Stephen Mulhall

Early on​ in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein imagines an interlocutor who claims that every word in language signifies something – where ‘signifies’ means something like ‘names an object’. Wittgenstein gives an indirect assessment of that claim by discussing a second, analogous one. He imagines someone saying: ‘All tools modify...

Derek Parfit was what is sometimes tactfully called a philosopher’s philosopher. He held no brief for philosophy as a spiritual exercise, and had no interest in contributing to conversations about morality and politics outside the seminar room. He gave no media interviews, wrote no op-ed pieces for newspapers or websites, and had no social media presence of any kind.