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He considers three leading theories about what we ought to do – one
deriving from Kant, one from the social-contract tradition of Hobbes,
Locke, Rousseau, and the contemporary philosophers John Rawls and
T.M. Scanlon, and one from Bentham’s utilitarianism – and argues
that the Kantian and social-contract theories must be revised in order
to be defensible.
Then he argues that these revised theories coincide with a particular
form of consequentialism, which is a theory in the same broad family
as utilitarianism. If Parfit is right, there is much less disagreement
between apparently conflicting moral theories than we all thought.
The defenders of each of these theories are, in Parfit’s vivid phrase,
“climbing the same mountain on different sides.”
Readers who go to On What Matters seeking an answer to the
question posed by its title might be disappointed. Parfit’s real interest
is in combating subjectivism and nihilism. Unless he can show that
objectivism is true, he believes, nothing matters.
When Parfit does come to the question of “what matters,” his answer
might seem surprisingly obvious. He tells us, for example, that what
matters most now is that “we rich people give up some of our
luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth’s atmosphere, and taking care
of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent
life.”
Many of us had already reached that conclusion. What we gain from
Parfit’s work is the possibility of defending these and other moral
claims as objective truths.

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and
Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Revised editions
of his books Practical Ethics and The Expanding Circle have just
been published.

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