Right after seeing and currently being mightily amazed with Alain De Botton for the Guardian Hay Competition (see my critique) and his power to interact by using a crowd about philosophy within a digestible way, I decided to read his book 'The Consolations of Philosophy'.

Beforehand Alain experienced introduced the novels Kiss and Inform, Essays in Adore and also the Passionate Motion, ahead of dropping the storytelling model with How Proust can change your lifetime. ADB has stored his religion in telling it how he sees it While using the Consolations of Philosophy.

As someone that likes a demanding study every so often I had been just a little sceptical relating to this ebook following examining that it had been to some degree dumbed down philosophy. But on the other hand I have often felt which the higher echelons of philosophical debate is stricken with an inclination to turn explained discussion into an workout in etymological prowess. The great thing about this book is De Botton cuts on the chase with fantastic clarity of which means mixing outdated assumed With all the anxieties of contemporary lifestyle.

I enjoyed his unapologisingly damaging impression of Friedrich Nietzsche and his impact around Hitler's Seneca philosophy anti-semitic ethos. His comparison of Socrates being an unpopular outcast who maintained his personal beliefs provides the reader hope of triumph beneath adversity and his Investigation of Seneca And exactly how his heartbreak philosophy may also help our own understanding of our personal romantic anxieties was nostalgically believed provoking.

Searching back as time passes philosophical believed has stimulated and therefore shaped the pinnacles of recent considered and unfold to more people who within a prior age would by no means have experienced the chance to understand from the great thinkers. Yet many of us imagine philosophy is only for the elite mainly mainly because they are still segregated by contemporary professors of thought who surface to surreptitiously conceal away from seeking to teach the masses like Alain De Botton is trying to try and do. Possibly It is pretentiousness, it's possible It truly is arrogance Or possibly they don't need to stick their neck out for want of failing a attractiveness contest like Socrates.