You are Who You Remember
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27

Table of Contents

Picture of <b>Todd R. Long</b><br><small>Professor of Philosophy, California Polytechnic State University</small>
Todd R. Long
Professor of Philosophy, California Polytechnic State University

Warm-Up: We Change But Remain The Same?

I’m on trial for a murder committed five years ago. Taking the stand in my own defense, I declare:

“People of the jury: I’m not the person who committed the murder. That person was angry, but I am calm. That person was under forty years of age, but I’m over forty. That person was married, his favorite food was lasagna, his hair was brown, and he believed people should be punished for offending him. I, on the other hand, am divorced, prefer tacos, have grey hair, and I let people who offend me go their own way. So you see, I’m not the same person as the person who committed the murder, and you can’t justly punish the wrong person for a crime.” 

Would any jury take my testimony as a good reason to acquit me? Let’s hope not! But, what was wrong with my testimony? Both my bodily states and my mental states have changed radically in the last five years. If I’m mentally and physically so different from the murderer five years ago, then how can we be the same person? If there’s something that’s me that remains the same across time, what is it? If there’s nothing that’s me that remains the same over time, then how could I be the same person at different times?

These questions challenge a deeply held assumption we have about ourselves. All our meaningful human interactions presuppose that persons persist across time. You assume the person you say “goodbye” to on the phone is the same person you said “hello” to earlier. When you plan for the future, you assume you’re making plans for your future self, not someone else. When we think justice is done in a criminal trial, we assume the person put into prison is the very same person as the person who committed the crime months or years earlier. But here is a mystery: how can one’s person remain the same over time when one’s mind and body are constantly changing

In this reading, we will examine one of history’s most influential answers: the psychological continuity theory of the Early Modern philosopher John Locke.

Introduction

John Locke (1632-1704) was a British philosopher, medical researcher, and Oxford academic. A prominent Enlightenment thinker during a tumultuous century of political and religious conflicts, Locke made substantial contributions to political theory and philosophy. His reason-based, anti-authoritarian political thought, which was instrumental in both English and American revolutions, championed citizen-focused sovereignty and the separation of church and state. In philosophy, Locke contributed an empirical (i.e., senses-based) theory of knowledge in his monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in which he attempts to find the limits of human understanding with respect to a wide range of topics, including personal identity. His definition of “person”, as well as his memory-based theory of personal identity across time, remain highly influential.

The version of Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27 (“Of Identity and Diversity”) that you will be reading from can be found here.

Key Concepts

Person – Locke’s forensic definition of person (pertaining to courts of law regarding the justice of praise, blame, reward, or punishment): a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places.

Substance Identity Across Time – Something is the same substance across a segment of time if, and only if, it continuously exists across the relevant segment of time without gaining or losing any of its parts.

Human Identity Across Time – Locke’s notion that any human stays the same across time if, and only if, it maintains the same (distinctively human) organizing structure of parts.

Personal Identity Across Time – Whatever makes someone the numerically same person (i.e., that very person) at different times; according to Locke, it is a relation of first-person consciousness via memory.

Immaterial Soul – A personal thinking substance without any physical constitution.

Memory Is The Key To Being a Person

Locke includes essential aspects of his theory of personal identity across time in the following passage.

Section 9

To find what personal identity consists in, we must consider what ‘person’ stands for. I think it 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. What enables it to think of itself is its consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking and (it seems to me) essential to it. It is impossible for anyone to perceive, without perceiving that he perceives. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. It is always like that with our present sensations and perceptions. And it is through this that everyone is to himself that which he calls ‘self’…. Consciousness always accompanies thinking, and makes everyone to be what he calls ‘self’ and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now that it was then; and this present self that now reflects on it is the one by which that action was performed.

Here, Locke makes three important points. First is his highly influential definition of “person”. A person, he says, is an intelligent being who is not only conscious but also self-conscious with the power of reason and memory, including the power to remember itself at various times and places. As he points out in a later section, he is defining “person” in a forensic sense (i.e., pertaining to the justice of praise, blame, reward, or punishment): only someone with such abilities could be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy, or be an appropriate defendant in a criminal trial.

Second, Locke points out that what gives us our sense of self is our self-consciousness. We are aware of ourselves as beings who think, sense, will, and remember ourselves as doing things in the past. Our sense of self is thus first-personal. He concludes that the identity of one’s person is determined by one’s first-person consciousness.

