Experience and identity of the self
Advances in Consciousness Research August 7, 2012 Antonio Lamarra
The modern concept of consciousness, understood as subjective awareness of the self and its mental contents, emerged in European thought only in the late 17th century, rooted in earlier ideas of moral conscience and requiring a subjective interiority. Cartesian philosophy, equating thought with mind, provided the necessary framework. John Locke first defined consciousness in modern terms, linking it closely to personal identity and avoiding metaphysical commitments, thereby separating personal identity from theological disputes and laying groundwork for empirical psychology. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, by contrast, grounded consciousness in an immaterial substance (the monad) and introduced an intentional relationship with the external world absent in Descartes and Locke, while also viewing consciousness as a largely unconscious phenomenon of the self.