Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first personal appropriation of mental states, and as identical to a first personal distinctive experience of the qualitative features of one’s own thinking. (...) There is wide agreement, however, that Locke’s theory of personal identity is meant to complement his moral and theological commitments to a system of divine punishment and reward in an afterlife. But these commitments seem to require also a metaphysical criterion, and Locke is insistent that it cannot be substance. The difficulty reconciling the psychological and metaphysical requirements of the theory has led, at worst, to charges of incoherence and, at best, to a slew of interpretations, none of which is widely accepted. (shrink)

john locke argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, and he maintains that any other theory of personal identity would lead to "great Absurdities".1 This statement intimates that Locke thought carefully about alternative conceptions of personal identity and their problems. In this paper, I argue that, by understanding Locke's account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his time, especially debates concerning the afterlife and the state of the soul between death and resurrection, (...) we can reveal the strengths of his view and show how his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness has the resources to avoid... (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of John Locke’s account of persons and personal identity that gives full credit to Locke’s claim that “person” is a forensic term, sheds new light on the relation between Locke’s characterizations of a person in sections 9 and 26, and explains how Locke links his moral and legal account of personhood to his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness. I show that Locke’s claim that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity (...) depends on two components: first, his particular moral and legal conception of a person and, second, his particular understanding of the conditions of just accountability for past actions. Had Locke given a different account of personhood, or thought differently about the conditions of just accountability, he might have given a nonpsychological account of personal identity. (shrink)

Not unlike the Catholics, the English Reformed circles—the Church of England—upheld the legitimacy of the Revelation and miracles, recognised the Mosaic account of creation, original sin and the Trinity, the non-corporeal nature of spiritual substance, the eternity of punishment or reward and the primacy of Church over State. And so where did Locke’s hermeneutics fit into this complex panorama in terms of the interpretations of Christian anthropology and the resurrection? As underscored in the early chapters of The Reasonableness of Christianity, (...) Locke does not appear to consider that the sin of Adam has to fall on the whole of posterity, and again there is no positive affirmation of the Trinity in this work which, although it is not named, in effect proves to be incompatible with the definitions of person and individual identity which he provides in the Essay concerning human understanding. (shrink)

ALTHOUGH OVERLOOKED, THE SUBJECT OF LOCKE’S "THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY" WAS JUSTIFICATION, WHICH HE WROTE ON BECAUSE OF CONTEMPORARY DEBATES ON THE SUBJECT. HE RESTATED THE VIEW OF BAXTERIAN PRESBYTERIANS AND LATITUDINARIAN ANGLICANS, THAT JUSTIFYING FAITH COMPENSATES FOR HUMAN FAILURE TO FULLY OBEY GOD’S LAW. LOCKE ALSO EXPRESSED A MORAL INFLUENCE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT, FOR WHICH STRICT CALVINISTS EXCORIATED HIM AS A SOCINIAN, EVEN THOUGH MANY LATITUDINARIANS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND HELD THE SAME VIEW. NEITHER ANTITRINITARIAN NOR DEIST, (...) LOCKE WAS A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. (shrink)