Stuart Jeffries
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (Penguin)
Once, in Portugal, Alain de Botton found that he could not have sex with his
girlfriend. It could have been a humiliating moment, but, fortunately, a few
months earlier he had read the 21st chapter of the first volume of Montaigne_s
Essays. There Montaigne wrote that he had counselled a friend with a similar
problem. His friend had assumed he should have unwavering rational control over
his penis. What he needed to realise, advised Montaigne, was that impotence belonged to a broad range of sexual mishaps, neither very rare nor very peculiar. De Botton took this to heart
What is disturbing is that he needed the consolation of Montaigne. Yet such is
the tone of this short book, with lots of pictures, that it wouldn_t have been
surprising to turn the page and find photographs of two flaccid items, one labelled _My penis_ and the other _Montaigne_s friend_s penis_.
The book accompanied De Botton_s BBC series Philosophy: AGuide to Happiness and
is now in papberback. Its title echoes Boethius_s The Consolation of Philosophy,
written while the minor Roman philosopher was in jail awaiting trial and execution. It has taken nearly 1 500 years, but now, thanks to De Botton, philosophy offers more than one consolation. Socrates gives us consolation for
being unpopular; Epicurus offers consolation for frustration; Seneca helps us
with money troubles; Montaigne with inadequacy, sexual and otherwise; and Schopenhauer with a broken heart.
De Botton_s Consolations of Philosophy purports to be a self-help manual. It
consists of obvious, hopeless or contradictory advice culled from great thinkers
on how to overcome certain problems of existence.
First, the obvious. We learn from De Botton_s reflections on the life of Socrates that _we will best be rewarded if we strive instead to listen always to the dictates of reason_. If we need Socrates to help us arrive at this conclusion, we need more help than philosophy can supply.
Next, the hopeless. De Botton embarks on a shallow and perverse reading of Schopenhauer, here presented as arguing that when you_re ditched by your lover,
you shouldn_t take it personally as the rejector was only unconsciously respecting humanity_s essential drive, namely the will-to-life. But this is an
unconvincing argument: only if all romantic rejection can satisfactorily be accounted for in terms of the will-to-life can Schopenhauer be consoling. Worse,
even if we accepted that the will-to-life was at the root of all sexual rejection, reading Schopenhauer would not help.
The moral De Botton draws is this: _It is consoling, when love has let us down,
to hear that happiness was never part of the plan._ It is at least arguable that
the opposite is the case _ that this pseudo-philosophical appropriation of Schopenhauer only rubs salt into the wound.
Thirdly, the contradictory. In the chapter on Socrates, De Botton is in favour
of reason. Later, influenced by Montaigne, he decides, _Misplaced confidence in
reason is the wellspring of idiocy._ In philosophy heaven, Socrates and Montaigne are still slugging that one out; down here, De Botton thinks they are
compatible.
De Botton is a Nietzschean recycler, insisting everything must be used in order
that we lead fulfilled lives. We must, he writes, _endeavour always to transform
our tears into knowledge_. Must we? Are tears only helpful to the extent that
they promote cognition? Is everything to be reduced to its use value?
Epicurus said: _Just as there is no profit in medicine when it doesn_t expel the
diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy when it doesn_t expel
the sufferings of the mind._
This quote would be justifiable if taken in the Wittgensteinian sense, whereby
the intellectual puzzles that cause philosophical suffering are to be therapeutically treated by the enlightened thinker. Here it shows only the uselessness of philosophy in helping us to lead the good life. Philosophy is at
its best when it doesn_t reassure, when it opens up the wounds that misplaced
consolation has healed.
When the first edition of Schopenhauer_s The World As Will And Representation,
one of the greatest and most disturbing books in Western philosophy, was published in 1819, it sold 230 copies. De Botton_s book, with its marketing hoopla, its attendant audio book and TV series, will sell many, many more. How
are we to be consoled for that?