How to Be Perfect

I genuinely laughed out loud to the description of Kant's inquiring murderer passage as a “self-own.”

I really love Parks & Rec and The Good Place, so I was curious to check out this book by the creator of those shows, Michael Schur. I've seen him in a few interviews too and he's always seemed like a genuinely nice and thoughtful person, on top of being funny.

And his voice certainly comes through in this book, especially since I listened to the audiobook which is narrated by him. In the intro he explains that this is a sort-of Philosophy 101 book based off his research when making The Good Place, and that's definitely accurate. He never gets into anything too deep, but he keeps things light and fun so that it is entertaining throughout.

He has a few personal anecdotes here and there, but I think I was hoping for a few more insights into his career and some of the shows he's worked on. That's probably more my fault for having expectations of this book that it never promised.

I love Michael Schur with every fiber of my being but I think I'm too dumb for this book.

When I found out that Mike Schur has written a book, I jumped at my phone to search if its available in my library to borrow. As my favorite writer for most of the comedy show's I've watched, I had high hopes from his book. And it didn't disappoint.
Not only is the book a guide to moral philosophy, it is also, surprise surprise, funny.
As the author very rightly mentions, we do not have time to read books on philosophy. And when we do, the literature is so difficult to read, that you just wish there was a summary of it all somewhere.
Mike Schur did the job for us folks.
Reading / Listening to this book, will give you an introduction to most of moral philosophy. Recommended for those who like philosophy.

It was an accessible crash course to the canon of Western moral philosophy, which was what I wanted – the CliffNotes on Aristotle, Kant, and others (including concepts that might not strictly “count” as philosophy but had relevance). Schur critiques where this group of (mostly) old white guys deserves to be critiqued. I wish he had incorporated more modern thinkers – I guarantee that there is a school of feminist philosophy out there but the only woman who gets major time in this book is Ayn Rand (getting dunked on, properly so) although Schur does quote and draw from several women philosophers discussing and critiquing the “canon”. I do have to concede that this is a book about Western philosophy for the most part, and if I want more than the brief shout-out to ubuntu in terms of philosophy outside the white Western world, I'd need to look for a different book. (But I wanted to understand this first as the bedrock of so many modern US concepts.) Schur does discuss the more radical bents of all these folks but ends up “we take a little from each tradition”-ing his end conclusion into a sort of moderate “this is what your gut was telling you anyway, here's why it's pretty much right”.

It was funny at times and overdone at others. I also appreciated some of the Easter eggs related to The Good Place.

This is by far the most approachable book on formal ethics I've ever seen. While Schur's writing occasionally gets a little too cute, he does a really good job — I assume, not being a philosophy expert — laying out the major schools of thought and their key players and their strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, he covers virtue ethics, consequential ism, and deontology, and highlights a few related schools of thought like existentialism and contractualism and objectivism. (He doesn't like objectivism very much, which makes me think we'd get along okay.)

What I would have liked is a bit of advice on how to choose what to apply to what situations, but I guess a groundbreaking unified ethical theory might be asking a bit much.

Very fun read, would recommend for a chill introduction to ethics.

A really great book that takes you traveling around the ethics and how to improve and be a better person through the thoughts of several great philosophers across History. The whole book is written with a lot of humor and quirky remarks making it really easy to read while still learning a lot (and has a way of translating some ethicists thoughts in something way more understandable for us mortals). Totally recommend it!

Re­mem­ber: We are wrong, all the time. We are wrong, and we try again, and we’re wrong again, and again, and again. Keep try­ing. Choos­ing to not try is still mak­ing a choice, and it won’t make you (or any­one else) a bet­ter per­son

I was already a big fan of Michael Schur and his work. Everything from The Office, to Parks and Recreations, but most of all The Good Place. If you enjoyed the philosophy from the latter show, as I did, you'll eat this book up. I can especially recommend the audiobook version since it's narrated by the author and the cast of The Good Place. Yes, that includes Kristen Bell and Ted Danson.

