Book
Parfit D. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1984. 543 pp.
Why we cite it
The philosophical origin point for the “future self as stranger” concept that runs through the project’s temporal discounting material. Before Parfit, discounting future outcomes was seen as irrational weakness of will. Parfit’s Part Three (Chapters 10-15) provided the reductionist argument that personal identity over time is a matter of degree — psychological connections weaken with temporal distance, so caring less about a distant future self is structurally equivalent to caring less about another person, not a failure of rationality. This reframing was later operationalized by Hershfield et al. (cfs04) in neuroscience and by Bartels & Urminsky in consumer behavior. For the project, Parfit provides the conceptual foundation: the reader who chooses a doughnut today over health at 65 is not simply weak-willed — they are, in a philosophically defensible sense, making a choice that affects someone they don’t yet know.
About the author
Derek Parfit (1942-2017). Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford (1967-2010; Emeritus Senior Research Fellow until death). BA Modern History, Balliol College, Oxford (1964); Harkness Fellow at Columbia and Harvard (1965-66), where he abandoned history for philosophy. Visiting Professor at Harvard, NYU, and Rutgers. Fellow of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy (2014, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). Widely considered the most important moral philosopher of the late 20th century.
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