Locke on Education, Persons, and Moral Agency

Bibliographic Data

ID21604115
AuthorsRuth Boeker (0000-0002-5995-8868, University College Dublin, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume31
Issue2
Pages202-210
Publication date2023-03-15
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0967-2559 • E-ISSN: 1466-4542
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09672559.2023.2250179
OpenAlexW4386476906
LanguageEN
References cited9

In her book Experience Embodied Anik Waldow devotes a chapter to ‘Locke’s Experimental Persons.’ Her chapter aims to show how Locke’s views on persons, personal identity, and moral agency in his Essay concerning Human Understanding build on his esteem-based approach to education that he develops in Some Thoughts concerning Education. After outlining main contributions that Waldow makes in her chapter, I turn to three issues that in my view deserve further consideration. First, I draw attention to the question of how Locke’s esteem-based education can be reconciled with his moral views in the Essay. I propose that the question of how children become persons or moral agents who see their actions bound by divine law is worth examining with more detail. Second, I contrast Waldow’s interpretation of what a Lockean action is with an alternative interpretation and show that this has implications for how we understand the role of consciousness in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. Third, I take a closer look at Waldow’s view that consciousness has an epistemic function in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity and highlight advantages of also acknowledging a metaphysical function of consciousness

Aesthetics · Consciousness · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Moral agency · Personal identity · Self · Sociology · Philosophy · Religion, Theology, and Education · Religious Education and Schools · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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