Leibniz, Locke e l'idea moderna della coscienza di sé

The idea of 'consciousness' (as well as the noun that express it in English) are relatively novel cultural (and linguistic) achievements, which originated in the Early Modern Age as a result of a complex process of conceptual and semantic the pre-existing adjective 'conscious', to express the subjective state of being aware of one's own thoughts and feelings and therefore to mean a state of self-awareness. As a cognitive and psychological concept, consciousness had thus joined the much older concept of conscience, which - as the heir of the Latin noun conscientia - had instead expressed the inner awareness of the moral distinction between right and wrong and therefore the subjective capacity of judging one's own behaviours. Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanting and its French translation, together with Leibniz's comment in his Nouveaux Essais, plaied a primary role in these semantic and lexical developments.