In fact, he dedicates an entire chapter, chapter ten, to talking about things or people we love and admire that turn out to be morally problematic in some way. Aristotle defended slavery, after all, and Schur doesn’t ignore that. He doesn’t hide the fact that most of these philosophers, particularly the ones from millennia ago like Aristotle, were not actually the greatest men.

One thing I particularly loved is how aware of social issues Schur is. I picked up on lots of references to the show, but also this book perfectly stands on its own you don’t have to have seen a single episode of The Good Place to get a lot out of this book. For him, we’re all on this ride together (though I hope it’s not a trolley). He asks us to ponder tough questions, and introduces lots of ideas we might not know about, but never talks down to us.

Schur manages to be both incredibly thoughtful and incredibly entertaining throughout this text. But best of all, the audiobook version is not only read by Schur himself, there are appearances from the entire main cast of The Good Place, plus philosopher Todd May. It’s one of my favorite shows, and so I was so excited about Schur’s philosophy-for-the-non-philosopher book. We are asked to think about issues in multiple ways, to question ourselves, and to push ourselves to do better every day. We see examples of difficult ethical scenarios (like the famous trolley problem, but also the idea of whether it’s right to take the shopping cart back to the front of the store, or leave it in the parking lot), and use each school of thought to answer it. In How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur, we examine the three major schools of Western philosophical thought - virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism.

How to be perfect book michael schur