Derek Parfit Quotes on Truth
Derek Parfit, regarded as one of the most important moral philosophers of his era, pursued truth with a rare combination of rigour and personal conviction, and the quotes gathered here express that. Parfit was a self-described revisionist, holding that philosophers should not only interpret our beliefs but, when they are false, should change them. He believed the great ethical theories were converging rather than irreconcilable, capturing the thought in a famous image: we are climbing the same mountain on different sides. He also found philosophical truth personally transforming: reflecting on his reductionist view of personal identity, he reported that the truth, far from depressing him, was liberating and consoling, dissolving the walls of a glass tunnel and leaving him less concerned with himself and more with others. Drawn from Reasons and Persons and On What Matters, these passages present truth as something to be sought exactingly and embraced.
Quotes
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“We are climbing the same mountain on different sides.”
p. 419 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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