Foreign thinker
Derek Parfit
Derek ParfitMoral philosophy and personal identityBritish1942–2017
Life is insignificant and short, but the fact that we exist and can reduce the suffering of others gives life real importance.
Life and Thought
Derek Parfit was a prominent British philosopher and one of the most influential moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. He spent his academic career at the University of Oxford and transformed debates on personal identity, population ethics, and moral reasoning through his innovative analyses. His two major works, Reasons and Persons and On What Matters, are regarded as masterpieces of contemporary analytic philosophy.
