Perfectivism is the philosophy of the future, with a fine track record of precedent in the Aristotelian and Enlightenment traditions; recent theoretical formulations for how to perfect one's intellectual processes appear in
Ayn Rand's work on cognitive and epistemic method, displaying her laser-like focus on the fundamental importance of systematic, contextual, hierarchical, orderly, efficient and economical
mental integration as the cardinal function of human consciousness. (See her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology ([1966] 2nd ed. 1990), and Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991) and Understanding Objectivism ([1983] 2012), for introductory and intermediate material on Objectivism's implicitly perfectivist method.) A perfectivist life is, in essence, an Aristotelian one; widespread adoption of such an ethos would (realistically!) lead to a society that would assuredly rate as
utopian by present standards. Moreover, Perfectivism is distinctive among other versions of perfectivism (Rand being a notable identical-similarity, however) in affirming a
genuinely radical individualism at the heart of a modern, post-Locke understanding of human nature, flourishing and rights. Will a more-or-less-apolitical 'Übermensch-ism' be the next frontier? Had Nietzsche been productive into (say) his 70s, would humanity have reached such a stage decades ago? (Short short answer: Yes!) Galt's Gulch social ethics, one might suppose, and something about the power of ideas to change society....