Persons

The word "person" has become a familiar part of an activist's battle cry in the latter half of the twentieth century: it has been used abundantly by feminists, ethnic groups as well as pro-life and pro-choice advocates. And we constantly hear, in medical ethics and many other fields, about respect for persons, rights of persons and treatment appropriate only to persons. These debates proceed as if we are all agreed on what persons are. But there are many concepts and definitions of a person in current use. Prompted by a terrible tragedy - a loved one's descent into dementia as a result of multiple sclerosis - Warren Bourgeois here explores the history of Western philosophical ideas about persons from the Ancient Greeks to the present. He examines what we have believed about ourselves and why, and he links the ideas of the great thinkers to our contemporary world by applying them to the analysis of a woman's radical personal changes. And finally he uses the lessons of history to develop a proposal for a way to think about ourselves today.