pleasure is the summum bonum."[1] In the Essays in the Guardian (1713), pleasures of reason and pleasures of sense are placed on the same level, so long as they are natural and not 'fantastical.' But in Alciphron (1732), pleasures of sense are degraded. The view that these constitute the summum bonum is strongly attacked. Sense-pleasure is natural only to brutes. Reason is the highest and most characteristic element in human nature, and rational pleasures are natural to man. It is interesting to note in Berkeley's theory of knowledge a similar growing recognition of the importance of reason.
For Berkeley, as for all other British moralists, the problem of the relation of egoism and altruism is urgent. But in Berkeley's ethical, as in his metaphysical philosophy, God solves many difficulties. This problem, among many others, would remain unresolved apart from God. Self-love remains the supreme principle in morality, but it is only at a low stage of moral development that self-love bids a man seek his own happiness only. Rational self-love seeks to regard the world sub specie aeternitatis. Self-love advocates only those kinds of actions that are supposed to be in accordance with the will of God. No purely selfish action can be conformable to the will of God. The Hobbist position of undiluted egoism is stated by Berkeley, but only to be refuted by the same arguments as Butler used.
The summum bonum cannot be mere temporal happiness. It cannot be confined within the conditions of time. It consists in eternal happiness. Now eternal happiness can be guaranteed only by God. Hence self-love lays down the rule that we act always in conformity with the will of God. The existence of God is required by morality as it is by knowledge. Berkeley's general metaphysical position implies that apart from the existence of God to guarantee the regularity and invariability of our sense-impressions knowledge would be impossible. And so in ethics the supreme moral end would be impossible apart from God. But it is worth noting that Berkeley does not, as Kant does, attempt to base a practical proof of God's existence on his indispensability for morality.
- ↑ Commonplace Book, I, p. 47.
