Book
How to be perfect : the correct answer to every moral question
Edition
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
Publication Information
New York : Simon & Schuster, 2022.
Physical Description
xi, 289 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Summary
"From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world. Most people think of themselves as 'good,' but it's not always easy to determine what's 'good' or 'bad'--especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people. Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like 'Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?' (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we'll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we'll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day."--Provided by publisher.
Notes
On jacket, title is purposefully shown as: "How to Be Perfec t" with the final letter on the next line (cover) or separated by an inch from the rest of the word (spine title).
Contents
- Introduction: a few questions readers might have, before we get started
- Part One: in which we learn various theories about how to be good people from the three main schools of western moral philosophy that have emerged over the last 2,400 years, plus a bunch of other cool stuff, all in like eighty pages. Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason? ; Should I let this runaway trolley I'm driving kill five people, or should I pull a lever and deliberately kill one (different) person? ; Should I lie and tell my friend I like her ugly shirt? ; Do I have to return my shopping cart to the shopping cart rack thingy? I mean... it's all the way over there
- Part Two: In which we take everything we've learned, and we start asking some tougher questions, and we use the stuff we've learned to try to answer them, and we also learn a bunch more cool stuff. Should I run into a burning building and try to save everyone trapped inside? ; I just did something unselfish, but what's in it for me?! ; Yes, I bumped into your car, but do you even care about hurricane Katrina?! ; We've done some good deeds, and given a bunch of money to charity, and we're generally really nice and morally upstanding people, so can we take three of these free cheese samples from the cheese sample plate at the supermarket even though it clearly says "one per customer"?
- Part Three: in which things get really tough, but we power through and complete our journeys, becoming perfectly virtuous and flourishing and deontologically pure happiness-generating super-people, and also there's a chapter with some cursing in it, but it's for a good reason. Oh, you bought a new iPhone? That's cool, did you know that millions of people are starving in South Asia?! ; This sandwich is morally problematic, but it's also delicious, can I still eat it? ; Making ethical decisions is hard, can we just... not make them? ; I gave a twenty-seven-cent tip to my barista, and now everyone's yelling at me on Twitter, just because I'm a billionaire! I can't even enjoy the soft-shell crab rolls that my sushi chef made for my private dirigible trip to the Dutch Antilles! How is that fair?! ; I screwed up, do I have to say I'm sorry?
- Coda: Okay, kids, what have we learned?.