35 - Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints”

This episode is about Susan Wolf’s 1982 article “Moral Saints.”

 You’re probably a moral enough person. But have you ever had that nagging feeling that you should be even better? That if you were really good, you would devote your life to the cause, whatever cause that might be? That you should become some kind of moral saint? 

People who devote their entire lives to being as morally good as possible are held up as objects of admiration, as a kind of saintly standard that the rest of us feel vaguely guilty for not living up to.

Susan Wolf says we shouldn’t feel bad about not being saints because no rational person should want to be a saint in the first place. In this episode, I explain her argument for why it makes more sense to be cool like Paul Newman than good like Mother Teresa.