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Derek Parfit, On What Matters . Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 592 pages. 978-0199572809 (hbk.). $35/-.

Derek Parfit, On What Matters . Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 592 pages.... One of the great temptations to which moral philosophers since Sidgwick have succumbed is the search for a theory of everything – a combinatorial view that synthesizes key insights of rival moral theories and explains why their differences are really not as deep as they seem. Although Sidgwick famously hoped to do this for ethics, in the final pages of the first edition of his Methods of Ethics he worried aloud that he had searched in vain for a “hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental contradiction in a vast system of Belief: a contradiction so fundamental that if it cannot be overcome the whole system must fall to the ground and skepticism be triumphant over one chief part of our thought” ( The Methods of Ethics , First Edition, MacMillan Publishing: London, 1874, p. 472). Derek Parfit’s long-awaited second book, On What Matters , is seen by Parfit as the continuation of a project begun by Sidgwick. It is an ambitious and ingenious attempt to show us how the apparently intractable differences between Kantians, consequentialists, and contractualists are, contrary to popular thought, surmountable, and that these theorists are ultimately “climbing the same mountain on different sides.” The http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Moral Philosophy Brill

Derek Parfit, On What Matters . Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 592 pages. 978-0199572809 (hbk.). $35/-.

Anomaly, Jonny
Journal of Moral Philosophy , Volume 10 (3): 358 – Jan 1, 2013
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Book Reviews
ISSN
1740-4681
eISSN
1745-5243
DOI
10.1163/17455243-01003003
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

One of the great temptations to which moral philosophers since Sidgwick have succumbed is the search for a theory of everything – a combinatorial view that synthesizes key insights of rival moral theories and explains why their differences are really not as deep as they seem. Although Sidgwick famously hoped to do this for ethics, in the final pages of the first edition of his Methods of Ethics he worried aloud that he had searched in vain for a “hypothesis logically necessary to avoid a fundamental contradiction in a vast system of Belief: a contradiction so fundamental that if it cannot be overcome the whole system must fall to the ground and skepticism be triumphant over one chief part of our thought” ( The Methods of Ethics , First Edition, MacMillan Publishing: London, 1874, p. 472). Derek Parfit’s long-awaited second book, On What Matters , is seen by Parfit as the continuation of a project begun by Sidgwick. It is an ambitious and ingenious attempt to show us how the apparently intractable differences between Kantians, consequentialists, and contractualists are, contrary to popular thought, surmountable, and that these theorists are ultimately “climbing the same mountain on different sides.” The

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Journal of Moral Philosophy – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 2013

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