Reasons and Persons

By Derek Parfit

This dialogic book will teach you to think rigorously about the questions that matter most. You will learn to dismantle self-defeating moral theories, rethink what personal identity really means, and confront our obligations to billions of people who do not yet exist.

AI copies, mind uploads, climate obligations to unborn generations. The questions Derek Parfit raised in 1984 now sit at the center of our most urgent debates. He showed that common moral theories defeat their own purposes, that personal identity is not what matters in survival, and that we owe far more to the future than we imagine.