“A passionate, unpretentious, and serious contribution to the practice of reading literature through the prism of philosophy and theology.”—Giuseppe Mazzotta, author of Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment

"A study of the Anglo-Irish Idealist philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) that examines his interest in alchemy, utopian projects, and other esoteric matters."
—The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The author... aims to locate the rich panoply of historical sources which... lie behind Berkeley's thought, and which influence his thinking in ways not always appreciated... [He] pulls together a wide range of historical material seldom cited in modern Berkeley studies. [...] this book is rich in ideas on how to interpret Berkeley in a non-analytic fashion. It will be of use to all students of Berkeley willing to stray from the familiar interpretive paths."—Journal of the History of Philosophy

"This is a refreshing and welcome book, illuminating aspects of Berkeley's thought that have been relatively neglected in recent scholarship. It aims at giving a fuller and more complex picture of Berkeley than usual, by adding to the standard view of Berkeley as a theologically-minded pre-analytical empiricist the portrait of a thinker profoundly steeped in longstanding religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions."
—Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques

"Costica Bradatan's book... surprises the reader through its uncompromisingly genealogical, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach. Bradatan's study is one hundred percent 'continental,' explicitly dealing with 'non-empiricist' topics like alchemy, utopias, and the Christian Cathar religion (which teaches that the material world should be attributed to evil). Interestingly, Berkeley's philosophy of the 'visual language' is presented as a counterpoint to Lockean empiricism [....] There are numerous works on Berkeley that approach the philosopher from the perspective of his descendants; studies analyzing Berkeley's relationship with the past, however, are rare. In Bradatan's book, the historical figure Berkeley, who was trained as a theologian and served as a bishop of the Anglican Church, becomes a subject of research for the history of ideas. Berkeley is permitted to speak for himself, and his speech is not distorted by present day philosophical ideologies."
—forthcoming in The European Legacy

"Professor Costica Bradatan’s book contains several well written accounts of the European history of ideas and he relates them to Berkeley’s writings in an interesting and challenging manner. I fully agree with him that we need to read and master the whole of Berkeley’s corpus and not only some preselected parts of it."—Berkeley Studies