The Person Vanishes argues that despite John Dewey's failure to articulate «an adequate theory
of personality» his writings provide at least a theory-sketch of human personality consistent
with the assumptions that framed his philosophical outlook. Recognizing the new developments in
society science and the arts Dewey argues for the necessity of a Copernican revolution in
our understanding of the human self from the monadic and minimalist self of the
Cartesian-Newtonian modernist tradition to a relational and processual model of selfhood
consonant with the press of post-modernist historical experience. As a field and activity
conception Dewey's self emerges as a nexus of relational energizing genuinely moored in a
cultural surrounding in which ongoing creative reconstruction becomes the mark and criterion of
the self's health and growth. What vanishes in Dewey's reconstruction is not the self as such
but only the entitative substantive self of early modernism. Dewey's understanding of the self
is grounded in the conviction that philosophy must begin its inquiry from the ordinary
experience of plain men and women. The Person Vanishes examines Dewey's participatory notion of
deliberation what he calls «dramatic rehearsal» by using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as
a case study. The analysis attempts to cash out the personal and collective habits as well as
the different modalities of ends facts and values that diagram the existential dimensions of
this problematic situation. Contrary to traditional dualistic and spectatorial accounts of
deliberation Dewey's «dramatic rehearsal» shows the complexity of decision-making when the
genuine limitations of daily life are taken seriously. The attempt to march to Dewey's
participatory philosophy reveals the escapist nature of all dualistic philosophical traditions
and the reason for their continuous failure to resolve concrete social and personal conflicts.
