Using examples from classical and modern philosophy, this collection asks if it is feasible to call ourselves rational beings at the same time as possessing human failings and whether we can find in ancient philosophy a notion which is comparable to "person", which figures in modern philosophy.

Part One: 'Person' and 'Human Being': the status and interrelationship of the concepts; Amelie Oksenberg Rorty: Persons and Personae; Adam Morton: Why there is no concept of a person; Peter Smith: Human persons; P.F. Snowdon: Persons, animals, and ourselves; Troels Engberg-Pedersen: Stoic philosophy and the concept of the person; Christopher Gill: The human being as an ethical norm; Part Two: The human and the rational mind - models of self-understanding; George Botterill: Human Nature and Fold Psychology; Stephen R. L. Clark: Reason as Daimon; M. R. Wright: Presocratic minds; Christopher Rowe: Philosophy, love, and madness; A. W. Price: Plato and Freud

'the essays are uniformly of unusually high interest, all at least very good, some quite excellent ... Three not so far discussed in this review are of particular importance for students of Greek thought. M.R. Wright's first-rate discussion of "presocratic Minds" is peculiarly valuable for its account of a view of mind.' Arion, 1991 'we should welcome the individual papers in the conveniently accessible form which this book provides' J.D.G. Evans, Queen's University of Belfast, Philosophical Books, 33.1 (1992) 'interesting collection of papers ... a stimulating and useful collection the value of which lies not only in the merits of individual papers but also in the questions which it raises about the relations between the views discussed and defended by the different authors' David Cockurn, St David's University College, Lampeter, Philosophical Investigation 'The essays are of uniformly high quality; they are original and provocative. Most exciting, however, is the diversity of perspective which this collection brings to a single set of problems. The authors come from widely divergent areas of philosophical specialization and, hence, come to the questions treated in their essays by quite different paths. They converge, however, on the same set of issues, and so we see these issues treated from quite different perspectives, informed by vastly diverse background assumptions, which yield importantly different insights.' Ethics 102:1 October 1991 'It is not the least of the merits of this valuable collection to provoke the reader to reflect on the nature of the study to which it makes its own distinctive contribution.' C.C.W. Taylor, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Polis, Vol. 11, No. 1, (1992)