Third, Locke says that one’s being the same person at different times just is a relation of first-person consciousness across time. And it is memory that connects one’s consciousness now to one’s conscious experiences in the past. Hence, first-person memory provides the psychological continuity that unites a person at different times into one and the same person. 

Thus we get Locke’s theory: personal identity across time consists entirely in a relation of first-person consciousness via memory across time. It follows that you’re the same person who existed in the past if, and only if, you can remember some first-person conscious experience that the person in the past had.

Do It Yourself!

A Trial Cat and Infant Punishment

To appreciate why Locke defines “person” as he does, consider the following two scenarios: (i) A cat, which has scratched you, is tried in a criminal court for assault and battery; (ii) A father is feeding his infant some baby formula when the infant moves her head and the bottle tips downward, spilling liquid onto the father’s clothing. The father puts his infant into the corner, adding, “You bad baby. You’re in time-out to think about what you’ve done!” Questions: How does Locke’s theory explain why putting the cat on trial is absurd? What would Locke say that the father fails to understand about his infant?

Persons And Humans And Souls, Oh My!

Locke thinks we can easily mistake personal identity for other kinds of identity by confusing the word “person” with words like “human” and “substance”.

Section 7

To conceive and judge correctly about identity, we must consider what the idea the word it is applied to stands for: it is one thing to be the same substance, another the same man [Locke means “human”], and a third the same person, if ‘person’, ‘man’, and ‘substance’ are names for three different ideas; for such as is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity. If this had been more carefully attended to, it might have prevented a great deal of that confusion that often occurs regarding identity, and especially personal identity […]

Locke knew that some people assume a person just is a human or a substance (e.g., an immaterial soul). By paying attention to the differing ways we use the words “person”, “human” and “substance”, Locke thinks, we’ll realize that personal identity differs from both human identity and substance identity.

Humans Are Like Trees?

What makes something the same human across time? Human identity, Locke says, is comparable to oak tree identity. We don’t identify the same oak tree at different times by comparing its substance (it’s material parts) at different times.

Section 4

How, then, does an oak differ from a mass of matter? […] [T]he mass is merely the cohesion of particles of matter ]…], whereas the oak is such a disposition of particles as constitutes the parts of an oak, and an organization of those parts that enables the whole to receive and distribute nourishment so as to continue and form the wood, bark, and leaves, etc. […] Thus something is one plant if it has an organization of parts in one cohering body partaking of one common life, and it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes of the same life, even if that life is passed along to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant.

Locke concludes that oak tree identity across time does not require substance identity across time. What makes the large oak and the sapling the same tree is that the two have the same organizing structure of parts in one cohering body partaking of one common biological life.

Main Idea

The Sapling and the Great Oak

Suppose you plant an oak tree sapling today. Fifty years later you return with your children (maybe grandchildren!) and announce:  “There’s the oak tree I planted fifty years ago!” What you say is true, but the great oak is not the same mass of material parts as the sapling. Indeed, the great oak has many more substantive parts than the sapling had; and yet is the same oak tree. So, an oak tree’s identity across time depends not on its being the same substance, but rather on its organizing structure of parts.

Humans Are Not The Sum Of Our Parts

Locke says that something similar to oak tree identity goes for human identity.

Section 6

This also shows what the identity of the same man [i.e., “same human”] consists in, namely: a participation in the same continued life by constantly fleeting particles of matter that are successively vitally united to the same organized body. If you place the identity of man in anything but this, you’ll find it hard to make an embryo and an adult the same man, or a well man and a madman the same man.

Locke’s point is that human identity across time is not the sameness of physical substance across time but is rather the sameness of human organizing structure of parts across time. After all, you’re the same human being as a baby who existed long ago, but your body’s substantive parts are radically different from any baby’s substantive parts.

Connection

DNA

Our biology seems to bear out Locke’s idea. We now know that most of our physical human parts (cells) are replaced every few months and almost all our cells are replaced during our lifetimes. But we remain the same human being from infancy to old age. Today we might say that your human DNA expresses the special organizing structure that makes you the same human being at different times.

The Same Person Is The Same Human, Right?

But why isn’t human identity the same as personal identity? Aren’t all humans persons, and aren’t all persons humans? Locke has an intriguing answer.

Section 8

[…] [T]here should be no doubt that the word ‘man’ as we use it stands for the idea of an animal of a certain form. The time-hallowed definition of ‘man’ as ‘rational animal’ is wrong. If we should see a creature of our own shape and physical constitution, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, we would still call him a man; and anyone who heard a cat or a parrot talk, reason, and philosophize would still think it to be a cat or a parrot and would describe it as such. One of these is a dull, irrational man, the other a very intelligent rational parrot.

