Derek Parfit

Derek Parfit is the kind of thinker I genuinely admire from a distance. A British philosopher working on personal identity, rationality, and ethics, he's widely counted among the most influential moral philosophers of recent decades, and I can see why. What strikes me is that his 1971 paper on personal identity made his name almost immediately, which is rare in philosophy. Winning the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy confirmed his standing. To me, what makes him compelling is that he asked unsettling questions about what makes us the same person over time. He died in early 2017, but those questions clearly outlive him.

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Name (English)

Derek Parfit

Name (Japanese)

デレク・パーフィット

Reading

でれく・ぱーふぃっと

Born

December 11, 1942 – January 1, 2017

Origin

Chengdu, People's Republic of China

Occupation

philosopher

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Horse

University

Eton College

Awards & achievements

• 2014 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek%20Parfit
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%83%AC%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BB%E3%83%91%E3%83%BC%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%83%83%E3%83%88
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q962160

Tags

• philosopher

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.