David Edmonds interviewed Nigel Warburton

Writer and philosopher Dr David Edmunds talks about Derek Parfit, a man he says is the most famous philosopher nobody has heard of.

Edmonds says Parfit is widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the last 100 years but was not a public intellectual. His ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations and what it means to be a person. Edmonds presents an obsessive and eccentric genius in this first biography of Parfitt. He shows a man who believed we should be less concerned with ourselves than with the common good and who devoted himself to arguing that morality without God had a rational basis.

Edmonds’ previous books include The Murder of Professor Schlick and Would You Kill the Fat Man? He cohosts the popular Philosophy Bites podcast. Here he talks to philosopher and co-host on Philosophy Bites Dr Nigel Warburton.