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Metaphysics

John Locke & Personal Identity

Nurana Rajabova considers why, according to John Locke, you continue to be you.

Does the self reside in the soul, in the body, or in some combination of both? It’s a question philosophers have long debated. However, one philosopher, John Locke (1632-1704), argued that the self resides in memory. In what follows I will give an overview of the arguments that led him to this conclusion, and consider some of the objections critics have raised against Locke’s account of the self, in particular his reducing the self to memory. I will conclude that Locke does not only reduce the self to memory, but to internal memory. In doing so, he puts himself on a slippery slope toward idealism, despite his general common-sense empiricism.

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