PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksI’ve studied philosophy for decades and taught moral philosophy to college students, so I’ve never felt less welcome as a reader ... The distinctive Schur-twist (Schurprise?) of How to Be Perfect is, of course, comedy. The text is studded with riffs on philosophers and their theories, along with the occasional funny observation about contemporary life. The joking tone varies from playful absurdism to winking irony to hyperventilating histrionics, as if Schur were playing an improv game of \'yes and\' with himself ... these are all jokes, right? Schur’s just a funny guy, poking fun at the severe nerds. Maybe. I hope. It’s exactly this uncertainty that makes philosophy and any sort of comedy except the obvious and ham-fisted a difficult fit. Insofar as even the most basic philosophical reasoning is carried out by the valid connection of true premises, it’s difficult for readers to follow along when they’re never quite sure the presented statements are true — or at least taken to be true by the author ... Ironic humor allows a conceptual slippage and narrative disengagement that ensures the author cannot be critiqued and the reader may not need to feel challenged ... For all its comedy, How to Be Perfect isn’t solely, or even primarily, concerned with scoring laughs. Rather, Schur cares about the underlying topics and wants to share them as broadly as possible. His humor contributes to what is a remarkably companionable book, a text that invites the reader to learn, explore, and grow. He’s clearly spent years working through the details of philosophy’s complications to render it comprehensible for television viewers and nonspecialist readers. He does this, in part, by showing how these theories apply to his own choices, including some he’s screwed up. The text most fully succeeds when Schur-the-comedy-writer pivots to Schur-the-person. He reveals how he’s been shortsighted, haughty, and pedantic, and we learn from his example in a way we wouldn’t if we’d been presented with only the adventures of a carefully constructed ethical exemplar ... Except for the jokes, Schur’s summaries and applications of ethical theories are of a piece with those a reader might find in most any introductory ethics textbook. What a reader won’t find in those standards, though, is anything like Schur’s earnest vulnerability and willingness to open himself for critique to make a point, not just a joke. Such inclusion reminds us that ethics isn’t simply a field of abstract study but a set of tools to be used for getting through daily life without nagging regret and constant self-hatred ... With his careful attention to the complexities of moral life, development of a novel concept to explain one of our era’s defining features, and an unflinching analysis of his own character and foibles, Michael Schur has shown us something of how to be a philosopher, too.
