HOW TO BE GOOD

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ANNAlS OF IDEAS

HOW TO BE GOOD

An Oxford philosopher thinks he ron dutill all mart/lity into a formula. Is he right?

BY LARISSA MAcfAJ\QUHAfl.

WhO! make< me me "",>0 ^persoo ,nroo.,gh·

"" m)" life, and a diffcrtnt pcrK><1 frum ,.""?

And what is m. impo<to''''' of the>c faa.?

I bel.,..,"

,II;"

fim<. and ,ha" when ".., set tho truth, "'" ought to c\I.1I~ ^!(1m( of 01" brlid. aoom wha, ""

ho"""""""" ^do.

' TOll ^{are in a terrible accident. Your}

~ body is fatally injured, as are the brains of your ^[WQ identicl-triplet broth- ers. Your brnin is divided into two hah'l:S, and into each brother's body one h:.Jris

s~l1y transplanted. After the sur- gery, each of the ^IWO resu1tingpeople be-

lie''es himself to be YOI.1, seems to re- member living your life, and has your

chameter, (Ibis is not as llnlikdy as it

sounds: already, living brains ha''e been surgically divided, resulting in two sepa- rate streams of consciousness,) \.\/hat has happened? J-la\'e you died, or ha\<: you survnul? And if you have survived who are you? Are you one of these people?

Both? Or neither? What if one of the trnnsplants fails, and only one person with half yourbrnin SUrvil'CS? That seems quite differcnt--but the death of one person could hardly make a diffcrence to the identity of another.

~ philosopher Derek Pattit bd;.,..ts that neither of the pwple is you, but that this doesn"t matter. It doesn't matter that you have ceased ^Tn exist, br:cause what has happened to you is quite ^lIJI!ik., ordi-

nary death: in your relationship to the two new lJ<:Q{Ile there is everything that matters in ordinary surviml--a continu-

ityof memories and dispositions that wiU decay and change as they usually do.

Most of us care about oor furun: Jxc.usc it is our.r-but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Pamt belie''CS. Personal identity is not what matters.

Pamt is thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the:

English-speaking world. I-Ie has written two books, both of which ha,'e been called the most important works to be wril!en in the ficld in more than a cen- ru..,---sincc 1874, when Henry Sidg- wick's -fbe Method ofEthics,~ the apo- gce nf classical utilitarianism, waS

published. Pamt's firs! book, ~Reasons

and Persons,~ waS published in 1984,

when he ,vas forty-<me, and caused a sen-

sation. The book ,vas dense with science-

fictionallhought experiments, all wging a shift toward a more i~naI, non- physical, and selfless view of human life.

Suppose that a scientist were to begin replacing your cells, one by one, with those ofGrera Garbo at the :Jgl: of thirty.

Attbe beginning of the experiment, the red pient of the cells, \"OI.1Id clearly be you, and at the end it would clearly be Garbo,

but what aboot in the middle? It seems impbmible to suggest thM you could draw a line between the two-that any single cdl could make all the difference

between you and not-}ml.11len:: is, then, no answer to the question of whether or not the person is you, and}t1 there is no

mystCl)' invoh~-wt: know what hap-

peno:!. A sclf, it seems, is not all or noth- ing but the sort of thing that tho::re can ~ more of or less o( When, in the process

of a Z}gote"s cellular self-multiplication,

d~s a person start ¹⁰ exist? Or when does a person, descending into dementia or coma, cease to be? ~re is no simple anS\ver---i1 is a matter of degrees.

Parlit's view 1C","lIbles ill some ways tho:: Buddhist ^view of the sclf, a fact that w:as pmltecl OUI ^to him}'l:\lfS ago by a pro-

fessor of Oriental religions. Parlit ^'V:U; de-

lighted by this discovery. lie is ill the business of searching for unil'CfWl truths, so to find out that a figure like the Bud- dha, vastly removed from him by time and

space, came indq:>endently to a similar l.'OIlclusion--wd~ that was extTemely n:- Dtrd~ Pmfit btu ftw mmlOrin ojhis past and almost nn.>« thinks arollt it, a fl.t that he attriblltn to an inability to form mmtal imagn. Photograph by Stew Fyke.

aswring. (Sometime later, he kamed that

"Reasons and P~"fS(lf'tl;· was being mo.mo- ri7-OO and chanted, along with Mras, by

tl(l\icc monks at a monasK'I)' in Tibet.} It is difficult to bcli/.."\'C that there is no such thing as an all-or-nothing self~ "Q.'Cf>

funher fact~ beyond the multitude of small psychological facts that make }'OIJ

who you arc. Parfit finds that his own be- I,,:f ^is unstabk~he n.:oos to re-ronvina::

himself. Buddha. too. thought that achieving this bclx:fw:1S ''Cry hard, though possible with much mo.'lii.tation. But. as- suming that '''' could be convioccd. how should '''' think about it?

