The Role of Appropriation in Locke's Account of Persons and Personal Identity

Abstract


 
 
 According to Locke, appropriation is a precondition for moral responsibility and thus we can expect that it plays a distinctive role in his theory. Yet it is rare to find an interpretation of Locke’s account of appropriation that does not associate it with serious problems. To make room for a more satisfying understanding of Locke’s account of appropriation we have to analyse why it was so widely misunderstood. The aim of this paper is fourfold: First, I will show that Mackie’s and Winkler’s interpretations that have shaped the subsequent discussion contain serious flaws. Second, I will argue that the so-called appropriation interpretation —that is the view that appropriation is meant to provide alternative persistence conditions for persons—lacks support. Third, I will re-examine Locke’s texts and argue that we can come to a better understanding of his notion of appropriation in the Essay if we interpret it in analogy to his account of appropriation in Two Treatises. Fourth, I will offer a more fine-grained interpretation of the role of appropriation in relation to persistence conditions for persons. I conclude by showing that the advantage of this proposal is that it reconciles interpretations that have commonly been thought to be inconsistent.
 
 

The Biblical Roots of Locke's Theory of Personal Identity

“…It is widely believed that Locke's theory of personal identity resulted from his intention to clarify the principium individuationis in accordance with his way of ideas, which entails an agnostic stance on the ontological constitution of substances, including thinking substances or souls. However, Locke's theory of personal identity was also intended to complement and sustain his moral and theological commitments to a system of otherworldly rewards and sanctions (Weinberg 2011, 398; Boeker 2014., 242; Lucci 2021, 106−33). And, since Locke's views on divine judgment and the afterlife were grounded in his reading of Scripture, his biblical theology also conditioned his notion of personal identity.…”