Self-awareness early philosophical discussion of self-awareness is that of John Locke. Locke was apparently influenced by René Descartes' statement normally translated 'I think, therefore I am' ("Cogito ergo sum"). In chapter XXVII "On Identity and Diversity" of Locke's "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1689) he conceptualized consciousness as the repeated self-identification of oneself through which moral responsibility could be attributed to the subject—and therefore punishment and guiltiness justified, as critics such as Nietzsche would point out, affirming "...the psychology of conscience is not 'the voice of God in man'; it is the instinct of cruelty ... expressed, for the first time,
Cogito, ergo sum for thought". In other words, "the only claim that is indubitable here is the agent-independent claim that there is cognitive activity present". The objection, as presented by Georg Lichtenberg, is that rather than supposing an entity that is thinking, Descartes should have said: "thinking is occurring." That is, whatever the force of the "cogito", Descartes draws too much from it; the existence of a thinking thing, the reference of the "I," is more than the "cogito" can justify. Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the phrase in that it presupposes that there is an "I", that there is such an activity as "thinking",