We ordinarily speak of a person as one being among others: an individual who thinks, acts, remembers and enters into relations. Personal idealism asks a further question. Is personality merely something that happens within an otherwise impersonal reality, or does it disclose something fundamental about reality itself?
In the Swedish tradition associated with Geijer and Boström, the independence of the person becomes a philosophical demand. An account of the whole must give an account of the individual who knows and acts within it. The individual cannot simply disappear at the moment the system is completed.
Boström gives this demand a systematic form. His account of reality centres on self-conscious beings and their determinations. The task of philosophy is to understand the relations within this order and the place of the finite person in it.
Such a claim immediately creates difficulties worth studying. How can dependence and independence belong to the same being? How can an eternal ground sustain a life of change? How can the person belong to a whole and remain a source of action?