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How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"That makes How to Be Perfect one of the most accessible entry points to philosophical ethics available—in short, a very good place to start."
"[Schur's] chatty, informal, and often irreverent style does well to balance the serious inquiries."
"The joking tone varies from playful absurdism to winking irony to hyperventilating histrionics, as if Schur were playing an improv game of 'yes and' with himself ..."
"Moving both carefully and conversationally through progressively more difficult questions, Schur makes good on his promise to 'wade into some deeply confusing and painful applications of moral philosophy, stretching and straining and chewing on really tough questions that plague us in our daily lives, that cause us anxiety and anguish and often lead to loud arguments with our closest friends and family."
"He writes so well that this book might pull off the unprecedented feat of getting otherwise sane and healthy teenagers to read Immanuel Kant."
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