Individuals

Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances. The first part of the book sets out the place of bodies and persons in our thought. Strawson poses some fundamental questions, such as why we ascribe states of consciousness to anything, and why we ascribe them to the same thing to which we ascribe physical predicates.The second part of the book establishes the connection between bodies and persons and the idea of an object of reference. Strawson argues that the crucial link between these two notions, and with it, the explanation of the status of the particular as the paradigm logical subject, is found in the idea of 'completeness'.Throughout, Individuals advances some highly influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'.

'This is a book of quite unusual interest and importance, which is likely greatly to influence philosophical discussion on the same and related topics for some time to come...It is a book to read and re-read by anyone with an interest in philosophy.' - Mind

P.F Strawson taught at the University of Oxford from 1947, becoming Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in 1968. He retired in 1987 and is now Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College. He is also the author of The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, published by Routledge.

Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances.Throughout, Individuals advances some highly influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'

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