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Derek Parfit, pictured at Oxford in 2015, published seldom, but his works of philosophy were ambitious and influential.
Rex Features, via Associated Press
Derek Parfit
Died on January 2, 2017 at age 74
Mr. Parfit was a British philosopher whose writing on personal identity, the nature of reason and the objectivity of morality re-established ethics as a central concern for contemporary thinkers and set the terms for philosophic inquiry.
Notable Deaths 2017
Remembering Mary Tyler Moore, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lewis, David Rockefeller, Trisha Brown, Glen Campbell, Dick Gregory, Edith Windsor, Sam Shepard, Tom Petty and many others who died this year.