Derek Parfit (born December 11, 1942) is a British philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. His 1984 book, Reasons and Persons (described by Alan Ryan in The Sunday Times as "something close to a work of genius") has been very influential. He has worked at Oxford for the whole of his academic career, and is presently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford....
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Derek Parfit (born December 11, 1942) is a British philosopher who specializes in problems of personal identity, rationality and ethics, and the relations between them. His 1984 book, Reasons and Persons (described by Alan Ryan in The Sunday Times as "something close to a work of genius") has been very influential. He has worked at Oxford for the whole of his academic career, and is presently a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is also a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Harvard University, and Rutgers University. Between 1965-66 he was Harkness Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University.
Reasons and Persons is a four-part work, each successive section building on the last. Parfit believes that non-religious ethics is a young and fertile field of inquiry. In many ways, he serves as a foil to Wittgenstein, directing his study inwards to address the everyday mechanics of moral problems. He asks questions about which actions are...
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