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A Response to George Berkeley?s Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous


The following essay is a response to George Berkeley?s Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in which he argues that the Cartesian notion of substance is incoherent, that the word "matter" as Descartes uses it, does not mean anything.

This essay is also about words as memories, and about the two fictional Marcels, young and old.

Hylas is a Cartesian thinker, and Philonous is Berkeley?s voice of reason.

Words are like vessels?they are merely novel constructions of sounds empty of meaning until we fill them. They mean only what we discern in them, and nothing more.

Words are only our impressions of them?imprecise, indefinite, unclear. A single word suggests infinite shades of intensity or quality or connotation. They are variable, distinct in each era and dialect, even in each speaking. They are impossible to translate.

Words are almost translations themselves. They are re-creations of other words from other languages and from their own. They are metaphors?dead because they have been "carried across" into alien languages, and dead because we no longer hear them. They are the memories of, and allusions to, what they once were.

Words are instinctive?the fundamental expression of thoughts secondary to thoughts. They are, indeed, the translations of thoughts, the inexact and practical interpretations of them. They communicate.

Words are imperfect by nature.

In the Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley knows words to be imperfect. His two speakers debate definitions?of skepticism, sensible things, substrata, matter, idea, spirit?as principal points on which their arguments depend; once Philonous has clarified and, in so doing, altered Hylas?s notion of these words, his argument is won. At his worst, Hylas attempts to use the word "matter" to mean what it truly does not mean simply by endowing it with new meaning. Even if language allows this, philosophical argument does not. Philonous objects: "How many shapes is your matter to take?...you mean nothing at all... you employ words to no manner of purpose, without any design or signification whatsoever" (Berkeley 54, 57). Philonous, the philosopher, wanting to describe his thought-world precisely, attempts to restrain unruly language by defining words clearly and distinctly?it is a task familiar to us. Berkeley, through Philonous, realizes the power of words as interpretations of thought-meaning (ideas); he attempts to control that power by making one word mean one thing only. But, indeed, words are imprecise, indefinite, unclear?Berkeley can approach, but can not gain complete reign over his language.

Marcel too knows that words are imperfect, but, unlike Berkeley, revels in the infinite complexity of language that both causes and is born of its imperfection. He devotes his life to words, to the depiction of real experience in thoughts expressed in writing. For Marcel, the novelist, all there is, is language?words which contain in themselves more than themselves. Some words are motifs, like "hawthorn," "lilac," "church," "novel." These are the words to which Marcel, the author, returns, and in which he develops meaning through repetition and connotation. Other words are names and place-names, like "Gilberte," "Swann," "Combray," "Bergotte." These are those to which Marcel, the character, returns, vessels which he perpetually fills with his current and colored conceptions of them. For this Marcel, we know, all there is, is memory?recalled images and ideas. In devoting himself to language, to his novel, Marcel devotes himself to the recollection of his experiences, to the remembrance of things past, to the search for lost time.

Unlike Berkeley, Marcel can be comfortable with the multiplicity of meaning in words. Indeed, Marcel uses the complexity and self-referentially of language to create intricate layers and sub-layers of memory. His relationship to words parallels his relationship to memory?as one Marcel exists by memory alone, the other exists by words alone. And these words themselves are word-memories, both of Marcel?s language and of his experiences. Each word echoes every instance in which it has been used before and will used again; each represents his recollections; each contains in itself all that is in Marcel?s conceptions of it. As Marcel fills his words with his impressions of them, he recreates them as the vessels of his memory.

Frank Bidart wrote, "We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed."

NOTES

1. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
2. Marcel Proust, Swann?s Way, trans. C. K. Moncreiff and Terence Kilmartin (NewYork: Vintage, 1989).

3. George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979).

A note on the texts:

Proust?s Swann?s Way is the first volume of his eight-volume continuous narrative Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Times. (In the original French, it is A la recherche du temps perdu.) It is the story of a man?s life, a first-person memoir, a fictional autobiography. Swann?s Way is the story of this character?s love for his mother and for the girl Gilberte and his retelling of his friend Swann?s love for the woman Odette. In class, we called the un-named character/narrator "Marcel"?"old Marcel" when he is the grown-up man recounting the story of his childhood and "young Marcel" when he is the child. Marcel Proust is a distinct entity?of course, the author of the novel. Swann?s Way is written in four books, the Overture, Combray, Swann in Love, and Place-Names: The Name, all of which are mentioned in the essays.

Descartes? Meditations on First Philosophy questions and defines knowledge and existence. Descartes too, uses a first-person voice, whom we called "the Meditator." It is the Meditator who goes through the method of progressive doubt and re-founds all knowledge on the basis of "the cogito":

Thus, after everything has been most carefully weighed, it must finally be established that "I am, I exist" is necessarily true every time I put it forward or conceive it in my mind.

Berkeley?s Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous is an argument between the Cartesian thinker Hylas and the Berkelean Philonous. In the first of these dialogues, Berkley argues that the Cartesian notion of substance is incoherent and that the word "matter" as Descartes uses it is meaningless.