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Derek Parfit: The Perfectionist at All Souls

by miobrien on 4/24/23, 2:46 PM with 21 comments

  • by thedailymail on 4/24/23, 11:22 PM

  • by zvmaz on 4/24/23, 10:52 PM

    I don't know a lot about Derek Parfit, but one interesting philosopher who claims to have solved Parfits' problems about population and moral theory is David Benatar [1]. His solution is anti-natalism, which he defends extensively in his book Better Never to Have Been, The Harm of Coming into Existence.

    [1] https://academic.oup.com/book/32901/chapter-abstract/2766430...

  • by rektide on 4/24/23, 3:30 PM

    The moral obligation to future people is a strong current that runs through Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, a recent semi hope-punk book of his.

    Fun to run across an earlier line of inquiry here, in Parfit.

    And a code I strongly believe in. Orienting yourself to best help the future, perhaps even futures beyond your time. As the Greek proverb goes:

    > A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.

  • by 2b3a51 on 4/24/23, 6:27 PM

    "Few works of philosophy have the urgency of Reasons and Persons, which was written with extraordinary speed, driving its author to the brink of collapse and its publisher to despair."

    Makes me feel slightly less bad about abandoning my first attempt at reading this very dense book. I was trying to read it in short bits (the book is split into quite short sections but with a big apparatus of parts, chapters, sections and so on with implied cross referencing) during a busy time.

    I'll try again over the summer in a more concentrated way.

    No recourse to spirits or pills though...

  • by dang on 4/24/23, 5:22 PM

    Related:

    How to Be Good: The Philosopher Derek Parfit (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22037240 - Jan 2020 (6 comments)

    Why anything? Why this? (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13315746 - Jan 2017 (77 comments)

    Derek Parfit has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13304873 - Jan 2017 (38 comments)

    How to Be Good: Derek Parfit's Moral Philosophy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11273495 - March 2016 (16 comments)

  • by archon1410 on 4/25/23, 12:53 AM

    I remember reading an account of how Parfit cared deeply about the suffering of the world that he would cry talking about ethics.

  • by greenie_beans on 4/24/23, 9:33 PM

    trying to remember the fiction book where derek parfit was mentioned. was it a michael bible book? blake butler?