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John Locke And Cockburn's View Of Personal Identity

1315 Words6 Pages

In this paper, my goal is to outline the key objections raised against John Locke’s view of personal identity and the soul, explain Catherine Trotter Cockburn’s response to those objections in defense of Locke, and demonstrate the adequacy of Cockburn’s defense of Locke while considering and addressing possible objections to that point. The primary objection raised against Locke is that he has failed to prove that the soul is immortal when under Reid’s view an immortal soul is necessary. Among the threats, within Locke’s arguments, to the immortality of the soul are the lack of constant thought and the assertion by Locke himself that we are indeed unable to know whether or not the soul is truly immortal in that sense. Locke admits of himself, “ I confess to have one of those dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas; nor can conceive it any more necessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move,” (Locke Book II, Ch. I). A parallel is explicitly drawn between the nature of the soul and the body, with the body not having to be in constant motion to exist and the soul not having to be in constant thought to exist as well. Within the same objection to whether or not …show more content…

Establishing the soul as being immortal and having that immortality being dependent upon its immaterial nature is not the argument that Locke was making. It is then wrong to think that the lack of establishment of a necessarily immaterial soul invalidates the immortal nature of the soul, a quality of the soul Locke indeed argues for. Cockburn explains this in her defense of Locke against this objection, and further solidifies the point by drawing from the omnipotence of God if the other line of reasoning was unsatisfying or

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