Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle Reading App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Apple
Android
Windows Phone
Android
To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
$43.97
FREE Shipping.
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Gift-wrap available.
Frequently Bought Together
{"currencyCode":"USD","itemData":[{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":43.97,"ASIN":"019824908X","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0},{"priceBreaksMAP":null,"buyingPrice":22.19,"ASIN":"0199678111","moqNum":1,"isPreorder":0}],"shippingId":"019824908X::aIgZDyIRx8yBQ50KpBQYt7zDCyuahWuEI%2Bgwl9qQK%2BmfqpAmE9G3nutyVTNOLN3%2BFjzZSU%2F3LUJIrVyWCTy85DmL6f%2FW2r3uNDqbXCuN5ew%3D,0199678111::aRGVlnvW7KhgI9nI0XqTj91vSZaIkBvD2VgK9YSYYmzuklGGzzSl8YdQWsfzEBnr0ciobntuoV3Ax9dwp1DELNIH8qzKYXrYOAPAneSqj1tYOqSNfTgmVg%3D%3D","sprites":{"addToWishlist":["wl_one","wl_two","wl_three"],"addToCart":["s_addToCart","s_addBothToCart","s_add3ToCart"],"preorder":["s_preorderThis","s_preorderBoth","s_preorderAll3"]},"shippingDetails":{"xy":"same"},"tags":["x","y","z","w"],"strings":{"addToWishlist":["Add to Wish List","Add both to Wish List","Add all three to Wish List","Add all four to Wish List"],"addToCart":["Add to Cart","Add both to Cart","Add all three to Cart","Add all four to Cart"],"showDetailsDefault":"Show availability and shipping details","shippingError":"An error occurred, please try again","hideDetailsDefault":"Hide availability and shipping details","priceLabel":["Price:","Price for both:","Price for all three:","Price For All Four:"],"preorder":["Pre-order this item","Pre-order both items","Pre-order all three items","Pre-order all four items"]}}
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
If you buy a new print edition of this book (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for only $2.99 (Save 89%). Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. Learn more.
For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases now lets you buy the Kindle edition for $2.99 or less. (Textbooks available for $9.99 or less.)
Thousands of books are eligible, including current and former best sellers.
Look for the Kindle MatchBook icon on print and Kindle book detail pages of qualifying books. You can also see more Kindle MatchBook titles here or look up all of your Kindle MatchBook titles here.
Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
I got this book hoping for insights on temporal metaphysics and found a cornucopia of ideas, analyses, and gedankenexperiments on the nature of personhood. The moral calculus of time and self is neatly laid out for exploration (do you have obligations to your past self?) A class of problems is deeply probed: whether and how you evaluate the moral desert of *possible* future people (do you do someone a favor by causing them to exist?)
The first part of the book is a technical dissection of the ethical behavior theories of self interest and collective utility. It ties together with the rest of the book, but if that is not your bag I think you can pretty safely skip it.
One stand out, for me, was the thorough destruction of theories of the Cartesian ego. It opened my eyes to the problems that idea has caused throughout history. (That is my realization, it is not in the book.)
It did not seem long. An excellent read overall.
The Kindle edition has about 10 typos, but in addition there is a fairly confusing typographical error in one of the appendices: a capital T is used instead of I in single quotes ('I'). Now you are warned, all of you who read 6 or 7 appendices in philosophy books. :)
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
74 of 80 people found the following review helpful
This isn't an easy book either to read or to review, and I don't expect I'll be able to provide an adequate summary of it here. But it's one of those massively important books that there's just no way to get around. It's easily the most weighty and thorough work of utilitarian ethics since Henry Sidgwick's _The Methods of Ethics_, and it has something of Sidgwick's spirit of judicious reasonableness. Derek Parfit exploded onto the scene with this book in 1984. His work is a goldmine of helpful reflections on, and criticisms of, our ordinary notions of moral behavior, rationality, and personality. The work is divided into four major parts. In the first, he argues that many of our common-sense moral theories are "self-defeating" in the manner of a Prisoner's Dilemma (which, by the way, is the part that first interested me in the book). In the second, he considers the relations between rationality and time and worries about how we should take the past and the future into ethical account. In the third, he offers a theory of personal identity and its relations to morality. In the fourth, he considers the role that future generations ought to play in our moral deliberations. Well, sure enough, that's _not_ an adequate summary. I haven't even begun to convey the sheer virtuousity with which Parfit raises objections, makes distinctions, brings out difficulties that are so un-obvious that nobody ever noticed them before, and generally develops his arguments with clarity and vigor. Heck, I haven't even adequately conveyed his views themselves. So I guess you'll just have to do what I did: read the book. If you have any interest in ethics, you're going to have to read it _sometime_. So get a copy, put it on your bookshelf, take it down and browse through it once in a while.Read more ›
Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
I gave this paperback edition only two stars because the actual physical book is horribly put together. For the price, the book is a disgrace. The print is too small and crammed onto a page with insufficient borders. To be able to read the inside words, you have to open the book wide enough which breaks the thinly and poorly glued spine. This is a real shame, because this is a brilliant treatise by a major thinker which is a must read for anyone interested in epistemology, morals, and a theory of personal identity. Buy the hardcover, but I am still sceptical about this publisher's real interests.
1 Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
This book does a very good job of pointing out inconsistencies in common moral intuitions, and does a very mixed job of analyzing how to resolve them. The largest section of the book deals with personal identity, using a bit of neuroscience plus scenarios such as a Star Trek transporter to show that nonreductionsist approaches produce conclusions which are strange enough to disturb most people. I suspect this analysis was fairly original when it was written, but I've seen most of the ideas elsewhere. His analysis is more compelling than most other versions, but it's not concise enough for many to read it. The most valuable part of the book is the last section, weighing conflicts of interest between actual people and people who could potentially exist in the future. His description of the mere addition paradox convinced me that it's harder than I thought to specify plausible beliefs which don't lead to the Repugnant Conclusion (i.e. that some very large number of people with lives barely worth living can be a morally better result than some smaller number of very happy people). He ends by concluding he hasn't found a way resolve the conflicts between the principles he thinks morality ought to satisfy. It appears that if he had applied the critical analysis that makes up most of the book to the principle of impersonal ethics, he would see signs that his dilemma results from trying to satisfy incompatible intuitions. Human desire for ethical rules that are more impersonal is widespread when the changes are close to Pareto improvements, but human intuition seems to be generally incompatible with impersonal ethical rules that are as far from Pareto improvements as the Repugnant Conclusion appears to be.Read more ›
1 Comment
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes No
Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
