Philosophers are not terribly good advertisements for the life philosophic. It’s not that they tend to be reprobates, although a few of them are. It’s just that their lives are usually so damned ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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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 ...

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 ...