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+--- Thread: Derek Parfit's philosophy in seven parts (/thread-12460.html)
Derek Parfit's philosophy in seven parts - C C - Jun 24, 2022
Table of Contents links, with intros
https://rychappell.substack.com/p/parfit-in-seven-parts
OVERVIEW: Derek Parfit was a great philosopher, but his work is not known for being especially approachable. Reasons and Persons was 500+ pages of incredibly dense (yet rewarding!) philosophy. The three volumes of On What Matters total almost 2000 pages. Very few people will (or should) read all this.
In Parfit’s Ethics, I critically introduce Parfit’s central insights and arguments in around 130 pages (according to my preprint; Cambridge University Press somehow squeezes this into just 55 pages). But even this very short book is still, you know… a book… and so unlikely to be as widely read as random blog posts on the internet. Solution: turn the book into a series of blog posts!
So, here we are. I’ve written seven posts that break down different elements of Parfit’s thought into manageable chunks. (The first six draw heavily from my book; the seventh, on metaethics, contains more new material.) I hope this will prove valuable to philosophers, students, and philosophically-interested readers who would like to learn more about Parfit’s ideas without requiring a huge investment of time and effort. If some of your friends might meet this description, do them a favour and let them know of this resource! (MORE - the seven parts)
RE: Derek Parfit's philosophy in seven parts - Yazata - Jun 25, 2022
Or at least his ethics in seven parts. Thanks for this CC, I will have to take a look at it. 2000 pages of On What Matters is a little off-putting.
I've always liked Derek Parfit, but more about his theory of the self than about his ethics. (Though I suppose that the latter derives from the former.)
And I've always associated Parfit with Buddhism, even though Parfit seems to have never thought of himself as a Buddhist. It's more that Parfit kind of hit on an insight about the self that was very similar to the Buddha's, without having ever studied Buddhism. And like the Buddha, he developed that insight into an ethics.
https://polycitta.org/parfit-pratyekabuddha-f7585578c644