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 ...

Philosopher whose books inspired his academic peers all over the world Your body is destroyed, but only after it has been scanned and the blueprint beamed to Mars, where an organic replica of you is ...

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, ...

This publication has been produced to meet accepted Accessibility standards and contains various accessibility features including concise image descriptions, a table of contents, a page list to ...

Dylan Matthews was a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic ...

I first met Derek Parfit the summer I was 19, when my college boyfriend and I spent a day visiting Oxford. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons was the only thing written by a living person on our first-year ...

Brilliant and eccentric, the Oxford philosopher spent his career grappling with fundamental moral questions. By David Edmonds Reasons and Persons (1984) earned Derek Parfit a reputation as one of the ...

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 ...