Stephen Law

I found de Botton’s new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work in the bookshop at the Oxford Literary Festival on Saturday, so I bought it, and have now read it. It’s a series of essays on the theme of work, each chapter focussing on a different profession. The book is filled with black and white photos taken by a photographer who accompanied Alain on his travels around the world. I loved the photos. The essays are largely descriptive, peppered with lots of references demonstrating the vast range of de Botton’s literary, historical and philosophical knowledge. Chapter one describes the arrival of a ship down the Thames, which then unloads at Tilbury container docks. We get details of the ship’s course, some reflections on how little most of us know about how the goods we use daily actually get to our local shop from far away lands, and impressions of the vast scale of the facilities and their grandeur. De Botton ponders on the question: why people don’t come down and look at these ama...

Alain De Botton's new book is out. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is a another philosophical self-help treatise, or so it's been described in the Metro this morning (I am reading the free Metro on the bus). I have not read the book. It's kind of a bad time, I guess, for someone who does not need to work, at a time when many are being put out of work, to write about the pleasures of a 9-5 grind in the office. I am sure I read a columnist in the Times or Mail on Tuesday who also had a go at DB because DB has never had to work - the claim made was that DB inherited 200 million from his father. The Metro , on the other hand, says that while his father was eye-wateringly rich, DB's "money is his own". Hmmm, confusing messages. Especially for me, as I really want to revel in being pissed off and envious, and the latter report rather stands in my way. Anyway at least I can gloat over some reviews: Naomi Wolf wanted to hurl it across the room. The merciless D ...

Hear Alain de Botton defending himself against his philosophical critics (which would include me) on Philosophy Bites here . For my review of The Consolations of Philosophy in the Mail on Sunday go here . Note that, towards the end of the interview, Alain suggests that the kind of analytic philosophy I and other professional mainstream academic philosophers do (when I publish in journals) is largely a waste of time. For the most part, only the sort of thing he does (the more "literary" stuff addressing the problems of everyday living) is worthwhile. That's also implied by the book (see quote on back cover, 1st ed.). But then he says near the beginning of the interview that he was surprised when academics took him to task. He says: I was quite surprised. I quickly became aware that I had done a very bad thing, but it was unclear to me for a while what that bad thing is supposed to be. Surely he shouldn't have been that surprised? The problem many academics have with...

This review was published in The Mail on Sunday, back in 2000. (Was I too harsh?) Broken heart? Take some Schopenhauer. Frustrated? Try a little Seneca. Money-worries? Epicurus can help. In The Consolation of Philosophy, Alain De Botton takes a novel approach to popularizing philosophy, explaining how six different philosophers can help us in six of life’s darker moments. Consolations is tied to a new six-part Channel 4 TV series Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, also written by De Botton. Given the hype and the link to a TV series, the book is likely to be a best seller. But how good an introduction to philosophy is it? It does sound like a great idea. The market for self-help books is booming. And popularizing philosophy has become sexy, especially since the success of Sophie’s World. So why not mix the two together in one winning formula? But can Seneca and Epicurus really help us with our woes? The trouble is, dispensing practical advice on life’s problems is not what philoso...