We take perfection to mean flawlessness. But it seems we can’t agree on what the fundamental human flaw is. Is it our attachment to things like happiness, status, or security – things that are about as solid as a tissue? Our propensity for evil? Or is it our body and its insatiable appetite for satisfaction?

Four different philosophical traditions have answered this in their own ways and tell us how we can achieve perfection.

Platonism

Plato’s idea of perfection is articulated in his Theory of Forms. The Forms represent the abstract, ideal moulds of all things and concepts in existence, rather than actual things themselves. In short, the idea of something is more perfect than the tangible thing itself.

Take ‘red’ for example. Each of us will have a different understanding of what this means – red lipstick, a red brick house, a red cricket ball… But these are all different manifestations of red so which is the perfect one? For Platonists, the perfect, ideal, universal ‘red’ exists outside of space and time and is only discoverable through lots and lots of philosophical reflection.

Plato wrote:

He will do this [perceive the Forms] most perfectly who approaches the object with thought alone, without associating any sight with his thoughts, or dragging in any sense perception with his reasoning, but who, using pure thought alone, tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from eyes, ears, and in a word, from the whole body, because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it is associated with it.

In Platonist thought, the body is a distraction from the abstract thought necessary for philosophical speculation. Its fundamental flaw? Its carnal desires that shackle the soul.

Perfection for the individual, to sum up, is the arrival back to the soul’s state of pure contemplation of the Forms. This out of body state of contemplation is far from the idea of the perfect face and physique we often think about today. Indeed, a perfect physical form for Palto is impossible. It is all in the imagination.

Hinduism

In Hinduism’s Advaita school of philosophy, perfection means the full comprehension and acceptance of Oneness.

It’s when you realise your soul (or your atman) is the same as everyone else’s and you are all part of the one, unchanging, metaphysical reality (the Brahman). In this state of realisation, the always changing, material world of maya reveals itself to be an illusion and anything attached to this world, including your actions, are illusions as well. (There are parallels with this and the idea of Plato’s Cave, which is narratively conceived of in The Matrix.)

To attain this status of perfection, an individual must surrender to their caste role and perform that duty to excellence. No matter what they did, they would understand their actions had no effect on the Brahman and to believe so, was a trick of the ego. They focused on renouncing all earthly desires and striving to become completely detached from the world through the specific rituals of their caste role.

Krishna said:

A man obtains perfection by being devoted to his own proper action. Hear then how one who is intent on his own action finds perfection. By worshipping him [Brahman], from whom all beings arise and by whom all this is pervaded, through his own proper action, a man attains perfection … He whose intelligence is unattached everywhere, whose self is conquered, who is free from desire, he obtains, through renunciation, the supreme perfection of actionlessness. Learn from me, briefly, O Arjuna, how he who has attained perfection, also attains to Brahman, the highest state of wisdom.

By “actionlessness”, Krishna means the supreme effort of surrendering everything, including your own actions, so they become “non-action”. If everything is an illusion in the face of Brahman, we mean everything.

Christianity

A sainted bishop named Gregory of Nyssa classified perfection as being and acting just like God’s human form, Christ – that is, completely free of evil. Nyssa said:

This, therefore, is perfection in the Christian life in my judgement, namely, the participation of one’s soul and speech and activities in all of the names by which Christ is signified, so that the perfect holiness, according to the eulogy of Paul, is taken upon oneself in “the whole body and soul and spirit”, continuously safeguarded against being mixed with evil. Perfection lies in the total transformation of the individual. He/she must live, act, and essentially, be all that Christ was, meaning that, as Christ was God manifest in human form, completely free from evil, so too the Christian individual must sever all evil from his/her being.

While the Socratic ideal of perfection requires pure “abstract” thought, and the Hindu ideal requires sublimating individualism into Oneness, the Christian ideal requires cultivating the characteristics of Christ and expelling all that is unlike him from yourself.

Sufism

The Sufi scholar Ibn ‘Arabi had a concept of perfection that echoes the three discussed above. For him, perfection is the individual’s complete knowledge of the abstract and the material, leading to a prophetic (or Christ like) character.

Let’s break that down. He says:

The image of perfection is complete only with knowledge of both the ephemeral and the eternal, the rank of knowledge being perfected only by both aspects. Similarly, the various other grades of existence are perfected, since being is divided into eternal and non-eternal or ephemeral. Eternal Being is God’s being for Himself, while non-eternal being is the being of God in the forms of the latent Cosmos.