I,.he ,,,,th depressing? SOil'" may find i, so. Bo.u I find i, lib,,,uil\:.nnd consoling.

(Paml's WQfds. in his books, in c-maiis, and ~"\"Cn in sp<.."Ceh. all haw a similar

timbrl~it is difficult to distinguish them. In all, a strong emOlion is audible under "--straint.)

Whrn I ""I~'«l II", my <,;st<nCe ,..0, such • fun ... 100. 1....,,>«1 impri..,.,..! in myodl. .\ly life...-d lik a gL\ .. tun...,l. ,h"",gIl which I wa' """ing fa""" '''try y"a~ and "' ,I\c tnd of which ''''' ... wa, d:"knw;. When I chonged my '''''''. tht ... II.of myglO"l\ln~ disaPl't"n:d. I now 1;,. ^{in ,ht} opt".ir."T"htre is "ill" Jiffert"", brtw",," In)' lift and ,he li,~ uf 01"'" pooplr:.

Bu, 'ht differ""", i. less. Other people .rt closer. I am loss cot>a"t"J>«l "bo,,, ^{tht rtSI of my}

""0 lift.and mok~ about the I,,"<sof OIhen;.

It seems to a friend ofParfi~s that his theory of pcrwnal identity is motivated

by an extreme fcar of d~ath. But Pamt

/ '

doesn't bdk"\'C that he once buw death more than other people, and now he

thinks he fcars it less.

:\1)" dtath "ill break the mort Jir<'O ... lations

bet",",," my present upcri<' .... nnd huu", ex-

ptIit,~ ... b.,n i, will ^n<lI brtak ,,,riou,

01"""

r<latK:ons.

Some people will rem<."I"tlbt.,. him. Oth:rs

rna}' be infiucoccd by his writing. or act

upon his advice. Memories that oom .... 'Ct

with his mo'morics, thoughts thaI connect with his tho.tghts, actions tm."n that con-

nect with his inll.'11.tions, will persist after he is gone. just inside difli:n.:nt bodies.

nu. isall the ... is to ,n. ^fact lhat t ... in "" no

on<: li,;n!; .... OO will be tnt. Nowtha, I h"" ^0<Yfl ,his, m)" ","",h,.,...". to tnt loss rod.

After Paml finisho:! ~R<.<ISOOS and J\T- w;:ons, ~ he I::<.=mc inm."asinglydisturb..'Ii by hoIv many poople lxlio..",-'Ii that then.- was no weh thing as objecti,..., rnorallruth.

This led him to wrile his second book,

"On What l\'lattcrs," which was published this summer. aftl"T ^)'Cars of anticipation among philosophers. (A conference. a book of critical ess:\)'S, and endless discus- sions abottt it preceded its appearance, based on circulated drafts.) P:ufit beoc"\\.'S that tbr."TC arc troe ansI"-"TS to moral ques- tions. just as there arc to mathematical ooes. Humans can perceive these truths, through a combination of intuition and critical reasoning. but they remain true whether humans perceive them or not. He bc\il."\'I:S that then: is nothing !TlOO." Wb'\.T!t

·Don'tj!utterYOllr liftlewings on company time."

for him to do in his bricftimc on eanh than discv."'"T what tbcsc tlUths are and persltadc others of their reality. '-Ie be- oo.'CS that widlOOt moral tlUth the world wO\tld be a bkak place in which nothing mattt:n:d. -111is thought horrifies him.

w. """kl ha,'. no rt':ISQt1, rotr)" 10 ~ ho ...

10 Ii '"t" Such <kci.ioI\s .... "" kl be arbi,mry .... W.

"""Id '""' ""lyon our ir",i,...,. and dtsirrs, li,~

ing as OIher a~im.11s li,"t.

