Derek Parfit (1942-)

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Derek Parfit (1942-) is a person.



References

2015

2011

  • Larissa MacFarquhar. (2011). “[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good How To Be Good: An Oxford philosopher thinks he can distill all morality into a formula. Is he right?.” In: The New Yorker
    • QUOTE: … Parfit’s main task, however, was to prove that Kantianism and rule consequentialism were not actually in conflict. To do this, he needed to perform surgery on Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, the formula that Kant had claimed to be the supreme principle of morality: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” Many Kantians had given up on this formula (Kant had many others), concluding that it simply didn’t help to distinguish right from wrong. But Parfit went to work on it, hacking off a piece here, suturing on a piece there, until he had arrived at a version that seemed to him to combine the best elements of Kantianism and contractualism: “Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.” He argued that these principles would be the same ones that were espoused by rule consequentialism. Then, at last, he was in a position to propose his top-of-the-mountain formula, which he called the Triple Theory:

      An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable.

      The theory’s principles were consequentialist because they would lead to the best results (optimific); Kantian because they were universally willable; and contractualist because no person could reasonably reject them. …

1984