John Locke and Personal Identity: Immortality and Bodily Resurrection in 17th-Century Philosophy

161 Pages·2010·0.78 MB·English

by  K. Joanna S. Forstrom

John Locke and Personal Identity
Continuum Studies in British Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
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Doing Austin Justice – Wilfrid Rumble
The Early Wittgenstein on Religion – J. Mark Lazenby
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Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientif c Knowledge – Dennis Desroches
Hobbes and the Making of Modern Political Thought – Gordon Hull
Hume on God – Timothy S. Yoder
Hume’s Social Philosophy – Christopher Finlay
Hume’s Theory of Causation – Angela Coventry
Idealist Political Philosophy – Colin Tyler
Iris Murdoch’s Ethics – Megan Laverty
John Stuart Mill’s Political Philosophy – John Fitzpatrick
Matthew Tindal, Freethinker – Stephen Lalor
The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer – Michael Taylor
Popper, Objectivity and the Growth of Knowledge – John H. Sceski
Rethinking Mill’s Ethics – Colin Heydt
Russell and Wittgenstein on the Nature of Judgement – Rosalind Carey
Russell’s Theory of Perception – Sajahan Miah
Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Natural Philosophy – Stephen J. Finn
Thomas Reid’s Ethics – William C. Davis
Wittgenstein and Gadamer – Chris Lawn
Wittgenstein and the Theory of Perception – Justin Good
Wittgenstein at his Word – Duncan Richter
Wittgenstein on Ethical Inquiry – Jeremy Wisnewski
Wittgenstein’s Religious Point of View – Tim Labron
John Locke and Personal
Identity
Immortality and Bodily Resurrection in
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
K. Joanna S. Forstrom
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© K. Joanna S. Forstrom 2010
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-8470-6145-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 J ohn Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity:
The Principium Individuationis, Personal Immortality,
and Bodily Resurrection 6
Chapter 2 O n Separation and Immortality: Descartes and
the Nature of the Soul 29
Chapter 3 O n Materialism and Immortality: Or Hobbes’ Rejection
of the Natural Argument for the Immortality of the Soul 54
Chapter 4 H enry More and John Locke on the Dangers of Materialism:
Immateriality, Immortality, Immorality, and Identity 76
Chapter 5 R obert Boyle: On Seeds, Cannibalism, and the
Resurrection of the Body 101
Chapter 6 L ocke’s Theory of Personal Identity in Its Context:
A Reassessment of Classic Objections 116
Notes 132
Bibliography 147
Index 153
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the philosophy faculty at the University of Nebraska
Lincoln and Washington University in St Louis, particularly Pauline
Phemister, Pauline Kleingeld, Richard Watson, Harry Ide, and J. Claude
Evans.
The initial work on this book was done during my dissertation, supported
by a fellowship from Washington University Graduate College of Arts and
Sciences in 1998–99. The work was further ref ned in parts through partici-
pation in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar
“Descartes and His Contemporaries” in Summer 2000 directed by Roger
Ariew and Daniel Garber, as well as in the National Endowment for the
Humanities Summer Institute “The Intersection of Philosophy, Science
and Theology in the Seventeenth Century” chaired by Steve Nadler
and Donald Rutherford. I benef ted from the many presentations and
discussions with other participants and visiting scholars.
I thank Spring Hill College for research support during two summers
and in the spring of 2008 made possible in part by a Teagle Foundation
grant to Spring Hill College. The Delta Gamma Fraternity National Faculty
Teaching Award allowed the purchase of materials germane to this project.
The Librarians at Washington University in St Louis, Virginia Tech,
the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Tulane University and Spring
Hill College are also acknowledged for their assistance in procuring the
materials that I used in the research and writing of the text.
The support of my husband, family, friends, colleagues, and students
enabled me to f nish the project despite hurricanes and serious health
problems. While I doubt this work will make a difference in the great
scheme of things, it does make a small difference in my life. Thank you.
Introduction
John Locke’s formulation of and position on the problem of personal
identity are among the most commonly studied and dissected by philoso-
phers. It is studied not only by historians of philosophy, but also by philo-
sophers who specialize in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind,
and ethics. Frequently discussed in introductions to philosophy as well as
in graduate seminars and faculty colloquia it is only fair to say that it is one
of the most enduring problems in philosophy.
This book positions Locke’s famous problem in relation to four distinct
philosophical approaches taken in the seventeenth century to the issues
of personal immortality, bodily resurrection, and the afterlife. In his treat-
ment of identity, Locke considers four philosophical accounts of personal
immortality and bodily resurrection, namely Cartesian dualism, Hobbesian
materialism, Cambridge Platonism, and Boyles’ corpuscularian mechanism.
After developing each position and Locke’s response to it in detail, I argue
in the f nal chapter that by presenting Locke’s analysis of personal identity
in relation to these discussions, his theory exhibits new resources which
can be drawn on to answer common classic objections made to it.
This project of looking at the context of the problem of personal identity
is in accord with recent trends in both Locke scholarship and the history
1
of philosophy. Increasingly, understanding the broader philosophical,
theological, and scientif c context within which a philosopher works is seen
as contributing to our understanding of the philosopher’s positions and
arguments. In Lockean studies there has been a resurgence of interest
in Locke’s context and its inf uence on his thought. For example, John
Marshall provides a book-length treatment of the development of Locke’s
