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Derek Parfit

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Also known as Derek Antony Parfit

British philosopher (1942–2017)

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Quotes

  • the part of our moral theory... that covers how we affect future generations... is the most important part of our moral theory, since the next few centuries will be the most important in human history.
  • Classical Utilitarians...would claim, as Sidgwick did, that the destruction of mankind would be by far the greatest of all conceivable crimes. The badness of this crime would lie in the vast reduction of the possible sum of happiness.
  • To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.
  • We are paternalists when we make someone act in his own interests.
  • Strawson describes two kinds of philosophy, descriptive, and revisionary. Descriptive philosophy gives reasons for what we instinctively assume, and explains and justifies the unchanging central core in our beliefs about ourselves, and the world we inhabit. I have great respect for descriptive philosophy. But, by temperament, I am a revisionist. […] Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are false, they should change them.
  • On all plausible theories, everyone’s well-being consists at least in part in being happy, and avoiding suffering.

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Key facts

Born
Derek Antony Parfit , ( 1942-12-11 ) 11 December 1942, Chengdu , China
Died
2 January 2017 (2017-01-02) (aged 74), London , England
Spouse
Janet Radcliffe Richards ​ ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 2010 ) ​
Awards
Rolf Schock Prize (2014)
Alma mater
Balliol College, Oxford
Influences
Henry Sidgwick John Locke Immanuel Kant John Stuart Mill Christine Korsgaard Thomas Nagel T. M. Scanlon Shelly Kagan P. F. Strawson A. J. Ayer David Pears R. M. Hare Ronald Dworkin Amartya Sen Jonathan Glover James Griffin
Discipline
Philosophy
School or tradition
Analytic philosophy
Institutions
All Souls College, Oxford
Main interests
Ethics personal identity rationalism consequentialism philosophy of mind
Notable works
Reasons and Persons (1984)
Notable ideas
Relation R repugnant conclusion nonidentity problem Triple Theory teletransportation paradox self-defeating moral theories
Influenced
Larry Temkin Jeff McMahan John Cottingham Brad Hooker Ruth Chang Peter Singer Thomas Hurka Samuel Scheffler

via Wikipedia infobox

~23 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Derek Antony Parfit (/ˈpɑːrfɪt/; 11 December 1942 – 2 January 2017) was a British philosopher who specialised in personal identity, rationality, and ethics. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Parfit rose to prominence in 1971 with the publication of his first paper, "Personal Identity". His first book, Reasons and Persons (1984), has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s. His second book, On What Matters (2011), was widely circulated and discussed for many years before its publication.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Derek Parfit” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.