God himself will deal with bad and mad princes

Text by professor Timo Airaksinen

The case of the mad prince is difficult to evaluate, as it seems be an afterthought and concession to critics.[i] I mean Berkeley worries that he will be tested to the extreme by the hypothetical case of the mad prince and something even worse until he looks like a mad extremist himself. A mad prince may punish all conscientious objections of positive precepts by death. Therefore, he must admit that some imagined princes are so mad, or insane, that we need not respect their will, commands, and laws. This is to say that the idea of a mad prince is just a backstop of an argument, the ultimate admission that not all expressions of royal power need to be tolerated. Without such a theoretical backstop the power of the princes looks suspiciously like God's power; this indeed is limitless. Berkeley also hints, as we saw above, at a possibility that God himself will deal with bad and mad princes, but this move does not fit his overall philosophical world-view.

[i] See Matti Häyry, "Passive Obedience and Berkeley's Moral Philosophy," Berkeley Studies 23 (2012), 3-14.