Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves

Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves is a sustained analytical exploration of the rich philosophy of self of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Pessoa has become many things to many people in the years that have passed since his untimely death. For some, he is simply the greatest Portuguese poet of the twentieth century. For others, he has gradually emerged as a forgotten voice in 20th century modernism. And yet Pessoa was also a philosopher, and it is only very recently that the philosophical importance of his work has begun to attract the attention it deserves. Pessoa composed systematic philosophical essays in his pre-heteronymic period, defending rationalism in epistemology and sensationism in the philosophy of mind. His heteronymic work, decisively breaking with the conventional strictures of systematic philosophical writing, is a profound and exquisite exploration in the philosophy of self. In Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves, Jonardon Ganeri pulls together the strands of Pessoa's philosophy and rearticulates it in a way that does justice to its breathtaking originality. He reveals the extraordinary power of Pessoa's theory by applying it to the analysis of some of the trickiest and most puzzling problems about the self to have appeared in the global history of philosophy.