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Parfit
- A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This audiobook narrated by Zeb Soanes paints an entertaining and illuminating portrait of a brilliant philosopher who tried to rescue morality from nihilism
Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.
Believing that we should be less concerned with ourselves and more with the common good, Parfit dedicated himself to the pursuit of philosophical progress to an extraordinary degree. He always wore gray trousers and a white shirt so as not to lose precious time picking out clothes, he varied his diet as little as possible, and he had only one serious non-philosophical interest: taking photos of Oxford, Venice, and St. Petersburg. In the latter half of his life, he single-mindedly devoted himself to a desperate attempt to rescue secular morality—morality without God—by arguing that it has an objective, rational basis. For Parfit, the stakes could scarcely have been higher. If he couldn’t demonstrate that there are objective facts about right and wrong, he believed, his life was futile and all our lives were meaningless.
Connecting Parfit’s work and life and offering a clear introduction to his profound and challenging ideas, Parfit is a powerful portrait of an extraordinary thinker who continues to have a remarkable influence on the world of ideas.
Critic Reviews
“In his monumental biography of the moral philosopher Derek Parfit, David Edmonds renders the movements of a quicksilver mind, the allure of a charismatic personality, the drama of a cloistered life.”—Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
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What listeners say about Parfit
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-06-2023
An engaging introduction to Parfit.
Tells the story of Derek Parfit’s life in a clear and engaging way and provides an easy to understand explanation of his main philosophical ideas. The reader generally did a very good job, but I found the voice he used for Parfit offputting.
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