'-Ie fecls himself surrwndcd bydangcr-

OIlS skeptics. Many ofllis oollcagucs not

only do not bcliC\'C in objecti\'C moral trutb---tlry don't CI",'11. find its :abscnre dis- turbing. Thl)' arc pragmatic types who

argue that the notioo of moral truth is un- oecessary. a fifth whec~ with it orwithout it, people will g<> 00 wilh their mt."S as they have always done. feding strongly that some thirtg'! arc 1;00 and oth."fS b"lO<i, ^not

mi~ng the COIimic imprimatur. To Parfit, this is an appalling nihilism.

Subj""i,"i,ti wmttirTlC$ say that. Htn though nothing m""I~" in an obj""i,". ",n"" i, i.

<"IlOugh ,ho" >On'" things mo"" '0 P'''lf'Ic-. Bu'

tMt shows how dttpl)' thtst ,itw. diff.r.

S~bjccti,i"i 31, lik. thO$C who sa)". "God doesn't oxi>l in )"001 "'""". but God ^is "" .•• and SOtnt people 10 .... o",h OIht~ so in ^fir}' srnsc God <x;'ti."

Pamt is an atheist. but when it comes to

moral tMh he bclic>'CS wbat 1I'aO. Kara- mazov belie\w about God: i[;t docs nO!

exist, d)(:n C\'Cl)thing is permitted.

I

on~ who is unaware ofbcing looked at.

p.:maps because he spto'neIs so moch time alone. He clutches his oompull."I" bag. He

fidgL-rs. His hair ^is whitt: and fiullY ^{and has}

St"!tlcd into a rab'\.-boyof the kind that was f3shionable for Illl"fl in the fifteenlh Ct.T!-

NI)'. I k w,."arS the same outfit every da)'."

whitt: shin. black tmus<."fS.

'Ibcre is something not-there about him. an unphysical, slighdy androgynQUs quality. He lacks the normal anti-social

~·motions-ell\y. rn:ilice, dominano:, de- sire for "-""'-""ngC. He doesn't belic'" that his conseiOllS mind is 1"CSJlO'"'Iibk for the imponant parts nfhis work. I-Ie pictures his thinking selI as a gov<-'1TilllCnt minis- tcr sitting behind a Iargc desk, who wriles a question on a piece of paper and P'tts it in his OIJI-I."ra},. The minister then $its idly at the desk, twiddling his thumbs, while in some back room civil servants labor fu- rioml},. come up With the answer, and place it in his in-tnly. Pamt is less aware

than most of the boundaries of his self- less conscioul; of them and less pfOtl:<:tive.

I-Ie is helplessly, sometimes unwillingly, empathetic he will find himself o"ercome by the mood of the person he is with, es- pecially if that person is unhappy.

He has few memories of his past, and he almost never thinks <1hout it, although his memory lOr other things is very good.

I-Ie attributes this to his inability to form Inental ilnages.. Although he recognizes f.unifutr things when he sees them, he can- not call up images uf them afterward in his head: he C31mut visu.alir.e even so simple an image: as a fug; he cannot, ,men he is away, rtta1I his wife's 00. (This condition is rare but not llIllKard of, it has bem pr0-

posed that it is more common in peuple who think in abstracri<ms.) I Ie has aJ.,""fl

beliC\ro that this is why he flC\,.,r thinks about his childhuod. I Ie imagines other pwple, in quiet moments, playing their memories in their Ix:ads like wonderful old IllO\'ies, whereas his fC\v memories an:

stored as propositions, as sentences, with none of the vi'Jidn= o( a picture. But, 'men it is suggested to him that an ab- sence ofimages does not really explain an absence of emotional connection to hi$

past, he concedes that this is so.

Parfit's mother,J=ie, was born in India to 1\\'0 medical missionaries. She grewup tostudy rned;cine--she was a bril-

liant student and won many prizes. She joined the Oxford Group, a Christian lI1O\-emtTlt, fOunded in the ninetccll-t\\"eIl-

ties, whose members stro\,., to adhere to the Four Absolutes: absolute honesty, ab- solute purity, absolute unselfishness, and ahsoIutt kne. 'Through theOxford Group.

she met Noonan P.ufit, the sun of an An- glicanclergpnan, woo ^{waS also stud)-ing to}

be a doctor. Norman was a bad srudem, but he was funnyand gregariuul; and prin- cipkd---he was a I,oo&t and a =tornlk:r.

Mer he n.x:ci"ed the group's ptnnissiUfl to proP06C, he and Jessie married.

