Abstract

Among the striking elements of this description is the way in which Locke’s analogy, so bereft of an outward orientation, is employed to represent the modernist notion of self. This sharp contrast of classical and modern conceptions of the self is alone enough to justify Jerrold Seigel’s comprehensive study. There can be no doubt that something new regarding the concepts of soul, self, and personhood came into prominence with the advent of that Copernican Revolution in philosophy, the Cartesian turn. Indeed, every major Western European philosopher since the time of Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke has in some way confronted the problem of the self, and Seigel sets out to catalogue and place into context the various responses to this central problem of modern philosophy.