Alain de Botton: taking philosophy out of the university and into everyday life

For most of the history of philosophy, the philosopher's task was not merely to explain the world.

Socrates asked how a human being ought to live. Epicurus investigated the conditions of happiness. Seneca wrote about anger. Montaigne tried to understand himself. Nietzsche interrogated our capacity to create our own values.

Alain de Botton is the most visible figure now attempting to revive that older conception of philosophy.

He was born in Zurich on 20 December 1969. He trained in philosophy and then chose books addressed to a wide readership over an academic career. With The School of Life, founded in 2008, he built a space in which philosophy, psychology, literature and art could be put to use in daily life.

The question is the same in every book: what use is a philosopher's thought in my life today?

Should philosophy belong to the university alone?#

De Botton's objection to academic philosophy is aimed at the discipline's growing technicality and specialisation. University philosophy, he argues, has for the most part drifted away from the problems of living that people actually care about; he levels the same charge at his own education at Cambridge.

The roots of that stance lie in The Consolations of Philosophy — in Turkish, Felsefenin Tesellisi.

In it, six philosophers are set against six modern predicaments:

Philosopher	Predicament
Socrates	Losing the approval of society
Epicurus	Money and happiness
Seneca	Anger and disappointment
Montaigne	The sense of inadequacy
Schopenhauer	Rejection in love
Nietzsche	Pain and difficulty

The claim is plain enough: philosophy should teach us how to live as well as how to explain living.

The self-help charge#

This is where de Botton is most contested.

His defenders say he has taken philosophy out of elite academic circles and put it into the lives of millions. His critics say what he has really done is turn philosophy into a species of intellectual self-help.

He largely rejects the charge. The trouble, on his account, is not the idea of “helping oneself” but its reduction to shallow and commercial forms. Greek and Roman thinkers also offered guidance on how to live — Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius can all be read in that light.

The difference lies in a single claim: to live well we need thought, not motivation.

The School of Life: philosophy acquires an institution#

Founded in 2008, The School of Life today offers writing, video and courses on psychology, philosophy, relationships and emotional intelligence, in various places around the world and online.

What makes the venture philosophically interesting is de Botton's attempt to re-establish philosophy as a practice of living.

The ancient schools are his model. Socrates' arguments in Athens, Aristotle's Lyceum, Epicurus' Garden: none of these was merely an institution for producing theoretical knowledge. They were practical communities organised around the question of how to live.

Behind that reading stands the work of Pierre Hadot, who examined ancient philosophy as a set of “spiritual exercises”. Hadot's thesis was that ancient philosophy was not a discourse but a way of life, and that the theoretical texts are only its residue.

De Botton's project is a contemporary application of that thesis: philosophy is a way of living before it is a profession.

Love, and the weight of expectation#

The chief reason for his hold on contemporary readers is that he does his philosophy through love and relationships.

In The Course of Love he argues that a romantic relationship is not only a field of passion and happiness but one of misunderstanding, expectation, disappointment and psychological transference.

His basic diagnosis: modern people load the romantic relationship with far too much expectation.

Love is no longer all that is asked of a partner. From the same person we now expect friendship, sex, trust, intellectual companionship, psychological support, an economic partnership and personal growth. Placing so many demands on one human being leaves the relationship fragile.

Why emancipation did not make things easier#

Marriages were once settled largely by family, class, religion and economic necessity. Modern people believe they choose their partners for themselves.

But the emancipation of choice has inflated expectation too. “A good marriage” will not do; people want to find “the right person”.

This is where de Botton's criticism bites. The greatest obstacle to romantic happiness may not be being with the wrong person but believing too firmly in the idea of the right one.

For there is no flawless partner. Everyone brings their own psychological troubles, their own history, their own misreadings. Every relationship is the effort of two imperfect people to learn to live together.

Loneliness, the price of freedom#

Modern society grants the individual a great deal of freedom. Where to live, whom to live with, what work to take up: these are decided by the person concerned far more than they once were.

But freedom has a price, and the price is responsibility for the choice.

