The Invention of Consciousness: A French Interpretation of John Locke

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In 1998, Étienne Balibar, one of the best-known living French philosophers, published a new French translation of Book II, Chapter XXVII of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding - the chapter added to the second, 1694, edition of Locke's Essay in which is to be found his celebrated theory of personal identity. This is Locke's explanation for what constitutes the identity of the person or of personality, in distinction from the identity of matter, of plants, and of animals, including man. Balibar's long introductory essay to the translation, along with some 31 substantial Glossary entries, propounds and defends a thesis that, if accepted, forces us to reconsider, fundamentally, the philosophical achievement of Locke's famous chapter and to acknowledge Locke's rightful place in the history of European philosophy - specifically in the history of the otherwise mainly Franco-German philosophy of 'the subject'. Balibar's claims run contrary to the received version of the history of philosophy, according to which 'consciousness' is presumed to be at the heart of Descartes' earlier philosophical determination of the 'self', or according to which Descartes 'invented' the philosophical concept of consciousness and thereby presented us with the first philosophy of the subject. Instead, Balibar identifies Locke as the central figure in the invention of the philosophical concept of consciousness in the second half of the 17th century, and in so doing restores to our understanding of the history of philosophy an awareness of the originality, or novelty, of the European invention of 'consciousness', a concept which we are apt to take for granted. However Balibar's work on Locke remains relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, even amongst his admirers. Why is this the case? Balibar's work is part of the tradition of 'continental' or 'Modern European' philosophy, by which is meant the mainly French and German philosophies of the late 18th-20th centuries and the contemporary scholarship across the world that is inspired by it. The dominant contemporary understanding of this tradition, within which Balibar's natural readers reside, effectively excludes Locke from its canon and Balibar's book on Locke therefore seems to have passed under its radar. On the other hand, the English-language literature on Locke is almost exclusively produced within the Anglo-American 'analytical' philosophical tradition, by which is meant the 20th-century, anti-metaphysical tradition of logical and linguistic analysis that conceives philosophy as primarily a process of conceptual clarification and that conceives itself, in part, as the inheritor of the empircist philosophies of Locke and Hume. On the whole, analytical philosophers do not read contemporary French 'continental' philosophy. The publication of an English edition of Balibar's book is an attempt to remedy this situation in relation to both traditions. The contribution of this research is a substantial critical essay for inclusion in the book and general editorial input, adapting the edition for an English-speaking audience.As well as critically assessing Balibar's complex and nuanced arguments, the aim of the research is thus to engage two different readerships in the discipline of philosophy with Balibar's interpretation of Locke. It aims both to introduce Balibar's interpretation to the Anglophone readers of Locke in the analytical tradition, in the context of a wider discussion of Balibar's work on the concept of consciousness and the philosophy of the subject, and to present to readers in the continental tradition Balibar's argument for the outstanding importance of John Locke to the 'continental' philosophy of the subject. In this way the research aims to mediate between the two, sometimes opposed philosophical traditions in demonstrating their common ancestry in Locke andthe value of the contribution of each for the other on this particular topic.