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The Consolations Of Philosophy

Alain De Botton

Perspectives of 7 philosophers from 7 ages, starting with Socrates and ending with Nieztche. Each chapter is structured around a shortcoming and the philosophy that can help you make peace with it.

1. Consolation for unpopularity

Examines the life and teachings of Socrates, who was condemned to death by a jury for practicing philosophy. He is unyielding and greets his fate with equanimity.

“In conversations, my priority was to be liked, rather than to speak the truth. A desire to please led me to laugh. With strangers, I adopted a servile manner out of a desire for affection. I did not publicly doubt ideas to which the majority was committed. I sought the approval of figures of authority … and worried whether they thought me acceptable.”

We have an internal sense that, “societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time.”

“Rich people could be admirable, but this depended on how their wealth had been acquired, just as poverty could not by itself reveal anything of the moral worth of an individual.”

Arriving at good ethical ideas belongs to “a troublesome class of superficially simple but inherently complex activities. Socrates encourages us not to be unnerved by the confidence of people who fail to respect this complexity… What is declared obvious rarely is so.”

“The product of thought is superior to the product of intuition.”

Knowledge involves not only knowing why something is true, but also why its alternatives are false.

“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.”

We seem afflicted by a tendency “to listen to everyone, to be upset by every unkind word and sarcastic observation. We fail to ask ourselves the cardinal and most consoling question: on what basis has this dark censure been made? we treat with equal seriousness the objections of the critic who has thought rigorously and honestly and those of the critic who has acted out of misanthropy and envy.”

“True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning. When we are making a ship, it is the verdict of those who construct triremes that should worry us.”

2. Consolation for not having enough money

Focused on Epicurus who thought a simple life lived among friends was more valuable than riches.

“Feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf.”

“We don’t exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care have the power to pull us from our numbness.”

“The desire for riches should perhaps not always be understood as a simple hunger for a luxurious life, a more important motive might be the wish to be appreciated and treated nicely. We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.”

“There are few better remedies for anxiety than thought. In writing a problem down or airing it in conversation we let its essential aspects emerge. And by knowing its character, we remove, if not the problem itself, then its secondary, aggravating charateristics: confusion, displacement, surprise.”

“If one thought rationally about mortality, one would realize that there was nothing but oblivion after death, and that ‘what is no trouble when it arrives is an idle worry in anticipation’.”

Epicurus’s list of what is an isn’t essential for happiness:

“Nothing satisfies the person who is not satisfied with a little.”

On why we buy luxuries and the effectiveness of advertising

“Objects mimic in a material dimension what we require in a psychological one.”

“It may be a Jeep we end up buying, but it was freedom we were looking for. It may be the fancy aperitif we purchase, but it was friendship we were after. It may be fine bathing accoutrements we acquire, but it was thought that would have brought us calm.”

“Advertising would not be so prevalent if we were not such suggestible creatures. We want things when they are beautifully presented… and lose interest when they are ignored or not well spoken of.”

“Mankind is perpetually the victim of a pointless and futile martyrdom, fretting life away in fruitless worries through failure to realise what limit is set to acquisition and to the growth of genuine pleasure. It is this discontent that has driven life steadily onward, out to the high seas.”

3. Consolation for frustration

Focused on Seneca, who was put to death on a whim by Nero in AD 65. He had from the first conceived of philosophy as a discipline to assist humans in overcoming conflicts between their wishes and reality.

“At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality. The collisions begin in earliest infancy, with the discovery that the sources of our satisfaction lie beyond our control and that the world does not reliably conform to our desires.”

“In the Senecan view what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like.”

On injustice

“We cannot always explain our destiny by referring to our moral worth; we may be cursed and blessed without justice behind either. Not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us.”

On anxiety

“Consider that bad things probably will occur, but they are unlikely ever to be as bad as we fear.”

On flying into rages at minor things

We’re told a story of Cyrus the great diverting the path of the Gyndes river as revenge for sweeping his horse away. The result was a summer’s work that broke the morale of his army and wasted the opportunity to expand his empire. Seneca explains such behaviour thus:

“Behind their readiness to anticipate insult lay a fear of deserving ridicule. When we suspect we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us.”

“The wise do not put a wrong construction on everything.”

“We should place a fireguard between the noise outside and an internal sense of deserving punishment. We should not import into scenarios where don’t belong pessimistic interpretations of others’ motives. Thereafter, noise will never be pleasant, but it will not have to make us furious.”

“We may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them, and it is in our spontaneous acceptance of necessity that we find our distinctive freedom.”

4. Consolation for inadequacy

Focused on Montaigne.

On education

“We readily inquire, ‘Do they know Greek or Latin?’… but what matters most is what we put last: ‘Have they become better and wiser?’ We ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. We work merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding and the sense of right and wrong empty.”

“Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment.”

“It is understandable to prefer to quote and write commentaries rather than speak and think for ourselves. A commentary on a book written by someone else, though technically laborious to produce… is immune from the most cruel attacks that can befall original works.”

“It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries. Statements which might be acceptable when they issue from the quills of ancient authors are likely to attract ridicule when expressed by contemporaries.”

“In my own climate of Gascony, they find it funny to see me in print. I am valued more the farther from home knowledge of me has spread.”

“A man may appear to the world as a marvel: yet his wife and his manservant see nothing remarkable about him. Few men have been wonders to their families.”

“It is a deleterious impulse to think that the truth always has to lie far from us, in another climate, in an ancient library, in the books of people who lived long ago.”

“It is tempting to quote authors when they express our very own thoughts but with a clarity and psychological accuracy we cannot match. They know us better than we know ourselves. What is shy and confused in us is succintly and elegantly phrased in them.”

5. Consolation for a broken heart

Focused on Arthur Schopenhauer. Didn’t pick up much from this chapter.

6. Consolation for difficulties

Focused on Nieztche.

In his early years he was influenced by Schoppenhauer and liked this quote from Aristotle: “The prudent person strives for freedom from pain, not pleasure.” But as he matured began to think of the avoidance of diffulties led to a timid, unfulfilled life.

“What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other.”

“The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment.”

“Ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms.”

“No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately… and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfilment.”

“Nieztche was striving to correct the belief that fulfilment must come easily or not at all, a belief ruinous in its effects, for it leads us to withdraw prematurely from challenges that might have been overcome if only we had been prepared for the savagery legitimately demanded by almost everything valuable.”

“Both Christianity and alcohol have the power to convince us that what we previously thought deficient in ourselves and the world does not require attention; both weaken our resolve to garden our problems.”

“Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad.”