Interview: Alain de Botton

[rug]

In his new book, the best-selling philosopher ponders how we can all learn a lesson or two from religion, writes STEVE MEACHAM.

January 14, 2012

The man who is, quite possibly, the world's richest philosopher is hard at work in his private study at 9 o'clock on a wintry London morning. Not the kind of study most of us might have - a room in our home, just a child's wail away from domestic distraction - but a silent retreat in another building, the 21st-century equivalent of a mediaeval monastic cell, perhaps.

So how does Alain de Botton - now 42, TV presenter and best-selling author of The Consolations of Philosophy, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and The Architecture of Happiness - spend his time in the study?

''When I'm writing, I write all day,'' he explains jovially over the phone. ''Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies and I like that.

''A few years ago, I decided that being alone all the time in a study was probably driving me nuts and that I should get out a little more. So I took concerted steps to do that. That's when I got involved in other projects, principally the School of Life [which he co-founded in 2008] and Living Architecture [which followed in 2009]. They are my two extracurricular projects.''

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/interview-alain-de-botton-20120112-1pvvw.html

[Jim__]

1. Terry Eagleton's review of de Botton's book.

Eagleton calls the book condescending because it doesn't accept religious beliefs but claims there are some good aspects to religion that we should hang onto. I'm not convinced by his review. Unless de Botton's book is a lot different than it sounds in the interview, Eagleton is overly critical. An excerpt from the review:

...

God may be dead, but Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists is a sign that the tradition from Voltaire to Arnold lives on. The book assumes that religious beliefs are a lot of nonsense, but that they remain indispensible to civilised existence. One wonders how this impeccably liberal author would react to being told that free speech and civil rights were all bunkum, but that they had their social uses and so shouldn't be knocked. Perhaps he might have the faintest sense of being patronised. De Botton claims that one can be an atheist while still finding religion "sporadically useful, interesting and consoling", which makes it sound rather like knocking up a bookcase when you are feeling a bit low. Since Christianity requires one, if need be, to lay down one's life for a stranger, he must have a strange idea of consolation. Like many an atheist, his theology is rather conservative and old-fashioned.

De Botton does not want people literally to believe, but he remains a latter-day Matthew Arnold, as his high Victorian language makes plain. Religion "teaches us to be polite, to honour one another, to be faithful and sober", as well as instructing us in "the charms of community". It all sounds tediously neat and civilised. This is not quite the gospel of a preacher who was tortured and executed for speaking up for justice, and who warned his comrades that if they followed his example they would meet with the same fate. In De Botton's well-manicured hands, this bloody business becomes a soothing form of spiritual therapy, able to "promote morality (and) engender a spirit of community". It is really a version of the Big Society.

Like Comte, De Botton believes in the need for a host of "consoling, subtle or just charming rituals" to restore a sense of community in a fractured society. He even envisages a new kind of restaurant in which strangers would be forced to sit together and open up their hearts to one another. There would be a Book of Agape on hand, which would instruct diners to speak to each other for prescribed lengths of time on prescribed topics. Quite how this will prevent looting and rioting is not entirely clear.

In Comtist It is surprising he does not add Celtic versus Rangers. He is also keen on erecting billboards that carry moral or spiritual rather than commercial messages, perhaps (one speculates) in the style of "Leave Young Ladies Alone" or "Tortoises Have Feelings As Well". It is an oddly Orwellian vision for a self-proclaimed libertarian. Religious faith is reduced to a set of banal moral tags. We are invited to contemplate St Joseph in order to learn "how to face the trials of the workplace with a modest and uncomplaining temper". Not even the Walmart management have thought of that one. As a role model for resplendent virtue, we are offered not St Francis of Assisi but Warren Buffett.

more ...

[rug]

2. Thanks for that.

He's a mixed bag.