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.