Shopping cart
Your cart empty!
How to Be Perfect
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 2,400 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.
More Books from Michael Schur
Reviews
A ringing endorsement of Hawaiian pizza!
By Urjenebsheuehrbd
That is a lie. BUT, I read every single page up to the notes (bibliography) and the index. I read every footnote. I read the acknowledgements. I read it all (well, again, almost all). And you know what? I very well may read it again and here’s why… It’s good. Very, very good. The main purpose of this book seems to be to help make us all better people, with emphasis on “people.” I learned a lot, I laughed a lot, and I thought a lot. And, I don’t know about you, but those three things make any book utterly enjoyable. And, for what it’s worth, I hate reading philosophy and this book is chock full of it. (Also, that’s not like “hate watching the last 4 seasons of ‘Lost’” but rather I really HATE reading philosophy.) Hope this was helpful. Reading the book will be more so. Enjoy.
By mike_10009
What a great read Meaningful Funny And impactful
By Tjbrown2582
A fun, easily digestible way to look at philosophical ideas
By Discount Belicheck
Like some of the other reviews here, I went into the audiobook really wanting to embrace this work. Initially, I wasn’t disappointed. Schur chose very interesting subject matter (at least to me) and educates his reader in a well-organized, humorous and entertaining manner. He makes classic philosophy very approachable and he deserves credit for that. Unfortunately, and after getting more than halfway through, I began to find his proclivity to interject his own political and social beliefs into the work to be not only unnecessary but distracting. So I gave up, which is a shame because the frequency of such interjections are ultimately to the detriment of his work. He could’ve easily accomplished his goals and probably even appealed to a wider audience without such commentary. I’d like to note that I’m very moderate in my leanings and I usually welcome opposite viewpoints. But I found his proselytizing to be gratuitous, and I read books to escape that sort of thing.
By Robby Moo