Reviewed by: George Berkeley and Early Modern Philosophy by Stephen H. Daniel Peter West Stephen H. Daniel. George Berkeley and Early Modern Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 352. Hardback, $85.00. Stephen H. Danielâs monograph offers a novel interpretation of Berkeleyâs philosophy of mind while situating Berkeleyâs thought within the context of early eighteenth-century epistemology and metaphysics. The text is commendable for its attempt to shed light on Berkeleyâs engagement with thinkers and traditions that tend to fall outside the canon of early modern philosophy (such as Stoicism, Ramism, and ânoncanonicalâ thinkers like Jonathan Edwards, Anthony Collins, and Peter Browne) and its attempt to place Berkeleyâs lesser-known works, such as De Motu and Siris, on a par with his best-known texts. Danielâs approach to historical interpretation is strongly contextualist and fits well with recent attempts to read the history of philosophy not as a debate among the âbig sevenâ (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant) but as a complicated network of exchangesâoften in very localized contexts (such as eighteenth-century Ireland, see chapter 17). Danielâs aim is to show that Berkeley developed an idiosyncratic account of the mind, which relies on a notion of substance that was not accepted by, and may not have even been familiar to, the likes of Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke. Berkeley scholars may already be familiar with this claim. Daniel has previously defended it in various journal publications that are included as chapters in this book (such as chapters 1 and 2, where Daniel argues that Berkeleyâs philosophy of mind is more indebted to Stoic and Ramist philosophy than to Cartesian and Lockean thought). It is worth noting that since a defense of this account of Berkeleyâs philosophy of mind is Danielâs focus, and his aims are primarily interpretative rather than expository, the text would be best suited to those with some prior knowledge of Berkeleyâs philosophy. In the remainder of this review, I have two aims: first, to explain Danielâs reading of what Berkeley takes a mind to be, and second, to put forward a criticism of Danielâs interpretation, focusing on his claim that Berkeleyâs notebooks ought to be read in just the same way as his published works. As the appendices to the book indicate (including a series of âReplies to My Criticsâ), Daniel is aware that his interpretation of Berkeley is not always warmly received. A likely explanation for this is that it is not always easy to understand what a mind is (for Berkeley) if Daniel is right. Daniel tells us this is because we are reading Berkeley in light of the substance-mode ontology of Descartes and Locke (and Aristotle before them) that Berkeley set out to reject (13â16, 294). This is a good reason to simply try to understand how Danielâs interpretation works. It is tempting to think of the mind as something that has thoughts and ideas, feels emotions, and performs actions like perceiving and reasoning. Our ordinary language reflects this: we say things like âI am tiredâ or âI am thinking.â Construed in this way, the mind is a thingâin early modern parlance, a substanceâthat has attributes and acts in certain ways. Similarly, I might describe a tree (another substance) in terms of its properties (tall, solid, brown, etc.) and activities (growing, photosynthesizing, etc.). However, Berkeley thinks this ordinary way of thinking is wrong. Really, he claims, the tree just is a collection of sensible properties (what he calls âideasâ). If Danielâs interpretation of Berkeley is right, it is also a mistake to think of the mind as a thing behind its thoughts, ideas, perceptions, and emotions. The mind is, as Berkeley puts it in a notebook entry, âa congeries of perceptionsâ (34). Daniel claims this does not make Berkeley a Humean bundle theorist; [End Page 510] the mind may not be a thing, but it remains a âsubstanceâ (in the way the ancient Stoics construed substances [26â36]). The mind is an active principle that translates collections of properties into something meaningful. Because we are minds, we do not...