Volume 31, Number 10 · June 14, 1984
The Parfit Connection
By P.F. Strawson
Reasons and Persons
by Derek Parfit
Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 543 pp., $29.95
What principles should govern human action? As rational beings, we should act rationally. As moral beings, we should act morally. What, in each case, are the principles involved? What is it to act rationally, or morally? It is often thought, or said, that philosophers are preeminently the people who have (and have neglected) a moral obligation to apply their rational skills to these great questions. Derek Parfit, fellow of All Souls at Oxford, is a philosopher who does exactly this. He marshals the most immediately obvious and plausible principles of rational, and of moral, action; he submits them, with great dialectical skill, to patient and thorough analysis and criticism; he tests the results against our intuitions, and draws the consequences.
Review, 3928 words
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