Description:
Reading Parfit: On What Matters is an outstanding overview and assessment of Parfit's monumental work by a team of international contributors, and includes replies by Parfit himself. It discusses central features of Parfit's book, including the structure and nature of reasons; the ideas underlying moral principles; the relationship between consequentialism, contractualism and Kantian deontology; and many important positions and arguments in current metaethics such as expressivism and moral realism.
Review Quotes:
"Derek Parfit's On What Matters is a major contribution to moral philosophy. The timely essays of this wonderful volume both clarify and evaluate Parfit's central arguments. Anyone interested in Parfit's work should study them carefully." Jussi Suikkanen, University of Birmingham, UK
"Reading Parfit features an impressive group of ethicists and metaethicists offering well-aimed critiques of Parfit's many arguments from his book, On What Matters. Parfit reacts in his characteristic style in a long response essay. The discussion illuminates many of the most important features of his argument and position. Mark van Roojen, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA
Derek Parfit was one of the world's leading philosophers. His On What Matters is the most eagerly-awaited book in philosophy for many years and heralded by Peter Singer in the Times Literary Supplement as "the most significant work in ethics since Sidgwick's masterpiece, The Methods of Ethics, was published in 1873."