In the book, Michael tries to explain the most important moral philosophies in his view: virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, contractualism, ubuntu, and existentialism. And if your eyes glazed over just now, this book is for you. Because he does it in such an entertaining way that you'll almost forget you're reading about moral philosophy. And that's the highest praise anyone can give.

And don't be deceived by the title. There's a whole chapter on making a case for why “moral perfection” is both impossible to attain and a bad idea to even attempt. This book simply tries to convey ideas by which you could live your life in ways that'll make you a better person. Or, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

So (re)watch The Good Place and then tackle this book. Again, I strongly recommend the audio version.

Moral ethics! With jokes! This was quite the treat.
Should there be more books like this? Comedy writers take on dry subjects?

This was kind of boring.

I got this from my library's humor shelf, and was unfortunately disappointed with the book.

If you, like me, still harbour dreams of waxing eloquently on Wittgenstein, noodling aloud over the nihilism of Nietzsche, or articulating your profound ideas about Aristotle — but the thought of actually reading these philosophers feels just a little too exhausting — this is the book for you. 2,500 years of philosophical thought rendered in short pithy chapters like “Do I Have to Return My Shopping Cart to the Shopping Cart Rack Thingy? I Mean... It's All the Way Over There” and the one I'm currently wrestling with; “This Sandwich Is Morally Problematic. But It's Also Delicious. Can I Still Eat It?”

Turns out being good is hard. Even Schur admits that 80% of the time when faced with a morally problematic issue the decision is never perfect. But 20% of the time, if you're thinking about it with some rigour, there is the realization that “Oh, you know what? This other thing I could do is just slightly better so I'm going to do that instead.” There are no hard and fast rules, but there's value in the thinking.

Also, I did not realize how many permutations of runaway trolleys and unwitting victims there are. Someone should really contact the trolley control board.

The pursuit of perfection is an impossible one, and that's something How To Be Perfect acknowledges: no matter how we strive for it, we will never achieve perfection.

We can, however, strive to be better. We can make better decisions that are grounded in moral philosophy and that bring us closer to being good people, however you may define that status.

As a primer on moral philosophy, How To Be Perfect can't be beat: it takes grand ideas and distills them into easily-understandable concepts. It compares and contrasts these philosophies helping us understand that our desire to be “good” can be interpreted in many ways and can lead to a multitude of oft-contrasting decisions.

In the end, being good—being perfect—relies both on circumstance and choices, and according to existentialism, choices are all we have in a meaningless world. I try to make the right choices every day, but I know I often fail. We all do.

All we can do is continue to make choices based our own philosophy of the world—guided by the moral philosophy that came before us—and hope that the decisions we make are good. Not perfect, but at least in its pursuit.

Funny and helpful overview of key philosophers and moral dilemmas we face each day. If you like Good Place, this is perfec

If you like shows like The Office (U.S.) and The Good Place, you will love the sense of humor in this. (I have not seen Parks & Rec yet, but that is on our list once Matt and I finish 30 Rock.) I laughed out loud a lot, because it turns out Kant is kind of ridiculous and Schur presents him as kind of a stick in the mud, and also one would hope that a seasoned comedy writer would be funny, and he is.

Schur manages to take a topic that I have little interest in (navel-gazing erm, philosophy) and presents a whole bunch of different people's attitudes toward it (utilitarianism! the golden mean! existentialism! which people should fear being hit by trolleys!) in a way that it's not only understandable, but somehow simultaneously hilarious and earnest about ways we can always do better at being human? Which, just today I told Matt that I wished people were better, also very earnestly, and Matt is now well on his way since I put this book in his nightstand book stack! (jk he's already a way better person than I am, but he will still enjoy this book as much as I did, and also he bought it for me for Valentine's Day but he told me he wanted to read it when I was done.)

Truly a delight. I highly recommend listening to it. I loved it so much I purchased both a hard copy and the Audible version. Great overview of basic moral philosophy and applications. One I will read again and again.