The beginning of the passage states that perfection requires knowledge of the eternal and the material. The eternal is God in Himself, and the non-eternal is the Cosmos, including humanity, who in striving for the perfection of the eternal, expresses it.

But Ibn ‘Arabi stresses neither of these knowledges negate the other. In fact, by learning only of the eternal, or only of the material, both would be incomplete since they are simply different manifestations of the same Being. Perfection, then, is not about negation – but continual striving to transformation. Onwards and upwards!

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Moral absolutism is the position that there are universal ethical standards that apply to actions regardless of context.

Where someone might deliberate over when, why, and to whom they’d lie, for example, a moral absolutist wouldn’t see any of those considerations as making a difference – lying is either right or wrong, and that’s that!

You’ve probably heard of moral relativism, the view that moral judgments can be seen as true or false according to a historical, cultural, or social context. According to moral relativism, two people with different experiences could disagree on whether an action is right or wrong, and they could both be right. What they consider right or wrong differs according to their contexts, and both should be accepted as valid.

Moral absolutism is the opposite. It argues that everything is inherently right or wrong, and no context or outcome can change this. These truths can be grounded in sources like law, rationality, human nature, or religion.

Deontology as moral absolutism

The text(s) that a religion is based on is often taken as the absolute standard of morality. If someone takes scripture as a source of divine truth, it’s easy to take morally absolutist ethics from it. Is it ok to lie? No, because the Bible or God says so.

It’s not just in religion, though. Ancient Greek philosophy held strains of morally absolutist thought, but possibly the most well-known form of moral absolutism is deontology, as developed by Immanuel Kant, who sought to clearly articulate a rational theory of moral absolutism.

As an Enlightenment philosopher, Kant sought to find moral truth in rationality instead of divine authority. He believed that unlike religion, culture, or community, we couldn’t ‘opt out’ of rationality. It was what made us human. This was why he believed we owed it to ourselves to act as rationally as we could.

In order to do this, he came up with duties he called “categorical imperatives”. These are obligations we, as rational beings, are morally bound to follow, are applicable to all people at all times, and aren’t contradictory. Think of it as an extension of the Golden Rule.

One way of understanding the categorical imperative is through the “universalisability principle”. This mouthful of a phrase says you should act only if you’d be willing to make your act a universal law (something that everyone is morally bound to following at all times no matter what) and it wouldn’t cause contradiction.

What Kant meant was before choosing a course of action, you should determine the general rule that stands behind that action. If this general rule could willingly be applied by you to all people in all circumstances without contradiction, you are choosing the moral path.

An example Kant proposed was lying. He argued that if lying was a universal law then no one could ever trust anything anyone said but, moreover, the possibility of truth telling would no longer exist, rendering the very act of lying meaningless. In other words, you cannot universalise lying as a general rule of action without falling into contradiction.

By determining his logical justifications, Kant came up with principles he believed would form a moral life, without relying on scripture or culture.

Counterintuitive consequences

In essence, Kant was saying it’s never reasonable to make exceptions for yourself when faced with a moral question. This sounds fair, but it can lead to situations where a rational moral decision contradicts moral common sense.

For example, in his essay ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives’, Kant argues it is wrong to lie even to save an innocent person from a murderer. He writes, “To be truthful in all deliberations … is a sacred and absolutely commanding decree of reason, limited by no expediency”.

While Kant felt that such absolutism was necessary for a rationally grounded morality, most of us allow a degree of relativism to enter into our everyday ethical considerations.

Conscience describes two things – what a person believes is right and how a person decides what is right. More than just ‘gut instinct’, our conscience is a ‘moral muscle’.

By informing us of our values and principles, it becomes the standard we use to judge whether or not our actions are ethical.

We can call these two roles ethical awareness and ethical decision making.

Ethical Awareness

This is our ability to recognise ethical values and principles.

The medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas believed our conscience emerged from synderesis: the ‘spark of conscience’. He literally meant the human mind’s ability to understand the world in moral terms. Conscience was the process by which a person brought the principles of synderesis into a practical situation through our decisions.

Ethical Decision Making

This is our ability to make practical decisions informed by ethical values and principles.

