After observing and being mightily impressed with Alain De Botton in the Guardian Hay Festival (see my evaluation) and his capability to engage having a group about philosophy inside of a digestible way, I made a decision to browse his reserve 'The Consolations of Philosophy'.
Earlier Alain had launched the novels Kiss and Tell, Essays in Love and also the Passionate Movement, just before dropping the storytelling model with How Proust can improve your lifetime. ADB has stored his religion in telling it how he sees it While using the Consolations of Philosophy.
As someone that likes a demanding study every so often I had been just a little sceptical relating to 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 claimed discussion into an workout in etymological prowess. The fantastic thing about this book is De Botton cuts on the chase with excellent clarity of that means mixing aged thought Together with the anxieties of contemporary society.
I loved his unapologisingly adverse belief of Friedrich Nietzsche and his impact over Hitler's anti-semitic ethos. His comparison of Socrates 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 exactly how his heartbreak philosophy might help our personal knowledge of our very own intimate anxieties was nostalgically believed provoking.
Seeking back again with time philosophical imagined has stimulated and that's why shaped the pinnacles of modern assumed and distribute to more and more people who within a earlier age would in no way have had the chance to study from The good thinkers. However many of us believe that philosophy is only for the elite mainly mainly because they remain segregated by modern day professors of thought who surface to surreptitiously conceal away from seeking to teach the masses like Alain De Botton is trying to try and Seneca philosophy do. Possibly It is pretentiousness, it's possible It truly is arrogance Or possibly they don't want to stick their neck out for want of failing a popularity contest like Socrates.