How an Ancient Greek Notion of Goodness Can Help Us Live Right in the Modern Age
As the Anglo-Irish Writer Iris Murdoch Learned From Plato, by Overcoming Our Egotistical Desires We Can Find a Higher Truth
By swotting the classics of Western morality, can one learn to be good? Philosophy is having a pop culture moment thanks to The Good Place, a sitcom about people in a place that may or may not be heaven, which poses this burning question.
Viewers get to trace the inevitably perverse consequences that ensue when the characters act upon a particular moral principle. These principles are the work of a lineup of heavy hitters. Along with Plato, there is Aristotle, Hume, and Kant—batting cleanup, of course—as well as other perennial all-stars …
