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cblj_backupI'm not sure if you could really consider this review spoilery, since the book is nonfiction, but I'll cut it anyway. :D It's.....really really long.
Aside from having the coolest name ever, Alain de Botton is a pretty thinky guy. I haven't quite pinned down the purpose behind his books -- they're not really self-help, not really educationally oriented though they do educate, and definitely not fictional. They seem to be short meditations on various subjects (Love, Travel, and Proust are some topics of his other books).
To be honest, I think he has found the glorious secret to writing about Interesting Things and getting paid for it. He certainly deserves the pay. His books were recommended to me by [info]blythely; dearest, put your feet up and I'll do the cooking and dishes tonight. :D
The Consolations of Philosophy is a book about various philosophers and how their beliefs can help you through difficult times. The slim book is divided into six parts or "Consolations" that seem much shorter than they are: Unpopularity (Socrates), Not Having Enough Money (Epicurus), Frustration (Seneca), Inadequacy (Montaigne), A Broken Heart (Schopenhauer), and Difficulties (Nietzsche).
This seems simple enough, and in some ways it is. It's an excellent method for introducing the beginning student to some fairly advanced philosophy, and in addition it makes said philosophers interesting. It includes plenty of neat pictures, which is a new trend that I think should be encouraged. Both this book and Stealing The Mona Lisa, which I read for my thesis, had quite a few pictures inserted into the text, which made for a nice break from reading and kept me pretty engaged. So, you know, as an aside, text = good, text + relevant images = better. What is really impressive about the book, however, is that each philosopher, though dealing with a different issue, builds on the last; the groundwork laid by Sophocles becomes a part of the advanced and still difficult-to-understand Nietzschian theory at the end.
"Unpopularity" starts out with a painting of the Death (by state-mandated suicide) of Socrates, surrounded by his mourning friends. The friends are more or less incidental, in the end, because they are a small minority; de Botton explains to us that Socrates was much reviled during his lifetime because he questioned social norms. He was one of the first to examine "common sense" and see if it really was, well, sensible. I love that he opened with Socrates, because de Botton and I share a common belief in the Socratic school of thought:
His confidence had sprung from a more profound source than hot-headedness or bull-like courage. It had been grounded in philosophy. Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. [...] Such independence of mind was a revelation and an incitement. It promised a counterweight to a supine tendency to follow socially sanctioned practices and ideas. In Socrates' life and death lay an invitation to intelligent scepticism. (p. 7)
Reading about Socrates was familiar and comforting to me, even if I didn't pick up much I didn't already know. I'm a classics geek; I didn't expect to learn much new.
Nor did I learn much new from his explication of Epicurus regarding Consolation for Not Having Enough Money, for similar reasons. Still, it's good stuff to know. Epicurus is often mistaken for a hedonist, a man wholly given over to excessive pleasure. Not so. Epicurus believed that the goal of life was happiness, true, but he believed in achieving that goal through a very Socratic method: by examining in a rational manner our first impulses, instead of acting on them, and deciding by diagnosis what will truly make us happy.
Epicurus has never in two millenia been more relevant than today, when we are told every moment of our lives that consumerism -- bigger cars, new improved soft drinks, shinier clothes, better cinematic special effects -- is what will bring us joy.
Seneca follows hard on Epicurus, consoling us for Frustration. Seneca is a bit harder to grasp, but his philosophy still falls into step with his predecessors: he believes that we endure frustrations for which we have prepared ourselves, and are hurt the most by those we least expect. The goal of philosophy, Seneca believed, was to prepare us for the constant blockades reality strews in the path of our dreams.
