The Good PLace (series)

Subject: Philosophy

Type: Series (fiction)

Creator: Michael Schur

Genre: Comedy

How long is it?

There are fifty episodes across four seasons. The average episode length is 23 minutes and 32 seconds.

Is it easy to understand?

The moral philosophy is well-explained and accessible.

Who is it for?

It is for teenagers and adults.

How recent is it?

It premiered on NBC in 2016 and came to an end in 2020.

What to expect

Aristotelian virtue ethics

Aristotle believed that there were certain virtues of mind and character, like courage or generosity, and that you should try to develop yourself in accordance with those virtues.
He said that character is voluntary because it is the result of actions which are under your control. This means that it is possible for a bad person to become good by doing good things, which leads Chidi to decide to help Eleanor become more ethical.
When Chidi teaches her about this theory, Eleanor says, “Who died and made Aristotle in charge of ethics?”
“Plato!” Chidi replies.

Michael Schur said that Aristotelian virtue ethics have supplanted The Good Place “in terms of what the show’s overarching statement about the world is”.

Kantian deontology and moral imperative

Deontology is the school of thought that there are strict rules and duties that everyone must adhere to in a functioning society. Being ethical means identifying and obeying those duties and the categorical imperative is the idea that those duties are not situational.

Chidi teaches this concept to his students.
Kant’s theories encourage Chidi and Eleanor to tell the truth, because the categorical imperative says that lying is wrong under all circumstances. Chidi also uses Kantian ethics in order to decide whether he should help Eleanor become a better person.

Moral nihilism

This is the idea that there is no point to anything because we all die eventually. This means that our actions have no significance.
Chidi turns to this idea at a certain point in the series and tells his students that this is the true ethical framework to follow.

Jonathan Dancy’s theory of moral particularism

“Moral Particularism” is a belief which questions the role of principles in ethics. Jonathan Dancy says that rules which declare certain things to be right or wrong in all situations cannot adequately account for the role context plays in ethics.
The theory comes from the observation that exceptions to moral principles are common, so the principles therefore cannot be accurate determinants of virtue.

Judith Shklar’s “Putting Cruelty First”

Michael Schur read this during season three and before the fourth season premiered, he said, “That essay really shook me, in the best way.”

In the essay, Shklar writes that cruelty is society’s main flaw and points out the cruelty of society’s punishment of criminals. The essay also discusses the best way to unify society with unbiased law.

It is likely that this essay played a key role in the writing of the final season, in which the point-based system of determining whether a person should go to the Good Place or the Bad Place is redesigned. The essay is also referenced in the episode ‘You’ve Changed Man’.

Tim Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other

Michael Schur said that this was “the book we kept coming back to” and that it had been “a sort of spine of the entire show”.

In the season one finale, Eleanor rips out a page from this book and writes herself a note.

In the season two finale, both Chidi and Michael (the character) mention the book.

Philippa Foot’s Trolley Problem

Trolley problems ask in what situations it’s acceptable to sacrifice fewer people to save more people.
Michael Schur brought in Hieronymi to talk his writers through trolley problems.

Chidi says there is no right answer, so Michael (the character) makes the trolley problem real in order to see how it plays out. He puts Chidi in a situation where pulling a lever to switch the trolley track would lead to one person being flattened, but doing nothing would kill five people.

Amusingly, as the trolley advances, it passes a movie theatre with the title ‘Bend it Like Bentham’ on display. (Jeremy Bentham was the father of utilitarianism.)

Peter Singer

In the series, Singer’s book The Most Good You Can Do can be seen on a table in Doug Forcett’s house. Doug is a character who hallucinated the Good Place while high on magic mushrooms. This led to his decision to try to live perfectly in order to get in. However, he has deprived himself of happiness as a result, drinking his own filtered urine and eating only radishes and lentils.

Schur explained Doug’s scene as “an attempt to say, if you indulge in any of these theories too much, if you go too far in any one direction, you’re in trouble”. This might indicate what he thought of Singer’s demanding ethics.

Consequentialism and utilitarianism

In consequentialism and utilitarianism, the basis for judgement about whether something is right or wrong stems from the consequences of that action – how much utility or good it accomplished rather than pain.

Chidi teaches this concept to his college students and to Eleanor.

Eleanor likes its apparent simplicity.

The Doctrine of Double Effect

Thomas Aquinas said that you can act in a way that has an immoral side effect as long as your primary intention is morally sound. This is called the Doctrine of Double Effect and it justifies several of the decisions made by the characters.

Moral Desert

The expectation of moral desert is that there is some kind of reward for virtue.

Eleanor is disappointed that she there was no guaranteed prize for moral acts, but she discovers that the answer might be related to our relationships with others.
She watches a video lecture that Chidi has given on the subject, which leads her to pay him a visit.

John Locke’s theory of personal identity

John Locke believed that personal identity is based on memories.
Chidi mentions the theory and applies it when Eleanor is struggling to retain her personal identity. In order to help her, Chidi recites her memories to back her.

Existentialism

This theory rejects the notion of a vague moral ideal, instead asking that individuals act with moral authenticity.
There is an episode based around Søren Kierkegaard’s theory of total freedom coming only through having absolute faith in yourself and life.
Chidi includes Kierkegaard’s ideas in a rap he writes in order to educate Michael (the character).

Moral Intuitionism

Moral intuitionism teaches three main points:

there are real objective moral truths which are independent of human beings
these fundamental truths cannot be broken down into parts or defined as anything other than moral truths
we can discover these truths by using our minds intuitively

My thoughts…

“Hell is other people” (spoiler)

This line comes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, a play in which three people are trapped in a mysterious room (hell) and fall into a strange love triangle. I think this is related to the Good Place because Michael, a neighbourhood architect in the Good Place, decides that the perfect way to torture people is to make them torture each other. He tells Chidi, Eleanor, Jason and Tahani that they have been placed in the Good Place, then watches them worry and argue when they come to believe that they are impostors. In fact, Michael had created a fake Good Place for them, which was actually the Bad Place (the show’s version of hell) the whole time. In this way, not only is philosophy referred to in the script, but the writers have also embedded it in the storyline.

Can you become a better person by reading moral philosophy? (Metaethics)

I think that learning about moral philosophy cannot make you a good person because I think most humans can intuit when something is clearly moral or clearly immoral, at least in day-to-day situations. In order to become a good person, one has to follow these intuitions; learning all the theory behind where these intuitions come from is not required.

However, The Good Place seems to suggest that learning about ethics can make you act more ethically. This is because Eleanor and Michael become more virtuous after Chidi gives them lessons in ethics. I would argue that although the characters use the philosophical theories in order to explain why their actions are good, the reason for those good actions is the characters’ willingness to do good. It may be that learning about moral philosophy has inspired this, but I think that the fact that they had the intention to become better people is what made the difference.

In the series, there is a point at which Michael is behaving bizarrely. Eleanor asks Chidi which of his philosophy books will fix him, but Chidi replies that Michael cannot be fixed with a book. I think this indicates that The Good Place is not claiming that education alone can change a person’s character. As well as this, a study by Eric Schwitzgebel conducted a study between 2007 and 2009 which did not indicate an association between moral philosophy education and an improvement in moral behaviour. According to him, books about ethics are actually more likely than other books to be missing from libraries. His research indicates that philosophy professors are more likely than other professors to hold certain views about what is right and wrong, yet are not more likely to behave in accordance to these principles.