Gavin Ardley’s Complete Renovation of Berkeley

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

  

Bishop George Berkeley is revealed by philosopher-scientist Gavin Ardley to have been a most poorly misunderstood, and wrongly classified, philosopher of science and mathematics.

  
 
Introduction


Some decades ago, Gavin Ardley (RIP) very kindly posted me a copy of his marvellous book, Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy (Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), in which he turned upside down virtually everything that I had been taught about the Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher, George Berkeley (1685 -1753).
Traditionally, bishop George Berkeley – who is not highly regarded at all by champions of philosophia perennis - is placed alongside such Age of Enlightenment philosophers as Locke and Hume, albeit with his own unique brand of Empiricism.


For example (http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_berkeley.html):
Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753) was an Irish philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, best known for his theory of Immaterialism, a type of Idealism (he is sometimes considered the father of modern Idealism). Along with John Locke and David Hume, he is also a major figure in the British Empiricism movement, although his Empiricism is of a much more radical kind, arising from his mantra “to be is to be perceived”.  
 
And again (http://www.iep.utm.edu/berkeley/):


George Berkeley was one of the three most famous British Empiricists. (The other two are John Locke and David Hume.)  Berkeley is best known for his early works on vision (An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709) and metaphysics (A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713).
….
Berkeley claimed that abstract ideas are the source of all philosophical perplexity and illusion.  In his Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge he argued that, as Locke described abstract ideas (Berkeley considered Locke’s the best account of abstraction), (1) they cannot, in fact, be formed, (2) they are not needed for communication or knowledge, and (3) they are inconsistent and therefore inconceivable.
In the Principles and the Three Dialogues Berkeley defends two metaphysical theses:  idealism (the claim that everything that exists either is a mind or depends on a mind for its existence) and immaterialism (the claim that matter does not exist).  His contention that all physical objects are composed of ideas is encapsulated in his motto esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived). ….

[End of quotes]

 
According to Gavin Ardley


In Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy, Gavin Ardley paints an entirely different portrait of Berkeley as a most common sense and realist philosopher, “one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle”. Berkeley, Ardley explains, has been misread, causing his actual philosophical outlook to have been quite misunderstood due to a misinterpretation of his dialectical method. For often Berkeley’s antithesis has been taken for his final synthesis, with the inevitably catastrophic result: “… they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley’s intentions”.
Ardley introduces his book as follows:
In this work I have endeavoured to see Berkeley in his contemporary setting. On the principle that philosophy is ultimately about men, not about abstract problems, I have tried to see Berkeley the philosopher as an expression of Berkeley the man. When this is done, what is perennial in the philosophy may be discerned in and through what is local and temporal. Berkeley then emerges as a pioneer reformer; not so much an innovator as a renovator; one who set out to rescue phi losophy from the enthusiasms of the preceding age; one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle. Critical studies of some of the more striking of Berkeley’s epistemological arguments are legion. They commenced with the young Berkeley’s first appearance in print, and have continued to this day. But whether they take the form of professions of support for Berkeley, or of bald refutations of Berkeley’s supposed fallacies, or whether, like the contemporary analytical studies of Moore, Warnock, and Austin, they are subtle exposures of alleged deeply concealed logical muddles, they all tend to share one common characteristic: they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley’s intentions. It is the intentions which control the whole, and give the right perspective in which to view the various items.

[End of quote]

After that it is a roller coaster ride towards the discovery of an entirely new Berkeley and his vital contribution – not without Ardley’s points of criticism here and there – to the philosophy of modern science and mathematics.
Not least of Gavin Ardley’s achievements here is his re-interpretation of Berkeley’s supposed principle of immaterialism, esse est percipi, along the lines of realism and common sense. Earlier we read of the standard view of Berkeley in this regard: “[Berkeley’s] immaterialism (the claim that matter does not exist). His contention that all physical objects are composed of ideas is encapsulated in his motto esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived)”. Berkeley’s true view of this famous principle is well explained also in the following review: “… everything that is perceived is truly real and existing; it is, because it is perceived, esse est percipi”.
http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/MC.13.4.338?journalCode=mc