Seneca addresses anger and the management thereof, particularly destructive rage -- which I think is especially relevant to online interaction. Anger, Seneca-via-de-Botton tells us, is not something that overtakes us, not some separate part kept locked away to emerge and conquer when we are frustrated. Anger derives from a basic error in reasoning: the assumption that we have the right not to be frustrated. We aren't overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied an object we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it. (p. 83) For example, wealth and privilege have the tendency to cause sharper tempers, because those for whom life has been easiest tend to be the least well-equipped to deal with it when it is not. They assume that they have the right to a level of service from the world which does not actually exist. For another example, you do not actually have the right to expect everything you read on the internet will be thoughtful, properly spelled, accurate, or polite; that is merely an assumption on your part, dependent heavily upon other, and often stupider, people. Dealing with trolls is much easier when one understands and accepts this.
I have to admit that the going got a lot tougher for me once we left the Greco-Romans and moved into France and Germany. The last three philosophers seemed to be more free-floating, less precise examples of the Consolations they were assigned to. Still, it was thought provoking.
Michel de Montaigne's consolation for Inadequacy is a peculiar one; he believed that we were far from the rational, serene creatures we aspired to be. Mostly, he said, we were demented, hysterical, gross, agitated souls. And yet, he posited, if we accept this to be so, we stand to discover our true adequacy. This is perhaps best applied to sexual inadequacy (one of the many Inadequate subtitles) wherein psychological impotence is most easily overcome by accepting and honestly stating to one's partner what the situation happens to be. In a broader sense, Montaigne says that "nothing that can happen to a man is inhuman", which is taken to mean that our failings are not abnormalities; if we embrace and strive to understand them, we may find not only ways around them, but whether or not it is necessary to find a way around them.
The subsection on "Cultural Inadequacy" is a brilliant refutation of racism, but de Botton's prose is spare enough that I'd have trouble condensing it any more than he does, so I won't try. But it is all the same.
I have to admit that I found the last two chapters rather messy, as though de Botton thought he had to have six Consolations and ran out of steam after the first four. This could also be that I lack any familiarity at all with German philosophy, by and large, whereas even with Montaigne I had at least some root understanding already. The problem with Consolation for A Broken Heart (Schopenhauer) and Consolation for Difficulties (Nietzsche) is not necessarily a lack of information or coherent presentation of it. Rather, the link between the problems at hand and the beliefs of the philosophers seems incomplete. It does provide an excellent introduction to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's beliefs as well as the events of their lives, however, and on that score is still interesting (if not completely effective).
As far as I can gather, Schopenhauer believed that we do not choose people who are the most personally compatible with us, but rather the best genetic material possible (in relation to ourselves; not necessarily the ideal universal genetic material). Bad decisions at the get-go are the cause of most brokenheartedness, and a rejection in love is not because of our person or our personality, but rather because the other party found us inappropriate as the second contributor for the production of a child. A few moments' thought on this, by me, brought up the issue of homosexuality, but of course it's possible to still judge another person based on their genetic potential rather than their ability to reproduce with us. In other words, even if two people could never have a biological child together, they can still recognise significant genetic markers in each other and will search those out over the markers of personality and intellect.
I'm not sure I buy Schopenhauer, however. But I do like saying his name. It's almost as cool as "Alain de Botton".
Nietzsche, as most people have been able to pick up over the years from various references, believed that suffering teaches us how strong we are, and tribulation gives us depth. Certainly it is easier to be merciful when one has been treated mercifully during some trial in the past, for example. Compassion for others' imperfections is easier when we have become intimate with our own and been accepted for them. That having been said, it's a weak thesis to build a Consolation upon, in my opinion.
Final Verdict: An excellent primer for some of the major philosophies of Western culture, a solid foundation in some respects on which to build a more satisfying view of life, and an amusing sojourn in the minds of great men. Nietzsche aside, I really enjoyed this book, and even the section on Nietzsche wasn't actually bad, just difficult to grasp the point of. It's not holiday reading, but neither is it so challenging that one can't read it on the bus. That's what I did, after all. Worth the price, in my opinion, though you may want to investigate it at your local library first.
