Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit
This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.
In Reasons and Persons, [Parfit's] clipped prose, with its repetitive sentences, poetic cadence and sly humour becomes the vehicle for a depth and range of insight rarely matched in recent philosophy* Kieran Setiya, Times Literary Supplement *
Very few works in the subject can compare with Parfit's in scope, fertility, imaginative resource, and cogency of reasoning. * P.F. Strawson, The New York Review of Books *
Very few works in the subject can compare with Parfit's in scope, fertility, imaginative resource, and cogency of reasoning. * P.F. Strawson, The New York Review of Books *
Derek Parfit, University of Oxford's All Souls Derek Parfit is a notable philosopher of our day. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Global Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of the celebrated On What Matters: Volume One and Volume Two, as well as Reasons and People (OUP, 1984), one of the most significant books in philosophy in the last several decades.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780198249085 |
| ISBN 10 | 019824908X |
| Title | Reasons and Persons |
| Author | Derek Parfit |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1986-01-23 |
| Number of pages | 560 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |