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David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, Princeton University Press, 2023, 380pp., $32.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780691225234.
Reviewed by David Phillips, University of Houston
David Edmonds’ Parfit belongs to a burgeoning genre. There are the two recent collective biographies of Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch (by Benjamin Lipscomb and by Claire Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman). There are M.W. Rowe’s J.L. Austin: Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer and Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure. Earlier works include Ray Monk’s Russell and Wittgenstein volumes, Tom Regan’s Bloomsbury’s Prophet, and Bart Schultz’s books on Sidgwick and the other classical utilitarians. And Edmonds himself is inter alia the author of The Murder of Professor Schlick and the coauthor of Wittgenstein’s Poker.
Derek Parfit stands out among the subjects of these various works for being so contemporary. Edmonds could draw on a vast collection of stories conveying Parfit’s legendary eccentricity. But he also took…
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