Locke here points out that a human might be so devoid of personal powers that it would be at the cognitive level of a cat. But, cats lack the cognitive abilities required for forensic personhood. Thus, a human with severely diminished cognitive powers—such as someone in a persistent vegetative state—lacks the cognitive abilities required for (forensic) personhood. This is why we will never (let’s hope) see someone in a persistent vegetative state stand trial in a criminal case, for such a human would not be able to understand, or even be conscious of, any of the trial’s proceedings. Such facts explain why Locke’s forensic definition of “person” does not include being human: not all humans are (forensic) persons; and there might even be persons who aren’t human!

Thought Experiment

Persons From Outer Space

Locke’s definition allows for the possibility that there are non-human persons. Is this plausible? Well, suppose representatives of an alien civilization from outer space were to visit earth and begin to kill humans to steal our resources. If those aliens satisfied Locke’s definition of person, then couldn’t they deserve moral blame for their behavior, even though they are not human at all?

Aren’t Souls Persons?

Locke is aware that some people think a person just is an immaterial soul (a non-physical, conscious, thinking substance). Locke himself is open to the possibility that our first-person consciousness is attached to an immaterial soul. So, Locke is not opposed to what we might call the soul theory of personhood. But (and it’s a big but!), Locke thinks it’s a mistake to think that personal identity across time just is having the same soul.

Section 10

[…] [T]he question is about what makes the same person, and not whether the same identical substance always thinks in the same person. Different substances might all partake in a single consciousness and thereby be united into one person, just as different bodies can enter into the same life and thereby be united into one animal, whose identity is preserved throughout that change of substances by the unity of the single continued life. What makes a man be himself to himself is sameness of consciousness, so personal identity depends entirely on that—whether the consciousness is tied to one substance throughout or rather is continued in a series of different substances. For as far as any thinking being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness that he had of it at first, and with the same consciousness he has of his present actions, so far is he the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness he has of his present thoughts and actions that he is self to himself now, and so will be the same self as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come. Distance of time doesn’t make him two or more persons, and nor does change of substance: any more than a man is made to be two men by having a long or short sleep or by changing his clothes.

Consider Locke’s analogy: as someone can be the same human across time despite changes in the human’s bodily substance (material parts), so might someone be the same person across time despite changes in the thinking substance that consciousness is attached to. Locke’s central idea is that the crucial personal link—the link that relates a person at one time to the same person at a different time—is first-person conscious experience and nothing else. It’s irrelevant, he thinks, whether the thinking substance that is conscious now is the same identical thinking substance as one in the past.

Suppose that in the future there will be, as some people (and some sci-fi movies) predict, silicon-based persons (i.e., persons made of silicon, rather than flesh and blood). And suppose that someday such a person will be able to remember your current conscious experience as you’re reading this (perhaps advances in artificial intelligence, computer technology, and neuroscience will make “uploading” first-person conscious experiences possible). Were this to happen, Locke’s theory implies that this silicon-based person would be you.

Objection

The Brave Officer

Thomas Reid, an Early Modern philosopher who was born shortly after Locke’s death, objected that Locke’s theory allows a contradiction to be true (Reid’s objection from Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay III, Chapter 6, can be found here).

Imagine three events in a man’s life: when he was (A) a school boy he was whipped for robbing, when (B) a young officer he stole the enemy’s flag in battle, and when (C) an old man he was decorated as a general. When he stole the flag, he remembered being whipped as a school boy, and when he was decorated as a general he remembered stealing the flag as a young officer, but he could no longer remember being whipped as a school boy. 

PERSON         EVENT

A                      School boy is whipped for robbing

B                      Young officer takes the enemy’s flag in battle

C                      Old man is decorated as a general

On Locke’s theory, A = B (because B remembers being A) and B = C (because C remembers being B); it follows by transitivity that A = C. However, C cannot remember being whipped as a school boy; so, Locke’s theory implies that A ≠ C; therefore (A = C) & (A ≠ C), which is a contradiction. But, contradictions can’t be true, right? A video presentation of this objection is available here.

One Soul Might Be Different Persons?

A common assumption among soul theorists about personhood (i.e., those who think a person just is an immaterial soul) is that personal identity across time is just the continuous existence of an immaterial soul substance across time. Accordingly, you (the person) have existed as long as your soul has existed, and you’ll persist as the same person as long as your soul exists. Although Locke is open to the possibility that our consciousness is attached to an immaterial soul, he thinks it’s a mistake to identify soul existence across time with personal identity across time. Locke presses his point with a thought experiment.

