Abstract: This chapter explores the unexpected resurgence of Enlightenment thinking about the stability and continuity of personal identity during the 1820s a late-Romantic decade that is usually thought of as conservative, consumeristic, superficial, and notoriously unphilosophical. After surveying some of the philosophical background that put ideas about identity, agency, and sympathy into play, turns to the way these issues were revisited and transformed by Hazlitt, Keats, James Hogg, and Charles Mathews. Consciousness defines identity across time, as far backward as individual memory reaches and as far forward as the Last Judgment, the same self held morally accountable for its past actions. However, identity is firmly linked to consciousness, according to Locke's hypothesis; consciousness and identity are not firmly linked to the body. Instead, by assuming that consciousness is "perfectly detachable" from the body, Locke undertakes what philosopher Charles Taylor has called "a series of bizarre thought experiments.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-05-22
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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