The Good Place and Philosophy

Dive into the moral philosophy at the heart of all four seasons of NBC’s The Good Place, guided by academic experts including the show’s philosophical consultants Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and featuring a foreword from creator and showrunner Michael Schur.

Explicitly dedicated to the philosophical concepts, questions, and fundamental ethical dilemmas at the heart of the thoughtful and ambitious NBC sitcom The Good Place, this book navigates the murky waters of moral philosophy in more conceptual depth to call into question what Chidi’s ethics lessons—and the show—get right about learning to be a good person.

Featuring contributions from The Good Place’s philosophical consultants, Pamela Hieronymi and Todd May, and introduced by the show’s creator and showrunner Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation, The Office), the book engages classic philosophical questions, including the clash between utilitarianism and deontological ethics in the “Trolley Problem,” Kant’s categorical imperative, Sartre’s nihilism, and T.M. Scanlon's contractualism.

It explores themes such as death, love, moral heroism, free will, responsibility, artificial intelligence, fatalism, skepticism, virtue ethics, perception, and the nature of autonomy in the surreal heaven-like afterlife of the Good Place. Led by Kimberly S. Engels, co-editor of Westworld and Philosophy, this book invites readers to deeply ponder these complex ideas.