The Consolations of Philosophy

I've owned this book for four years (a signed copy no less), and yet I've only just got round to reading it. I suppose this will be my first book review for around 10 years. I've never read this book before because I'd always been under the impression that it wasn't very important to my studies or relevant to my interests, and besides Socrates, I'd never felt much inclination to read the philosophers contained within it.

The premise of the book is that philosophy can be used to aid us in our regular, every-day, lived lives. It could equally be called "Problems of Life...and Philosophical Solutions", after which we ought to read "Problems of Philosophy" by Russell and this should be the way that we get into philosophy in the first place. `Tis strange that I read this quite accessible gateway book five years after beginning to read philosophy. It's a step backward with the promise of two steps forward.

I can't say I'm a massive fan of de Botton's style. Quite often this book resembles a diary or blog. It's a book review itself really, just an introductory commentary on the contributions of philosophers to normal life. I don't think the chapters are very well-titled either. It occurred to me that Socrates never really said anything about unpopularity and by calling the Socrates chapter "Consolation for Unpopularity" he implies that Socrates killed himself because he was unpopular.

I enjoyed learning about Socrates' trial. I didn't realise before that he had been sentenced to death by the narrow margin of 280 to 220, and that he was sentenced purely by majority vote, by the prejudices of idiots who had turned up on the day to see what was going on, and who had merely heard things about him. It is ironic that inferences which led to the majority verdict were the very sort of fallacies that Socrates had questioned and spent his later life pointing out to people.

I liked the chapter on Epicurus, and I may get hold of some of his works for closer reading. A good life (goodness in general, in fact), says Epicurus, can only be conceived with reference to the satisfaction of desires, comfort, taste and sexual desire. Philosophy is just the tool by which we come to learn what makes our life worth living (to which the answer could be "cake" or "heroin"). I've always construed philosophy as being synonymous with "truth" or "the practice of the study of truth", and gone as far as to distinguish the former "meaning of life" construal as "Not Philosophy". I think I would ordinarily proclaim an atheism towards there being a meaning of life. The early philosophers wouldn't have known it, but nowadays I think we can accurately determine what drives humans by studying evolutionary psychology. This doesn't go quite far enough though. All it tells us is what makes humans happy, what they strive to achieve, and it does not include the Epicurean principle that the point of life itself is to produce and experience happiness. That Epicurus is right is something that has been programmed into us by evolution. That is the only authority it has as truth, as the correct answer to "What is the meaning of Life?" It's not very much authority but then I can't really imagine how there could be a right answer to that question. This universe is primarily physical, secondarily psychological or phenomenal. We're observing the world through a lens, a lens that didn't have to exist. I don't think there would be "truths" about the meaning of life if there was no life, but there would be truths about the density of gold even if there were no gold. That is why we, as philosophers, are often stuck with intuition as an authority figure. If your intuition is that the meaning of life is XYZ, then I don't see why it isn't XYZ. Questions like that have true answers that correspond only to intuitions. It is what you make of it.

There are really two very, very different definitions of philosophy or applications of philosophical method. Many people know the word because of statements like "My philosophy on life is to live every day like it's your last." Typically I would class this usage as "Not Philosophy", but I suppose it does have a place and can be interesting. Many European departments have a distinction between Practical Philosophy (How to live, meaning of life etc) and Theoretical Philosophy (What there is, how we know it). Until now my philosophical study as focussed only on Theoretical philosophy. I've never even touched Practical Philosophy for a second. Although I've been interested in definitions of Right and Wrong, only so much as knowing "What there is".

Anyway back to Epicurus. He seems to think that one should go to a philosopher to ask "How can I become happy?" in the same way one would go to a doctor to ask "How can I become healthy?" I've never really understood why anybody would ask the first question. Isn't it obvious what will make you happy? I believe all of us could easily predict what would make us happy to a degree of 90%, and perhaps the last 10% could be provided by a psychologist. There are a few "tricks" one could use to become artificially happier by playing on the workings of the brain. Prospect Theory is the sort of subject that could surprise us about what would make us happy, as well as Evolutionary Psychology of course. But on the whole I refuse to believe that a person could really not know what makes them happy. People only do the things that make them happy so you might as well ask "What am I doing?" as "What would make me happy?"

