This book is an attempt to answer the question 'What is a person?'. Although the answer is given in largely theoretical terms, the author is concerned primarily with practice: what does it mean to live as a human person in community with others? What personal, social, and political practices are required by personal being? The central insight, that human identity is most productively understood in communicational terms, leads to an account of personhood which is both compassionate and which - at the same time - keeps sight of the particularity of each individual.