Gender Identity: Marxist Plan to Destroy the Family



The Washington Standard / May 17, 2016 /


This past week, America got a glimpse into what was really meant when Barack Obama said we were five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.  The president demanded that school districts across the country allow boys who identify as female have access to girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, and even college dorms. Many people have been warning that Obama has a lot of time left in office to push through some of his most, shall we say, radical ideas in his quest for social change. People would have never imagined back in 2008, however, that this man would one day issue decrees that would ultimately redefine humanity itself by pushing the issue of transgenderism into the forefront of everybody’s consciousness.
The liberal left would have you believe that allowing transgendered people to use the restroom of their choice is a civil rights issue comparable to the struggle black Americans have faced.  To them, America is an oppressive society that clings to the idea of a Gender Binary System. This is the idea that gender itself is nothing more than a social construct based off a person’s biological sex and that by separating gender into two distinct classes, male and female, society is engaging in gender oppression. This means that we are forcing individuals into the expected norms and social mores of the biological sex assigned to them at birth. The left uses the term “gender identity” in an attempt to differentiate between the ways a person self-identifies and their actual gender. In fact, they claim that gender itself is defined, not by the individual’s biological anatomy, but by a complex relationship between their actual biology, how they self-identify, and the behaviors they exhibit that project that particular gender identification, as well as the expected social roles of that gender.

Biological Gender (sex) includes physical attributes such as external genitalia, sex chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, and internal reproductive structures. At birth, it is used to assign sex, that is, to identify individuals as male or female. Gender on the other hand is far more complicated. It is the complex interrelationship between an individual’s sex (gender biology), one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither (gender identity) as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviors (gender expression) related to that perception, including their gender role. Together, the intersection of these three dimensions produces one’s authentic sense of gender, both in how people experience their own gender as well as how others perceive it.

These ideas are Marxist in origin, as Karl Marx viewed the nuclear family as a vehicle of class oppression. In a civilized society the most basic institution of self governance is the family structure. Marxists on the other hand, view this structure as one that exploits the labor of women and reduces her to nothing more than a servant of men. They claim that because women are viewed as being the nurturer and caretaker of the home they are being oppressed. This was the idea behind Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique as well. While Friedan started the feminist movement masquerading as a typical suburban housewife, the truth is radically different. She was actually a radical left wing activist who pushed communist propaganda for nearly twenty five years before publishing her book.  This means that she already held a biased, Marxist view on the traditional family and that she wrote her book with the intent of pushing change that would break the traditional view Americans held towards the family as an institution. The following is the first paragraph from The Feminine Mystique.

The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for the groceries, matched slip cover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured cub scouts and brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask of herself the silent question—“Is this all?”

In her article entitled “On the Social Construction of Sex” Freya Brown, a Marxist, writes that the idea of gender is a set of baseless myths designed to “reinforce and ideologically” justify the oppression of women. Again, this comes from the Marxist idea that the family is an oppressive institution that exploits the labor of women while keeping them in the societal role of mother and caretaker. Consider the following from this source:

Some Marxists view the household as an institution that functions to support capitalism and it permits or even encourages exploitation. That is, by creating and recreating sexual inequalities, and keeping women in the home with responsibility for family subsistence, emotional support and reproduction, the family helps capitalism continue to exploit labour and helps maintains stability within a system of class oppression and inequality. There are various ways in which the family and sex roles do this.
 First are the strictly economic features. So long as women have primary responsibility for reproduction (physical and socialization) and household and family maintenance, women constitute a cheap form of labour, a reserve army of labour. T hey have been a latent reserve over the last forty years, some are a short term reserve over the economic cycle, and women are a labour reserve in a generational sense. That is, the expectation that women will not be as committed to many jobs as men, with time taken off for childbearing, child care, care of elderly parents, etc., allows employers to pay women less than men. The lower status of women within society also allows women to be paid less, since some wages and salaries are structured on status considerations.

Brown also goes on to say that it is the patriarchal ideology, or the idea that men are the head of the family structure, that needs to be dismantled in order to create true equality. She argues that a Marxist theory should govern society when it comes to gender identity.

