Get the latest tech news

Imperfect Parfit

Daniel Kodsi and John Maier critically discuss Derek Parfit, as portrayed in a recent biography by David Edmunds.

Given the standard for success that he so explicitly defined for himself, and the shape that the rest of his life took as he attempted to meet it, a biography of Parfit sceptical of whether its protagonist satisfied his ambition would inevitably read as something between tragedy and farce. One complication for that diagnosis, discussed by Edmonds, is that when young, Parfit hardly fit the prototype of autism: at twelve, he was a stylish writer, exhibiting mature facility with analogy and metaphor; at Eton, he was outgoing, with sophisticated interests, popular, “even cool”; an early girlfriend from Oxford insists that he was “not at all weird”. And once granted a permanent post, he was enabled to do more or less anything he liked: in Parfit’s case, that turned out to be working as a socially-isolated obsessive who frantically wrote and rewrote an ultimately unsuccessful book for 30 years – a fate one would only wish on one’s worst enemy.

Get the Android app