 

Section 14

Reflect on yourself, and conclude that you have in yourself an immaterial spirit that is what thinks in you, keeps you the same throughout the constant change of your body, and is what you call ‘myself’. Now try to suppose also that it is the same soul that was in Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy. This isn’t obviously absurd; for souls, as far as we know anything of their nature, can go with any portion of matter as well as with any other; so the soul or thinking substance that is now yourself may once really have been the soul of someone else, such as Thersites or Nestor. But you don’t now have any consciousness of any of the actions either of those two; so can you conceive yourself as being the same person with either of them? Can their actions have anything to do with you? Can you attribute those actions to yourself, or think of them as yours more than the actions of any other men that ever existed? Of course you can’t […]

Main Idea

Your Soul in Nestor’s Body

To focus Locke’s point, suppose that during the ancient siege of Troy, Nestor committed a heinous war crime—say, he killed a defenseless baby—but was never held morally accountable. Now, suppose the police arrive to arrest you for the murder. What will you say? Probably something like: “Are you crazy? You’ve got the wrong person! I’m not the one who did it!” You will say this because you have no memory whatsoever of killing a baby (right?!). There’s nothing about your consciousness that relates you to the murderer. Nevertheless, on the soul theory of personal identity across time, you are the person who murdered the baby. But, can you really think of yourself as deserving moral blame and punishment?

Variation 1 (Unremembered Recent Murder): You might think our murder example is irrelevant because the supposed crime occurred 3,000 years ago. But, Locke would make the same point about a murder committed a year ago (or last week). Suppose you (an immaterial soul, as we’re supposing) murdered someone last year, but then you permanently lost all your previous memories. If the police arrested you today, what would you say? “Are you crazy? You’ve got the wrong person! I’m not the one who did it!”. You’ll think this because you literally cannot remember doing it. You are no more connected by consciousness to the murderer than is some randomly selected neighbor down the street. 

Variation 2 (Remembered Murder): Now suppose you do remember murdering someone last year, and the police arrive to arrest you. What will you think? Perhaps something like: “What took you so long?” In this scenario you really do think of yourself as guilty because you remember committing the crime. Accordingly, you could make sense of the moral blame and punishment that might come your way, because you’re connected to the crime by your own memory of a past, first-person experience, and thus you have the psychological continuity with the murderer that Locke says unites conscious beings into the same person across time

Life After Death: The Prince And The Cobbler

Locke points out that his account of personal identity across time is consistent with (i.e., it logically allows for) personal life after death. Suppose that someone in the future after your death remembers an experience you’re having right now. According to Locke’s theory, that future person will be you. Using the language of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, Locke says the following.

Section 15

So we can easily conceive of being the same person at the resurrection, though in a body with partly different parts or structure from what one has now, as long as the same consciousness stays with the soul that inhabits the body. But the soul alone, in the change of bodies, would not be accounted enough to make the same man—except by someone who identifies the soul with the man. If the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, were to enter and inform the body of a cobbler, who has been deserted by his own soul, everyone sees that he would be the same person as the prince, accountable only for the prince’s actions; but who would say it was the same man? The body contributes to making the man, and in this case I should think everyone would let the body settle the ‘same man’ question, not dissuaded from this by the soul with all its princely thoughts. To everyone but himself he would be the same cobbler, the same man.

In this reflection on the afterlife, Locke argues that mere sameness of soul across time does not guarantee sameness of person. For if the prince’s soul but not his consciousness were transferred into the cobbler’s body, that would be insufficient to make the prince the person inhabiting the cobbler’s body. After all, that person would not think of himself as the prince; he would have no memories of being the prince, and thus it would be unjust to hold him accountable for the prince’s actions.

But, suppose the prince’s consciousness (including all his memories) were transferred with the prince’s soul into the cobbler’s body. Then, it would be plausible that the prince is the person inhabiting that body. He would surely think of himself as the prince. If you asked him who his mother was, he’d have warm fuzzy thoughts, feelings, and memories of the Queen. Of course, everyone who was ignorant of this consciousness transfer would think that he remained the cobbler, but this is because we are accustomed to psychological continuity accompanying human identity.

