Parfit World

Parfit, By David Edmonds

Henry Oliver | Common Reader | 11th May 2023

Perceptive discussion of Derek Parfit — arguably the Kant of our time, though his reputation is still bedding down — as depicted in a new biography. "Parfit is very much like [J.S.] Mill. Prodigious, high-minded, aesthetic, musical, socially odd, astonishingly productive, romantically unconventional, and strongly motivated by death". He was "a romantic poet working as a moral philosopher" (1,400 words)

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Written Word And Unwritten World

Italo Calvino | Paris Review | 5th January 2023

An all-time great essay, Calvino at his best, about his realisation, late into his writing life, that he had come to feel more at home in the world of books than in the world of real life. How and why did the two diverge? "The challenge for a writer is to speak of the intricate tangle of our situation using a language so seemingly transparent that it creates a sense of hallucination, as Kafka did" (3,300 words)