Summary of Michael Schur's How to Be Perfect

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 We should not punch our friends in the face for no rea­son, but it can be hard to de­ci­sion what to do in such an ob­vi­ous situ­ation. We should consider why it’s bad to punch our friends in the face for no rea­son, and that might help us make de­ci­sions about what to do in less morally ob­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions.
#2 The first theory we’re going to discuss is called virtue ethics. It defines good people as those who have certain qualities that they’ve cultivated and honed over time. But we immediately wonder if there is a single way to define a good person.
#3 Aris­to­tle’s most im­por­tant work is the Nico­machean Ethics, which de­fines what makes a per­son good.
#4 Aris­to­tle’s ul­ti­mate goal for hu­mans is hap­pi­ness. He claims that hap­pi­ness is the thing we want to be, just… to be it. It has no aim other than it­self. It’s the top dog on the list of things we de­sire.

Sujets

• Topic

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9781669357230
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Michael Schur's How to Be Perfect
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

We should not punch our friends in the face for no rea­son, but it can be hard to de­ci­sion what to do in such an ob­vi­ous situ­ation. We should consider why it’s bad to punch our friends in the face for no rea­son, and that might help us make de­ci­sions about what to do in less morally ob­vi­ous sit­u­a­tions.

#2

The first theory we’re going to discuss is called virtue ethics. It defines good people as those who have certain qualities that they’ve cultivated and honed over time. But we immediately wonder if there is a single way to define a good person.

#3

Aris­to­tle’s most im­por­tant work is the Nico­machean Ethics, which de­fines what makes a per­son good.

#4

Aris­to­tle’s ul­ti­mate goal for hu­mans is hap­pi­ness. He claims that hap­pi­ness is the thing we want to be, just… to be it. It has no aim other than it­self. It’s the top dog on the list of things we de­sire.

#5

The virtues of a person are the aspects of their makeup that we admire or associate with goodness. The virtues of a knife are those qualities that make it good at being a knife, and the virtues of a horse are the horse’s in­her­ent qual­ities that make it good at gal­lop­ing and other horsey stuff.

#6

We all have the po­ten­tial to become vir­tu­ous, but not all of us ac­QUIRE it. We all have a po­ten­tial to be­come virtuous, but not all of us ac­QUIRE it.

#7

We must practice all of the virtues, and develop a habit of doing so, in order to flourish. We were not born with ap­ti­tudes for these things, but with the ability to develop them through ha­bit­u­a­tion.

#8

The an­cient Greeks were ob­sessed with the role of teach­ers in re­ shaping peo­ple from un­formed lit­tle goobers into the civic-minded, flour­ish­ing peo­ple they wanted them to be.

#9

The golden mean is the most im­por­tant cog in Aris­to­tle’s eth­i­cal ma­chine. It’s also, in my opinion, the most beau­ti­ful. And the most an­noy­ing.

#10

The search for virtue helps us understand what we like and don’t like about people. We can only find these golden means by practicing the art of find­ing them, by try­ing and fail­ing, and by eval­u­at­ing our suc­cesses and fail­ures.

#11

Virtue ethics helps us understand why certain actions are good or bad, and how we can improve our behavior. It gives us a clear picture of how we’re doing, how we can get better, and what we should avoid.

#12

The virtue ethics of Aris­to­tle are great for helping us ex­tract the good bits of our per­son­al­i­ties, even if we were raised with a strong predilec­tion to do what we’re told.

#13

The search for golden means is cu­mu­la­tive - the closer we get to one, the more it can help us in our search for oth­ers. We’ll un­der­stand and adapt to any new sit­u­a­tion, able to see and de­ci­pher the foun­da­tional code of hu­man exis­tence.

#14

When we only consider religious sins as the worst things we can do, we end up justifying horrible atrocities. If we elevate cruelty to the top of the worst crimes we can commit list, we can no longer find any loopholes.

#15

We have covered a lot of ground already! We understand that we shouldn’t punch our friend in the face for no rea­son, and we understand why that is. We also understand that there are times when our choices are not between (a) punch someone in the face or (b) don’t punch someone in the face, but instead between (a) punch someone in the face or (b) punch someone else in the stom­ach.

#16

The Trol­ley Prob­lem is an ex­per­i­ment that asks you to re­spond to the question, If you were faced with the choice of switch­ing a trol­ley that was about to kill five people, or one per­son, whom would you switch it off of. Most people say they would save the five con­struc­tion workers, re­flex­ively.

#17

The Trol­ley Problem is a series of booby traps that await us if we even slightly modify the orig­i­nal sce­nario. For ex­am­ple, we might not be the driver, but just an in­no­cent ob­server stand­ing next to the tracks where the track-switch­ing lever is lo­cated.

#18

The Trol­ley Prob­lem is so com­pelling be­cause our an­swers to the sim­ple ques­tion Is it okay to do this. vary widely with each dif­fer­ent ver­sion, even though the ba­sic act and its end re­sult is al­ways the same.

#19

The second Western school of philo­sophy is uta­ri­an­ism, which was de­veloped by British thinkers Jeremy Ben­tham and John Stu­art Mill. Ben­tham had many ad­mirable qualities, but he was also… let’s say, ec­cen­tric.

#20

Util­i­tar­i­an­ism is a branch of con­se­quen­tial­ism, which is the belief that the best ac­tion is the one that re­sults in the most good and least bad con­se­quences.

#21

The great­est hap­pi­ness prin­ci­ple states that if you’re act­ing only for your­self, go ahead and seek plea­sures however you want. But if you’re act­ing pub­licly, aim to spread as much plea­sure around as you can.