In 1935, l;UI)n after they became doc- tors, Norman andJessie mo,,.,d 10 west- ern China to leach pre\'l!nti'"e medicine in missionary hospitals. Before theyw.:re able to begin work, they'vere required to spend a couple of }eat"S in the mountains studying Chinese.J=ie picked it up eas- ily, but Nonnan simply cuuld not learn the language, however hard he tried, and he despaired mer his failure. lbeir first child, Theodora, was born in 1939, and their second, Derek, in 1942. Noonan

was drawn to Mao's idealist ardor. I Ie didn't become a CommlUlist, exactly, but he abandoned Ihe conservative political view!; with which he was brought up.

More significantly, both Norman and Jessie lost their faith. They disliked some of their feI1ow-mi~~ionarics, some of whom were quite racist, and they were struck by the irrelev:lnce of Christianity

to a sophisticated culture like China's.

J= ie shed her faith easilr-she associ- ated Christianity ,vith the oppressive pu- ritanism of her upbringing, and found purpose enough in publiC health. But Norman's loss of failh was a catastrophe.

Withuut God, ^{his life had no meaning.}

He sank into a chronic dC]>KSsion that lasted until his death.

Aboul a ytar after Derek was born, the family lcflChina. They scttkd in Oxford, and had a third child, Joanna. \Vhen Derek was SC\en, he became religious and

<kcid~d to be a monk. I Ie praytd aU lhe time and tried ,ainly to persuade his par- ents to go lochurch. But at eight he lust hi$ faith: he decided that a good God would not send JltOple to Hell, and 00 if his teachers were wTong about God's goodness they must also be wrong about God's existence. His argument was flawed but con"incing-he never be- liC\ro in God again.

Jessie and Norman had little in com- mon and grew unhappy together, but they sta)ro married. Jessie took a second de- gree, became a psrchiatrist, and ended up running London's services for emotiona1!y distuIDed children. Norman worked at a knv-Ievd public-health job near OxfOrd.

He was concern~d about cancer and fluoridation, but he was too indfectual tu do much about either.

M)" f"dlt( w., a perftctionisl, who ochle.-ed linie. I ^Ie labvrtd fu.-"",·"",1 \\ttk$ <ath 1"""0

wnlt hi. Annual R<r<>", woo..: I"". hl:conlinu·

allr m·i...!. My 1"",hM- WOIIld ha,·. w,in ... ,

such. rt"f'Ol1 in an hooT ^Of 'wo. ll>:Jugh hi: \\'as,

in 10m< ways, an intel"",,,,,I, to wrom moral and mig10us idras. manr=i g ... "ly, ^I bel"" ...

!M. hr =d,asan "JIII.,OI~yrwo book.<: Thad·

<,a)"'s -I knry E'rn""d,~ "hich hi: w,,~ gn~~

and -Aw'l· willi A1I1'es!s, - which dc.<:ribrd a

~d a.i ... calll!"'ign rodesiroy di>ea""

cal\)ingftics.

All three children were sent to boarding school when they were young, so they didn't know each other IeI)' 'veil.

I fem<mbrr bcrornillg a,,"Afe Iha!. fo, III",,!

child, .. ", hom< ,,"a~,,~ Ihr)· li,-ed. and ^not n'IOT<ly,'" il waS for me,' place IMII ,i,itt<! for h<irf i",,,rrupriorts .0 m)" m.in life III,,, was

li,-ed a. school.

Theodora and Derek 'vere brilliant snldenlS, like their mother. Derek '''liS

sent to Eton, where he came first in every subject except mathematiu. Jo- anna, like her father, was bad at elery- thing. Her teeth s{\lck out. She was also much too tall----six feet at the age of dC\"en. \Vhen the family I"lIS together, it was awfuJ--Nonnan was angry almost all the time. He often didn't understand what his wife and dder children ,vere talking about, and this made him feel in- ferior. He had a narrow life. He took ref- uge in two hobbies-ttnnis, which he didn't pial' wd~ and sramp collecting, on which he spent several hours each e..e- ning. Parfit emerged from his childhood with the understanding that he and his mother and Thco were lucky and would

Ii,,.,

For Ihe rest of his life, his father and his )'QI.Ingr:r sistcr repre..emed for him C\-ety- thing that horrified him about suffi:ring and unfainlC$S.

