Among the many philosophical systems that recognize the primacy of the spiritual principle in the world of material things, the teachings of J. Berkeley and D. Hume, which can be briefly described as subjective idealism, stand somewhat apart. The prerequisites for their conclusions were the works of the medieval scholastic nominalists, as well as their successors - for example, the conceptualism of D. Locke, who claims that the common is the mental distraction of the often repeated signs of various things.
Based on the positions of D. Locke, the English bishop and philosopher J. Berkeley gave them their original interpretation. If there are only scattered, isolated objects and only the human mind, having caught the repeating properties inherent in some of them, selects objects into groups and calls these groups with some words, then we can assume that there can be no abstract idea that is not based on properties and the qualities of the objects themselves. That is, we cannot imagine an abstract person, but thinking “man”, we imagine a certain image. Consequently, abstractions, in addition to our consciousness, do not have their existence; they are generated only by our brain activity. This is subjective idealism.
In the work “On the Principles of Human Knowledge”, the thinker formulates his main idea: “to exist” means “to be perceived”. We perceive an object with our senses, but does this mean that the object is identical to our sensations (and ideas) about it? J. Berkeley's subjective idealism states that with our sensations we “model” the object of our perception. Then it turns out that if the subject does not feel the knowable object in any way, then there is no such object at all - as there was no Antarctica, alpha particles or Pluto in the time of J. Berkeley.
Then the question arises: was there anything before the appearance of man? As a Catholic bishop, J. Berkeley was forced to abandon his subjective idealism or, as it is also called, solipsism, and move to the position of
objective idealism. The Infinite in time Spirit had in mind all things even before their existence began, and it makes us feel them. And from the whole variety of things and the order in them, a person should conclude how God is wise and good.
British thinker David Hume developed Berkeley's subjective idealism. Proceeding from the ideas of empiricism - cognition of the world through experience - the philosopher warns that our handling of common ideas is often based on our sensory perceptions of individual objects. But the subject and our sensual representation of it are not always the same thing. Therefore, the task of philosophy is to study not nature, but the subjective world, perception, feelings, human logic.
The subjective idealism of Berkeley and Hume had a significant impact on the evolution of British empiricism. French enlighteners also used it, and the installation of agnosticism in D. Hume's theory of knowledge gave impetus to the formation of criticism of I. Kant. The provision of the "thing-in-itself" of this German scholar formed the basis of German classical philosophy. The epistemological optimism of F. Bacon and the skepticism of D. Hume later prompted philosophers to the idea of "verification" and "falsification" of ideas.