Special Episode: Pamela Hieronymi, Philosopher and Consultant on The Good Place!

Yet another “insider” conversation with someone from the Good Place team! Pamela Hieronymi is a philosophy professor at UCLA with whom Michael Schur spoke early on in the show’s development. Pamela talks with Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett about some of the moral emotions, like envy, resentment, and blame; whether one can in fact try to be good and whether some people have limits on how good they can become; reframing the matter to center another’s experience of being disrespected rather than the calculation of one’s own rightness or blame; what effect death or immortality have on our moral lives. We of course discuss contractualism and why Pamela thinks it is both the best theory and an inspiring one, despite its sometimes dense presentation in the works of modern philosophers. We get her take on Maimonides and teshuvah (repair as “return), the Torah covenant as compared to modern contractualism -- and the moral superiority of horses!

Visit Professor Hieronymi’s webpage

Some of her works:

• ”Taking Responsibility, Defensiveness, and the Blame Game” (2021 article)

• “Defensiveness, Making Excuses, and Blame Game” (2022 Lester Kissel Lecture in Ethics at Harvard, video)

• “Four Thoughts for Neuroscience of Decision-Making (2017 lecture on free will and science)
  

As we do frequently, we referenced this text:
Rabbi Moses Maimonides (Rambam),
Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1

What is complete teshuvah?
It is when the thing that you did wrong comes to one’s hand, and it is in one’s power to do it and one separates and does not do it because of teshuvah. And not from fear and not from a failure of strength/power/capacity.

For instance? If a man had improper sexual relations with a woman and after a time found himself alone again with her, and still loves her, and has the same physical capacity and is in the same city where he wrong with her, and separates and did not do the wrong thing — this is a complete ba’al teshuvah/master of teshuvah.

… and if one only did teshuvah in one’s old age or at a time when it was not possible to do what one had done, even though this is not an elevated teshuvah it is still effective teshuvah and that person is a master of teshuvah.