  The second general reason selves can be understood only by reference  to community and morality comes from a consideration of human  actions. As MacIntyre notes, human actions are intelligible  only if viewed in a particular setting. We can understand a piece of  human behavior only when we have situated the agent's intentions  within the two contexts of their role in the agent's history and  their role within the history of their particular setting(s). In  doing so, we are writing a narrative history. Intelligible actions  are actions for which the agent is accountable, actions  which have a place in an ongoing narrative (MacIntyre 1984, 206–208). Thus arises the notion of narrative unity. My life, my  entire life, from physical birth to physical death, can be  understood only as a narrative, as an ongoing story. Now the unity of a narrative requires unity of character, and unity of character  presupposes strict, numerical personal identity. To be the subject of a narrative is to be accountable for past actions that have composed  that narrative life. To understand your actions now, therefore, I  have to understand them as actions situated in a life story,  your life story, as actions interrelated with your  prior actions. As a result, “all attempts to elucidate the  notion of personal identity independently of and in isolation from  the notions of narrative, intelligibility and accountability are  bound to fail. As all such attempts have” (ibid.,  218).