Wednesday Nov 05, 2025
Perfection: what is it—and is it worth striving for?
Perfectionism is a striving for perfection, and as such has a bad reputation these days. Is that reputation deserved? Is perfection worth longing for, whether on the political level (where it may be thought of as “utopia”) or on the personal level? The answers hinge in part on the answer to another question: what is perfection? That question is the main focus of this rumination.
Perfection is sometimes understood as transcendent in that it is purified of the bad elements (such as illness, pain, and death) of the world. But maybe perfection is, instead, better understood as a mix of all the elements of the world—the bad ones included—in just the right proportions. Do either of those views of perfection make sense? And if the first of those—perfection as transcendent and purified of all that is undesirable—is unattainable, is it possible to be reconciled to a cosmos or “natural whole” that is forever a mix of good and bad, beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain? Would there be a place left for wonder in so flawed a world?
In the course of reflecting on those questions, I draw distinctions between what is practicable and what is desirable, redemption and reconciliation, and between seeing the cosmos as guided by the divine versus as unguided by God or gods.
This episode is divided into three parts separated from one another by brief interludes of flamenco music, and concludes with a two-minute coda.
Show notes:
[1] In the course of this episode, I refer to Christina Caron, “Perfectionism Is a Trap. Here’s How to Escape,” The New York Times, April 12, 2024, accessed online on Feb. 26, 2025; Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (Ballantine Books [Random House], 1968), pp. 208-09; and Drew Hyland, The Virtue of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Charmides (Ohio University Press, 1981), pp. 10-17.
[2] I am grateful to Douglas Den Uyl, Steve Griswold, Ryan Hanley, Annice Kra, Michael Prince, Lisa Griswold Robbins, David Roochnik, and Susanne Sreedhar for their comments on and discussion about this rumination. I am also very pleased to thank the “focus group” of Boston University students who kindly listened to an earlier version of this episode of the podcast and then gave me their feedback (individually and, on March 28, 2023, as a group). The focus group included William Chang, Quentin Clark, Vanessa Hanger, Andrew Jacobsen, Aishwari Krishna, Gabriel Libman, Rosalie Amber Looijaard, Ruska Mumladze, Caroline Wall, Alex Wecht, and Yunyang Zhou. I owe a particular debt of thanks to Vanessa Hanger, who not only participated in our meeting but also organized it.
The snippets of flamenco you hear throughout this podcast’s episodes are inspired by, and draw on, not only traditional tropes of the art form but in particular the work of Diego del Gastor (my teacher), Paco de Lucia (everyone’s teacher in modern flamenco), and Luciano Ghosn.
For more information about where I am coming from in this podcast as a whole, as well as the General Acknowledgements and the Dedication, please see “Philosophy on the Way” at: https://griswoldphilosophy.podbean.com/
Further reading (and listening):
The broadly philosophical literature on perfection and perfectionism is as vast as it is ancient, due not only to the importance of the concepts but also to their complexity and varying meaning. For a wide-ranging discussion of works that address the notion of perfection, see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, 3rd ed. (1970; rpt. Liberty Fund, 2000). I would also recommend Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen’s co-authored books Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005) and The Perfectionist Turn: From Metanorms to Metaethics (Edinburgh University Press, 2016). Have a look as well at Rasmussen’s helpful “Perfectionism,” Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, ed. Ruth Chadwick (Academic Press, 2012) 2nd ed., Vol. 3: 395-403. In a different vein, see Marina McCoy’s Wounded Heroes: Vulnerability as a Virtue in Ancient Greek Literature and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2013). For yet other angles on the topic, see Michael Sandel’s The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007); and John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002; rpt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Possibly helpful too might be “Philosophy, Imagination, and the Fragility of Beauty: On Reconciliation with Nature,” ch. 8 of my Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1999). As I prepared to publish this episode of Philosophy on the Way, I came across a relevant interview on “Why? Philosophical Discussions About Everyday Life” (a podcast hosted by Jack Russell Weinstein) entitled “When is Life Good Enough” (Jan. 12, 2025; https://philosophyinpubliclife.org/2025/01/12/when-is-a-life-good-enough-with-guest-avram-alpert/). His guest is Avram Alpert, the author of The Good-Enough Life (Princeton University Press, 2022). I’ve not read the book, but it sounds interesting. I also came across Iddo Landau’s intriguing Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World (Oxford University Press, 2017) and look forward to reading that book as well.
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