At the end of the day, the sex/gender dichotomy is part of patriarchal ideology, and it is an idea that we need to break with in favor of a theory which is revolutionary and Marxist in character. The purpose of the present article is to provide an initial counter to the idea that sex assignment is “just biology.” A properly Marxist theory of sex will be more thoroughly explored in part two. Freya Brown-“On the Social Construction of Sex”

The whole purpose behind the transgender issue is not to push for civil rights, but to destroy the basic ideas behind the traditional gender structure and the institution of family. In its place would be a system based on Marxist theory where everybody is completely equal without the societal assigned pressures of having to behave according to our natural biology. Without a legal definition of sex, or male and female, there can be no family where there are traditional mothers and fathers recognized by law; therefore, the family would have been effectively neutralized.  Riki Wilchins, in his or her article entitled “We’ll win the Bathroom Battle when the Binary Burns,” writes that the real struggle that gay and lesbian activists face is the hetero-binary system that queer people must inhabit. This is quite a telling admission, seeing as it was a convicted child rapist who wrote North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law.  In another article entitled “Dismantling the Gender Binary System,” written by someone calling themselves Rae, it is admitted that educating people into the idea that gender is a social construct is the only way to break people from the rigid ideas of biological gender being what identifies us as individuals. This would explain why they are pushing the issue into our public school system.  By conditioning students at an early age to accept transgender individuals into their personal space, the transition into a genderless society in their later years will be easy.
This is essentially a battle between the traditional Judeo-Christian view on the role of men and women and the Marxist view. The former views men and women as being complete equals with different roles to play in society while the latter argues that believing a woman should embrace her responsibility as a mother is a form of oppression. The left believes that, by destroying the idea of biological gender, they will essentially be creating a world of total equality where the stigma of behaving according to society’s definition of gender is gone. If this goal is realized, and the truth of biological sex is redefined by law under the guise of transgenderism and gender identity theory, the structure of our society would also be redefined because it is the family itself that has served as the basic institution of liberty. There would be no legal definition of men and women in the traditional sense, and the idea that fathers and mothers have separate but equal roles to play concerning the raising of children would thus be irrelevant and have no real meaning.  If our country is to survive at all, this is an issue that must be fought on all levels.

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Taken from: http://thewashingtonstandard.com/gender-identity-marxist-plan-destroy-family/

"Economic Science and St. Thomas Aquinas" by Don Boland

                                                                                                                                                                          

          

This is a book on what is perhaps the most burning and urgent of social issues of our times, namely, the relationship between the science of Economics and Ethics.

It demonstrates that the modern view has reversed the true relationship and that it is a mistake of enormous practical significance, not unrelated to the vicissitudes that the modern economy has experienced in the past and, now worldwide, is undergoing at the present time.

To regain the proper perspective on the relationship, we need to recover the practical wisdom of two of the geniuses of Ethics in the history of that study: Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

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Taken from: http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Science-St-Thomas-Aquinas/dp/1633370941/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF

Victoria now criminalising peaceful activities – anti-abortion protests

 

 

This is an infamously historic day for Victoria and you could be forgiven for not noticing that anything has changed at all. No church bells pealing, calling people to prayer, asking God for His mercy on our State.  However over 100 Helpers were there in prayer on Saturday after a beautiful Mass with seven Priests in Carlton. Some people processed in prayer to the modern-day Calvary and others stayed to pray in the church before the Blessed Sacrament. Thank you to those who have supported us in prayer from afar.

This morning Richard, Ken and Doris prayed on the edge of the 150 metre zone. Two activists from the Sex Party were there taking photos of the Helpers (they had been inside the zone for some time before approaching to take the photos). The police showed up and thanked the Helpers for adhering to the new law. He told them that the Melbourne City Council would shortly be marking lines where the 150 metre boundary would be. That's a lot of line-marking! When Ken and Richard walked past the Fertility Control Clinic (FCC) praying the rosary on their way to the bank, a few of the FCC staff and the Sex Party activists, who were standing at the front gate, didn't say a word to them. The Snr. Sergeant had earlier affirmed the Helpers' rights to use the footpath. 

Richard showed the policeman the leaflet that some people had distributed in neighbouring letterboxes (1,800 of them) on Sunday 1st May. It details the number of unborn babies destroyed at the FCC since 1973 -  a shocking total which residents will now be aware of.

