For a man whose name is immediately associated in the public conscience with philosophy and who has given the world books with titles such as ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’, Alain de Botton is surprisingly wary of being labelled as a modern day philosopher. When I asked whether he saw himself as a latter-day Plato or simply as a writer who drew upon philosophers and their writings, his response was immediate and emphatic stating that he was ‘certainly not just a philosopher’ and that his writings rely upon ‘film, art and architecture’ as much as they rely on philosophical tracts. Moreover, despite the fact that de Botton did a Master’s Degree in philosophy at King’s College London and began a PHD in French Philosophy at Harvard, he is at pains to distance himself from the academic definition of a ‘philosopher’, asserting that ‘according to the academic profession, I am not a philosopher’.
This denial of a particular academic background serves de Botton as it both allows him to write books which are self-professed in their attempts to be ‘relevant’ to modern readers and also serves his critics who are eager to dismiss him as a light-weight; peddling books which one Guardian reviewer described as offering ‘obvious, hopeless or contradictory advice culled from great minds’. This is a debate which de Botton seems more than ready to get involved with and to confront his critics in the press and in academic circles. He claims that his style of thinking and writing was partially inspired by his ‘deeply disappointing’ time at Cambridge University where he was ‘extremely badly taught’ by lecturers who had ‘lost their spark’. He was particularly anxious about the seeming inability of many academics to justify their own work and their derisory attitude towards those who sought to make fields of academic endeavour of interest to the wider public.
‘According to the academic profession, I am not a philosopher’
In particular de Botton see his ‘work as a response to the academic panic at the mention of being “relevant”‘. Indeed de Botton welcomes the challenge of making philosophy popular and relevant and thus seems to transcend traditional academic snobbery. One of the unifying stylistic themes of all his writings has been a willingness to put ‘great’ writers and thinkers (e.g. Kant, Stendhal, Montaigne) to work on the mundane concerns of modern living such as popularity, relationships and traveling.
Depending on your perspective, this tendency to intellectualize all of the modern world’s pitfalls with the help of long dead classical philosophers is either refreshing or purely gimmicky.
However, your reaction to much of de Botton’s work will ultimately depend on how tolerant you are of his energetic enquiries into the most banal aspects of modern life. This was evident in the reaction to his latest work ‘A Week at the Airport’ written following a week spent as a writer-in-residence in Heathrow Terminal Five. Upbeat as ever, de Botton described his time there as ‘great fun’ and characteristically described his observation of the workings of the airport as ‘an exercise in ethnography and anthropology’.
Inevitably, the more skeptical critics took a rather more jaundiced view of de Botton’s book dismissing it as little more than a PR stunt performed on behalf of BAA. This is essentially the question that lies at the core of de Botton’s writings: whether the places, routines and activities of the modern world are worthy of inspection and philosophical analysis. If the reader thinks they are then de Botton’s work is exciting, and at times even revelatory. If not, then the whole business becomes meaningless and a tad self-indulgent, leaving you to sympathize with Charlie Brooker’s dismissal of de Botton as a ‘slap-headed, ruby-lipped pop philosopher who’s forged a lucrative career stating the bleeding obvious’.
In the meantime de Botton’s ongoing success and popularity have meant that there is little need for him to defend his works and the thinking behind them. Instead he has been able to focus on what is perhaps the central idea of his work: the extent to which it is possible to live a ‘happy’ and fulfilled life. I use apostrophes because de Botton openly said that he was ‘uneasy about the notion of happiness’ and was ‘more attracted to the word consolation’. This preference of ‘consolation’ to ‘happiness’ is perhaps the nuance which sets de Botton apart from all the other cultural thinkers and trend spotters who endlessly dissect every aspect of the modern world.
‘Humans are inherently ungrateful creatures’
De Botton does not essentially believe that the modern world provides any more or any fewer opportunities for ‘happiness’ but it was simply the case that contemporary society had more time to worry about whether it was happy or not in way which our predecessors did not. Thus recognizing that ‘humans are inherently ungrateful creatures’, de Botton doesn’t seek to inform his readers how to become happy but rather to reconcile them to the disappointments and anxieties of modern living; to console them with the wisdom and thinking of those who have come before us.
De Botton’s constant enquiry into all aspects of the modern world and his endeavour to understand our reactions to it makes his books interesting. In a country such as England which is preoccupied to a great extent with the past and considers the present to be an altogether unfortunate situation, de Botton insists on revealing the profundity, and at times the beauty, of the modern experience. All the trappings of modernity have the potential to be explored and their greater significance considered; accordingly de Botton’s books include, amongst other things, meditations on the beauty of electricity pylons, the mystery of transport terminals and reflections on what it means to say ‘I love you’.
For de Botton, modernity is to be embraced rather than feared. Modern architecture is ‘a hobby and a love’ and he is involved in the project Living Architecture, which builds modern houses that are then rented out to members of the public. This is the niche that de Botton seems to be carving out for himself in the public mind: that of the casually intellectual optimist exploring everyday emotions and experiences and finding within them a kernel of philosophical consequence that reignites our interest for the modern world.
