Parfit found this intensely annoying. He thought Rawls’s insight about the need for special concern for the least well-off was important, but that A Theory of Justice was spectacu- larly overrated. Rawls was one of very few philosophers whom Parfit would denigrate—not in print and not about anything personal, but because he was baffled by his prominence.

David Edmonds, Parfit: a philosopher and his mission to save morality, Princeton, 2023, p. 247