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145. - Personal Identity

from P

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Ursula Renz  and
Oliver I. Toth
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Although the problem is perhaps as old as philosophy itself, the concept of ‘personal identity’ is introduced into philosophical discourse by John Locke (1632–1704) in his Essay concerning Human Understanding. For Locke, the issue became pressing because of his agnostic attitude with respect to the existence and essence of substances and therefore with respect to the notion that human persons are, or consist of, substances. It is against this skeptical background that the question as to what constitutes the identity of persons needs to be addressed in Locke, and he does so by turning consciousness and memory into the grounding for, and the criterion of, personal identity.

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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 419 - 421
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Barbone, S. (2002). What counts as an individual for Spinoza? In Koistinen, O. and Biro, J., Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (pp. 89–112). Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, D. (1994). Spinoza’s theory of metaphysical individuation. In Barber, K. F. and Gracia, J. G. E. (eds.), Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant (pp. 73–101). State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Gilead, A. (1983). Spinoza’s principium individuationis and personal identity. International Studies in Philosophy, 15(1), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, M. (2005). Memory and personal identity in Spinoza. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 35, 243–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newlands, S. (2020). Spinozistic selves. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6)1), 16–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perler, D. (2021). Spinoza on diachronic identity. In Melamed, Y. (ed.), A Companion to Spinoza (pp. 170–78). Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Renz, U. (2018). The Explainability of Experience: Realism and Subjectivity in Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saw, R. L. (1972). Personal identity in Spinoza. In Kashap, P. S. (ed.), Studies in Spinoza: Critical and Interpretive Essays (pp. 86–100). Hutchinson.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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