The philosopher Tom Hurka recalls a conversation along these lines with Jerry Cohen. Hurka was a visiting Fellow at All Souls in the mid- 1980s and, one evening, he invited Cohen back for supper after the semi- nar. Cohen asked him to rank the participants according to (a) how much they cared about ‘winning’ and (b) how much they cared about the truth. It was obvious, Cohen thought, that Parfit was the one who cared most about the truth and the least about victory.

David Edmonds, Parfit: a philosopher and his mission to save morality, Princeton, 2023, p. 251