History
Perfectionism, as a moral theory, has a long history and has been addressed by influential philosophers. Aristotle stated his conception of the good life (eudaimonia). He taught that politics and political structures should promote the good life among individuals; because the polis can best promote the good life, it should be adopted over other forms of social organization. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that the individual reaches perfection by exercising the will to power.
The philosopher Stanley Cavell develops the idea of moral perfectionism as the idea that there is an unattained but attainable self that one ought to strive to reach. Moral perfectionists believe that the ancient questions such as "Am I living as I am supposed to?" make all the difference in the world and they describe the commitment we ought to have in ways that seem, but are not, impossibly demanding. We do so because it is only in the keeping such an "impossible" view in mind that one can strive for one's "unattained but attainable self."
Stanley Cavell uses Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill as models of this view and detects strains of it in Rousseau and Kant as well. Hilary Putnam has also endorsed this idea and ascribes it to Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, and Franz Rosenzweig.
Read more about this topic: Perfectionism (philosophy)
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