Rapping with Socrates, a review of The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

The author's name is close to a common everyday word -- button or bottom -- but no, it is totally out of the ordinary -- "Botton," and with an exotic twist "Alain de." His style plays the same kind of trick with our minds -- deceptively seductive, tripping us up by making us expect the commonplace, and then showing us that the everyday world is anything but common and familiar.

He uses simple declarative sentences, laced with one- and two-syllable words. And the next thing you know he's giving you the essence of Socrates/Plato, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzche.

He doesn't talk down to anyone or parade his erudition. With turns of phrase that feel now and right and immediate, as if he were a high-paid writer of advertising copy for a major potato chip company, he gives us the straight scoop on life, the universe and everything. It's simply beautiful.

For instance: "There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are." (p. 23) With those words, he summarizes a main theme of Socrates/Plato. That sentence consists of just seven one-syllable words, and "reason." Direct, to the point, and utterly without pretense.

With a style like this, Alain de Botton could write about absolutely anything and I'd be fascinated. And in fact, he does write about anything -- from the contemporary culture of shopping malls to abstruse literature and philosophy -- all with the greatest of ease. His previous books included The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel (1994), How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), and two playful romantic-comedy novels On Love (1993) and Kiss and Tell (1995).

So how does a stylistic master of the frivolous, adept at uncovering the hidden humor and meaning in ordinary modern events and objects, like a Nicholson Baker or a Jerry Seinfeld, how does such a comic genius manage to produce a delightful a 244-page tour of Western philosophy? The bio blurbs on the covers of his other books just indicated that he was born in Switzerland in 1969 (the year I graduated from college), was educated at Cambridge, and lives in London. This book reveals that, in fact, "he is a director of the Graduate Philosopy Program at London University."

He punctuates his narrative with humorous pictures, many of them gleaned from contemporary life, and emphasizes the immediate applicability and modernity of the ideas and principles discussed. For instance, in the Socrates chapter we see a magazine cover in the midst of the text, "We lack a portrait of Meno, too, though on looking through a Greek men's magazine in the lobby of an Athenian hotel, I imagined that he might have borne a resemblance to a man drinking champagne in an illuminated swimming pool. The virtuous man, Meno confidently informed Socrates, was someone of great wealth who could afford good things."

Other times, he produces the same effect by inserting anecdotes from his own life.

He's like a modern Alexander Pope, using rhetorical tricks with professional skill. His juxtaposition of the ordinary contemporary reality and the most revealing and provocative thoughts of some of the greatest philosphers in history (restated so they feel natural and obvious) produces comic effect -- like Pope's "cabbages and kings." But de Botton uses this device not just for humor, but also to pound home the point that these "great thinkers" were men like us, with the same concerns and human frailty as us, and that their insights can help make our lives more fun, meaningful, and satisfying.

He's like a modern Socrates, taking us on a stroll through western history and philosophy, and poking at everything he comes across with questions that undermine every sign of self-satisfied pretense and with comments that go right to the heart of important issues. Never for a moment does he exalt his own brilliance, but rather reminds us again and again that we all have reason and can arrive at truth on our own -- without depending on the authority of "great men" -- if we simply have the self-confidence and discipline to think for ourselves.

Like Richard Powers, Alain de Boton is an "opus author" for me, meaning I'm totally hooked. From this point on, whatever he writes, I'll buy and read and probably delight in as soon as it comes out.

PS -- Consolations is now my favorite of his works, but How Proust Can Change Your Life is a close second. There Alain de Botton finds just the right word to subtly, humorously, and gracefully introduce you to a delicate and delicious way of looking at the world, of relating to people, and of living and writing. He illuminates the work of Proust while not seeming to. The style is conversational and light, rather than scholarly. There are no footnotes, no bibliography, no index. This is a personal appreciation, a delightful and idiosyncratic reading of everything that Proust wrote. The beauty of this book is in the details, how the mind works. He opens our eyes and sensitizes us to the world around us, helping us to see the world as fresh and new, just as he says that Proust does, and just as Proust says true artists do.

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