Now i don't mean to say that Practical philosophy is pointless, but I really don't expect there to be many experts on it, least of all philosophers. Epicurus has some ideas about what pastimes are sufficient for happiness, and I am happy to read them and take his advice not because he is a renowned philosopher but because he is a person, older than myself, and a good candidate for somebody who knows what might make me happy. I could get advice almost as good as Epicurus' down the pub probably, but of course not worded nearly so well as him. The philosopher's real skill, one that cannot be easily taught, is not their wisdom or access to truth, but ability to accurately transcribe and describe what we all hold to be true already. To quote Orwell, "The best books, he realised, were the ones that told you what you already knew." It is a little sad that philosophy has advanced so much since Russell as to be quite often completely inaccessible to the lay person, but then there are also trickle-down benefits as well.

So what does Epicurus have to say? There are four things that contribute to a good, happy life, he says.

1. Friendship. "Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship."

Another thing he says is the following: "Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than hat you eat or drink: for feeding without a friend is the life of a lion or wolf."

I'm not sure how much I agree with this statement. I do like it though, and could even see it being used as an effective chat-up line.

I read elsewhere that humans, who according to evolutionary psychologists have the brains of Stone Age humans and have failed to evolve since then (or haven't had the time to do so), when they watch sitcoms or dramas or soaps on television, their brain thinks that they have actually been in the company of real people. This is also the reason why we become sexually aroused when we see pornography, our brains think we are seeing real people and have the opportunity to mate. The former truth explains the popularity of shows like Friends. People who watch friends typically don't have social lives like those of the characters, such an arrangement is probably quite rare in the West. But the show's makers somehow tuned into a frequency that we were all on, the desire to be surrounded by supporting friends our entire lives.

Epicurus' second factor is freedom. Now I'm not sure exactly what he means by this, and will research further in order to understand it. I don;t think he means freedom in the philosophical sense, but some form of self-sufficiency and independence, and lack of responsibility all seem to form his notion of freedom. Freedom from the rat race, from the bullshit (See Curb Your Enthusiasm for a parody of the bullshit I refer to: social customs and etiquette.). This seems to be the sort of life that many of us aspire to, even while hypocritically longing after more and more money. I remember watching an episode of High Stakes Poker. One of the players, a very successful online cash player said that they hadn't had a day off playing poker in 3 years. I suspect in that time he had probably made around $5 million or so. But what is the point of making that money, of working all day long in the prime of your life, to not spend the money you've earned? Similarly you get people who work 12-15 hours a day as stockbrokers or surgeons who appear to have got into a pointless existence of constant work. Maybe this sort of thing isn't as obvious to people as I thought it was?

His third factor of happiness is an interesting one: Thought. This is really a hard one to judge whether you have it as well. How much Thought does he think we need? How much do regular people think? I admit that I have been guilty of believing that many people fail to think. I'm reminded by Bertrand Russell's quote, "Many would sooner die than think. In fact they often do so." How fair is this assessment though? This is one of the questions I have always wondered about, and I do believe it can be answered. We can never really know whether other people think at all, or just give the impression of thinking occasionally. Sometimes I might read an author like Russell, or Descartes, and think that they must be so wise that I am one of the people that they would consider is incapable of thought. They might agree that I can reasonably look down upon underclass-types as being intellectually inferior, but they can look down upon me with the same perspective. I regularly look down upon as being intellectually inferior some people who look down upon me as being intellectually inferior (for example, Nietzsche: we'll come to him later). I'm not sure if I do this because it's the correct thing to do, or just because I know that nothing would annoy them more than knowing that I am doing it.

Epicurus' fourth factor appears to be standard desire satisfaction, some wealth and sustenance, and general lack of pain, food, shelter and clothing etcetera. He also believes that once you have the other three factors accounted for, being grossly rich or even moderately wealthy does not raise your happiness level whatsoever. I don't know whether this is really true or not. it probably is, but people fail to believe it. Collectively they might be said to be wiser than Epicurus. As Napoleon said, "The only person wiser than anyone is everyone."

Next we have Seneca's consolation for Frustration. The chapters on Seneca and Epicurus struck the chords most resembling B7 to me than any other. Seneca's "philosophy" seems to be "Stop complaining!" Learn to adapt to situations and don't be angry at what fate throws at you because there is no reasonable point to it. I think maybe evolutionary psychologists could find a reason for it, although I'm not sure what. Seneca thinks that anger follows from misguided beliefs we have about how the world should be, how it would better fit around our temperaments.

Seneca talks about a lot of issues that are close to my own heart, particularly with reference to Fortune, or The Lord Chance in another form. "There is nothing which Fortune does not dare." He stressed that we ought to once in a while appreciate what we have, because it is very easily taken away. "No promise has been given for you this night - no, I have suggested too long a respite - no promise has been given even for this hour."

"We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die.Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. Reckon on everything, expect everything.

