I strongly disagree. As human beings, we have a moral obligation to make life good as it can be, and the only way we can do that is to understand people"s basic

I strongly disagree. As human beings, we have a moral obligation to make life good as it can be, and the only way we can do that is to understand people"s basic motives and try to use them to motivate good behavior. Do you really disagree? Parfit's solution of a single absolute moral principle is simply not workable as a way of getting people to behave well. Again, do you really disagree? The reason he tries for it is he has a greatly distorted view of human nature. As the article say, he thinks that the human moral evalution that cruelty is wrong is "just a psychological fact—flimsy, contingent, apt to be forgotten." No, the prohibition against cruelty is a permanent part of human nature, the problem is that we have many other drives, and circumstances may favor them. Instead of coming up with useless principles, what we need to do is understand in detail why people behave in good or bad ways. That is what, for instance, Aristotle did in his Ethics, and Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Let me add that Parfit is such a profoundly odd person that I am pretty sure his understanding of human nature is quite poor, and so he is simply the wrong sort of person for this job.