political, religious, and social thought found in John Locke: Resistance,
Religion and Responsibility. Other authors have looked at Locke’s relation
to those who followed him as well as whom he responds to, for example,
John Yolton in his classic John Locke and the Way of Ideas. And Roger
Woolhouse’s Locke: A Biography reminds Locke scholars and philosophers of
the importance of his life and context to the formulation and articulation
2 John Locke and Personal Identity
of his philosophy. Other philosophers have also focused on the context in
which Locke develops his analysis of personal identity and the way in which
he responds to prior philosophical thinkers who grapple with the problem,
most notably David Behan, Edwin Curley, Ben Mijuskovic, Kenneth Winkler,
and Michael Ayers. This work is an extension and deepening of the approach
of those works, as the context not only of Locke is discussed, but also that
of those to whom he is responding.
The f rst chapter sets the stage for the project by focusing on the
philosophical milieu of the f rst edition of An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding. It begins with an examination of William Molyneux’s request
to Locke to elaborate in the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding on two topics of interest to the scholastics at Oxford: the
principium individuationis and the doctrine of eternal truths. Molyneux
hopes that in so doing Locke’s work will be more readily accepted. The
passages which Molyneux references from the f rst edition are those where
Locke raises concerns with other philosophers’ accounts of the soul and
its interactions with the body before and after death. The tension for
philosophers and theologians between the analyses of personal immortality
of the soul and bodily resurrection is explored and Locke’s early work on
the tension and problem, as found in his journals and the f rst edition of
the Essay, is discussed. The position that he develops in the second and
subsequent editions is carefully laid out. Finally Locke’s more mature
understanding of the resurrection of the body is portrayed by highlighting
his work on the epistles of St. Paul from A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles
of St. Paul.
What emerges in this initial analysis of Locke is an engagement with
other philosophers of his time who were being used by theologians or
were themselves theologians. He is not writing about personhood or iden-
tity in isolation but rather in a context. Four main philosophical approaches
with which Locke engages highlight different aspects of the seventeenth-
century concern with the topic of personal immortality and its relation to
our understanding of the world. Each philosopher discussed in this book
has a signif cant engagement with not only the philosophy of the time but
also the science and theology of the time. Each sees himself as working to
replace the scholastic Aristotelianism that dominated the schools of the
day. And each was quite familiar to Locke.
Rene Descartes, often called the father of modern philosophy, presents
an analysis of personal immortality in his Meditations on First Philosophy
that invokes and claims to be in conformity with the f fth Lateran Council’s
decrees of 1512. This attempt at conformity constrains his analysis in
Introduction 3
interesting ways. As will be seen in Chapter 2, the Lateran Council specif es
two groups of problematic Aristotelians who needed to be responded to by
Catholic thinkers: the Averroists and the Alexandrians. While Descartes’
own personal orthodoxy might be suspect, it is clear that he hoped his
philosophy would be acceptable to Catholics and used in their schools.
Of course, his analysis and the restrained nature of some of his claims
may indicate that he hoped his philosophy would prove acceptable to non-
Catholics as well. But by choosing to focus on the immortality of the soul
in his Meditations, he sets the stage for the discussion of immortality and
identity of the soul in accordance with Catholic tradition and thus for iden-
tity of the person before and after death. His response to the heresies
condemned by the council lead to a focus on the question of memory and
what the soul remembers after death. In Chapter 2, Descartes’ arguments
are schematized and used to show how he articulates the possibility that
the soul is immortal and that its individuation continues after the death
of the body. He ultimately does not claim that his arguments demonstrate
that the soul must be immortal, only that it is possible, which is a response
to the Aristotelians and others who doubted that possibility.
Thomas Hobbes, one of the most vilif ed philosophers of his time, rejects
Descartes’ arguments and indeed all accounts of immaterial substance. He
f nds the concept of “immaterial substance” to be a logical contradiction.
But interestingly he does develop an account in Leviathan of what happens
after the death of the body that coheres not only with his philosophical
account of perception but also his interpretation of scripture. While Hobbes
is clearly not an orthodox theological thinker, he nonetheless evinces a
somewhat consistent interpretation of scripture to support his rejection
of immaterial substance. He methodically goes through passages from the
old and new testaments to show that a materialistic explanation is possible
for each passage usually used in support of an immaterialist understanding
of angels and souls. Often ignored by philosophers, Hobbes’ writings on
theology in Leviathan ref ect his scientif c approach to vision as well as his
understanding of basic materialistic metaphysics. His discussion of philoso-
phy, science, politics, and theology is framed to show that the science of
the day—with a focus on perception in particular—does not need to use
immaterial substances. Hobbes is happy to jettison a Catholic view of the
afterlife, particularly given that he thinks that such accounts are the very
ones that have constrained thinkers and kept them from progressing in
science as well as other areas. The rejection of immaterial substance as well
as his mortalist account of death and what follows is explored in Chapter 3,
as is Locke’s response.