His characteristic thought-experiment-driven reasoning is not so much in vogue today as in the past, but the discussions he began regarding personal identity, and the obligations present-day people have to future people, remain relevant.
a consequentialist movement that urges individuals to maximize the impact of their giving, even going so far as to choose lucrative careers so as to give more to charity.
the significance of a philosophical life like that of Parfit.
The author paints Parfit, especially in later years, as aiming to save morality from various kinds of skepticism about the existence of objective, normative truths.
He seems to have made it his mission to save ethics from its connection to religion. That is, he took the non-existence of God as a given, and saw one of the greatest challenges to morality in the apparent need for moral beliefs to be refounded on a decidedly atheistic basis.
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