I \\"a~ not, l!:cli","c, badlr afft.:tt.d by 1llJ· falhrr'$

<kprcssion. I ""as mctl:ly '.CT)-. sorry for him.

Tha! is boca",,, I "'as ^{1\("\ ...} cIosdy rd,,!ro to him. I I" "'!oI,·1 !I;OOd '" inl ... <ting \\;th <hil·

drcn. lIcIorc I Icfi for my 1"C'" a. a llari<J'lc>5 fellow in !hr U.S .• IIIOIia-d !.a" ill my fa!hM-'5 '1'" wher, h.,,:.id goodb)c !o me. n.". mo ... d

me grcatl)·at li>c lime,and I ~ncl

tea"

.. llyp< mi""""",,o_ ThaI wa.lhr only !ime in ... hicb I had ,om< ... ,..-ohhr !o,c .11 .. m)" 10·

I""", in hi' d<prc<s<J and i".rri<ul,,,,, \\"a)·, ~I fOfmc.

I

He was nearly tumed dOlm fOr a visa- the immigration officer saw that he was born in China and told him the Chinese quota was already full. He protested that he was British; the oflicerconsultcd ,vith a colleague and informed him that he would gr:t a visa since he was the son of

Chin!$!: person ther liked. Hc went to

WQrk at The Nl'W YQI"m, as a researcher

for The Talk of the Town. He slayed in a splendid high·ceiling<:d apartment on the Upper 'Nest Side with his $isrer 'lnco and SCleral of her friends from Ox- ford-mostly returning Rhodes scholars.

I Ie brimmed with enthusiasms and self- confidence and issued pronOlUlCemellts 011 all sorts of subjects, which amused some of the Rhodes scholars and ini(ated others.

He IO'"ed jazz, and went often to hear Miles Davis and TheloniOl.ls Monk.

He had always loved music, but he

couldn't play an instrument, because he couldn't rcad the notes-he could slowJywork them out, bill not with any fluency. He hypothcsi7m Ih:1I there was some relationship between his inability to read musk and his deficiencies at mmhcmatics: he was not good at pro- cessing symbols.

He had wanted to be a poet since he was nine or ren. He pub~shedonc poem,

"PIlotoj,<raph of a Comtt:ssc; ill TJx New Y<>rkn-thc}.:af after he worked there, and sc"eral in the Eton College Clmmi&

, ". A fie"", tug on ,b<-linc

Jcrkctl you back. You pulkd at one.:-

I"r~g bootw<'",

D,ligh. and horror

,ha,

"~'"

W""eo";ng a pointt'\ hook throogh flesh., ..

You hold the Ii';!',

1hcn lashed it savagoly ,gainst tho dcd:

And threw the bantu<! pulp fur OI.t to

... ^",

With ,ick"e,s ill yOUT th, .... ' )"QU ",tn,

~,~

And tay h.,lf-sick tin port.

HCSpClll monthslaboringon hispo- cuy, but he dC\'C1oped an obsession with

the idea dml not only shoold the Jj,,<.'S of a poem rhyme but the words within each line should hal'c internal asso- nances, with repeated pIl!!el1lS of con- sonants or vowels, as is the case in some Anglo-Saxon and German poetry. But it wassodifficuh ^to find words that had both the right sound and the right sense that he found he could no longer finish a poem. His obsession became crnicr and mon: crippling. Now when he n:ad his favoritc poets-Shah-spcarc, KealS, T Cnn)"SOn-their poems seemed to him badly flawed, because they had ^too fn"

internal assonances. He understood that this ^w.iS insane, but he couldn't help it.

Eventually, he realized that he stood nO chante ofbccoming a b'O<>d poet and gave up.

In the autumnofl%l, hev.cm upto Oxford to read history. (He studied Modern History at Eton, which for England 1xgan when the Romans left, in 410.) He was a little bon:d by the subj<:ct, and briefly considered switching to P.P.E.-Philosophy, Politics and Ec0- nomics. He was appn:hensi,'\: about the mathematics that l"Conotoics would in- voh'\:, howevCJ", so he n:ad a fl"W pages of a rextbook and came across a S)1nbo! he didn't recogni7.c---"J line with a dot aOO..'\:

and a dot helow. I-Ie asked somcone to

explain it, and when he was told that it was a divisiOl1 sign he fclt so humiliatc<l that he decided to stick with histol)'.

After Oxford, he went back ^to Ameriea for two years on a Harkness Fellov.-ship.

