On What Matters

Introduction

Parfit’s second book, which occupied him for more than a decade, appeared in two volumes in 2011; a third followed in 2017, shortly after his death. It grew out of his Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in 2002. Parfit defends the objectivity of reasons against subjectivism: some things matter, independently of what we happen to want. His central thesis is that the best versions of Kantian ethics, rule consequentialism and Scanlon’s contractualism converge on the same principles – a “Triple Theory”. Volume two contains critical commentaries by Susan Wolf, Allen Wood, Barbara Herman, T. M. Scanlon and others, with Parfit’s replies. For Parfit much depended on this convergence: if there were no objective moral truths, he argued, nothing would matter.

Connections

Builds on

• Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals1785 · Immanuel Kant
• The Methods of Ethics1874 · Henry Sidgwick
• Reasons and Persons1984 · Derek Parfit

More works by Derek Parfit

• 1984Reasons and Persons