Thought Experiment

Your Soul in Heaven

Suppose that after your death your soul is in heaven but it cannot remember any of your experiences. Would that soul be you? Why would you care whether there is some person in heaven who happens to have the same soul as you if that person has no personal connection—no psychological continuity—with you? As far as hoping there will be good things in your future, what would be the relevant difference between that soul, who can’t remember you at all, and a different person’s soul (say, someone you’ve never met) existing in heaven?

Putting It All Together: Locke’s Conclusion

All the crucial elements of Locke’s view are in the following passage.

Section 16

But although the same immaterial substance or soul does not by itself, in all circumstances, make the same man, it is clear that consciousness unites actions—whether from long ago or from the immediately preceding moment—into the same person. Whatever has the consciousness of present and past actions is the same person to whom they both belong. If my present consciousness that I am now writing were also a consciousness that I saw an overflowing of the Thames last winter and that I saw Noah’s ark and the flood, I couldn’t doubt that I who write this now am the same self that saw the Thames overflowed last winter and viewed the flood at the general deluge—place that self in what substance you please. I could no more doubt this than I can doubt that I who write this am the same myself now while I write as I was yesterday, whether or not I consist of all the same substance, material or immaterial. For sameness of substance is irrelevant to sameness of self: I am as much involved in—and as justly accountable for—an action that was done a thousand years ago and is appropriated to me now by this self-consciousness as I am for what I did a moment ago.

In our ordinary experience our first-person consciousness goes along for the ride as our human bodies age. But real examples of serious amnesia (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease) show that, no matter what our consciousness is attached to, psychological continuity can be, and sometimes is, diminished or extinguished. And that’s why Locke concludes that even the literal sameness of soul substance across time is insufficient for sameness of person across time. What matters, Locke urges, both for your sense of self and for the justice of praise, blame, reward, or punishment, is a relation of personal consciousness, whether that connects whatever you are now to whatever you were a minute ago or to whatever you might be a billion years from now.

Connection

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

In Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, a salesman, wakes up one morning to find that he has the body of a “monstrous vermin”, such as a cockroach. It’s a horrible situation, as he and his family struggle to adjust to his plight. But, suppose this were to happen to you! You’d be horrified, and you’d wonder how it could have happened; but you wouldn’t doubt that you were the person who was formerly human and is now an insect. Kafka’s story thus illustrates the plausibility of Locke’s idea that psychological continuity is essential to personal identity.

Summary

Locke knew how counterintuitive it would seem to say that personal identity across time is not about sameness of thinking substance (material or immaterial) across time. His major contribution was in illuminating how important psychological continuity is for our deserving praise, blame, reward, or punishment. Locke concluded that, regardless of what our consciousness is attached to—whether an immaterial soul or material brain or anything else—it is a relation of first-person consciousness that unites thinking beings across time into one and the same person. Thus, the relation we have to ourselves in the past via memory is crucial for our being justly accountable for our past actions.

Video

Locke on Personal Identity

To appreciate (i) the importance of personal identity across time, and (ii) what we’re looking for as philosophers as a solution to our mystery, check out this video by a philosopher:

Want to Learn More?

Locke’s groundbreaking work motivated a vast philosophical literature on personal identity across time. For an overview see “Personal Identity” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. For more on Locke’s view see “Locke on Personal Identity” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Acknowledgements

This work has been adapted from John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter xxvii, in the version presented here. This work is in the Public Domain. All images were created using Midjourney.

Citation

Long, Todd R. 2025. “You Are Who You Remember: John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 27.”  The Philosophy Teaching Library. Edited by Robert Weston Siscoe, <https://philolibrary.crc.nd.edu/article/who-you-remember>

Key Concept

Unconditioned: an ultimate explanation of reality. For example, if I explain why it is raining today by appealing to some atmospheric conditions, I can always ask for the cause of those conditions, and so on. Only a cause that is not caused by anything else (something unconditioned) would give us an ultimate explanation.

Key Concept

Transcendental Idealism: Kant’s mature philosophical position. It holds that appearances are not things in themselves, but representations of our mind. It is opposed to transcendental realism, which identifies appearances with things in themselves.

Key Concept

Appearances (vs. things in themselves): things as they are experienced by us (also known as phenomena). They should be distinguished from things as they are independently of our experience (things in themselves or noumena).

Key Concept

Metaphysics: the study of what there is. Traditionally, metaphysics is divided into general metaphysics and special metaphysics. The former investigates the general features of reality and asks questions such as ‘What is possible?’. The latter studies particular kinds of being and asks questions such as ‘Does God exist?’ or ‘Is the soul immortal?’.

