Abstract

This book's dedication reads “to the man I married.” The phrase is a nice incitement to reflect on the book's topic: is the man she married identical with her present husband? Does the dedication imply a subtle reproach? a note of resignation before the inevitable fact that the man I married cannot be the one I'm married to? By the end of her book, Radden concludes that we can't get away from “normative demands of individuality” that remain anchored to common sense. The challenge she takes up is to articulate the intuitions evoked by a wide spectrum of questions about unity and disunity of the person, both diachronic and synchronic. The latter include the dramatic case of Multiple Personality Syndrome or MPD, but also milder cases of dissociation. Radical amnesia, personality changes including those brought about by religious conversions, and disintegration of personality consequent on senile dementia suggest disunity through time. In all cases, Radden opts for a Rawlsian reflective equilibrium, though she rightly notes that “drawing philosophical conclusions from empirical descriptions, on the one hand, and contributing philosophical distinctions and theories to an understanding of those facts, on the other, [are] fraught with methodological dangers.”