That reminds me of Napoleon's quote, "I start out by believing the worst." Strangely enough, neither Napoleon nor Seneca come across as being pessimistic to me, but realistic. Seneca says, "If you wish to put of all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen." He is pointing out that worrying and anxiety are really pointless ventures. I feel that he would agree with Epicurus that life is for living, not worrying. Epicurus famously reasoned that there was nothing to fear from death because when one is dead one cannot experience anything negative. Neither of them have defeatist attitudes, but simply acknowledged that luck is a massive element in life, and that there cannot be joy without hardship too. He uses the analogy of a dog tied to a cart. It can either choose to walk with the cart or be dragged by it. Those who worry and complain are letting the cart drag them. At the cost of discomfort they are going the same way as they would have gone anyway.

Onto Montaigne, the chapter on "Consolation for Inadequacy". It's not really de Botton's fault but I found at this point the opinions of the philosophers he chose to write about began to diminish. Strange really, because I usually consider the more modern writers to be better than the Ancients. I don't think Montaigne really counts as a philosopher in any sense. He seems to just be pointing out that people aren't as great as they think they are. He talks about his erectile disfunction and regular bowel movements as if these make him and others inferior.

He does say some interesting things about cultural norms, how Frenchmen who traveled through Germany could not see the merit of a stove over a fireplace, and vice versa, that a lot of regular human action is made without reasoned thought going into it, but based on convention. He doesn't seem to be saying that more than Socrates if I'm honest, and a lot of his work is pure aphorism. He can be funny, but I wouldn't call Gervais a philosopher (maybe some Continentals would though). Montaigne questioned the truth of questions like "Is the fireplace really a superior form of heating?" and "Is it really barbaric for a person to eat spiders and insects?" Only a few years later Descartes was questioning the truth of everything. To question the former things is just commonsense really. Perhaps I am being a little too harsh on him, but I don;t think he really contributed anything that Socrates would not have said had he been present.

Next we come to Schopenhauer, quite a pathetic character. If you read a little about his life you can see where some of the negative connotations of what a philosopher is in the modern world have come from. He was arrogant and unpopular, and critical of everything. I don;t know why he didn't just kill himself: perhaps he thought it too important a responsibility to deliver to mankind his genius? Schopenhauer famously resented Hegel, who also taught at Berlin, because he was far more popular. Because nobody likes him or his philosophy, he comes to believe that the majority of the public are stupid. Even when he does begin to achieve notoriety he refuses to abandon his previously-justified belief.

Perhaps we shouldn't linger on his personality but consider more of what he actually said. I was intrigued a little about his theory concerning the "Will-to-Life", the force that commands humans and animals to try to reproduce in an endless cycle. He held the theory that any typical human will look for a partner that has the opposite traits to themselves for the reason that when they mate, the child they will produce will be closer to normal as possible. For example, if one has a big nose they ought to find partners with small noses attractive so that their offspring will have average-sized noses. He says that inevitably the Will-to-Life contradicts with the basic desires of the person, which is to settle down with somebody they actually like.

"A man in love may even clearly recognise and bitterly feel in his bride the intolerable faults of temperament and character which promise him a life of misery, and yet not be frightened away... for ultimately he seeks not his interest, but that of a third person who has yet to come into existence, although he is involved in the delusion that what he seeks is his own interest."

I found this interesting, but ultimately, it's false isn't it? It's demonstrably, empirically false, and I can't stand so-called philosophy that is so easily falsifiable. Science nowadays tells us that members of both sexes usually look for potential partners with traits that their own parents have, possibly because those traits have connotations for them with good parenting. Schopenhauer is just wrong, and I feel that there is little point reading much more of him. He portrays the human as being an animal constantly being acted upon by desires and impulses which aren't in their real interest, as if they don't really know what it is they do want. I think the comedian, Dylan Moran, gives us a better example of such an eternal impulse with "The Beast". The Beast is the entity to whom all humans report to when asking how best to spend their resources of time and effort. The Beast says to them "I want the things that are behind that locked door. But not just any locked door, guarded nonchalantly by security guards talking about last night's football. I want the stuff behind that door over there, guarded by men in black with Uzis. Get me that stuff. I'll have what they're having." The stuff behind the well-guarded door includes luxurious food, alcohol, constant sex with beautiful people, cushions and fine clothes and drugs, now and forever. We are a slave to the whims of The Beast, when we learn of some new extravagance, he pesters us forever until we get it.

Schopenhauer does follow some thoughts along these lines, viewing humans as stupid animals, trapped in meaningless cyclical institutions.

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error...the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment ."

