I have just been reading Larissa MacFarquhar’s very enjoyable account of the life and works of the British philosopher, Derek Parfit, in The New Yorker. No one can but be impressed by both Parfit’s ...

I find the following argument convincing. (1) If equality is intrinsically good, then, other things being equal, leveling down is good. (2) It is false that other things being equal, leveling down is ...

Philosophers are not terribly good advertisements for the life philosophic. It’s not that they tend to be reprobates, although a few of them are. It’s just that their lives are usually so damned ...

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our ...

Chances are, unless you’re a philosopher, you’ve never heard of Derek Parfit. A philosopher’s philosopher, he spent most of his career far from the madding crowd in the cloisters of All Souls College, ...

Philosopher whose books inspired his academic peers all over the world Your body is destroyed, but only after it has been scanned and the blueprint beamed to Mars, where an organic replica of you is ...

Perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve read on the failure of one’s consciousness to continue was in Part III of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, which is concerned with the question of personal ...