From the bestselling coauthor of Wittgenstein's Poker, an
entertaining and illuminating biography of a brilliant philosopher who
tried to rescue morality from nihilism
Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have
never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of
the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual.
Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that
affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations,
and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds
presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric
genius.
Believing that we should be less concerned with ourselves and more with
the common good, Parfit dedicated himself to the pursuit of
philosophical progress to an extraordinary degree. He always wore gray
trousers and a white shirt so as not to lose precious time picking out
clothes, he varied his diet as little as possible, and he had only one
serious non-philosophical interest: taking photos of Oxford, Venice, and
St. Petersburg. In the latter half of his life, he single-mindedly
devoted himself to a desperate attempt to rescue secular
morality--morality without God--by arguing that it has an objective,
rational basis. For Parfit, the stakes could scarcely have been higher.
If he couldn't demonstrate that there are objective facts about right
and wrong, he believed, his life was futile and all our lives were
meaningless.
Connecting Parfit's work and life and offering a clear introduction to
his profound and challenging ideas, Parfit is a powerful portrait of
an extraordinary thinker who continues to have a remarkable influence on
the world of ideas.
