When I wrote last week's blog, I forgot the great philosopher of the Peek-a-Book, Bishop Berkeley, so Helena and I had a quick talk about him this week. He seems to make the same mistake that contemporary psychologists do about babies, thinking that what the kid is struggling with is merely object permanence, with the idea that things can exist outside of our perception of them.
Berkeley took philosophical idealism to its extreme, saying that in fact, the world itself did not exist. All that was "really there" is the subject who perceives, and God who sends the perceptions directly into his soul. The world "as it is", other subjects... all are merely my own projections, confusions of my relationship with God. There is a certain mystical logic to this, at least as Western Mystics have always said that God is all that really matters, but both babies and most of the original thinkers of Judeo-Christianity didn't make that mistake. After all, Jesus says, "As you do to the lest of these my brothers, you do to me." It isn't as Berkeley suggests that others are a projection of the subject's relationship with God, but that God is an extension of the justice we do to others, especially the poor and vulnerable.I think babies understand the basic premise, and parents do, too. God is, to a certain degree, a byproduct of the love we bear for one another.
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