Publisher's Synopsis
Rudolph McNair is a National Merit Scholar who focused on philosophy and became convinced that a clear understanding of what the concept of "person" and of the "self" is meant to stand for is essential to the settling of many contemporary arguments about notions like social posture, civil and reproductive rights of persons, or political identity. He undertakes this study with a particular attention given to the jazziness of dialogue (as engaged in by about personkinds), and confronts the problem with the supposed "literal" standing of some avowed ideas, depending upon the language group attending to them. He suggests that there are many streams of figurative meaning, with strong currents, into which people engaged in any language group might wade, and he asks whether there can be a solid literal ground upon which any societal "identity" might stand (as might regard expressions like "minority," "patriot," "watchman" or "police officer," and such like). The reader should beware that this is a collection of essays that might present a dangerous course to follow. For instance, McNair insists that an awakened/enlivened personkindness and, necessarily, the process of socioemotional integration essential to it, has substance only at the event horizon surrounding selves (or souls, if you will) where we sort out all aspects of real life-time phenomena-in which case we cannot know when or whether "selves" occur (are born) at all, in the way we track person-being. A concentrated collection of mostly basic annotation and the author hopes, witty explanation, that the reader might find an intriguing train of thought.