Quotes:
One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe could result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one's life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? Perhaps because we don't believe that directing our lives is in fact complicated. Certain difficult activities look very difficult from the outside, while other, equally difficult activities look very easy. Arriving at sound views on how to live falls into the second category. -- p. 21
[Socrates] maintained faith in a philosophical project that had been declared conclusively misconcieved by a majority 56 per cent of his audience. [...] Errors in our thought and way of life can at no point and in no way ever be proven simply by the fact that we have run into opposition. What should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so. -- p. 29
We should not be intimidated by bad thinking, even if it issues from the lips of teachers of rhetoric, mighty generals and well-dressed aristocrats from Thessally. It sounded elitist, and it was. Not everyone is worth listening to. Yet Socrates' elitism had no trace of snobbery or prejudice; [...] the discrimination operated not on the basis of class or money, nor on the basis of military record or nationality, but on the basis of reason, which was -- as he stressed -- a faculty accessible to all. -- p. 33
One had to look more closely around the library, stand in the middle of the room and tilt one's head to the ceiling: in the mid-1570s Montaigne had a set of fifty-seen short inscriptions culled from the Bible and the classics painted across the wooden beams, and these suggested some profound reservations about the benefits of having a mind. -- p.118
Education: its end has not been to make us good and wise, but learned. And it has succeeded. It has not taught us to seek virtue and toe embrace wisdom: it has impressed upon us their derivation and their etymology. [...] We ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. -- Montaigne, quoted on page 153
The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands. -- Schopenhauer, quoted on p. 200
Many things that I would not care to tell any individual man I tell to the public, and for knowledge of my most secret thoughts, I refer my most loyal friends to a bookseller's stall. -- Montaigne, quoted on p. 148
The recipe for becoming a good novelist [...] is easy to give, but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed to overlook. One has only to make a hundred or so sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is necessary. One should write down anecdotes every day until one has learnt how to give them the most pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one's eyes and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or costume designer. [...] One should, finally, reflect on the motives of human actions, disdain no signpost for instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise for some ten years; what is then created in the workshop will be fit to go out into the world.
-- Nietzsche, quoted on p. 217
Aside from having the coolest name ever, Alain de Botton is a pretty thinky guy. I haven't quite pinned down the purpose behind his books -- they're not really self-help, not really educationally oriented though they do educate, and definitely not fictional. They seem to be short meditations on various subjects (Love, Travel, and Proust are some topics of his other books).
To be honest, I think he has found the glorious secret to writing about Interesting Things and getting paid for it. He certainly deserves the pay. His books were recommended to me by [info]blythely; dearest, put your feet up and I'll do the cooking and dishes tonight. :D
The Consolations of Philosophy is a book about various philosophers and how their beliefs can help you through difficult times. The slim book is divided into six parts or "Consolations" that seem much shorter than they are: Unpopularity (Socrates), Not Having Enough Money (Epicurus), Frustration (Seneca), Inadequacy (Montaigne), A Broken Heart (Schopenhauer), and Difficulties (Nietzsche).
This seems simple enough, and in some ways it is. It's an excellent method for introducing the beginning student to some fairly advanced philosophy, and in addition it makes said philosophers interesting. It includes plenty of neat pictures, which is a new trend that I think should be encouraged. Both this book and Stealing The Mona Lisa, which I read for my thesis, had quite a few pictures inserted into the text, which made for a nice break from reading and kept me pretty engaged. So, you know, as an aside, text = good, text + relevant images = better. What is really impressive about the book, however, is that each philosopher, though dealing with a different issue, builds on the last; the groundwork laid by Sophocles becomes a part of the advanced and still difficult-to-understand Nietzschian theory at the end.
