On Personality / Edition 1

by Peter Goldie

Overview

Warm, sensitive, creative, outgoing, cheeky, creepy. Scan any personal ads page and it's clear that to get a life you need a personality first. It is also a notion with a long and often bizarre history: in early Greece and medieval Europe, it was thought to depend on the balance of bile in the body.
On Personality is a thoughtful and stimulating look under the skin of this widely-used but little understood phenomenon. Peter Goldie points out that we rely on personality to do a lot of work: describe, judge, understand, explain and predict others as well as ourselves. Is it really up to this task? If personality is about 'character', is it a relic of a bygone Victorian age? If personality is so reliable, how can a virtue in one person be a vice in another?
Drawing on a great range of philosophers, novelists and films, from Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche to Joseph Conrad, Middlemarch, War and Peace and Bridget Jones' Diary, Peter Goldie also discusses some famous psychology experiments. If personality is a reliable guide to predicting what people will do, he reflects on why people often surprise us and asks whether personality is simply down to chance and circumstance.
On Personality is essential reading for anyone interested in this fascinating but slippery concept. It will also make you think twice before writing your CV.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415305143
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/16/2004
Series:	Thinking in Action
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface, The Pervasiveness of Personality, Good and Bad People: A Question of Character, The Fragility of Character, Character, Responsibility and Circumspection, Personality, Narrative and Living a Life, Notes, Index

Editorial Reviews

'Goldie writes in warmly accessible fashion.' - Steven Poole, The Guardian

'a clear, lively, illuminating, urbane and thoughtful little book on personality and character' Metapsychology Online

'It is exciting to see a philosopher, rather than a psychologist, wrestle with the concept of personality' - Paul Crichton, Times Literary Supplement

'Goldie writes in warmly accessible fashion.' - Steven Poole, The Guardian

From the Publisher