Professor Paul O'Grady, Professor, Philosophy, Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, and Head of the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy, pays tribute to David below.
"Those of us who knew David recognised that philosophy was a passion for him, it wasn't a mere scholarly interest. He would pursue conversation and argument with tenacity and persistence and he enjoyed defending ideas that went against the fashions of the time.
He was born in Brooklyn on Nov 20 1942 to Seymour and Marion Berman. He studied at the New School for Social Research in New York (BA 1965), University of Colorado at Denver (MA 1966) and came to TCD in 1966 to do his PhD with the celebrated Berkeley scholar A.A.Luce – he was his final PhD student, obtaining the degree in 1972. He taught at the Philosophy Dept from 1968, being Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and in 1995 Professor. He was Head of the Philosophy Dept 1997-2002 and was made a fellow in 1984.
While being best known for his work on Berkeley and Irish Philosophy, he had many interests including philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind and psychoanalysis. He did a diploma in St Vincent's in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and practised as an analyst. His books include: George Berkeley: Idealism and the Man (Oxford University Press, 1996); A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (Croom Helm, 1988); Berkeley: Experimental Philosophy (Phoenix, 1997); Berkeley and Irish Philosophy (Continuum, 2009); and George Berkeley: Eighteenth-Century Responses (Routledge Revivals, 2014). David is the editor of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea (Everyman's Library, 1995); George Berkeley: 'Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher' in Focus (Routledge, 1993); and (with Patricia O'Riordan), The Irish Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment (Thoemmes, 2002). David has contributed to many anthologies and reference works, including the Oxford Companion of Irish Literature (Oxford University Press, 1996); The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture (Blackwell, 1999); and The Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (Abingdon Press, 1999).
He felt that philosophers should not avoid writing for a wider audience rather than an academic one and, practising what he preached, he was a contributor to The Freethinker and Philosophy Now. He published Consciousness from Descartes to Ayer (Palgrave Macmillan) in August 2021. This was in line with his later theorising that some form of consciousness might outlast the death of the human body. Unlike, say, Descartes, he did not think of this after-death consciousness as personal but universal and impersonal.
Along with E. J. Furlong, David founded the journal Berkeley Newsletter in 1977 which became the journal Berkeley Studies in 2007. He helped to organize conferences on the work of George Berkeley. For one such international conference in Dublin in 1986, with Raymond Haughton and Maureen Lapan, he organized an exhibition of known portraits of Berkeley in The National Gallery of Ireland. They published a lavishly illustrated catalogue entitled Images of Berkeley for that exhibition and conference. The catalogue was published in 1986 by Wolfhound Press and the National Gallery of Ireland. It is prized by scholars as a visual and biographical catalogue of all known likenesses of Berkeley.
David was always a "hands on" and "back to the primary sources" scholar. He added to the primary sources for the life and work of Berkeley by discovering new letters by or about Berkeley. These included correspondence tracking Berkeley's famous, ill-fated 1720s plan to found a missionary college in Bermuda, a letter by Berkeley commenting directly on Bishop Robert Clayton's controversial text, "An Essay on Spirit", and rather eccentric letters about the medicinal properties of tar water.
David continued to work at philosophy through his retirement and up to the last weeks of his life. His more recent interests included explorations of taste (which he regarded as a philosophically neglected sense), drinking copious amounts of coffee and tea in the process. He also investigated near death experiences, sending his work to colleagues for feedback and comment.
Ní beidh a leithéad ann arís."
As a mark of respect, and in keeping with the custom for Fellows of College, the College flag will be flown at half mast on Tuesday, August 4th from 8.00am to 5.00pm.
