Recovering Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

256 Pages·2010·2.2 MB·English

by  Scott Breuninger

Recovering Bishop Berkeley
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Recovering Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context
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Recovering Bishop Berkeley
V S
IRTUE AND OCIETY IN THE
A -I C
NGLO RISH ONTEXT
SCOTT BREUNINGER
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RECOVERING BISHOP BERKELEY
Copyright © Scott Breuninger, 2010.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the
world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers
Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–0–230–10280–4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Breuninger, Scott.
Recovering Bishop Berkeley : virtue and society in the Anglo-Irish
context / Scott Breuninger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–230–10280–4 (alk. paper)
1. Berkeley, George, 1685–1753. 2. Ireland—Civilization. 3. Ireland—
Culture. 4. Virtue. 5. Philosophical theology. I. Title.
B1348.B75 2010
192—dc22 2009039955
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: April 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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For Hudson Kehs Breuninger
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Abbreviations xi
1 Introduction 1
2 Berkeley’s Sermons on Passive Obedience
in the Irish Context 15
3 Science and Sociability: Berkeley’s “Bond of Society” 35
4 Piety, Perception, and the Freethinkers 53
5 Luxury, Moderation, and the South Sea Bubble 71
6 Planting Religion in the New World, 1722–32 95
7 Improving Ireland: Luxury, Virtue, and
Economic Development 117
8 Bishop of Cloyne: Protestantism, Patriotism,
and a National Panacea 137
9 Epilogue 159
Notes 167
Bibliography 211
Index 235
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Acknowledgments
This project has been the work of several years and has been greatly
enhanced by the generous assistance of many people, especially the fol-
lowing exemplary models of scholarship and teaching: John Kirkland,
Joseph Fell, Ernest Keen, James Donnelly, Johann Sommerville, David
Sorkin, Maxine Berg, and Chris Fox. I would especially like to express
my gratitude for Laurence Dickey’s unstinting encouragement and
direction in formulating the dissertation upon which this is based, as well
as his insights into the practice of intellectual history as a whole. I have
been fortunate to learn a great deal from my peers and colleagues, and
would like to acknowledge the valuable insights shared over the years by
David Burrow, David Sheffler, Sean Farrell, Timothy McMahon, David
Holmes, Ted Frantz, Greg Bond, and Skip Willman. I would also like
to thank Anthony La Vopa and the anonymous reviewers at Palgrave for
their suggestions and comments, which have helped improve the final
form of this book.
I am particularly grateful to my parents, Ruth and Millard, for their
encouragement and interest in my project, as well as the Wood family for
making my transition to South Dakota more manageable. Finally, I would
like to offer my most profound thanks to my wife, Melanie, who helped
make it possible for me to finish this project and for giving me reasons to
appreciate its completion.
Some of the material included in this text has been published in
other forms and I would like to recognize these editors and publications
and thank them for permission to reproduce these earlier works: James
Rogers for “Rationality and Revolution: Rereading Berkeley’s Sermons on
Passive Obedience,” portions of which appeared in New Hibernia Review,
a journal of Irish Studies published by the University of St. Thomas
in Minnesota; the Journal of Religious History, the Association for the
Journal of Religious History, and Blackwell Publishing for “Planting an
Asylum for Religion: Berkeley’s Bermuda Scheme and the Transmission
of Virtue in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World”; the Associated
University Presses for “Berkeley and Ireland: Who Are the ‘We’ in ‘We
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