Derek Parfit Livres

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interests, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions that most of us will find very disturbing.

This is the first volume of a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of 20th-century philosophy. Parfit presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.

The main point of this third volume is to engage with the views of respected peers not won over by the argument as previously presented. Parfit thus moves beyond exposition to engage with the authors in the companion Singer-edited volume. He explains where he has modified his own views in response to several of these authors, rebuts their arguments at other points, and describes how further modifications of the views in question might lead to a meeting of the minds ... The arguments are vigorous. It isn't really a surprise that normative disagreement and deep puzzles haven't yielded to the hard thought and brilliant argument of Parfit and his interlocutors Mark van Roojen, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Derek Parfits bahnbrechende Arbeiten zur personalen Identität, zur Metaethik und zur normativen Ethik prägen seit Jahrzehnten die Debatten der praktischen Philosophie weltweit. Seine zentrale Frage lautet: Worauf kommt es eigentlich an? Er beantwortet sie mit einer innovativen Theorie, die eine reduktionistische Auffassung von personaler Identität mit einer objektiven Theorie praktischer Gründe und einer verblüffenden Vereinigung von Kantianismus, Kontraktualismus und Konsequentialismus verbindet. Erstmals liegen mit diesem Band nun Texte in deutscher Übersetzung vor, die das philosophische Schaffen Parfits in seiner ganzen Breite abdecken.