Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Derek Parfit

3 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Derek Parfit

Derek Parfit is one of the most influential representatives of the analytic philosophy of mind and of personal identity in the twentieth century. In the book he stands as a counter-position: his reductionist concept of person contradicts the substance-ontological concept of person in a fundamental way.

Key Contribution

Parfit holds the thesis that the person is an epiphenomenon — a by-product of neural and psychological processes, not a self-standing being. There is no “deeper fact” of personhood beyond the empirically describable processes. Personal identity is not a archphenomenon but a construct that dissolves once it is analyzed closely enough. Parfit thus represents the diametrical opposite of the book’s thesis that personhood is an irreducible archphenomenon (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 90–95).

Central Ideas in the Book

The Person as Epiphenomenon, Not as Archphenomenon

Whereas the book understands the person as a archphenomenon — as an irreducible actuality that cannot be traced back to anything impersonal — Parfit asserts the exact opposite: the person is an epiphenomenon, a secondary effect of physical and psychological processes. There is no someone behind the experiences — there are only the experiences themselves. Spaemann’s critique: whoever thinks in this way has already forgotten the person.

The Line Locke — Parfit — Singer

Parfit stands in the line of the empirical-functionalist concept of person founded by John Locke. Locke ties personhood to self-consciousness; Parfit radicalizes this by dissolving personal identity altogether; Peter Singer draws the ethical consequence: whoever lacks actual functions of consciousness is not a person and has no claim to the same protection.

Critique from the Substance-Ontological Perspective

The book objects against Parfit: whoever denies personhood must explain who it is that carries out this denial. Cognition, freedom, responsibility presuppose an underlying reality — a someone who cognizes, is free, and bears responsibility. The epiphenomenon model falls short of the reality of the person.

The Diachronic Identity Objection

The systematically sharpest objection against Parfit is the diachronic identity objection. Parfit wants to explain personal identity by psychological continuity — by chains of memories, intentions, and character traits. But every memory already presupposes the one who remembers: it is not the ground but the consequence of personal identity. The argument joins with the exclusion objection (Parfit’s reduction excludes all human beings without an actual experience of continuity from the circle of persons) and the performative contradiction (whoever argues for the epiphenomenon model presupposes himself as an abiding, truth-capable interlocutor).

Place in the Book

Parfit is analyzed above all in the chapter Chapter 5: What Happens When We Forget Who the Human Being Is? (German) as an example of theoretical oblivion of the person. His position is contrasted with the substance-ontological concept of person and refuted by means of the distinction between personhood and person-behavior.

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 90–95 (Parfit’s reductionist concept of person as a counter-position to the substance-ontological concept of person).

Further sources:

  • Reasons and Persons (1984). Oxford: Clarendon Press (reductionist concept of person — personal identity as an epiphenomenon of psychological processes)

See also

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