Reasons and Persons

Why it’s on the list: Parfit’s book is the source of most of the modern philosophical machinery around personal identity, future generations and the Non-Identity Problem — including the Repugnant Conclusion that population ethics has been arguing about ever since.

Where I saw it: A bare Amazon link saved in the note.

Connections

• Utilitarianism — the tradition Parfit is working inside and stress-testing.
• Effective Altruism — the movement that took the population-ethics arguments here as foundational.
• Existential Risk — Parfit’s argument about the moral weight of future generations is upstream of it.