In his writings, Aristotle described phronesis: the goodness of practical reason. This was the ability to evaluate a situation clearly so we would know how to act virtuously under the circumstances.

A conscience which is both well formed (shaped by education and experience) and well informed (aware of facts, evidence and so on) enables us to know ourselves and our world and act accordingly.

Seeing conscience in this way is important because it teaches us ethics is not innate. By continuously working to understand our surroundings, we strengthen our moral muscle.

Conscientious Objection

In politics, much of the debate around conscience concerns the “right to conscientious objection”.

• Should pro-life doctors be required to perform abortions or refer patients to doctors who will?
• Must priests break the confessional seal and report sex offenders who confess to them?
• Can pacifists be excused from conscription because of their opposition to war?

For a long time, Western nations, informed by the Catholic intellectual tradition, believed in the “primacy of conscience” – the idea that a person should never be forced to do something they believe is against their most deeply held values and principles.

In recent times, particularly in medicine, this has come to be questioned. Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu believes doctors working in the public system should be banned from objecting to procedures because it compromises patient care.

This debate sees a clash between two worldviews – one where people’s foremost responsibility is to their own personal beliefs about what is good and right and another where this duty is balanced against the needs of the common good.

Philosopher Michael Walzer believes there are situations where you have a duty to “get your hands dirty” – even if the price is your own sense of goodness. In response, Aristotle might have said, “no person wishes to possess the world if they must first become someone else”. That is, we can’t change who we are or what we believe in for any price.

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Progressivism is a political ideology based on the possibility of moral progress. In practice, this looks like an optimism about the future of humanity.

Progressives believe the course of human history is moving us closer to a state of peace, equality, and prosperity. They also tend to believe in human perfectibility. Politics, technology, and education can overcome human failings to create a utopia.

We can see this in the work of philosophers Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer. Pinker says since the Enlightenment, altruism has been on the rise and violence is declining around the world. Shermer suggests each generation has been smarter than the last, which he believes, has continually reduced impulsive violence.

Hegel’s synthesis

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel believed moral progress was inescapable. He thought the forces of history shape humanity for the better, pushing it toward perfection.

Hegel believed history unrolled according to a “dialectical” pattern. This was where opposing sides clashed and compromised with one another. These opposing forces, which he called the “thesis” and “antithesis”, would clash before reaching a “synthesis”.

This synthesis would then spark a new antithesis and the process would continue. Hegel thought each stage in the thesis-antithesis-synthesis series moved us closer to a state of perfection. His work is said to have inspired other progressive thinkers, most notably communist philosopher Karl Marx.

The darker side of progress

Today, new forms of genetic editing promise a cure to a range of illnesses and maybe even death itself. Transhumanists believe we can overcome the limitations of our humanity and mortality. They suggest a range of options, from changing our biology to uploading our consciousness into a supercomputer.

But practical efforts to create this perfect world have not always been pleasant. At times it has been outright barbaric.

One example is the eugenics movement. It aimed to breed some people, like those with disabilities, out of society altogether, and cited social progress as their defence.

This is one reason why conservatives often urge caution around progress. They encourage us to be mindful of the potential unintended side effects of new policies or technology.

But progressives are often concerned this will inhibit life changing new developments. They suggest we deal with issues as they arise, rather than trying to predict them in advance.

Heaven on earth

Progressives often see education as the silver bullet solution for social problems. Like Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, they tend to believe all vice is the result of ignorance, not malice. They suggest humans are fundamentally good and education will bring out the better angels of our nature.

But some are sceptical whether education alone will fix all humanity’s woes. They agree humans are mostly good but don’t blame ignorance for evil. Instead, they see war, conflict and violence as the product of oppression and inequality.

Karl Marx believed conflict between the wealthy and the working class was a central theme in human society. He believed the power imbalance between rich and poor was bad for everyone. He famously claimed people would be better throwing away hierarchies based on class and wealth. Only when we’re all equal, he thought, will we be able to perfect ourselves.

English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft suggested the path to human perfection might require both politics and education. She argued that political change requires us to educate marginalised groups. Otherwise, any change will continue to exclude the groups already on the fringes of society.

This explains why more women and culturally diverse people have contributed to progressive thinking in recent decades. In the past, the leading progressive thinkers tended to be white men. Improved access to education has enabled a greater range of voices to contribute to the larger conversation of what a perfect world might look like and how we could create it.