"How to be Perfect, The correct answer to every moral question" is a light-hearted, philosophy for dummies book by Michael Schur. Schur takes on many of the deepest questions facing mankind through the eyes of many of history's greatest philosophers. From Aristotle's virtue ethics, to Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mills utilitarianism, to Immanuel Kant's deontology, the author tries to answer moral questions. He moves on to Scanlon's contractualism, to African ubuntu, to Thich Nhat Han's mindfulness, to William James' pragmaticism, to Singer's selflessness, and even to Ayn Rand's egotistical selfishness. Throughout the book Schur provides cleaver stories and classic case studies, such as the run-away trolley. He often references a favorite TV series of mine that he wrote and created called "The Good Place." For example, Ted Danson asked the character Chedi (a Kantian rules based philosophy professor) "Has anyone told you what a drag you are?" Chedi responds, "Everyone, constantly." It becomes clear that no one can be perfect and in fact it is not necessarily a good thing. There are so many moral dilemmas and rules that one gets moral exhaustion. We look for little digressions but look out for the Overton windows. We don't want to become Atlas Shrugged or engage in "whataboutism". Schur finishes up with Satre's existentialism, Frank and the luck factor, and the effect of privilege on our ability to make good choices. He concludes that "nobody is perfect" and goes on to apologizing. How moral is good enough? The important thing is that we keep striving to be better. We owe it to ourselves and to others. "Try again, fail again, fail better."
