Identity of Persons - Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century, Twentieth And Twenty-first Centuries, Bibliography
discussed
General problems about identity had been discussed long before the early modern period, but the problem of personal identity in the form in which it is so widely discussed today has its origin in John Locke's (1632–1704) chapter "Of Identity and Diversity," which he added to the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694). Indeed, most early twenty-first-century views on the issue were anticipated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Additional Topics
A standard topic in medieval philosophy was the search for a principle of individuation—that is, the question about what it is that makes an individual (object or person) the individual it is and distinguishes it from all other individuals of the same kind. Indeed, the medieval disputes formed a major part of the background for the early modern discussions about the issue. But from about th…
In eighteenth-century Britain, the most important treatment of the topic is by David Hume (1711–1776) in a famous section of his Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Hume rejects the traditional Cartesian view, arguing that through inner experience one can identify only a variety (a "bundle") of distinct perceptions; there is no experiential evidence of a soul that remains the sam…
In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries the issue of personal identity has continued to be a major theme especially in Anglo-American analytical philosophy. The debate is mainly between those who favor bodily continuity and those who favor psychological continuity as constituting personal identity. There is, however, considerable variety within the two main positions. Thus, some proponen…
James, Susan. "Feminism in Philosophy of Mind: The Question of Personal Identity." In The Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy, edited by Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Korsgaard, Christine. "Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit." Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989)…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments