Early Life
Derek Parfit was born in Chengdu, China, to Norman and Jessie Parfit (née Browne), both medical doctors who had moved to Western China to teach preventive medicine in missionary hospitals. The family returned to the United Kingdom about a year after Parfit was born, settling in Oxford. Parfit was sent to Eton College. He later read Modern History at the University of Oxford, graduating in 1964. In 1965-66 he was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University. He abandoned historical studies for philosophy during the fellowship, returning to Oxford to become a fellow of All Souls College.
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“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)