Reading Parfit ─ On What Matters

Derek Parfit is 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 theTimes Literary Supplement as "the most significant work in ethics since Sidgwick’s masterpiece,The Methods of Ethics, was published in 1873."

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.

Reading Parfit is essential reading for students studying ethics and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of one of the most important works of philosophy published in the last fifty years.

Simon Kirchin is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Kent. He is the author of Metaethics (2012) and is the editor of Arguing about Metaethics (with Andrew Fisher) (Routledge, 2006).

Derek Parfit is Emeritus Fellow at All Souls College Oxford. He was previously Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College (1984-2010) and has also held visiting professorships at New York University, Harvard and Rutgers.

Contributors: David Copp, J. L. Dowell and David Sobel, Julia Driver, Simon Kirchin, Julia Markovits, David McNaughton and Piers Rawling, Derek Parfit, Douglas W. Portmore, Kieran Setiya, and Philip Stratton-Lake.