"Unpopularity" starts out with a painting of the Death (by state-mandated suicide) of Socrates, surrounded by his mourning friends. The friends are more or less incidental, in the end, because they are a small minority; de Botton explains to us that Socrates was much reviled during his lifetime because he questioned social norms. He was one of the first to examine "common sense" and see if it really was, well, sensible. I love that he opened with Socrates, because de Botton and I share a common belief in the Socratic school of thought:
His confidence had sprung from a more profound source than hot-headedness or bull-like courage. It had been grounded in philosophy. Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. [...] Such independence of mind was a revelation and an incitement. It promised a counterweight to a supine tendency to follow socially sanctioned practices and ideas. In Socrates' life and death lay an invitation to intelligent scepticism. (p. 7)
Reading about Socrates was familiar and comforting to me, even if I didn't pick up much I didn't already know. I'm a classics geek; I didn't expect to learn much new.
Nor did I learn much new from his explication of Epicurus regarding Consolation for Not Having Enough Money, for similar reasons. Still, it's good stuff to know. Epicurus is often mistaken for a hedonist, a man wholly given over to excessive pleasure. Not so. Epicurus believed that the goal of life was happiness, true, but he believed in achieving that goal through a very Socratic method: by examining in a rational manner our first impulses, instead of acting on them, and deciding by diagnosis what will truly make us happy.
Epicurus has never in two millenia been more relevant than today, when we are told every moment of our lives that consumerism -- bigger cars, new improved soft drinks, shinier clothes, better cinematic special effects -- is what will bring us joy.
Seneca follows hard on Epicurus, consoling us for Frustration. Seneca is a bit harder to grasp, but his philosophy still falls into step with his predecessors: he believes that we endure frustrations for which we have prepared ourselves, and are hurt the most by those we least expect. The goal of philosophy, Seneca believed, was to prepare us for the constant blockades reality strews in the path of our dreams.
Seneca addresses anger and the management thereof, particularly destructive rage -- which I think is especially relevant to online interaction. Anger, Seneca-via-de-Botton tells us, is not something that overtakes us, not some separate part kept locked away to emerge and conquer when we are frustrated. Anger derives from a basic error in reasoning: the assumption that we have the right not to be frustrated. We aren't overwhelmed by anger whenever we are denied an object we desire, only when we believe ourselves entitled to obtain it. (p. 83) For example, wealth and privilege have the tendency to cause sharper tempers, because those for whom life has been easiest tend to be the least well-equipped to deal with it when it is not. They assume that they have the right to a level of service from the world which does not actually exist. For another example, you do not actually have the right to expect everything you read on the internet will be thoughtful, properly spelled, accurate, or polite; that is merely an assumption on your part, dependent heavily upon other, and often stupider, people. Dealing with trolls is much easier when one understands and accepts this.
I have to admit that the going got a lot tougher for me once we left the Greco-Romans and moved into France and Germany. The last three philosophers seemed to be more free-floating, less precise examples of the Consolations they were assigned to. Still, it was thought provoking.
Michel de Montaigne's consolation for Inadequacy is a peculiar one; he believed that we were far from the rational, serene creatures we aspired to be. Mostly, he said, we were demented, hysterical, gross, agitated souls. And yet, he posited, if we accept this to be so, we stand to discover our true adequacy. This is perhaps best applied to sexual inadequacy (one of the many Inadequate subtitles) wherein psychological impotence is most easily overcome by accepting and honestly stating to one's partner what the situation happens to be. In a broader sense, Montaigne says that "nothing that can happen to a man is inhuman", which is taken to mean that our failings are not abnormalities; if we embrace and strive to understand them, we may find not only ways around them, but whether or not it is necessary to find a way around them.
The subsection on "Cultural Inadequacy" is a brilliant refutation of racism, but de Botton's prose is spare enough that I'd have trouble condensing it any more than he does, so I won't try. But it is all the same.
I have to admit that I found the last two chapters rather messy, as though de Botton thought he had to have six Consolations and ran out of steam after the first four. This could also be that I lack any familiarity at all with German philosophy, by and large, whereas even with Montaigne I had at least some root understanding already. The problem with Consolation for A Broken Heart (Schopenhauer) and Consolation for Difficulties (Nietzsche) is not necessarily a lack of information or coherent presentation of it. Rather, the link between the problems at hand and the beliefs of the philosophers seems incomplete. It does provide an excellent introduction to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's beliefs as well as the events of their lives, however, and on that score is still interesting (if not completely effective).