He decided ^to study philosophy. He attended a lecture by a Continental phi- losopher that addressed ^some important subj<:ct such as suicide or the meaning of life, but he oouIdn't W"Odcrstand anyofi!.

He went ^to h= an analytic philosopher who spoke ⁰¹¹ a trivial topic but wasquire lucid. He wondcro:l whether it was more likely that Contincntal philosophers would become more lucid Or anal}tic philosophers less trivial. He dccilk-d that the second waS more likely, and n:turned to Oxford. Almost at ^Ontt, he achicved a dazzling suc<;css: he took an CXam and won a Prize Fellowship at All Souls, whkh entitled him to room and board at theco&w: forso.'\'Cn years, with no teach-

ing duties. J Ie studied wilh A. J. ^Aycr,

Peter Smwson, and David Pears. lie was clcctrifil-d by lhe Ix:Jligcn:nce of phi- losophers-historians wer~ much milder-although he worried that his delight was inconsistent wilh his disap- pl"Q\-al of other pugilislic sports, such as boxing.

He mOl'ed into rooms at AU Souls and set1led into a monk-~kc existence.

There ^W"dS usually a woman in his life somcwhcrc, but he spellt ''CI)' littk: time wilh her. Almost all his waking hours were spent at his desk. AU Souls resem- bles a monastel)'. Its fifteenth-centul)' stone arcades surround a vivid lawn that is immaculate because it is seldom usc.-d:

All Sou!s has no undergraduates and is not often open to the public--its gateS arc shut. All his needs weIC taken care of by the col1cgc: Iu: was housed, fixJ, and paid, and nothing in the way of emO- tional output was n-quircd of him. This waS how his life had oc-cn sirn:c he went

to boarding school, a! ten, and it suited him. He had become, he realized, what psychiatri>ts call institutionalizcd-a IlC1Wl1 for whom living in an institution feels mon; normal than living in a family.

n..: ^only Ihing thaI interfered \vith his work was a lack of sleep. He suffered from terrible inSOlllnia-wbcn he went to oc-d his brain kcpl racing, and there were many days when he was too cx- hausted towork But ,.nen he was in his mid-thirties his docrorprcscribcd a tricy- clic antidepressant, Amitriptyline, wilh

which, along \vilh a ''CI)' large quantity of \wka, he could force himself into

UIlCOl1SClOUSllCSS.

S

him that his interest in committing to paper im3f:,'tS of thlnbos he hM seen might

stem &om his inability to hold those illl3f:,'CS in his mind. I-ic also bcliL~ul that most of the world looked OCttcr in reproduction than it did in lift. "There ^WLTI': only about

ten things in tk ,rurld he wantul to pho- tograph, howLvcr, and they"",,,e aU build- ings: the best buildings in Vmioe---Palla- dio's ^t\'ro churcl-.cs, the fk>gc's Paha:, the build~ alo~ the Grand Omal----and the

best buiklings in SL Pl'tCrWwg, the Win-

ter Paha: and the G..:llcral ScllfBuilding.

I find it pw:>1;1lj; how mud> I, and ^$Ome O<h<"r people. 10"> ... reI>i!l'<1\~. M"", of the buildi"g.

rlw I k,,"~ ha, .. pillars,eirl><rd ... 1 orGo!hic.

.11Int iu nice dL<1,.;,.i, .. ,,'OI"d tha, "wl;" ^to

all <.>Ihtr huil,li,"f\S' "alll'la,-1 .1.0 10"> .. ,11<."...

, .. ".,. in the F...dl coun!rysi<!., porh'!" ho- elust!Ilt!,...,; ate lik~ to,,-S of pilbts. rn ...

IOottc eight mill;"', t"-""l in Fm:>ch "1."1"1<"$ in 1900, .qnd now m.... ^{a~ onl)·} .hoot th ... hun-

dml !hoosand.) n ... ^{a~ 501".} as!)"!.;, bulk!- ing' tha, I """t, .... :h '" sonlt sk)'lCl"a(><1'S. 1ht

bn, builcl;nf\> in Vmice and S,. P<tc",burg.

