The Philosophy of The Good Place

‘The Good Place’ Season 3 Syllabus
What to read and watch before the acclaimed NBC sitcom makes its return
By Kate Knibbs Sep 27, 2018, 6:00am EDT

Here’s a Good Thing: The Good Place is returning for its third season this week. Mike Schur’s objectively perfect show has repeatedly demonstrated that trying to learn actually works, so it feels appropriate to study up before NBC’s brainiest comedy comes back. In its first season, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) morally improved herself under the tutelage of philosophy scholar Chidi (William Jackson Harper). In the second season, repentant, dandy demon Michael (Ted Danson) joined Eleanor and her friends in their quest for goodness. Whatever happens this season—I won’t even try to predict—now is the time to hunker down with fun study aids.

The Good Place is a highly literate show. One major reference: contractualist philosopher T. M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, which is featured in both previous seasons. It would be an appropriate pick for this syllabus, but I’m not including it for a simple reason: I haven’t read it, and I’m probably not going to read it. It’d be violating the moral spirit of The Good Place to pretend that I had read it in order to recommend it to you, so my bad. (This is also why I am not recommending A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume or Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant, which are name-dropped in the show. I’m sure they’re real corkers. However, I made a promise to myself when I was 22 and sobbing about how I didn’t understand Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit that I would never voluntarily read something so boring again. I’m not wavering now, dammit.)

Here’s what I can honestly recommend for The Good Place prep:
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre was the OG purveyor of the whole “hell is other people” story line. His existentialist play centers on three people damned to torture each other in the afterlife. No Exit is a quick, engrossing, horrifying read and an obvious influence on The Good Place, where four people are damned to torture each other in the afterlife. No offense to Sartre, but The Good Place is considerably less claustrophobic and harrowing... (continues)