In our last post, we highlighted how Taoism and Confucianism, along with Buddhism and David Hume, hold the view that the self is not a fixed, independent entity, but a constantly changing process. In addition, Derek Parfit (1942 – 2017), widely considered one of the most important and influential moral philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, shared a similar view.
Parfit rose to prominence in 1971 with the publication of his first paper, “Personal Identity“. His first book, Reasons and Persons (1984), has been described as the most significant work of moral philosophy since the 1800s.[6][7]
- Psychological Connectedness: You are “you” because of direct links like memories, intentions, and character traits.
- No “Further Fact”: There is no “soul” or “ego” beyond these physical and mental processes.
- Identity vs. Survival: Parfit famously claimed that “identity is not what matters in survival.” What matters is the continuation of your mental life, even if the resulting person is not strictly “identical” to you (e.g., in a Teletransporter thought)
How does this view affect our attitude toward our death?
- Dissolving the “Glass Tunnel”: He described his early view of life as a “glass tunnel” moving toward darkness. After changing his view, the walls disappeared; he felt less like a prisoner of his own ego and more connected to others.
- Impersonality of Death: If “I” am just a collection of experiences, then my death is just the end of one particular chain of experiences. Others will continue to have similar experiences, which Parfit found consoling.
- Redescribing the End: He argued that we can “redescribe” death so that it no longer seems like the total loss of something precious, but rather a natural part of a larger web of human life.
Here are Parfit’s own words on the subject,
On the Reductionist view [of personal identity] each person’s existence
just involves the exercise of a brain and body, the doing of certain deeds,
the thinking of certain thoughts, the occurrence of certain experiences,
and so on…
Is the truth [of Reductionism] depressing? Some may find it so. But I
find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was
such a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a
glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the
end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of
my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a
difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the
difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the
rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
When I believed the Non-Reductionist View, I also cared more about my
inevitable death. After my death, there will no one living who will be
me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many
experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present
experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in
experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. Some
of these future experiences may be related to my present experiences in
less direct ways. There will later be some memories about my life. And
there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done
as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations
between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not
break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will
be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death
seems to me less bad.
Instead of saying, ‘I shall be dead’, I should say, ‘There will be no future
experiences that will be related, in certain ways, to these present
experiences’. Because it reminds me what this fact involves, this
redescription makes this fact less depressing.
I’ll end with the introductory words at Parfit’s funeral service at All Souls College Chapel in 2017. As the congregation sits, the Warden states, “At the end of the day, Derek would often ask Janet to recite Tennyson’s famous poem, Crossing the Bar, to him:”
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Parfit was an atheist, so we must not take the final two lines literally. In that spirit, I would rewrite the penultimate line (and I think Parfit would approve) as follows,
I hope that good comes to time and space…
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Parfit’s views are similar to those of Bertrand Russell, whom I quoted in my last post.
The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.
If we must die, perhaps this is our best response.
I was not aware of Parfit, until shortly before he died. I don’t know if Parfit’s spirit affects this world his body and mind have left. Not my business. It just happened Parfit was born the same year as my brother. Interesting but coincidental. I was nonplussed with remembrances here about Parfit. What I read, today, showed me the uncertainty of Parfit’s philosophy. Of course, he did not try to disguise that…philosophers don’t disguise uncertainty, do they? Or do they try? Thanks, if and only if, this appears.
Nope! Billions of people have lived before us, where have thay all gone? Nowhere, rotted away and disappeared. I’s gonna be the same with us!
well, Parfit agrees with you mostly. He has just found a way of dealing with death. Perhaps he subscribes to the notion that the past and future are equally real as they are in Einsteinian spacetime, although he never says this as far as I know.