Following is our Press Release which we have sent to the media who have requested it. Don't expect they will use it.

Please pray for the intercession of St. Mary of the Cross for the future endeavours of the Helpers.

Press Release regarding the anti-Helpers law,

ludicrously named ‘Safe Access Zone’ Law                       Saturday 30^th April, 2016

 

This law prevents anyone from acting peacefully within the designated area. “It must be the first law of its kind in Victoria to criminalise peaceful activities”, Mrs Tanya O’Brien said. Nowhere in the world has an extreme exclusion zone of 150 metres been imposed. Buffer zones of lesser restrictions have been struck down by the courts in various states of the USA.

Helpers have been praying and offering help outside abortion centres around Victoria for the past 23 years. In particular, Helpers have been present on a daily basis outside the ‘Fertility Control Clinic’ in East Melbourne. During all these years, not one of the Helpers has ever been convicted of an offence. There are laws already to deal with accusations of harassment and intimidation. The Helpers presence is peaceful and therefore a new law has been construed which moves the goal posts, imposing draconian fines and possible jail term for merely being present or offering a pamphlet to those who wish to receive it.

We have been able to assist over 300 pregnant mothers to date. It is incumbent on the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to show the government how it will make up for the shortfall in services to mothers that our absence will create when this exclusion zone is enforced.

The law is clearly unconstitutional. It will inevitably be challenged in the courts and it will inevitably be struck down. It is arrogant for the Victorian Parliament to join with the abortion industry in passing an unconstitutional law to deny pregnant women any knowledge of the type of assistance that is available to them from the Helpers.

This law, which comes into effect from Monday 2 May, will not prevent the Helpers from reaching out to those in need. It is our aim to expand our activities in the future.

 

Helpers of God’s Precious Infants

P.O Box 4075

Patterson 3204

Mrs Tanya O’Brien

0407 090 367

             

Pope Francis and the Satanist

 

by Deacon Nick Donnelly  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  May 1, 2016                                                       

Pope Francis, like a number of other modern popes, has a devotion to Bd. Bartolo Longo. Pope St. John Paul II beatified Bartolo Longo in 1980 and presented him as an exemplar of a life made holy by praying the Most Holy Rosary:

As a true apostle of the Rosary, Blessed Bartolo Longo had a special charism. His path to holiness rested on an inspiration heard in the depths of his heart: "Whoever spreads the Rosary is saved!" As a result, he felt called to build a Church dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii, against the background of the ruins of the ancient city, which scarcely heard the proclamation of Christ before being buried in 79 A.D. during an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, only to emerge centuries later from its ashes as a witness to the lights and shadows of classical civilization. By his whole life's work and especially by the practice of the "Fifteen Saturdays," Bartolo Longo promoted the Christocentric and contemplative heart of the Rosary, and received great encouragement and support from Leo XIII, the "Pope of the Rosary."  (Apostolic Letter on the Rosary, "Rosarium Virginis Mariae").

However, if you type "Bartolo Longo" into a search engine you'll get some shocking headlines: "The Satanist on the Path to Sainthood"; "Pompeii and a Satanist Turned Saint"; "Satanism, Pompeii and the Rosary — a Bizarre Tale Surrounds Francis' Next Trip."
In 2014 Pope Francis flew by helicopter from the Vatican to Pompeii to visit the only Church dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Rosary built by a former satanist. The Church has been raised to the status of a pontifical basilica and is home to a miraculous image of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Pope Francis composed a special prayer dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, which he prayed before the sacred painting. His words refer to the deep wounds of sin that plague us and our society:

We entrust our miseries, the many streets of hate and blood, the thousands of ancient and new poverties and above all, our sins. To you we entrust ourselves, Mother of Mercy: grant us the forgiveness of God, help us to build a world according to your heart. O Blessed Rosary of Mary, sweet chain that ties us to God, chain of love that makes us brothers, we will not leave you again. You will be in our hands a weapon of peace and forgiveness, star that guides our path.

Bartolo Longo's life is testimony to the power of the Most Holy Rosary to heal very serious, very deep wounds inflicted by the devil and sin. Bartolo was born on February 10, 1841, the son of devout Catholic parents who daily prayed the Rosary as a family.

