Meet the Philosophers Who Give ‘The Good Place’ Its Scholarly Bona Fides

Every once in a while, Pamela Hieronymi fields a request from someone who wants to pick her brain about philosophy. The interlocutor is usually a creative type on a small project, maybe a graduate student making a movie. The email she got in October 2015 was from a TV producer who wanted to talk ethics.

Hieronymi, a professor of philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles, doesn’t watch a lot of TV, but she agreed to chat. Curious, she Googled the name of the producer: Michael Schur. You might not recognize the name, but you’ve probably watched one of his shows: The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He was laying the philosophical groundwork for a new sitcom for NBC, The Good Place.

The three-hour conversation that followed apparently made quite an impression on Schur. He wrote in a Reddit forum that consulting with Hieronymi and Todd May, a professor of philosophy at Clemson University, was “no joke my favorite part of putting the show together.”

It was the difference in perspectives, Hieronymi said, that prompted the two of them to hit it off.

“You have to be a special sort of weird to like [philosophy] in its pure form,” she said. “The way that it gets disseminated in a culture is typically through stories and narratives, so that’s probably what made the conversation so fun is that I have all this background and training in abstraction. I can’t do it by myself. But if you put me in conversation with someone who is skilled in narrative and storytelling, we can have a good time.”

The show, which went on the air in 2016, amounts to a Philosophy 101 course with a narrative arc and some jokes.

The premise: A woman, Eleanor, dies and finds herself in “the good place,” but she secretly knows she belongs in the other place. So she confides in a fellow afterlife-dweller, Chidi, who happens to have been a professor of moral philosophy. He decides to teach her to be good.

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In doing so, he introduces her to seminal philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Kierkegaard. Philosophy talk — both serious and humorous — ensues. “Who died and made Aristotle the king of ethics?” Eleanor asks. “Plato,” Chidi deadpans.

Hieronymi and May don’t provide plot points or contribute writing, they told The Chronicle — they are surprised by the same plot twists as the audience is — but they did have long conversations about philosophy with Schur.

For example, Eleanor at one point struggles with the idea of innate human goodness. That’s a topic the 18th-century philosopher David Hume addressed, and May discussed it with Schur.

May got involved in the show’s second season because one of the writers was reading his book Death: The Art of Living (Routledge, 2014). The book was featured briefly in one episode, and May said he saw its sales climb. (Hieronymi’s name appears on a chalkboard in another scene.)

For him, The Good Place offers a fuller view of how philosophy can function in the world.

“Here, what we have is people grappling with some of the philosophical complexities in the context of the very rich scenario in which their lives are unfolding,” he said. “That introduces the real complexities of being in moral situations that often might get lost if you’re working with a three-sentence thought experiment.”

Trying to Be Good

Hieronymi suspects that Schur reached out to her on the basis of work on her website that wrestles with the possibility of being good by trying to be good. That idea was addressed early in the show’s first season.

She visited the set during the second season to give the writers what amounted to a seminar on “the trolley problem,” a classic thought experiment in which a trolley is hurtling toward five people trapped on the main track. The subject must decide whether to turn the trolley onto a side track, where it will hit only one person.

It’s not her favorite thought experiment, but it’s a crowd-pleaser, she said. And she was pleased with her audience there.

“It was like having some of the smartest, most focused, sharpest students you would ever want to be in a room with asking me questions and talking through this material in a way that’s very fresh,” Hieronymi said. “Again, because they’re trying to put into a narrative — and that’s not the way I think it through.”

Among the show’s fans are — surprise — philosophy professors. Steven Benko, an associate professor of religious and ethical studies at Meredith College, in North Carolina, said he had probably seen every episode six times. The curriculum of his “Religious Ethics and Social Issues” course is heavily influenced by the 25 episodes of The Good Place, along with readings that include works by Aristotle, Camus, and Hume. (May’s book, too, makes an appearance on the syllabus.)

Fans of The Good Place will tell you that part of the show’s appeal is its numerous twists, which inflect the characters’ motivations. Benko wants his students to experience those shifts firsthand. “There will be a penalty for spoilers,” he said.

Robin Zebrowski, an associate professor of cognitive science at Beloit College, said she planned to create an introductory philosophy course that will use The Good Place as the main focus.

In a philosophy course in the fall, she started talking about the show with a few students who asked her if she had seen it. She had, of course. Soon the enthusiasm spread among the rest of the class.

“Every concept I would want to touch on in intro could be explored through episodes of The Good Place, and then traditional readings paired with it so easily,” Zebrowski said. “It practically writes itself.”

The show’s second season was completed last Thursday, but it’s been renewed for a third. And both Hieronymi and May say they’re continuing to consult with the writers.

Chris Quintana is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.

Correction (02/07/2018, 12:20 p.m.): Steven Benko was initially misidentified as an assistant professor at Meredith College. He is an associate professor there. The article has been updated accordingly.