How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

“This book is an account of my own journey through moral philosophy, but it’s also about learning to accept failure—or really, to embrace it—as a necessary and beneficial by-product of our efforts to try, learn, and improve.”

Schur acknowledges from the outset that any personal journey through moral philosophy is bound to be fraught with difficulty, both in knowing what is right and in summoning the will to proceed through life accordingly. Reckoning with failure and shortcomings, then, is an integral part of the process of growth, and Schur models this process through his reflections on his own mistakes. As a well-known TV writer, Schur brings vulnerability and a layman’s perspective to a complex subject.

“That list is so long I snuck ‘politics’ in there three times without you even noticing, and you didn’t so much as blink when I claimed he wrote about ‘badminton,’ which definitely didn’t exist in the fourth century BCE.”

Here, Schur comes clean after sneaking a few jokes into a list of Aristotle’s accomplishments. This passage exemplifies Schur’s humorous tone that persists throughout the text, including his tendency to address readers directly in second person, his use of italics for emphasis, and his off-the-wall sense of humor. Readers aware of Schur’s work will recognize his writing style. Schur’s casual and humorous tone invites the reader to engage with the daunting subject of philosophy.

“It’s the ‘Simone Biles doing a perfect dismount off the balance beam’ of ideas.”

Here, Schur compares Aristotle’s golden mean to a perfectly executed maneuver by celebrated gymnast Simone Biles. This passage demonstrates Schur’s knack for pithy, fitting images and comparisons. In this case, the physical balance demonstrated by Simone symbolizes the need for similar balance and judgment in locating the ideal middle ground between any two opposing extremes of character.