~ '· ... 1' bcoU!ihd, are no! SI,bli,,,.. Whot is ... bIi'''',l ..,,,.,,,ber t...r;ng Kmllt,h C1m "')., are onl)" the ;mcrio.s of some larc ('><)fruc GI'hc- dr:d ... and """It AIII.ri"an >kj'$Cr;lPC,,"-

Although he admired some sk)'icrap-

crs, he bc~C\ul that architecture hMgcn- crally dcdinul since 1840, and the world had grown uglier. On the other hand, an-

cstoctics wen: discmutXI around the same time, so the world's suffering had been grcady nxlooxl. Was the trade-off worth it? He waS not ^SUtt:.

He oc1i",u:l that he h~ little natiw taI- cot for photography, but that by working hard ^at it he would be able to product:, in his lifetime, a fn" gwd pictures. Bct"' .... :n 1975 and 1998, he spent about fu'C wccks l'llch)"-":lf in Venice and SI. Pet=burg.

r mal· be 501".,..1'1., unusual in the fuo 'h'" I

,""...,. w:t !imJ<>r sa!,d II;th wh,,' I \o"'m<.><l, SO rh.1! [do,,~ n=1 or w.IlI '"riety.

I Ie di$likcd Q\erlJCad ligillS, in which cat-

l"gOf)' he incMlcd the midday ^Sl.Ul, bUI he

kr.'ed the horiwntal rars at the ^I\V() axk of the cL"lY. He waited ror hours, reading a book, for the rigil! son ofEght and Ihe

right ^SOft of weather.

INhen he came home, hede\'doped his

photographs and sorted them. Of a thou- sand picturt:s, he might keep three. When he dtridal that a picturewas worth saving, he took it to a professional prt:>Cessor in London and had the: processor hand-paint out all aspects of the ~ that he: found distasteful, "hich meant all ~ of the twentieth rentul)-<:ars, relegraph wires, SignptOlts----ruid usually all people. Then he:

had the rolors repeatedly adjusted, al- though this was enormously expensive, until they were exactly what he wanted- which was a maner of fidelity not to the scene as itwas 001 to an ideainhi~ head.

Otherthan his trips to Venice and SI.

Petersburg, the only reason he left All Souls for any length of rime \\lI!; to navel to America, ^to teach. He had appoint- ments at Hal\-:mI, Rutgers, and N.Y.U.:

he wanted students, because he found that it was discouragingly di!liCIIlt to persuade older piUlosophers ^to change their minds.

He: also needed students, because only they would f:jlk philosophy with him for twelve hours at a stretch and then wake up

"Bry, they really let theiryardgo .•

• •

the I1O(t day wanting to do it :<gailr. Older philosophers (and his students from past

) = were now in this category) had chil- dren and spouses; they sat On academic committees and barbecued in their back )-ards. Only he stayed the same-as fer- '''ntly single-minded as they were, too, when they were young. 'Nhen he found a bright new student to mentor, he devoted hours to reading his work and writing comments. (He did this for many col- leagues as well: he read with astonishing speed, and would often return a manu-

script with densely argued comments that

""re 10nS'!r than the manuscript itself, even if the manuscript was a book.)

\Vhen he ^Wll£ in America, he was com- pelled toprOClI!e hisown food. Because he didn't want to "lI!;te time on choice or preparation, he developed rigid routines that he coold follow without thinking. For

)"C:U"S, according to a colleague, he made

the same meal eo."ry morning for break-

tast, which he conceil'ed of as a recipe fOr maximum health: sausage links, green

peppers. yogw-t, and a banana, all in one

bo\...-\. One: day, the colleague's nutritionist wife explained to him that this was ^not a

particularly healthy mrnl, and suggested a better meal; the next day he ""itched to the neo.v meal and nc:ver variod it.

He "lI!; always conscious of how little:

time he had When he had to go !Tom on!:

building to another on a big American campus, he ran. Bill his routines wctt not JUSt about time-saving: he fOlllld himself

OOIl!;tantly retumingto the same thoughts, philosophical and othenvise-that was just the way his mind worked. "At one point, I Spent a rear at Harvard when he was visiting there and ^WI! WOIIld go out ^to dinner,' Larry Temkin, a philosopher and former student of his, says. '"We ""nt to

the same place, a Thai restaurant, every

time, and C\'CI)' time he would order rome rony and 1 would order something that had pineapples and rice and cashews. And every time he'd say, 'Larry, isn't that b0r- ing, don't you want some of my CIIny?' rd say, 'No, Derek, I don't 1Ikc cuny, it's too spicy for me.' And then the next wttk we'd go to the same restaurant, and he