What is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions

Rist, John M. John M. Rist,

ISBN 10: 1108746810 / ISBN 13: 9781108746816

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 6666-GRD-9781108746816

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108746810
• ISBN 13: 9781108746816
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In this book, John M. Rist offers an account of the concept of 'person' as it has developed in the West, and how it has become alien in a post-Christian culture. He begins by identifying the 'mainline tradition' about persons as it evolved from the time of Plato to the High Middle Ages, then turns to successive attacks on it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then proceeds to the 'five ways' in which the tradition was savaged or distorted in the nineteenth century and beyond. He concludes by considering whether ideas from contemporary philosophical movements, those that combine a closer analysis of human nature with a more traditional metaphysical background, may enable the tradition to be restored. A timely book on a theme of universal significance, Rist ponders whether we persons matter, and how we have reached a position where we are not sure whether we do.

About the Author

John Rist is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Toronto. Author of more than a dozen books and over a hundred articles on ancient philosophy, patristics, and ethics, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Aquinas Medalist of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.