Berkeley on the natural laws of society

Besedin A.
First pub. in: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. United Kingdom: Voltaire Foundation, 2015, № 9, с. 37–52.

In the present article I examine two arguments Berkeley proposes to prove his claim that moral precepts are natural laws. The examination is based on Passive obedience and Berkeley’s Guardian essays. The first part of the article presents an analysis of the utilitarian argument – Berkeley’s deduction of moral rules. The second part is devoted to the sociality argument and to some features of Berkeley’s social philosophy. Conscience as a source of knowledge of moral laws is discussed in the third part of the article.