It is impossible to sum up in a couple of hundred words the richness, subtlety and complexity of the philosophy of Derek Parfit, who died at the age of 74 on New Year’s Day. However, it takes just two ...

Chances are, unless you’re a philosopher, you’ve never heard of Derek Parfit. A philosopher’s philosopher, he spent most of his career far from the madding crowd in the cloisters of All Souls College, ...

Perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve read on the failure of one’s consciousness to continue was in Part III of Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, which is concerned with the question of personal ...

I find the following argument convincing. (1) If equality is intrinsically good, then, other things being equal, leveling down is good. (2) It is false that other things being equal, leveling down is ...

Morality can’t just be a system of arbitrary taboos. We want its protections, and others want those same protections against us. A morality worth heeding must have a rationale. A chief task of moral ...

Derek Parfit, pictured at Oxford in 2015, published seldom, but his works of philosophy were ambitious and influential. Rex Features, via Associated Press Mr. Parfit was a British philosopher whose ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. For more than 20 years, the English philosopher Derek Parfit would leave his home in Oxford and spend five ...