As far as I can gather, Schopenhauer believed that we do not choose people who are the most personally compatible with us, but rather the best genetic material possible (in relation to ourselves; not necessarily the ideal universal genetic material). Bad decisions at the get-go are the cause of most brokenheartedness, and a rejection in love is not because of our person or our personality, but rather because the other party found us inappropriate as the second contributor for the production of a child. A few moments' thought on this, by me, brought up the issue of homosexuality, but of course it's possible to still judge another person based on their genetic potential rather than their ability to reproduce with us. In other words, even if two people could never have a biological child together, they can still recognise significant genetic markers in each other and will search those out over the markers of personality and intellect.
I'm not sure I buy Schopenhauer, however. But I do like saying his name. It's almost as cool as "Alain de Botton".
Nietzsche, as most people have been able to pick up over the years from various references, believed that suffering teaches us how strong we are, and tribulation gives us depth. Certainly it is easier to be merciful when one has been treated mercifully during some trial in the past, for example. Compassion for others' imperfections is easier when we have become intimate with our own and been accepted for them. That having been said, it's a weak thesis to build a Consolation upon, in my opinion.
Final Verdict: An excellent primer for some of the major philosophies of Western culture, a solid foundation in some respects on which to build a more satisfying view of life, and an amusing sojourn in the minds of great men. Nietzsche aside, I really enjoyed this book, and even the section on Nietzsche wasn't actually bad, just difficult to grasp the point of. It's not holiday reading, but neither is it so challenging that one can't read it on the bus. That's what I did, after all. Worth the price, in my opinion, though you may want to investigate it at your local library first.
Quotes:
One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe could result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one's life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? Perhaps because we don't believe that directing our lives is in fact complicated. Certain difficult activities look very difficult from the outside, while other, equally difficult activities look very easy. Arriving at sound views on how to live falls into the second category. -- p. 21
[Socrates] maintained faith in a philosophical project that had been declared conclusively misconcieved by a majority 56 per cent of his audience. [...] Errors in our thought and way of life can at no point and in no way ever be proven simply by the fact that we have run into opposition. What should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so. -- p. 29
We should not be intimidated by bad thinking, even if it issues from the lips of teachers of rhetoric, mighty generals and well-dressed aristocrats from Thessally. It sounded elitist, and it was. Not everyone is worth listening to. Yet Socrates' elitism had no trace of snobbery or prejudice; [...] the discrimination operated not on the basis of class or money, nor on the basis of military record or nationality, but on the basis of reason, which was -- as he stressed -- a faculty accessible to all. -- p. 33
One had to look more closely around the library, stand in the middle of the room and tilt one's head to the ceiling: in the mid-1570s Montaigne had a set of fifty-seen short inscriptions culled from the Bible and the classics painted across the wooden beams, and these suggested some profound reservations about the benefits of having a mind. -- p.118
Education: its end has not been to make us good and wise, but learned. And it has succeeded. It has not taught us to seek virtue and toe embrace wisdom: it has impressed upon us their derivation and their etymology. [...] We ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. -- Montaigne, quoted on page 153
The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands. -- Schopenhauer, quoted on p. 200
Many things that I would not care to tell any individual man I tell to the public, and for knowledge of my most secret thoughts, I refer my most loyal friends to a bookseller's stall. -- Montaigne, quoted on p. 148
The recipe for becoming a good novelist [...] is easy to give, but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed to overlook. One has only to make a hundred or so sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is necessary. One should write down anecdotes every day until one has learnt how to give them the most pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one's eyes and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or costume designer. [...] One should, finally, reflect on the motives of human actions, disdain no signpost for instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise for some ten years; what is then created in the workshop will be fit to go out into the world.
-- Nietzsche, quoted on p. 217
