The new Derek Parfit volume

He also talked about more personal matters such as his severe problems with insomnia during the recent book-writing process, saying that he was sometimes awake for thirty-six hours at a time and felt that if he had had a gun to hand he might have shot himself — not because he wanted to die, but because he was desperate to lose consciousness.  He had eventually been recommended to try a sleep regime and calming drugs that had solved the problem, and when I commented that I also had problems with sleep, he immediately suggested I should try his methods too.  I discovered later that whenever he came across some technique he regarded as providing a major life improvement, he would proselytize it far and wide.

That is from Janet Radcliffe Richard, the widow of Derek Parfit.  Her fascinating spousal memoir is from the new and fascinating edited collection Derek Parfit: His Life and Thought, edited by Jeff McMahan.  Worth the triple digit price.  Derek would exercise on a stationery bike only, because that was the only form of exercise compatible with reading.  And he was a big fan of Uchida playing Mozart, as all people should be.

And there is this segment, near the close of the essay:

…in the eyes of some people who were aware of it, my philosophical standing was if anything diminished, because in Derek’s circle I was merely his partner, and barely known otherwise.  He did not open up new opportunities for me; on the contrary, I rather dropped out of public view when we lived togehter.  He did not widen my social circle, because he did not have one; in practice (not deliberately), he severely contracted it.  He was of little use for anything recreational, because we did together only what he wanted to do, and soon after I met him most possibilities of that kind were perpetually over the horizon.  He did not in any way advance my career: he was neither my teacher nor my referee, and I had started to establish my terrain — very different from his — before I knew him.  I learned an enormous amount from him, of course; but I did not often find it helpful to discuss my work with him.  Even my eventual return to Oxford had nothing to do with him.

Recommended.  Larry Temkin tells us that Parfit could not calculate a fifteen percent tip, and there is an essay by Derek’s brother as well.  I have never seen a volume where the contributors evince so much fierce loyalty and attachment to their subject.