  For the most part, the philosophical history of the relation between  identity and ethics up until the 17th Century is about the relation between identity and self-regarding practical concerns.  Plato is a prime example. He held in the Phaedo that I (and  all persons) will survive the death and destruction of my body  insofar as what I essentially am is a simple, immaterial soul,  something whose own essence is being alive. This yields the direct  implication that, insofar as I will survive the death of my body, I  am justified in anticipating post-mortem experiences. Lucretius, on  the other hand, while also focused solely on the relation between  identity and prudential concerns, denied the Platonic view that I  would be justified in post-mortem anticipation, simply because  “if any feeling remains in mind or spirit after it has been torn from body, that is nothing to us, who are brought into being by the  wedlock of body and spirit, conjoined and coalesced” (Lucretius  1951, 121). In other words, I am essentially a union of body and  soul, and so even if my soul lives on, and even if it is capable of  having experiences, I am not justified in anticipating them given  that my body – an essential component of me –  will have disintegrated. For both, however, identity is thought to  be what grounds prudential concern: the difference between Lucretius  and Plato is only over what identity consists in (although for a  contrasting interpretation of Lucretius, see Martin and Barresi 2003, 10).