Michael Schur's How to Be Perfect is a humorous yet insightful guide on ethics, blending philosophy with everyday scenarios. Reviews praise its accessible, witty approach to complex topics and practical applications. Some criticize its light tone as overly simplistic. Overall, it's celebrated for making philosophy engaging and relevant.

Readers who enjoy humorous yet insightful takes on ethical dilemmas would relish Michael Schur's How to Be Perfect. Fans of Schur's TV show The Good Place or books like David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day and A.J. Jacobs's The Year of Living Biblically will find its blend of humor and philosophical inquiry particularly engaging.

How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur explores various moral philosophies through a humorous and accessible lens, synthesizing insights from Schur's work on The Good Place. From Aristotle's virtue ethics to Kant's deontology and Scanlon's contractualism, Schur examines these theories while embedding personal anecdotes. He concludes by discussing the complexity of moral actions and responsibilities in contemporary society, ultimately encouraging continuous ethical self-improvement.

Michael Schur

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “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”

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 2

How to Be Perfect Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Part 1, Chapters 3-4

How to Be Perfect Part 1, Chapters 3-4 Summary & Analysis

Part 2: “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”

Part 2, Chapters 5-8

How to Be Perfect Part 2, Chapters 5-8 Summary & Analysis

Part 3: “In Which Things Get Really Tough, but We Power Through and Complete Our Journeys, Becoming Perfectly Virtuous and Flourishing Deontologically Pure Happiness-Generating Super-People, and Also There’s a Chapter With Some Cursing in It, but It’s for a Good Reason”

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

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