Abstract

In Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit defends the principle that it is not irrational to perform an action one believes to be morally right, even if it is no tin one’s self-interest. He calls this principle CP2 and formulates it as follows: "There is at least one desire that is not irrational, and is no less rational than the bias in one’s own favor. This is a desire to do what is in the interests of other people, when this is either morally admirable, or one’s moral duty." (Parfit 1984, 131) I will examine his defense of this principle, which is essentially an invocation of a thought-experiment he labels My Heroic Death, with a view to clarifying its relationship to rational egoism and the principles of rational choice, as explained below.