Corrected reprint of the first edition of 1984. ‘Parfit was one of the most important — if not the most important — moral philosophers in the world. Some of his contemporaries go further, making a compelling case that Parfit belongs to an elite canon alongside three other British philosophers in the utilitarian tradition: Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick … it is his 1984 book, Reasons and Persons, that made his reputation. “Close to a work of genius,” reads one of the blurbs on the back cover — and, for once, it is not an exaggeration’ (Times obituary, 4 January 2017).
