If you look carefully at Parfit’s reasoning in Reasons and Persons, a common theme emerges: The general approach to moral life that has been taken for granted by most in the West (and, really, the world) is profoundly mistaken. Put simply, the mistake is that this approach has been too personal—too concerned with duties to those who are close to us, too preoccupied with the distinctness of individual people, too hung up on people having souls that unite our experiences, too concerned with who deserves what. Instead, as Parfit sums up at the end of the book, “Our reasons for acting should become more impersonal.”
And that, I believe, is the clue to understanding Parfit’s life.
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