Locke is often thought to have introduced the topic of personal identity into philosophy when, in the second edition of the Essay, he distinguished the person from both the human being and the soul. Each of these entities differs from the others with respect to their identity conditions, and so they must be ontologically distinct. In particular, Locke claimed, a person cannot survive total memory loss, although a human being or a soul can.
Some twenty years before Locke published the chapter on identity, Spinoza, in his Ethics, discussed an example similar in many respects to the amnesia cases that led Locke to distinguish persons from human being sand souls; infact, many commentators take Spinoza to have here anticipated Locke's continuity
Some twenty years before Locke published the chapter on identity, Spinoza, in his Ethics, discussed an example similar in many respects to the amnesia cases that led Locke to distinguish persons from human being sand souls; infact, many commentators take Spinoza to have here anticipated Locke's continuity