A cure for what ails us

Christian Century, Nov 2, 2004 by Jason Byassee

Status Anxiety. By Alain de Botton. Pantheon, 320 pp., $24.00.

WHAT DO philosophers do? Do they, like other academics, get doctorates, publish for fellow academics, strive for tenure and advance up the academic ladder? Alain de Botton defines a philosopher not as an ambitious academic, but as one who asks hard questions. Why do people work? Why do we travel? Why do we love? And why do we feel so rotten when we have so much stuff? De Botton reminds fellow philosophers of the time when their discipline's founder, Socrates, wandered around asking people questions so basic to their lives that they should have known the answer, but often didn't. He surprises those not given to turning to philosophy for help in daily life by showing them it can be just that.

The snippet of a biography on de Botton's Web site informs us that he was born in Switzerland and lives in London. He taught graduate students at the University of London, but his writing success seems to have turned writing into his primary vocation. At 23 he published his first book, On Love, the beginning of a series of three dealing with love and romance in a hybrid genre--part novel and part essay. His The Art of Travel (2002) got at the question of wily our travels seem to disappoint us. Why do we voyage halfway round the world to stand, exhausted and bored, before ruins that seemed interesting in the brochure? Three more recent books deal with questions of philosophy proper, though in a form meant to attract a wide audience.

This is no small achievement in an age not given to reading of any kind, much less to reading philosophy. De Botton tries to help ordinary readers see in philosophy a resource for living well. For example, in his How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997) he gives readers Proustian insights on how to suffer, how to be a friend mad how to love well, sparing them the need to read Proust's massive novels for themselves. He borrowed the title of The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) from the great philosopher Boethius, whose work inspired much of medieval Christendom.

Haven't read Boethius? No problem--de Botton doesn't talk about him. Rather, he plugs the thoughts of specific philosophers into the holes we feel in our souls. Socrates can heal the aches caused by the lack of friends and the misunderstanding of strangers. Epicurus teaches us that we don't need as much money or stuff as our culture tries to make us believe--just enough to survive and carry on friendships.

Seneca is a balm for road rage, teaching us to expect the disastrous to happen and to respond with stoic reserve when it does. Schopenhauer is our medic for disasters in love. When rejected we must realize that a great life force determines to whom we will be attracted and who will be drawn to us--part of its effort to improve the human species by crafting better babies. So when she says no, she can't help it, it's the life force, don't feel so bad. Nietzsche teaches us to deal with suffering, for whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger (a line I long used in sermons, only later realizing it originated with the great atheist).

De Botton writes for those who don't expect to like philosophy. He deftly entertains them into sympathy with the lives and thoughts of the "great philosophers," whose work he mines for psychological insight. Unlike most philosophers (or professionals of any sort), he doesn't take himself too seriously. A discussion of Jacques-Louis David's painting The Death of Socrates is immediately followed, without explanation, by a picture of the chocolate milk de Botton drank in the museum's cafe. And unlike postmodern philosophers with French names, impenetrable prose and barely concealed misanthropy, de Botton seems genuinely to like people and has an uncanny ability to name the pressures that harass them. He contrasts Socrates' martyrdom to philosophy with his own engagement with others:

      In conversations, my priority
   was to be liked, rather than to speak
   the truth. A desire to please led me
   to laugh at modest jokes like a parent
   on the opening night of a school
   play. With strangers, I adopted the
   servile manner of a concierge
   greeting wealthy clients in a
   hotel--salival enthusiasm born of a
   morbid, indiscriminate desire for
   affection. I did not publicly doubt
   ideas to which the majority was
   committed. I sought the approval
   of figures of authority and after encounters
   with them, worried at
   length whether they had thought
   me acceptable. When passing
   through customs or during alongside
   police cars, I harbored a confused
   wish for the uniformed officials
   to think well of me.

De Botton, of course, has remedies for this overdependence on the opinion of others. His newest book, Status Anxiety, offers a historical response to why people in modern Western democracies feel so anxious when they have so much luxury compared to what even the wealthiest enjoyed in earlier ages. His diagnosis: Since we live in a supposed meritocracy, there seems no one but ourselves to blame if we do not amass as much stuff or as many accolades as our neighbors. We are just "losers," to use our culture's most "chillingly contemptuous word." We chase status as though it were a form of love, which it indeed seems to be. We desire from others regard, respect and a willingness to notice our viewpoint and count it important. We work to compete, acquire and show off--and some must lose.