Date:
Location:
Watch this past event here!
In parternship with Harvard Book Store, we are pleased to welcome MICHAEL SCHUR to present his book, How to Be Perfect.
About the book
In 2005, Michael Schur’s fiancée was in a fender bender in LA, just as Hurricane Katrina was devastating New Orleans. When she received a claim for $838 from the driver for a barely perceptible scratch, Schur told the guy he’d write him a check for the amount if he agreed to donate it to the Red Cross. From there, the incident snowballed, with friends and family upping the stakes by agreeing to donate tens of thousands more on top of the $838—a viral campaign that garnered national media interest. At first they felt good about raising money for the victims of the hurricane, but eventually Schur and his fiancée started to feel sick. In an effort to figure out why, Schur cold-called philosophy professors to get their take. Their responses varied wildly: Shame can be good—it can affect change! Shame is bad—it’s unfair to put someone who is not at moral fault in a position of having to choose between something rightfully owed to him and a societal good that has nothing to do with the thing that is owed to him!
Schur was struck by how much reasonable people disagreed, so he dove deeper into moral philosophy. Out of this journey came the hit TV show “The Good Place,” and now this entertaining and edifying book. HOW TO BE PERFECT takes readers on a whirlwind journey through the thousands of years of ethics and Schur’s own voyage through moral philosophy, as he pokes fun at grandiose ideas, untangles philosophical knots, confronts moral quandaries, and works out a road map for how we ought to act.
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.
HOW TO BE PERFECT sets out to do for moral philosophy what A Brief History of Time did for astrophysics. (But with jokes!) And by the time the book is done, the reader will know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. He will be perfect, and all his friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, the reader will gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day. The hope is that – in a world of ever-increasing moral stakes and intense disagreement – HOW TO BE PERFECT will provide a foundation for all of us to consider our behavior and ponder how we can do better and be better to one another.
Learn more here.
About the Author
Michael Schur is a television writer and producer who has worked on shows like The Office, Master of None, The Comeback, and Hacks, and created or cocreated Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and Rutherford Falls. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jennifer, and their two kids, William and Ivy.