Bartolo's father died when he was only 10 years old, his mother remarried and he began to drift away from the Faith. During his studies at Naples University Bartolo became involved with the occult, taking part in séances, fortune-telling and sexual promiscuity. He was drawn deeper into occult practices, becoming a member of a satanic cult and eventually being initiated into the satanic priesthood.

Like many involved in the occult and satanism, he was afflicted with demonic oppression, which was ruining his life. People suffering from demonic oppression experience self-destructive thoughts, self-harming, the urge to actions that are damaging to themselves and others. Bartolo has been described as suffering "despair, fear, hate, anger, an inability to forgive, resentment, and thoughts of suicide."

Sinking deeper into self-destructive darkness, one day Bartolo heard the voice of his dead father beseech him, "Return to God! Return to God!" A friend of Bartolo put him in touch with a Dominican priest, Friar Alberto Radente, who taught him about the healing power of the Most Holy Rosary. At the age of 30 on October 7, 1871, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, Bartolo became a Dominican tertiary and took the name "Rosario."

Following his conversion Bartolo returned one last time to a séance at which he held up a Rosary and declared, "I renounce spiritualism because it is nothing but a maze of error and falsehood." But Bartolo's struggles against occultism didn't stop with that séance. In the town of Pompeii, Bartolo found Catholics trapped by the same superstition and dark practices. He longed to bring them the healing he had found through the Rosary. To this end Bartolo promoted devotion to the Rosary by forming a Confraternity of the Rosary, by restoring a dilapidated church dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary and by personally sponsoring an annual festival in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary. Bartolo also established the Marian devotion the Supplication to the Queen of Victories, first prayed in Pompeii on October 1883, and which is now recited all over the world on May 8, and on the first Sunday in October.

As well as these Spiritual Works of Mercy, Bartolo Longo was inspired by his deep love for Our Lady and the Church to radical Corporal Works of Mercy, in the words of Pope St. John Paul II, transforming "Pompeii into a living citadel of human and Christian goodness." He established orphanages, Sons of Prisoners, Daughters of Prisoners, Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompeii and Dominican Tertiaries.

The Miraculous Painting

Miraculous painting of Our Lady

In 1875 Bartolo received a special grace, though he didn't know it at the time. Father Radente gave him a painting of Our Lady of the Rosary. In bad condition, the painting was also of poor artistic quality. If that wasn't enough to put Bartolo off the painting, it had been brought to him in the back of a cart used to transport manure around the farms. However, seeing that it came as a gift from the priest who had helped him in his darkest hour, Bartolo accepted it, paid for it to be restored and placed it in the church he had renovated. The painting portrays Mary seated on a throne holding the child Jesus and handing a Rosary to St. Dominic and St. Catherine of Siena, who are standing at her feet. The moment Bartolo hung the painting in the church, miracles began to happen. On the very first day, 12-year-old Clorinda Lucarelli was completely healed of epileptic seizures diagnosed as incurable.

A year after the first miracle, Bartolo began the construction of a larger church that was completed in 1891, becoming the Pontifical Basilica of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary of Pompeii. Bartolo "Rosario" Longo died in 1926 at the age of 85. His final words were "My only desire is to see Mary who saved me and who will save me from the clutches of Satan."

Blessed Paul VI had a deep devotion to this miraculous painting of Our Lady of the Rosary, and following more restoration work, had it temporarily displayed in St. Peter's Basilica, before its return to Pompeii. During his veneration of the sacred image Pope Paul VI said, "[J]ust as the image of the Virgin has been repaired and decorated ... so may the image of Mary that all Christians must have within themselves be restored, renovated and enriched."

In our own time, with the growing acceptance of depraved evil, satanists are becoming more brazen, raising up statues to Satan and other demons in Detroit and London. In His providence, God has given us Bd. Bartolo Longo, and the personal devotion of so many modern popes, to assist us in battling and defeating Satan through the power of the Most Holy Rosary.

Blessed Bartolo "Rosario" Longo, pray for us.

Deacon Nick Donnelly is an author based in the diocese of Lancaster, England. You can follow him at @protectthepope.

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Taken from: http://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-francis-and-the-satanist