Persons: What Philosophers Say About You. 2nd ed.

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. His
most recently published work is Biblical Religion and Family Values: A
Problem in the Philosophy of Culture (2001).

This second edition of Warren Bourgeois’s lengthy philosophical study
of the concept of a person is meant to be more serviceable than its
predecessor as a university textbook in upper-level undergraduate
courses in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and related fields. The
author has been affiliated with a number of British Columbia
institutions and has an impressive command of his subject matter and a
lively, engaging writing style. The book begins with an affecting
account of the transformation of his late wife’s personality following
the onset of a degenerative illness. She remains a continuing presence
throughout the book, and in explaining and appraising numerous
historical and contemporary ideas about personhood, Bourgeois briefly
relates each of these ideas to his wife’s situation. Most of the book
is devoted to the explanation and appraisal of these philosophical
theories, and here Bourgeois traverses all-too-familiar academic ground.
In the last part of the book, however, he develops his own concept of a
person, and the position he develops is eclectic, practical, flexible,
and in many ways quite sensible. The book also contains content
questions, arguments for analysis, a glossary, and a bibliography.
Bourgeois is a mainstream analytical philosopher with limited interest
in methods and themes beyond the scope of the analytical schools; but
his survey of the classical theories is highly comprehensive. He is
particularly effective in relating metaphysical issues to ethical and
social ones.

Bourgeois endeavoured to make this book “accessible to anyone who
cares deeply about people and is willing to think hard,” but most of
the material is too demanding for general readers. Although students may
benefit more from exposure to primary sources than to an individual
scholar’s explanation of them, Bourgeois’s distinctive approach to a
difficult subject is impressive and valuable for all sorts of reasons.