The key problem

Text by professor Timo Airaksinen

The main source of trouble must be religion when a person cannot obey and draws the wrath of the prince upon himself. The key problem, clearly recognized by Hobbes, is an infidel sovereign. Berkeley says explicitly that sometimes one's conscience does not permit obedience (PO 3). He may think of religion, because these cases are the least subjective of all. Religious matters are by far the most important and controversial quandaries that one must elucidate and solve on conscientious grounds. It is not easy to imagine any other field of controversy in the 18th Century that has comparable significance in terms of one's conscience. Another field is royal succession, but often these are tied to religious controversies, like Jacobitism.[i] But in PO Berkeley wants to avoid all such religious and confessional matters (PO 2), and hence he does not specify any such cases where the unequivocal demands of conscience and its religious sensibilities would necessitate disobedience, but of course not disloyalty. I do not think that examples in terms of, say, chastity work at all well here – they are too trivial. Nevertheless, PO became a controversial text.

[i] See Conroy, 1971.