Key Concept

Reason: the faculty that knows a priori. Kant uses this term in a general sense (the knowing faculty as such) and in a specific sense (the faculty that demands ultimate explanations).

Key Concept

A priori: term denoting propositions that can be known independently from experience. For example, propositions such as ‘All bachelors are unmarried’ or ‘The whole is greater than its parts’ can be known without recourse to any experience.

Key Concept

Make sure not to think that ‘unjustified’ means ‘false.’ Even if they are true, the point is just that this would not be something that had been shown.

Key Concept

‘Absolute’ might be a confusing word, here. Socrates means that the geometers are not reasoning about their drawing of the square, for example, but of the square itself. They do not conclude that, for the square they drew, the area is equal to the square of a side – they conclude that this is true for squares as an intelligible object, or, as Plato would say, the Form of the square.

Key Concept

By ‘science’, Plato means to be talking about all rational disciplines, including mathematics.

Key Concept

The form of the beautiful has to be perfectly beautiful because all instances of beautiful things are explained by it, so it has to be responsible for the highest possible degrees of beauty possessed by anything. Moreover, it has no trace of ugliness in it.

Key Concept

The form of the beautiful has to be immaterial because all the many beautiful things do not share any material – that is, they are all made of different stuff.

Key Concept

Form (εἶδος / ἰδέα) – Intelligible, immaterial, perfect entities that explain the unity among the many things which share the feature named by the entity (e.g., Beauty, Squareness, Oddness). For example, think of a square. There might be many different squares, but they all share features like having four sides of equal length. So, the Form of Squareness would include all of those features that make something a square.

Key Concept

Guardian – This is the name Plato gives to the ruling class in his ideal city. Think of them as philosopher kings – they have complete control over the organization of the state. The Republic is partially about why Plato thinks they would be needed for an ideal system of government and what they would need to learn to do the job well.

Key Concept

Plato has previously argued that we are made up of different parts. The first part is the appetitive which is responsible for our desires for food, sex, and other bodily needs. Then there is the spirited part, which longs for fame and honor. Finally, he identifies the rational part, which discerns what is good and bad for us through reason. The parts can all come into conflict with one another, and managing their relations is what Plato thinks justice is all about.

Key Concept

Soul (ψῡχή) – What Greeks meant by this word is controversial. For now, think of it as the thing that makes you different from a rock or other objects, the thinking and experiencing part of you as well as the part of you that acts and makes decision. You might use the word ‘mind’ or ‘self’ to talk about this.

Key Concept

Virtue – Virtues are the character traits that make a person good. For example, most people consider courage and generosity to be virtues. English-speakers usually reserve the word ‘virtue’ for human beings, but in ancient Greek the word can be more comfortably applied to other beings as well.

Key Concept

Was it his burly physique, his wide breadth of wisdom, or his remarkable forehead which earned him this nickname?

Key Concept

Aporia – A Greek term for “being at a loss” or “clueless.” Socrates often questions people until they have no idea how to define something that they thought they understood.

Key Concept

You might be confused by the word ‘attention’ below. In Greek the word is therapeia, from which we get the English word ‘therapy.’ It primarily means the same as ‘service’ as in ‘to serve,’ but shades into ‘worship,’ ‘take care of,’ and ‘attend to.’

Key Concept

Meletus – A poet and citizen of Athens and one of Socrates’ accusers. Amongst other things, Meletus accused Socrates of impiety and corrupting the youth.

Key Concept

Divine Voluntarism – The idea that God is free to determine even the most basic truths. If divine voluntarism is true, then God could have made it so that 2+2=5 or so that cruelty and blasphemy are holy and good.

Key Concept

Euthyphro Dilemma – The question, “Is a thing holy because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is holy?” The general idea of a forced choice (or “dilemma”) about the true order of explanation occurs often in philosophy and gets referred to by this term.

Key Concept

Essence – What a thing fundamentally is. A square might be red or blue without changing the fact that it’s a square, but a square must have four sides, so having four sides is part of a square’s essence.

Key Concept

Definition – The perfect description of a thing. A definition should pick out all and only examples of a thing. For example, ‘bachelor’ might be defined as ‘unmarried man,’ because all unmarried men are bachelors, and only unmarried men are bachelors.

Key Concept

In Disney’s retelling of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the clergyman Claude Frollo orders the death of many Roma on religious grounds. It is clear, however, that he is really motivated by spite and his unrequited lust for the Romani woman Esmerelda.