esse est percipi aut percipere 20
Being consists in being perceived or perceiving. This expression synthesizes the thought of the eighteenth-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley, curiously and in apparent contradiction, empiricist and idealistic at the same time. There are only things perceived and insofar as they are perceived and we, the perceiving consciousness. There is nothing else. Matter itself is an abstraction. And Kant took good note when he awoke from his dogmatic slumber.