This book challenges, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity. The author claims that we have a false view of our own nature; that it is often rational to act against our own best interests; that most of us have moral views that are directly self-defeating; and that, when we consider future generations the conclusions will often be disturbing. He concludes that moral non-religious moral philosophy is a young subject, with a promising but unpredictable future.

"In Reasons and Persons, [Parfit's] clipped prose, with its repetitive sentences, poetic cadence and sly humour becomes the vehicle for a depth and range of insight rarely matched in recent philosophy." - Kieran Setiya, Times Literary Supplement

"Very few works in the subject can compare with Parfit's in scope, fertility, imaginative resource, and cogency of reasoning." - P.F. Strawson, The New York Review of Books