A failed relationship can no longer be laid at the door of society, the family or fate. The modern individual is held to be the architect of his own life.

In de Botton's view this raises the psychological pressure, because one is forever measuring oneself against others: one ought to be more successful, to find a better partner, to do more meaningful work, to be happier.

Freedom thus turns, paradoxically, into a new machinery for manufacturing anxiety.

Status anxiety#

His most durable concept is status anxiety.

Modern society offers people, in theory, unlimited scope for advancement. The paradoxical result is that if everyone can succeed, failure is no longer read as fate but as personal inadequacy.

This is why modern people fear more than poverty. They fear other people doing better than they are.

Why the analysis is being read again is obvious. Social media platforms keep other people's successes permanently in view. Where one used to be measured against a handful of neighbours, one can now compare oneself with thousands of lives at once.

Status anxiety is going global.

Beauty as an ethical question#

In The Architecture of Happiness he treats building not as a technical activity of putting up structures but as a field that works upon human psychology.

A well-designed school, hospital, house or railway station is not merely beautiful. It also carries a message: “your life matters.”

Architecture therefore becomes, for de Botton, an ethical matter. Ugly and neglected surroundings can leave people feeling worthless; carefully designed spaces can strengthen the sense that ordinary life is worth something.

The idea at the centre: misreading oneself#

The concept that binds his various subjects together is self-knowledge.

Love, work, architecture, art, travel, money, success — all of them lead in the end to one question: how badly are we mistaken about ourselves?

A person may want to make a great deal of money when what he actually wants is respect. He may want fame when what he wants is to be loved. He may want to travel constantly when what he is doing is fleeing the life he has. He may look for a romantic relationship when what he is looking for is the security he was denied in childhood.

De Botton's philosophy is precisely an attempt to make these misreadings visible.

A Therapeutic Journey brings the same interest closer to psychotherapy. A distinction is needed here: de Botton is not a psychiatrist, and philosophy is not a clinical mental health service. What he does is put philosophical and psychological ideas to work in understanding daily life.

Can one be a philosopher outside the academy?#

By conventional academic criteria his standing is disputable: he does not publish in peer-reviewed journals and contributes nothing to technical debates.

Look at the history of philosophy, though, and the picture alters. Socrates wrote no books. Montaigne was not an academic philosopher. Epictetus' philosophy spread through lessons and the practice of living. Nietzsche moved steadily away from his university career.

Treating “philosopher” as nothing more than a category of academic employment is itself historically awkward.

De Botton's own choice is unambiguous: not an academic philosopher but a public one.

Popularising or flattening?#

Popularisation may carry a cost.

Nietzsche's difficult thought can be boiled down to the advice “be strong in hard times”. Epicurus can be turned into a philosopher who says no more than “take your pleasure”. Stoicism can be misread as “suppress your feelings”.

The line between popularising philosophy and simplifying it is therefore decisive. De Botton's work keeps that line permanently in dispute.

The debate over the digital archive of academic philosophy that we covered this month carries a similar tension: as access widens, can depth be preserved?

Why he is still read#

De Botton matters not because he has built a new metaphysical system but because he converts the everyday problems of modern life into philosophical questions.

“Why doesn't my partner understand me?” becomes a philosophy of love. “Why does my job make me miserable?” becomes the problem of meaning. “Why do I envy other people's success?” becomes the problem of value. “Why do I feel wretched in my own home?” becomes a problem in aesthetics.

His philosophy can therefore be read not as a rival to academic philosophy but as its public extension.

And the real question is still the old one: how should we live?

That it remains unanswered, for all the technological and economic upheaval of the modern world, may be explanation enough for why he is still read.

In Turkish#

Felsefenin Tesellisi (The Consolations of Philosophy), Statü Endişesi (Status Anxiety), Mutluluğun Mimarisi (The Architecture of Happiness), Seyahat Sanatı (The Art of Travel), Aşkın Seyri (The Course of Love) and Haberler: Kullanım Kılavuzu (The News: A User's Manual) have all been translated into Turkish.