This is a book that I would not have read on my own. It is one of these books that came at the reader from various trusted sources.
While I enjoyed the show the Good Place, I was not
addicted to it. I had figured that a book on moral philosophy was worthy of my attention. I'm
glad I did because this is not Moral Philosophy for Dummies, it is much
more than that.
Michael Schur is known by the public because he created the
Good Place television series. The show is funny and entertaining, but it
also asks some uncomfortable questions as well as place its character in challenging
situations. Schur revealed early in the book that he had to do serious reading
and thinking in order to prepare himself for the task of writing the show. He wanted
to be thorough with his due diligence because he wanted to get the philosophy right.
He also had some high horsepower helps from some actual philosophers. I think
he, and the philosophers, did an excellent job of organizing the material and juxtaposing
the various schools of thoughts together in a very friendly and digestible way.
The learning curve for the book was not all smooth sailing, but it was very good.
He was able to ameliorate many problems with the very dense and obtuse parts of
moral philosophy. It is not easy to make Nietzsche or Kant accessible, but he did.
The book is split into thirteen chapters and three major parts.
the first part is the introduction to
the major schools of moral philosophical
thoughts. He asked some relatively
innocuous questions by way of giving examples of how these schools of thoughts
would resolve the conflicts created by the questions. These relatively innocuous
situations got the readers primed for what comes up later in the book, although
he did start by asking the classic thought experiment about the moral dilemma
of the runaway trolley in the second chapter.
He jumped in a little deeper in the second part of the book
as he attempts to untangle some of the knottier problems of moral philosophy by
discussing them and giving us more nuanced arguments from different schools of
thought. This is where Schur makes his greatest contribution, the problems and
potential solutions are explained in entertaining fashion as we were able to
understand where all these philosophers are coming from, the nuances of their
arguments, and how it all applies to us and our lives. There are no real heroes
and no real villains in this exercise, they are just there. The maddening part is that he tries to fairly
present the philosopher’s arguments when we are passionately falling on one
side or the other of the arguments, like all good humans. Schur does express
his opinions to us, which is what makes it interesting as a reader because this
makes the presentation more approachable. Schir is not just pontificating to the reader.
I agreed with some of his arguments, yet many times I did not.
The third part of the book is where everything falls together
or falls apart depending on your viewpoint. This is where we get into the
difficult moral questions and where context becomes very important in the situations
that are presented. These situations are classic moral philosophical
discussions and thought experiments placed in the modern context so that the
premises of the thought experiments are appealing to the contemporary
viewpoint. Of course, since Schur is a
successful comedy writer, his
discussions of the moral philosophical dilemma are peppered with funny asides when it gets too deep or too serious. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the
effort is appreciated.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I found myself underlining
certain passages and thinking about these thought experiments as my mind wanders
after I had put the bookmark in and put the book down. The philosophical arguments stick because
these arguments are all pertinent discussions that affects us and ultimately will
impacts our thinking as we navigate our way through the real world.
Even though I thought I would enjoy this book. I enjoyed it
a little more than I thought I would. One of the most important things about
this book is that the key points and important nuances of the schools of
philosophy were revealed to the reader without having the reader dive through voluminous,
extremely dense, and opaque outputs of the Greek philosophers, the Stoics,
Kant, Nietzsche et. al. This book gave the reader nuanced understanding of the
philosophies and more importantly, did the essential exercise of comparing the
schools of thoughts in a fair and provocative way. It got the reader thinking
about moral philosophy, even though neither the book nor Schur’s arguments for
his own beliefs are perfect.
