_title_page.jpg)
Alciphron, orThe Minute Philosopher is a philosophicaldialogue by the 18th-century Irish philosopherGeorge Berkeley wherein Berkeley combated the arguments offree-thinkers such asMandeville andShaftesbury against theChristianreligion. It was completed in 1731, and first published in 1732.
The dialogue is primarily between four characters, the free-thinkers Alciphron and Lysicles, Berkeley's spokesman Euphranor, and Crito, who serves as a spokesman for traditional Christianity. The mostly-silent narrator of the dialogue is given the name Dion.
The work contains two especially notable sections:
In a later work,The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained (first published in 1733), Berkeley adduced the work ofAlberto Radicati as evidence that the views advocated by the character Lysicles were not overly exaggerated (para. 5).
The work expressed Berkeley'santi-Catholicism. In it, he suggested that freethinking, by damagingProtestantism, would leave England open to conversion by Roman Catholic missionaries. In 1742, theCatholic Church responded to the work's anti-Catholic views by placing it on theIndex of Forbidden Books, where it remained until the abolition of the Index in 1966.[3]
It was originally published anonymously under the full titleAlciphron: or, the minute philosopher. In seven dialogues. Containing an apology for the Christian religion, against those who are called free-thinkers, printed in London by J. Tonson in 2 volumes. The second volume contains hisAn Essay towards a New Theory of Vision and so it was not very anonymous.[4]
The posthumous 1755 edition was the first to include Berkeley's name as author. The book was begun while Berkeley was living atWhitehall Farm,Rhode Island, and then finished when he came back to London in 1731.[5]
The book was criticised by a letter in theDaily Postboy (September 1732) to whom Berkeley replied in hisTheory of Vision (1733).Peter Browne, Bishop of Cork, responded to Berkeley in hisDivine Analogy (1733).Bernard Mandeville replied in a pamphlet entitledA Letter to Dion (1732).Lord Hervey protested against Alciphron'srationalism in hisSome Remarks on the Minute Philosopher (1732).Francis Hutcheson's philosophical criticism appeared in the fourth edition of hisInquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1738). The American clergymanSamuel Johnson wrote a more sympathetic review in theElementa Philosophica (1752).[6]