How Do We Know Who We Are?: A Biography of the Self

This book should have been far more interesting than it is. Can there be a more interesting subject than understanding who we really are, and if we discover that? I had hoped that this book would give real insight into the way we know and define ourselves. From the chapters I read and admit not to having read the whole I did not have a sense that there was any development toward ' real understanding of the impossibly difficult and insoluble perhaps question'. What the book does have is a number of distinguished biographers telling something about the way they understand biography. There is also Ludwig's conception of biographical freedom and the way each of us may construct the narrative of his own life. I connect this with an idea in Judaism in which each great sage makes through the story of his life a Sefer Torah that can be read by the generations to come. I think that there is much more to this book than I have indicated. And I certainly would recommend that anyone interested in the subject of self - definition through biography have a look at this book.