Why You Should Read Derek Parfit

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 worth an entire extra post – but it’s essentially because he has come up with a lot of very interesting ideas:

• 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 is well worth your time.
• In On What Matters, Parfit sets out his “Triple Theory” in Volume 1, which combines Kantian deontology, consequentialism and contracturalism – three separate moral traditions that are supposed to be incompatible.
• In Volume 2 he starts with comments by 4 other philosophers to this theory, and then sets out his response to each of those philosophers – a mixture of deeply educational content and knockabout fun.
• There then follows a variety of sections on Parfit’s approach to ethics, including his take on Nietzsche, which I have not yet read and am very much looking forward to.

Whether you agree with Parfit or not, this is truly mind-expanding material, written by someone who sets the weather. Whether you agree with him or not, if you want to get a handle on where moral philosophy is at, I cannot recommend having a take on Parfit highly enough.

And not only is Parfit a must-read, but his style is accessible to a layperson. Just as well: although I’ve had an interest in ethics since I was a teen, it’s very much a hobby: I’m a mathematician and engineer, not a philosopher. Parfit alternates between “thought experiments” – short, pared-down descriptions of moral dilemmas that provoke intuitive responses – and dense argument and reasoning that explores the implications of these responses. I personally find this an effective way to guide people through the terrain that Parfit is attempting to map out.

Why You Might Not Want To Read Derek Parfit

So a must-read, and accessible. There’s got to be a catch, right; otherwise we’d be ending the show right here? And, yes, you’re right. To start with, the books aren’t exactly quick reads. Reasons and Persons has around 400 non-appendix pages, and On What Matters has around 1,000. Even if there’s some filler in there, that’s a lot to get into your head.

More importantly, I need to fess up that not everyone is a fan of Parfit’s style. The kinds of thought experiment so beloved by Parfit are inteded by him to clarify the essence of various moral choices. But to other eyes, these experiments can appear reductive – even deceptive – narrowing down the complexity of real-world context, to instead present an articially stark choice between two unrealistic alternatives. These reservations are exceptionally well-laid-out by one of the philosophers responding to Parfit in On What Matters (Volume 2), where Allen Wood goes on an extended rant about just how little respect they have for the thought-experiment approach (which he denigrates as “trolley problems”). I have genuine sympathy with Wood, because even before I started reading Parfit, I had developed the same reservations as Wood about a famous thought experiement in another area of philosophy (Searle’s “Chinese Room“) – although Wood puts the reservations far better than I’m capable of. Parfit deals with Wood’s rant in his response by ignoring it completely: make of that what you will.

Wood is, at least, polite – if occasionally withering. It can get far worse. Stephen Mulhall’s LRB review of a biography of Parfit (“Non-Identity Crisis“) goes considerably further – frankly, Mulhall 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: anyone responsible for this much vitriol was surely worth a go?

You have been warned. You may, like I, find Parfit well worth persisting with. But you may find him incredibly irritating and wrong-headed. See how you get on with Reasons and Persons before buying On What Matters!

How To Read Derek Parfit

Let’s assume that you will get on with Parfit’s style, or at least be able to tolerate it sufficiently: even if so, there’s still an awful lot to cover. I’m used to being able to speed-read through a lot of very complex material, in a variety of fields, and retain the gist as I power on through: I am very good at doing this. There are lots of things I’m crap at, but my goodness I’m good at ploughing through a shedload of complex material. 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. I needed more traction. 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 to do things that were not moral philosophy, to allow the concepts to settle into my brain. 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. If you can do better than me, I take my hat off to you!

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 the 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!

Why I’m Bothering To Read Derek Parfit

I think Derek Parfit is a good person with extremely interesting things to say. I am not, by instinct, congruent with Parfit’s general inclinations: I am naturally deeply suspicious of people who attempt to systematize and bring disparate streams of thought under a single guiding set of principles.

Parfit is a systematizer of exactly the kind that normally raises my hackles – but he has good reasons for being so that I can respect. He is trying to bring moral philosophy together because he is horrified by the prospect of conflicting ethical philosophies resulting in nihilism. His potentially-off-putting tendency to systematize is, for me, offset by his warm respect for the importance of humanity, and an understanding of the reality and importance of the personal and partial motivations that we all have, and which make life woth living. Time and again, I’ll read a passage that makes me think “I love you, Derek Parfit”. For me, Parfit’s ultimate saving grace is his passionate belief in dignity – that no matter how badly someone has behaved, no matter how badly their personal moral compass is skewed, they are still worthy of consideration and so do not deserve to suffer.

Parfit is no fan of the Christian Hell: good for him.