The Early Modern Subject

The Early Modern Subject explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity-two fundamental features of human subjectivity-as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity is in many ways characteristic and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases. Thiels book is a tremendously rich source on early modern debates regarding consciousness and personal identity. This book is the first pick for everyone who wants to gain insight into the abundance of early modern discussions of these topics. Christian Barth, Philosophy in Review Thiel's Early Modern Subject is essential reading for any scholar interested in self-consciousness and personal identity. The book is of interest to ancient and medieval specialists and contemporary philosophers will find the work of use as well given that the early modern framework dominates current discussion of these issues. A welcome feature is the extensive discussion of not only the canonical figures of the period ... but alos less prominent figures of the period. ... This expansive approach captures a real sense of liveliness in the early modern debate. Angela M. Coventry, MindAcknowledgements ; INTRODUCTION: Aims and Issues ; PART I: THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY BACKGROUND ; 1. The 'Ontological' View of the Self: Scholastic and Cartesian Conceptions ; 2. Metaphysical Alternatives. Conceptions of Identity, Morality, and the Afterlife ; PART II: LOCKE'S SUBJECTIVIST REVOLUTION ; 3. Locke on Identity, Consciousness, and Self-Consciousness ; 4. Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness, Memory, and Self-Concern ; PART III: PROBLEMS WITH LOCKE. CRITIQUE AND DEFENCE ; 5. The Notion of a Person and the Role of Consciousness and Memory ; 6. The Charge of Circularity and the Argument from the Transitivity of Identity ; PART IV: SUBJECTIVITY AND IMMATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE MIND ; 7. The Soul, Human and Universal ; 8. Relating to the Soul and Pure Thought, Original Sin and the Afterlife ; PART V: SUSBSTANCE, APPERCEPTION AND IDENTITY: LEIBNIZ, WOLFF, AND BEYOND ; 9. Individuation and Identity, Apperception and Consciousness in Leibniz and Wolff ; 10. Beyond Leibniz and Wolff. From Immortality to the Necessary "Unity of the Subject" ; 11. From the Critique of Wolffian Apperception to the Idea of the "Pre-existence" of Self-Consciousness ; PART VI: BUNDLES AND SELVES: HUME IN CONTEXT ; 12. Hume and the Belief in Personal Identity ; 13. Hume and the Bundle View of the Self ; CONCLUSION: BEYOND HUME AND WOLFF ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; INDEX