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

by Michael Schur

Virtue ethicists define good people as those who have certain qualities, or “virtues,” that they’ve cultivated and honed over time, so that they not only have these qualities but have them in the exact right amount.

But there is a way to escape the scourge of cruelty: knowledge. (Specifically: knowledge of cultural practices other than our own.)

initial phrasing of utilitarianism was that the best action is whatever makes the most people happy.5

problems with consequentialism boil down to, really—sometimes it simply feels like the conclusion we come to, when we tally up the total “pleasure” and “pain” resulting from a decision, just can’t be right.

Jim’s integrity has to matter,

Deontology is the study of duties or obligations.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

counts as using him as a means to an end—he would cease to be a person, and literally become a tool

“a shared willingness to modify our private demands in order to find a basis of justification that others also have reason to accept.”

“I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.”