On What Matters (2 Volume Set) 1st Edition

The quick review: If you want to join the debate over moral non-naturalism, you have to read On What Matters. At least, you have to read part one of the first volume and the naturalism chapter in Volume Two.

The long review: This is a work of staggering ambition and obsessive focus by a leading philosopher -- a tome that had the attention of ethicists long before it hit the shelves.

But should you buy it?

If you do moral philosophy for a living, yes. Duh. You don't need me to tell you that OWM touches on (and sometimes improves on) debates all across ethics, even where you might not expect it to. It's also reasonably priced and surprisingly fun to read. As Mark Schroeder writes in his review, there are gems scattered throughout the whole thing.

(But there are also plenty of lumps of coal—his view on the relation between reasons and rationality, his interpretation of Sidgwick's dualism, and his insistence that some things exist "in a non-ontological sense" are unfortunate, in my view. There's no room here to defend these potshots, but if you're interested you might check out Kiesewetter's "A Dilemma for Parfit's Conception of Rationality," Tom Hurka's book British Ethical Theorists From Sidgwick to Ewing, and [if you're feeling brave] Kit Fine's "The Question of Ontology.")

Still, Parfit has a knack for helpfully reframing debates; here's an example. Contractualists think that right actions are right because they fall under the principles that we would all agree to follow. But in what circumstances are we supposed to imagine this agreement taking place? Well, probably not any actual ones! If people in the real world all had to decide what principles to follow (supposing that no one gets to break them once they're chosen!), the decision process would be unfair: the game would be rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, who hold all of the bargaining chips and often aren't afraid to use them. (Imagine a kid and parent selfishly debating what principle to use to determine bedtime.)

So, contractualists have to imagine some hypothetical bargaining situation where the chips are more evenly distributed among everyone at the table. Parfit makes a nice point here: we want our method of distribution to be elegant. Yet some existing contractualist theories, like John Rawls's theory, aren't as elegant as they could be. Rawls (who was really only writing about principles of justice, not all moral principles) effectively says that we should imagine what principles we'd agree on if we didn't know who we are in certain respects, but were selfish and rational. To decide on the principles of charity, imagine what we'd all agree to if we didn't know how needy we are. To dedice principles of racial justice, imagine what we'd agree to if we didn't know our own races. This would make principles like "Let the rich do what they want" and "Judge MLK's children according to the color of their skin" unlikely to make the cut. After all, what kind of rational egoist would agree to a racist system without first making sure he or she's not a member of the mistreated race!

Here's Parfit's en passant insight: while Rawls gets the right results, his method looks artificial rather than elegant. We're asking a question--What principles would we all agree on?--that only works if we pretend that we're more ignorant than we really are, and that we're egoists rather than occasional altruists. We're gerrymandering the context where we answer the question instead of picking a question that gets us to the right results all by itself.

Parfit's "Kantian" Contractualism is supposed to give us such a question: what principles could we be okay with everyone following, if we were thinking reasonably? (Or in Parfit-speak: what are the principles whose universal acceptance we could all rationally will?) I don't agree with Parfit that this Kantian contractualism is the supreme principle of morality; I also disagree with much of his defense of it. But I thought the comparison between Kantian and Rawlsian contractualisms was fascinating, and it's just one incidental move in a grandmaster game.

That's a lot of smoke I'm blowing up this book's rear spine. Does that mean you should buy it even if you're not professionally obligated to? The answer is: probably, if you're okay with slogging through or skipping around a few parts.

In my opinion, Parfit's arguments are fairly charitable, his ideas always deep, and his prose clear and engaging--sometimes even moving. But there are large swatches of OWM that hardly anyone outside of academic ethics is going to want to slog through. Are you itching to know whether Bernard Williams had the concept of a normative reason? Does the debate about state-given vs. object-given reasons tickle your fancy? Do you find yourself ruminating late at night on whether the evidence-relative, belief-relative, and moral-belief-relative senses of "ought" can be defined in terms of the fact-relative sense?

You get the point.

Still, if you're interested in what moral philosophers are buzzing about these days, and you have some basic familiarity with the subject, you'll find plenty in here to reward the time you spend on it. The whole thing's meticulously organized, lovingly designed, and laboriously polished--it's no wonder he had an amnesia-inducing panic attack right before submitting the last draft. Fortunately, you don't have to read it as obsessively as Parfit wrote it. There are many self-contained discussions throughout, allowing you to dip into mini-essays on the golden rule, Kant's Groundwork, Sidgwick's practical dualism, and the origin of the universe, all at your leisure. It helps that you can take on any section of the book once you've read the first part, which covers reasons, rationality, and objectivity.

The bottom line: On What Matters is an deep, broad treatise on the questions that Parfit truly cares about. There are problems with the project, no doubt: the parts on rationality and senses of ought, as well as much of the metaethics, are facing trenchant resistance in philosophy departments worldwide (including mine!), and some feel like the project rests too heavily on its assumptions about normativity and rationality. Yet there's something amazing about this book. It's the product of so much heart and gray matter, I can never put it down without taking something away. If you want to know more about what matters and why, and don't mind a little slogging, my guess is that you'll get plenty out of On What Matters, too.

I have now finished reading both volumes of this work from cover to cover. While the overall thesis concerning the confluence of rule consequentialism, Kantianism, and Contractualism is what seems to strike many commentators most strongly (both those whose commentary is included within the book and those who have commented elsewhere), I don't think that's even Parfit's most important achievement. Parfit's arguments in favor of normative objectivity, together with his extensive arguments against subjectivism, seem to me more important. This book is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in ethics. Although very clearly written, this is not a book for beginners. Some knowledge of analytic moral philosophy and the history of ethics since Kant is necessary if you want to follow his arguments closely and appreciate the magnitude of his result. (It's worth mentioning that the binding, while it does not seem to be sewn, has held up extremely well through my slow reading and marking of the entire book over several months.)

One read was not enough. Compelling material. I'm not ready to agree or disagree yet, if I ever will be, but I have appreciated On What Matters vol 1 and 2.

good and fast

A very important book. Parfit's work is rightly very influential in modern philosophical studies of the nature of reasons for action and the nature of moral reasoning. The kindle version is an amazing bargain

extremely satisfied with everything, especially Amazon.com's new way of international shipping

A strange tome. Parfit is way too confident about his arguments. They mostly boil down to commonsense that he tries to extend into deep metaphysical truth. I don't think us humans really quite understand morality. We have great trouble with it. I suspect we lack the concepts required to fully understand whether there can be "objective moral truths" or merely "subjective moral truths". I've personally speculated that we might need a category in between objective and subjective to explain some of the emergent phenomena of higher biological systems, such as morality and free will and so on. Perhaps they are trans-intersubjective, or something.
The reason I say this is that it seems almost impossible to deny that the sentence "Killing is bad" is true in some deep sense -- and yet Hume's arguments are also extremely convincing. So the way I see it, morality must be fuzzier than our concepts allow. I hope Parfit reads this and sees that he has been mistaken his entire life (his entire life has indeed been a waste (sorry mate).
Anyway, he's a nice guy so you should read this book because of that. Also, the stuff on Kant is very good. Also, his epistemological stuff is worth reading. Also, his stuff on Nietzsche is worth reading. A lot of this is worth reading.

he never opened them for his class