Following observing and being mightily impressed with Alain De Botton in the Guardian Hay Festival (see my evaluation) and his capability to engage having a crowd about philosophy in a digestible way, I made a decision to browse 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 daily life. ADB has held his faith in telling it how he sees it While using the Consolations of Philosophy.

As a person who likes a demanding go through every so often I had been somewhat sceptical about 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 upper echelons of philosophical debate is stricken with an inclination to turn explained discussion into an workout in etymological prowess. The fantastic thing about this guide is De Botton cuts to your chase with excellent clarity of that means mixing aged thought Together with the anxieties of recent society.

I loved his unapologisingly adverse feeling of Friedrich Nietzsche and his impact more than Hitler's anti-semitic ethos. His comparison of Socrates Seneca philosophy as an unpopular outcast who taken care of his possess beliefs offers the reader hope of triumph underneath adversity and his Assessment of Seneca and how his heartbreak philosophy might help our very own knowledge of our very own intimate anxieties was nostalgically imagined provoking.

Hunting back again after a while philosophical imagined has stimulated and that's why shaped the pinnacles of modern thought and distribute to more and more people who in the preceding age would never ever have had the chance to study from The good thinkers. But many folks consider philosophy is just for the elite largely because they remain segregated by present day professors of believed who appear to surreptitiously cover far from trying to coach the masses like Alain De Botton is trying to carry out. Probably It really is pretentiousness, maybe It can be arrogance Or possibly they don't want to stick their neck out for want of failing a popularity contest like Socrates.