Derek Parfit has been justly described as “the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of.” If you’re into moral philosophy, he’s a must-read. And despite his spending a decades-long academic career with no formal teaching commitments, Parfit’s publication record is relatively manageable: you can cover the essentials in two books – Reasons and Persons (1984) and On What Matters (2011).
Why is Parfit a must-read? Well, that’s probably worth an entire extra post – but he has come up with a lot of very, very interesting stuff. In Reasons and Persons he comes up with completely fresh arguments about personal identity, and links them to arguments about how to balance self-interest and more impartial moral theories. There is then a cracking section on how to balance the interests of future people, including the “Repugnant Conclusion”, which you really should know about. In On What Matters, Parfit sets out his “Triple Theory”, which combines Kantian deontology, consequentialism and contracturalism – three separate moral traditions that are supposed to be incompatible. He then includes comments by 4 other philosophers to this exposition, and sets out his response to each of those philosophers. Whether you agree with him or not, this is truly mind-expanding material.
There’s a catch, right? Well, kinda. The books are accessible to the layperson, but they need to cover a lot of ideas. Reasons and Persons has 400 non-appendix pages, and On What Matters has getting on for 1,000. Even if there’s some filler in there, that’s a lot to get into your head.
The style, at least is accessible. Parfit alternates between “thought experiments” – short descriptions of moral dilemmas – and dense argument and reasoning that sets out the implications. It might just be me, but I find this an effective way to guide people through the terrain that Parfit is attempting to map out. The thought experiments help to stop everything from getting too bogged down.
At this point I should note that not everyone is a fan of Parfit’s style! One of the philosophers responding to Parfit in On What Matters, Allen Wood, goes on an extended rant about how much they hate the thought-experiment approach (which they denigrate as “trolley problems”). I do have some sympathy – I’ve never been a fan of Searle’s “Chinese Room” for exactly the reasons that Wood sets out. Parfit deals with Wood’s rant in his response by ignoring it completely. Stephen Mulhall’s LRB review of a biography of Parfit (“Non-Identity Crisis“) goes even further – frankly, it verges on the bitchy, concluding that the biography “presents its subject as an epigram on our present philosophical age – a compact, compellingly lucid expression of its own confusions and derangements.” It was reading that review that made me decide I should make a determined effort to understand Parfit.
You have been warned: see how you get on with Reasons and Persons before buying On What Matters!
But even if you do get on with Parfit’s style, there’s still an awful lot to cover! I’m used to being able to speed-read through a lot of complex material and retain the gist as I power on through. But when I tried reading through Reasons and Persons, I hit the buffers a quarter of the way in; there was simply too much to hold in my head. More traction was needed. After some experimentation, I found an approach that has successfully carried me through .
Parfit splits his material out by chapters, which then tend to have multiple numbered sections. The recipe that worked for me is simple: cover material in the following three stages:
- First, read through, making sure you understand what you’re reading. Feel free to mark up significant passages in pencil, but don’t take detailed notes at this stage.
- Then, at least a day later than reading, make detailed section-level written notes. Elide detail that may have been useful as scaffolding, but is not necessary for you to express knowledge of the overall structure of reasoning once you’ve got it in your head. I ended up with something like 1 page of A4 per 10-15 pages of original text – the optimal compression ration depends on what you’re trying to summarise.
- Then, at least a day later than making written notes, make word-processed chapter-level summaries. You should be able to do this solely by referring to your written notes. Aim to sum up each chapter in a single side of A4, although some will chapters require more – you’ll know those when you see them.
This all can take place simultaneously – e.g. you’ll be covering the material in 3 waves with reading being furthest on, section-level written notes being behind that, and word-processed chapter-level summaries being further back again.
How long to leave between stages is up to you, but I would recommend a day at the absolute minimum – I would say a few days is probably optimal for reading-to-notes, and notes-to-summaries could be left for longer if convenient.
And how long will all this take? Well, I embarked on my Parfit binge when I was on gardening leave. So I had a lot of free time – but I did find there was a limit to how quickly I could absorb the material, even so. I had to take breaks. Reasons and Persons took me a month. Volume 1 of On What Matters took another month. The first 2 sections of Volume 2 (comments and responses) took another fortnight.
Another person’s experience: the “Only a Game” blog took 4 months to cover Volumes 1 and 2 of On What Matters, which feels in the right ballpark for someone who has the cognitive load of a job to handle at thr same time – read their take here. They reckon the best bit of On What Matters is the second half of Volume 2, which is up next – hopefully, I have a treat in store!