Unbecoming Persons

A damning genealogy of modern personhood and a bold vision for a new kind of ethics rooted in belonging rather than individuality. In the face of ecological crisis, economic injustice, and political violence, the moral demands of being a good person are almost too much to bear. In Unbecoming Persons, Ladelle McWhorter argues that this strain is by design: our ideas about personhood, she shows, emerged to sustain centuries of colonialism, slavery, and environmental destruction. We must look elsewhere to find our way out. This history raises a hard question: should we be persons at all, or might we live a good life without the constraints of individualism or the illusion of autonomy? In seeking an answer, McWhorter pushes back on the notion of our own personhood-our obsession with identity, self-improvement, and salvation-in search of a better way to live together in this world. Although she finds no easy answers, McWhorter ultimately proposes a new ethics that rejects both self-interest and self-sacrifice and embraces perpetual dependence, community, and the Earth.