How to Be Perfect

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.