the mark, which raises a host of interpretive questions. The first section of the chapter addresses the question of whether Kant had firsthand knowledge of Berkeley’s writings at all. It presents the case that he probably did. The second section addresses Kant’s published criticisms of Berkeley. While these criticisms do reveal some familiarity with Berkeley’s writings, they fall short insofar as they either fail to distinguish Kant’s own idealism from Berkeley’s, or they misrepresent Berkeley’s position. The final section presents a direct comparison of several important aspects of Berkeley’s and Kant’s metaphysics, including the relation between their respective “idealisms,” their views on the existence and nature of bodies, and their responses to skepticism.