** Gateway Drug Philosophy **
Most of us want to do the right thing most of the time, but outside of god, law, and politics, modern society offers little guidance on what that right thing is. Somewhere between virtue signaling and the gnawing truth that people are starving in Africa, it’s too easy to give up. The state of modern ethics doesn’t help, so How to Be Perfect offers an irreverent ethics 101 course with just enough distractions to keep a lay reader engaged.
I knew going in that I wanted to go deeper (and I have with mixed results), but Schur provides a useful introduction to ethics as a sub-branch of philosophy. Critically, before knowing any individual school, I want to philosophies fight in gladiatorial combat, pro weighted against con in a neat chart so that I can pick my ethical system like a dish at a restaurant. Schur delivers. He also takes inscrutable topics and keeps them light, such as Kant’s fundamental poem:
Act only out of duty to follow a universal maxim. Derive these maxims out of pure reason. Happiness is irrelevant.
Schur manages to get into enough details that the book is useful even if you’ve read an ethics book or two. Applying the Overton window to ethics is a useful lens, and How to Be Perfect isn’t afraid to take a stance in providing its own answers when appropriate. How should we help others? *The answer starts with Scanlon and then drifts over to Singer * What do we do when things we enjoy are morally problematic? * A fun little moral surprise: everything we love is terrible. * Most importantly, Schur invites the reader into the world of ethics and encourages further reading - exactly what a book like this should do.
** 72nd book of 2022 **