No doubt about it, philosophy is the new rock and roll, and Alain de Botton is its Colonel Tom Parker. The Consolations of Philosophy is the book of the Channel 4 television series, Philosophy: A Guide to Life, written and presented by de Botton, and is also available as an audiobook, read by the author. The book and the series set out to show us how a study of certain aspects of the work of certain philosophers can support us along the potholed road of life. De Botton fixes on six well-known thinkers - that is, their names are well-known - and extracts from their work some basic tenets that may be applied, not just to the debate with other philosophical systems, but to life as we live it in the world. Thus he finds consolation for unpopularity in Socrates, for poverty in Epicurus, for frustration in Seneca, for inadequacy in Montaigne, for failure in love in Schopenhauer - yes, really - and for difficulties in Nietzsche. Given the general public's unshakeable and endearing faith in the notion that we can be "helped" to achieve worldly success, find love, and have a trim waistline, The Consolations of Philosophy is bound to be a bestseller. And why not.
Alain de Botton, who is all of 31, is Associate Research Fellow of the Philosophy Programme at the School of Advanced Study, the University of London - whew - and is the author of three volumes of fiction, and the charming and highly successful How Proust Can Change Your Life; he also writes an entertaining column for the Independent on Sunday on what might be termed living philosophy, which was most likely the inspiration for this book and the television show. He takes a light-hearted but not unserious approach to his subject, and no doubt will cheerfully absorb the sneers of the academy. It is apparent that he knows his philosophy, but takes a refreshingly open and simple approach to it. To say that he wears his learning lightly would be an understatement; indeed, he does not wear it at all, but carries it slung over his arm like an old raincoat. As he says in his essay on Montaigne:
It is common to assume that we are dealing with a highly intelligent book when we cease to understand it. Profound ideas cannot, after all, be explained in the language of children. Yet the association between difficulty and profundity might less generously be described as a manifestation in the literary sphere of a perversity familiar from emotional life, where people who are mysterious and elusive can inspire a respect in modest minds that reliable and clear ones do not.
Anyone will be disappointed, then, who looks here for the thrill of grappling with great and barely comprehensible ideas and systems. Part of the pleasure of philosophy is the feeling that one is stumbling through a fog of ignorance made luminous by the sun of comprehension shining somewhere. Most people, and all philosophers, who read philosophy do so for reasons of epistemology or aesthetics, or both. The notion that philosophy should or could be relevant to ordinary living is certainly not a common Anglo-Saxon attitude. In our century, professional English philosophy has limited itself to clarifying a few definitions, and showing up certain nonsensical hypotheses; it has been a kind of higher hygiene. Russell and Whitehead sought to reduce speculative thought to mathematics - they failed - while Ayer and his followers were adamant that philosophy is a closed system, separate from lived life. As Ayer himself put it: "There is philosophy, and then there is all this - all of life!" Even David Hume, whose challenge to our ideas of causality is a stumbling block that still trips up the finest thinkers, threw up his hands before the implications of his own ideas, saying that "since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose and cures me of this philosophical melancholy . . . I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends."
Doubtless Alain de Botton would approve of Hume's Epicurean prescription for a quiet and successful life. He quotes Epicurus himself to good effect: "I don't know how I shall conceive of the good if I take away the pleasures of taste, if I take away sexual pleasure, if I take away the pleasure of hearing, and if I take away the sweet emotions that are caused by the sight of beautiful forms." In other words, Man may have a marvellous brain, but he also has a body, a fact that many philosophies overlook, and most religions deplore. But as another of de Botton's exemplars, Friedrich Nietzsche, never tired of pointing out, everything that we know of the world and of other people comes to us through the body. Indeed, the body-mind dichotomy has given philosophers more trouble than anything else, save perhaps the existence or otherwise of God. De Botton gives mordant recognition to this crux:
How problematic to have both a body and a mind, for the former stands in almost monstrous contrast to the latter's dignity and intelligence. Our bodies smell, ache, sag, pulse, throb and age. They force us to fart and burp, and to abandon sensible plans in order to lie in bed with people, sweating and letting out intense sounds reminiscent of hyenas calling out to one another across the barren wastes of the American deserts [hyenas - in America?]. Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms. Our whole perspective on life can be altered by the digestion of a heavy lunch.
It is to deal with and perhaps assuage the embarrassments and depressions attendant upon the predicament outlined here that de Botton calls upon the help of his six experts. He begins a little shakily. He accepts as true and full Plato's and Aristophanes's accounts of the death of Socrates, but these two were hardly the most reliable witnesses. Socrates may have been compelled to commit suicide because of his unpopularity among certain prominent Athenians, but many scholars, and, indeed, anyone who has paid any attention to the intricacies of public life, will doubt the simplicity and exemplariness of the story. De Botton is on firmer ground with Seneca and Epicurus, but when he gets to Montaigne he is wholly at home. The chapter on the great Gascon is probably the best thing in the book, and will send many new readers in search of the Essays. The two final sections, on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, are wonderfully provocative, and in places amusing, even. It would be hard to raise a laugh from Schopenhauer, but de Botton manages to elicit at least a wintry smile or two, for instance when he quotes the great pessimist on polygamy: "Of the many advantages of polygamy, one is that the husband would not come into such close contact with his in-laws, the fear of which at present prevents innumerable marriages. Ten mothers-in-law instead of one!" He is very fine, too, on Nietzsche's fundamental insight that the quietism of his former master, Schopenhauer, will lead not to Nirvana but to enervation. For Nietzsche, life is struggle, and rightly so; "What does not kill me", he declared, "makes me strong." Or as de Botton puts it, with characteristic mildness, making an analogy between our lives and the growth of a beautiful blossom from an ugly plant: "We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them."
Will you be likely to be helped by this book? That depends on the nature of your problem, and your capacity to think, and feel, and change yourself. It is a sad fact that philosophy has offered scant practical aid to philosophers themselves, even the six that de Botton chooses, if their biographies are to be trusted. As poor, lonely Nietzsche wrote in one of his notebooks, "And I, I too have tried to affirm - but ah". Helpful or not, Botton's handbook is a pleasure to read. And good writing, like good philosophy, is always a consolation.
John Banville is Associate Literary Editor and Chief Literary Critic of The Irish Times
Alain de Botton will read from his new book in Waterstones of Dawson Street, Dublin, on Tuesday at 6 p.m.