Identity And Difference: John Locke And The Invention Of Consciousness - Softcover

Balibar, Etienne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781681341 ISBN 13: 9781781681343

Publisher: Verso Books, 2013

Synopsis

John Locke's foundational place in the history of British empiricism and liberal political thought is well established. So, in what sense can Locke be considered a modern European philosopher? Identity and Difference argues for reassessing this canonical figure. Closely examining the "treatise on identity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Etienne Balibar demonstrates Locke's role in the formation of two concepts central to the metaphysics of the subject-consciousness and the self-and the complex philosophical, legal, moral and political nature of his terms.

With an accompanying essay by Stella Sandford, situating Balibar's reading of Locke in the history of the reception of the Essay and within Balibar's other writings on "the subject," Identity and Difference rethinks a crucial moment in the history of Western philosophy.

About this title

About the Authors

Étienne Balibar is a French Marxist philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Spinoza and Politics, The Philosophy of Marx and co-author of Race, Nation and Class and Reading Capital.

Warren Montag is Associate Professor of English at Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is the author of Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contemporaries and the Unthinkable Swift.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781681341
• ISBN 13: 9781781681343
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208