Derek Parfit Quotes
Derek Parfit was a British philosopher widely regarded as one of the most important moral philosophers of the late twentieth century. A long-serving senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, he devoted the better part of three decades to a single book, Reasons and Persons, published in 1984, and a further long labour to On What Matters, published in two volumes in 2011 with a third appearing posthumously. The quotes below are attributed to Derek Parfit, organized by topic.
Browse Derek Parfit by topic
Derek Parfit on Death
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Attributed to Derek Parfit:
“What is bad about my death is not that something happens to me, but that nothing more does.”
Derek Parfit on Happiness
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“Classical Utilitarians...would claim, as Sidgwick did, that the destruction of mankind would be by far the greatest of all conceivable crimes. The badness of this crime would lie in the vast reduction of the possible sum of happiness.”
p. 454 -
“On all plausible theories, everyone’s well-being consists at least in part in being happy, and avoiding suffering.”
p. 101 -
“When I consider the parts of the past of which I have some knowledge, I am inclined to believe that, in Utilitarian hedonistic terms, the past has been worth it, since the sum of happiness has been greater than the sum of suffering.”
On What Matters: Volume Two (2011) | p. 612
Derek Parfit on Justice
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Attributed to Derek Parfit:
“Non-identity makes a tremendous difference to the morality of policy.”
Derek Parfit on Knowledge
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“We are paternalists when we make someone act in his own interests.”
p. 321 -
“Until this century, most of mankind lived in small communities. What each did could affect only a few others. But conditions have now changed. Each of us can now, in countless ways, affect countless other people. We can have real though small effects on thousands or millions of people. When these effects are widely dispersed, they may be either trivial, or imperceptible. It now makes a great difference whether we continue to believe that we cannot have greatly harmed or benefited others unless there are people with obvious grounds for resentment or gratitude.”
p. 86
Derek Parfit on Life
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“To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.”
p. 202 -
“Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.”
p. 281 -
“What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth's atmosphere, and taking care of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent life.”
On What Matters: Volume One (2011) | p. 419
Derek Parfit on Mind
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“Personal identity is not what matters.”
Though everything is identical with itself, only I am me. -
“Venetian Memories . Jane has agreed to have copied in her brain some of Paul’s memory-traces. After she recovers consciousness in the post-surgery room, she has a new set of vivid apparent memories. She seems to remember walking on the marble paving of a square, hearing the flapping of flying pigeons and the cries of gulls, and seeing light sparkling on green water. One apparent memory is very clear. She seems to remember looking across the water to an island, where a white Palladian church stood out brilliantly against a dark thundercloud.”
p. 220
Derek Parfit on Nature
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“Strawson describes two kinds of philosophy, descriptive, and revisionary. Descriptive philosophy gives reasons for what we instinctively assume, and explains and justifies the unchanging central core in our beliefs about ourselves, and the world we inhabit. I have great respect for descriptive philosophy. But, by temperament, I am a revisionist. […] Philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs; when they are false, they should change them .”
p. x
Derek Parfit on Time
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“the part of our moral theory... that covers how we affect future generations... is the most important part of our moral theory, since the next few centuries will be the most important in human history.”
p. 351
Derek Parfit on Truth
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“We are climbing the same mountain on different sides.”
p. 419 -
“Nagel once claimed that it is psychologically impossible to believe the Reductionist View. Buddha claimed that, though it is very hard, it is possible. I find Buddha’s claim to be true. After reviewing my arguments, I find that, at the reflective or intellectual level, though it is very hard to believe the Reductionist View, this is possible. My remaining doubts or fears seem to me irrational. Since I can believe this view, I assume that others can do so too. We can believe the truth about ourselves.”
p. 280 -
“It has been widely believed that there are such deep disagreements between Kantians , Contractualists , and Consequentialists . That, I have argued, is not true. These people are climbing the same mountain on different sides.”
On What Matters: Volume One (2011) | p. 419
Derek Parfit on Virtue
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Attributed to Derek Parfit:
“What we ought to want is what we would want if we cared equally about everyone.”