53 pages • 1 hour read
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question
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Part 2, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “In Which We Take Everything We’ve Learned, and We Start Asking Some Tougher Questions, and We Use the Stuff We’ve Learned to Try to Answer Them, and We Also Learn a Bunch More Cool Stuff”
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Should I Run Into a Burning Building and Try to Save Everyone Trapped Inside?”
Schur opens with the story of Jack Lucas, an American soldier who miraculously survived after shielding his peers from a grenade during World War II. He proceeds to question how good people are required to be, even up to the point of heroic perfection.
To further explore this issue, Schur considers whether it is morally necessary to run into a burning building to try to save the people inside. From a Kantian perspective, we may be required to enter the building, or we may merely send for professional help, depending on which universal maxim we apply to the situation. From a utilitarian perspective, it seems worthwhile to attempt to save multiple lives. However, this reveals another drawback of utilitarianism: the so-called “happiness pump,” which is a person who feels morally compelled to give up everything they have to make others happy. Schur links this with the idea of moral sainthood, as expounded by American philosopher Susan Wolf. According to Wolf, a person who is wholly devoted to serving those in need would miss many personal pursuits, such as art, sports, and hobbies, and risk becoming bland.
