Locke: A Person Is a Thinking, Self-Conscious Being

The Quote

"A person ... is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places" is John Locke's definition of the person, from Book II, Chapter 27, Section 9 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It is the founding text of the modern philosophy of personal identity.

Context

The chapter "Of Identity and Diversity" was added to the second edition of the Essay in 1694. Locke had been challenged to explain how his empiricism — the doctrine that all ideas come from experience — could account for the self, and he responded by distinguishing kinds of identity: the identity of bodies, of living things, and of persons. His decisive move is to make consciousness, not substance, the principle of personal identity: the same consciousness, reaching back to past actions, constitutes the same person, regardless of whether the underlying body or soul changes.

Meaning & Interpretation

The definition has three components. A person is a thinking being — not a bare substance but an intelligent agency. It has reason and reflection — it is aware of its own operations. And it can consider itself as itself — it can represent itself as the same self across different times and places. On this basis Locke argues that personal identity is the sameness of this self-consciousness: memory is what links my present consciousness to my past actions, making them mine. The philosophical payoff is moral: praise and blame, reward and punishment, are just because the person who is punished is the very same self-conscious being who acted.

Legacy

Locke's chapter set the agenda for every subsequent theory of personal identity. The psychological-continuity tradition runs from Locke through Hume, Reid's objections, and on to Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons, where the Lockean insight that what matters is psychological continuity, not sameness of substance, is developed with modern rigor. His distinction between the self of consciousness and the self of the soul remains the framework within which contemporary debates about the self, memory, and responsibility are conducted.

Sources

1. Uzgalis, W. (2020). "John Locke." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/
2. Locke, J. (1694). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.27. Early Modern Texts.
3. Olson, E. T. (2019). "Personal Identity." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personal-identity/
4. Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press.