This is Philosophy Bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.

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PhilosophyBites.com.

There's a lot of interest in philosophers at the moment

and we've decided to interview a number of biographers of philosophers,

starting with Philosophy By its co-creator David Edmonds.

I asked him about his life of the quirky Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit,

who's famous for his imaginative thought experiments

and reflections on the nature of the self.

So, welcome to the first of our miniseries bio bites. David Edmonds.

Welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thanks very much. It's a podcast I've heard a lot about so I'm delighted to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on today is Derek Parfit, his life and philosophy.

Now those aren't two separate questions, the issue of what his life was like and his philosophy.

What we're interested in is the interrelationship

between the two. But before we get on to that, could you just give the briefest

sketch of what his life was like? So from one perspective his life is extremely dull he spends it literally in cloisters he goes first to a prep school in England then he goes to a boarding school the most famous school in England eaten he goes to Oxford, then he spends time on a

fellowship in America. He's something called a Hartness fellow and he goes to Harvard. He

comes back to Oxford and he gets a fellowship to All Souls, which is a very prestigious college in Oxford just for people doing

research. It has no undergraduates at all, and he spends his entire life basically at all souls. So as I say from

...