MINIBAR: The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good (with Jennifer Kling)

Most of us know what it’s like to want to do something good and then, on realizing we can’t do it perfectly, do nothing at all. You put off calling a struggling friend until you can give them your undivided attention, and the call never happens. In this Minibar episode, Jennifer Kling pulls up a stool on her own to take a hard look at advice so familiar we’ve stopped hearing it: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Jen draws on Alexis Shotwell’s critique of moral purity and Iris Marion Young’s account of shared responsibility to ask when “good enough” counts as a real achievement and when it works as a polite defense of an unjust status quo. Along the way, she considers who pays for our compromises and why solidarity can’t wait for any of us to become perfect allies. Grab a drink and join Jen as she makes the case for the imperfect phone call.

In this episode, we discuss the following thinkers, ideas, texts, etc.:

• Voltaire
• Ideal and nonideal theory [link needed]
• Alexis Shotwell, Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times
• Solidarity
• Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice
• Utilitarianism and consequentialism
• Moral demandingness
• Special obligations

Further reading:

• Samuel Moyn, “The Ethics of Coalition-Building,” Dissent (Summer 2021)