I wonder if the differences between these practical philosophers, for example, Schopenhauer and Epicurus, is just a matter of a chemical imbalance in the brain that directly affects degree of optimism. Why is the notion that we exist to be happy an error? As I mentioned already, I believe the intuitions concerning the meaning of life are quite subjective, and Schopenhauer is free to posit any answer he likes. Both Epicurus and Schopenhauer correctly point out that our lives are governed by attaining certain comforts, but for one of them this is a good fact, and for the other it is a bad fact. Personally, it is a good fact. Schopenhauer doesn't mention much about the desire for knowledge, which clearly is one that he holds strongly. Perhaps he mentions elsewhere the pointlessness of intellectual pursuits owing to their inevitable tendencies to cause madness. Perhaps he did not see this, but instead actually did become mad, which brings us on to the final chapter on Nietzsche.

It might be a weakness of myself that I cannot agree with people that I do not like, even on matters that are not related to their likeability, as philosophy should not be. I have often noted that I do not like the music of people who I find to be unlikeable people, for example: Oasis, White Stripes, The Darkness, most bands that begin with "The" to be fair, and to some extent Bob Dylan. The reason I don't like them is that they are exceptionally arrogant, and I just don't think exceptionally arrogant people can make good music. Some of them can certainly play instruments well but that is not the same. Likewise, I don't think exceptionally arrogant philosophers have the ability to write good philosophy. The two really are related. Perhaps humility is a necessary condition for wisdom. Socrates was certainly humble. So I immediately find it doubtful that Nietzsche has anything interesting to say about anything when he pipes up that, "It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being.", and "I have a terrible fear that I shall be one day pronounced holy.", and that his work was "The greatest gift that has ever been given." False sir. Unsurprisingly it turns out that Nietzsche read and agreed with Schopenhauer. I wonder if there is much evidence nowadays that arrogance and depression go hand in hand. Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were rejected by women numerous times throughout their life, and both initially met with unpopularity from the general public. Perhaps their instinctive reaction was to think that they were too good for the world.

What do I agree with Nietzsche on? I agree with him that the best pleasures in life are not possible without periods of intense sadness. We are also agreed upon the evils of alcohol. I once met somebody who, when told that I was both a philosophy student and did not drink alcohol, immediately presumed that I was a student of Nietzsche, one of those pathetic students who wish they were Nietzsche themselves, borne out of complexes of inadequacy, beliefs about a world that does not conform to them, and the belief that they were born to be great. Thankfully no, although it appears that we do have similar reasons for not drinking alcohol. (I didn't have to get blind drunk first though) I do also agree with him on religion, and believe that he said some important things about it, particularly how Christianity glorifies failure, for example, praising obedience, faith, poverty, ignorance and loneliness. He could have even have got a few laughs of agreement on a present-day stage by telling the audience that forgiveness was really just an action that entailed being unable to get revenge on your opponents. But isn't he saying pretty much the same thing as Marx here? I think Marx is more famous for his criticisms of Christianity as an institution than Nietzsche, although I might be wrong, and I'm not sure on how much they cross over on.

In conclusion, I enjoyed the book. I don't know if I would recommend it to anybody, interested in philosophy or otherwise. I would probably only recommend it to people in the same position as myself, a decent education in theoretical philosophy but an ignorance of practical philosophy. I don't think this book would help anybody improve their lives, but then I fail to understand why anybody would need any advice. My "philosophy" has always been to introspect and discover what it is one wants to do or be, and then do it. It doesn't matter too much to me that those desires I discover might be the result of evolution or the commands of The Beast or the Will-to-Life. If none of those things existed then there wouldn't be any underlying truth about the meaning of life, so we may as well derive some pleasure from satisfying The Beast. I think the one philosopher I have learned from most from this book (other than Socrates on theoretical philosophy) has been Epicurus. I'm interested in reading more about the Epicurean Beast, for the simple reason that advice from people who have been in similar situations to oneself in the past are far more effective gurus than one's own projections. Daniel Gilbert says in Stumbling Upon Happiness that people who listened to advice of people who had already been in the same position (for anything...cold feet for a marriage, become pregnant, considering moving home etc) ended up happier than those who simply tried to work out what would make them happiest in the end. Commonsense really I suppose.

I doubt that I will really study much in the way of Practical Philosophy in the future. I just find it a little silly that anybody could be considered an expert in that area. I would prefer to get my observations on the human condition from literature like Shakespeare and Coleridge, and even more so from the lyrics to music. Even now I am listening to a Sandy Denny piece, and finding that the lyrics strike me as far more meaningful and truthful than the philosophy of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.