#The New Yorker Close [NYR_300x250.gif] Close Subscribe to The New Yorker The New Yorker Skip to content Subscribe to New Yorker Subscribe to The New Yorker [USEMAP:NYR_global_header.gif] * Subscribe * home * New Yorker magazine articles * Blogs * Audio & Video * Reviews of New York events: Goings on About Town * New Yorker Cartoons * New Yorker Topics * Complete New Yorker Archives and Digital Edition * reporting * talk * fiction * Arts * Search * Services * Festival * Festival * Contact __________________________________________________________________ * Table of Contents * Humor * News Desk * Culture Desk * Fiction * Apps * Steve Jobs * State of the Union * Football * The Political Scene * Table of Contents * Shouts & Murmurs * The Talk of the Town * Comment * Ask the Author * Daily Comment * News Desk * Culture Desk * Sporting Scene * Photo Booth * Back Issues * John Cassidy * The Political Scene * Fiction Podcast * TNY Shorts * Peter Schjeldahl on Art * DVD of the Week * New Yorker Out Loud * The Political Scene Podcast * Audio Edition * The Theatre * Night Life * Art * Dance * Classical Music * Movies * Readings and Talks * Above and Beyond * New Yorker Festival * This Week's Slide Show * Animated Cartoons * Roz Chast * Editor's Desk * Shouts & Murmurs * The Cartoon Bank * Politics * Business * Culture * Health * Books * Movies * Fiction * Poetry * Table of Contents * Apps * Complete Archive * Covers * Back Issues * Contributors * THE NEW YORKER OUT LOUD * The New Yorker Store * POLITICS * PROFILES * THE TALK OF THE TOWN * COMMENT * Table of Contents * The Financial Page * News Desk * The Political Scene * Comment * The Financial Page * Hendrik Hertzberg * Close Read * News Desk * Politics * Profiles * Contributors * The Book Bench * The Fiction Podcast * Fiction Q. & A. * Culture * Contributors * Susan Orlean * Profiles * Books * Movies * Art * Music * The Book Bench * Photo Booth * Peter Schjeldahl on Art * Tables for Two * Table of Contents * Profiles * Humor * News Desk * Culture * Fiction * Table of Contents * Apps * Digital Revolution * 2012 Election * AFTER 9/11 * Home * THE NEW YORKER FESTIVAL * Friday Schedule * Saturday Schedule * Sunday Schedule * Tickets * Book Signings * Blog * App * Twitter * The New Yorker Festival * Home * The New Yorker * Reporting & Essays Annals of Ideas How to Be Good An Oxford philosopher thinks he can distill all morality into a formula. Is he right? by Larissa MacFarquhar September 5, 2011 Subscribers can read this article on our iPad app or in our online archive. (Others can pay for access.) September 5, 2011 Issue * * * * Print * E-Mail * Single Page Keywords Derek Parfit; Philosophers; Brain Transplants; Personal Identities; Moral Truths; Morality; "Reasons and Persons" (1984) ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF IDEAS about the moral philosopher Derek Parfit. Most of us care about our future because it is ours--but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Derek Parfit believes. Personal identity is not what matters. Parfit is thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world. He has written two books, both of which have been called the most important works to be written in the field in more than a century--since in 1874, when Henry Sidgwick's "The Method of Ethics," was published. Parfit's first book, "Reasons and Persons," was published in 1984, when he was forty-one, and caused a sensation. The book was dense with science-fiction thought experiments, all urging a shift toward a more impersonal, non-physical, and selfless view of human life. Parfit's view resembles in some ways the Buddhist view of the self. After Parfit finished "Reasons and Persons," he became increasingly disturbed by how many people believed that there was no such thing as objective moral truth. This led him to write his second book, "On What Matters," which was published this summer. Parfit lacks the normal anti-social emotions--envy, malice, dominance. He is less aware than most of the boundaries of his self, and he is helplessly, sometimes unwillingly, empathetic. Parfit was born in China, in 1942. The following year, his family moved to England. In the early summer of 1961, he went to work at The New Yorker, as a researcher for The Talk of the Town. In the autumn of 1961, he went up to Oxford to read history. After Oxford, he went back to America for two years on a Harkness Fellowship. He decided to study philosophy, and he won a Prize Fellowship to All Souls, at Oxford, which entitled him to room and board at the college for seven years, with no teaching duties. He also had appointments at Harvard, Rutgers, and N.Y.U. Sometime around 1982 or '83, the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards moved from London to Oxford, and, after she attended a seminar that Parfit was teaching, they began a relationship. Around the mid-nineties, Parfit started reading Kant. He became more and more troubled by the ways in which Kant diverged from Sidgwick, and by the way that modern Kantians disagreed with modern consequentialists and both disagreed with contractualists. He came up with what he called the Triple Theory: An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable. Mentions Bernard Williams. Parfit moved out of All Souls last year. Since then, he and Richards have been living together in a house in Oxford. Last August, after nearly thirty years together, they married. Meanwhile, Parfit experienced an episode of transient global amnesia. He recovered his memory, but smaller aftershocks have continued. read the full text... read the full text... Larissa MacFarquhar, Annals of Ideas, "How to Be Good," The New Yorker, September 5, 2011, p. 42 To get more of The New Yorker's signature mix of politics, culture and the arts: Subscribe Now Newyorker.com has a complete archive of The New Yorker, back to 1925. The complete archive is available to subscribers in the digital edition. If you subscribe to the magazine, register now to get access. 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