Parfit – A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality

The author of this brilliant intellectual biography writes that Derek Parfit (1942-2017) is the most famous moral philosopher most people have never heard of and one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years – he is right that Parfit was an intriguing, obsessive and eccentric genius, perhaps embodying Ernest Hemingway’s remark that as we grow older we do not grow wiser, we grow more so (see p. 333). Parfit spent most of his life at All Souls College in Oxford, which provided a fertile and secure backdrop for his intense intellectual activity that had started as the top scholar of his year at Eton College, where he won more prizes than anyone had ever won before – even Gladstone! One of his inspirations was Henry Sidgwick, whose book Methods of Ethics Parfit regarded as ‘the greatest work of moral philosophy ever written’ – however, Parfit did not share Sidgwick’s interest in psychical research, seeking to establish the objectivity of morality on a naturalistic basis while rescuing it from nihilism.

I was amused by Parfit’s summary of the history of ethics in four steps (p. 160):

1 Forbidden by God. 2 Forbidden by God, therefore wrong. 3 Wrong, therefore forbidden by God. 4 Wrong.

His book Reasons and Persons was received as the most notable contribution to moral philosophy since Sidgwick’s book, and featured on the cover one of his own haunting photographs of Venice – he had a passion for photography; he also left stunning images of Oxford and Saint Petersburg. His multi-volume magnum opus, On What Matters was finally fully published after his death, and there are agonising descriptions by the editors involved of the whole publishing process. Its length invites comparison with his All Souls colleague Iain McGilchrist, whose title The Matter with Things evokes some resonance, but Iain’s cultural influence will surely prove to be much more significant and enduring. One review of Parfit observed that the book ‘stands as a grand and dedicated attempt to elaborate a fundamentally misguided perspective.’ In any event, I suspect that Parfit will remain a philosopher’s philosopher. As a coda, it was striking to read about his breaking down during his Schock Prize lecture after mentioning Bach’s last and unfinished work The Art of Fugue as a creation of sublime value – he was moved not only by the beauty of the piece, but the tragedy of Bach dying before he could complete it. Perhaps this was the transcendence of values and the sacred embraced by Iain but passed over by Parfit? He felt it, but could not bring himself to think it.