By the time of Immanuel Kant, Berkeley had been caIled, among other
things, a sceptic, an atheist, a solipsist, and an idealist. In our own
day, however, the suggestion has been ad- vanced that Berkeley is bett
er understood if interpreted as a realist and man of common sense.
Regardless of whether in the end one decides to treat hirn as a
subjective idealist or as a re- alist, I think it has become appropriate
to inquire how Berkeley's own contemporaries viewed his philosophy.
Heretofore the gen- erally accepted account has been that they ignored
hirn, roughly from the time he published the Principles 01 Human
Knowledge until1733 when Andrew Baxter's criticism appeared. The aim of
the present study is to correct that account as weIl as to give some
indication not only of the extent, but more important, the role and
character of several of the earliest discussions. Second- arily, I have
tried to give some clues as to the influence this early material may
have had in forming the image of the "good" Bish- op that emerged in the
second half of the eighteenth century. For it is my hope that such clues
may prove helpful in freeing us from the more severe strictures of the
traditional interpretive dogmas.