Derek Parfit citations

Derek Parfit est un philosophe britannique, spécialiste de philosophie morale, et en particulier des questions touchant à l'identité personnelle et à la rationalité. Derek Parfit est Senior Research Fellow au All Souls College de l'université d'Oxford. Il est professeur invité au département de philosophie de l'université de New York, de l'université Harvard et de l'université Rutgers.

Son premier livre, Reasons & Persons , l'a rendu célèbre. Il a été largement salué dans le monde universitaire anglo-saxon, et il a exercé une grande influence sur le développement de la philosophie normative contemporaine.

Son second livre, On What Matters , a été présenté comme l'une des plus importantes contributions à l'éthique depuis Methods of Ethics de Henry Sidgwick.

Parfit préparait plusieurs ouvrages : The Metaphysics of the Self, Rediscovering Reasons, ainsi que deux livres de photographie consacrés à l'architecture de Saint-Pétersbourg et de Venise. Il a eu le temps d'achever le volume III de On What Matters . Wikipedia  

✵ 11. décembre 1942 – 1. janvier 2017
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Derek Parfit: 24   citations 0   J'aime

Derek Parfit: Citations en anglais

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 281
Contexte: Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

“We are paternalists when we make someone act in his own interests.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 321

“To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 202

“Certain actual sleeping pills cause retrograde amnesia. It can be true that, if I take such a pill, I shall remain awake for an hour, but after my night’s sleep I shall have no memories of the second half of this hour. I have in fact taken such pills, and found out what the results are like. Suppose that I took such a pill nearly an hour ago. The person who wakes up in my bed tomorrow will not be psychologically continuous with me as I was half an hour ago. I am now on psychological branch-line, which will end soon when I fall asleep. During this half-hour, I am psychologically continuous with myself in the past. But I am not now psychologically continuous with myself in the future. I shall never later remember what I do or think or feel during this half-hour. This means that, in some respects, my relation to myself tomorrow is like a relation to another person. Suppose, for instance, that I have been worrying about some practical question. I now see the solution. Since it is clear what I should do, I form a firm intention. In the rest of my life, it would be enough to form this intention. But, when I am no this psychological branch-line, this is not enough. I shall not later remember what I have now decided, and I shall not wake up with the intention that I have now formed. I must therefore communicate with myself tomorrow as if I was communicating with someone else. I must write myself a letter, describing my decision, and my new intention. I must then place this letter where I am bound to notice it tomorrow. I do not in fact have any memories of making such a decision, and writing such a letter. But I did once find such a letter underneath my razor.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), pp. 287-288

“Even if moral truths cannot affect people, they can still be truths.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Derek Parfit, ‘Reasons and Motivation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 71 (1997), p. 111

“Though everything is identical with itself, only I am me.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 25

“Why do we save the larger number? Because we do give equal weight to saving each. Each counts for one. That is why more count for more.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Derek Parfit, ‘Innumerate Ethics’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 7, no. 4 (Summer, 1978), p. 301

“Why shouldn’t I eat toothpaste? It’s a free world. Why shouldn’t I chew my toenails? i happen to have trodden in some honey. Why shouldn’t I prance across central park with delicate sideways leaps? I know what your answer will be: “it isn’t done.””

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

But it’s no earthly use just saying it isn’t done. If there’s a reason why it isn’t done, give the reason—if there’s no reason, don’t attempt to stop me doing it. All other things being equal, the mere fact that something “isn’t done” is in itself an excellent reason for doing it.

p.101
Reasons and Persons (1984)

“I sometimes want to kick my car[.] Since I have this anger at material objects, which is manifestly irrational, it’s easier to me to think, when I get angry with people, that this is also irrational.”

Derek Parfit livre Reasons and Persons

Source: Derek Parfit, ‘An Interview with Derek Parfit’, Cogito, Vol. 9, No. 2 (August, 1995), p. 118

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