
How to Be Good: The Philosopher Derek Parfit (2011) - benbreen
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good
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dlkf
I remember reading this article the week it was published! I found the
historical anecdotes about Parfit interesting, but I didn't become any more
convinced of his ideas. The discussion of Bernard Williams and moral
skepticism is particularly good.

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dang
A thread from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495)

Related from 2017, shortly after he died:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746)

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tunesmith
“An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is
optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable.”

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finm
See also – [https://sjbeard.weebly.com/parfit-
bio.html](https://sjbeard.weebly.com/parfit-bio.html)

> Derek Parfit was famously a fast and creative thinker. He used to advise
> students and colleagues to set up autocomplete shortcuts on MS Word for
> their most commonly used phrases to boost their productivity, unaware that
> very few other philosophers felt that their productivity was being
> restricted by their typing speed. Despite this, he published sparingly. He
> hated to commit himself to arguments unless he was certain of them. What he
> did produce however were numerous, and lengthy, drafts of papers and books
> (at least two of which never saw the light of day) that were widely
> circulated amongst the philosophical community and even more voluminous
> comments and responses to other philosophers on how they could improve their
> arguments. Likening Derek to an iceberg would be mistaken. Up to 10% of an
> iceberg is above the waterline, whereas I doubt if even 1% of Derek's work
> has ever been published. As one of his obituaries noted ‘When Derek Parfit
> published, it mattered!'

~~~
lordgrenville
It's a great post. You probably also found it via Tyler Cowen's MR post. The
whole piece is good, but my favourite part was his other excerpt:

> “‘Like my cat, I often simply do what I want to do.’ This was the opening
> sentence of Derek Parfit’s philosophical masterpiece, Reasons and Persons…
> However, there was a problem. Derek did not, in fact, own a cat. Nor did he
> wish to become a cat owner, as he would rather spend his time taking
> photographs and doing philosophy. On the other hand, the sentence would
> clearly be better if it was true. To resolve this problem Derek drew up a
> legal agreement with his sister, who did own a cat, to the effect that he
> would take legal possession of the cat while she would continue living with
> it.”

