Alain de Botton  

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"I know that you’re not easy to live with. And the reason is that you’re Homo sapiens and, therefore, you are not easy to live with. No one is. But there’s a wall of silence that surrounds us from a deeper acquaintance with what is actually so difficult about us. Our friends don’t want to tell us. Why would they bother? They just want a pleasant evening out. Our friends know more about us and more about our flaws. Probably after ten minutes’ acquaintance, a stranger will know more about your flaws than you might learn over 40 years of life on the planet. Our capacity to intuit what is wrong with us is very weak. Our parents don’t tell us very much. Why would they? They love us too much. They know. They conceived. Of course, they followed us from the crib. They know what’s wrong with us. They’re not going to tell us. They just want to be sweet. And our ex-lovers, a vital source of knowledge. They know. Absolutely they know."-- "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person…" by Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton, (born 20 December 1969 in Zurich, Switzerland) is a writer and television producer who lives in London and aims to make philosophy relevant to everyday life.

Contents

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Writing

De Botton has written essayistic books, which refer both to his own experiences and ideas interwoven with those of artists, philosophers, and thinkers. It is a style of writing that has been referred to as a "philosophy of everyday life." His books are published in 20 languages.

In 1993, his first novel, Essays in Love (titled On Love in the US), analyzed the process of falling in and out of love. The style of the book was unusual, because it mixed elements of a novel together with reflections and analyzes normally found in a piece of non-fiction.

He didn't, however, receive world-wide recognition until after the publication of his first non-fiction work, How Proust Can Change Your Life, in 1997. The book was based on the life and works of Marcel Proust. It is a mixture of a "self-help" envelope within which lies an ironically shallow response to one of the most revered but unread books in the Western canon. It was a bestseller in the US and UK.

It was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy. Though sometimes described as works of popularisation, these two books were attempts to develop original ideas about friendship, art, envy, desire, and inadequacy for example, with the help of thoughts of other thinkers. The title of this book is a reference to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, in which philosophy appears as an allegorical figure to Boethius to offer him consolation before he faces his impending execution. In The Consolations of Philosophy, de Botton attempts to demonstrate how the teachings of philosophers such as Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Seneca, and Socrates can be applied to modern everyday woes, such as unpopularity, feelings of inadequacy, financial worries, broken hearts, and the general problem of suffering. The book has been both praised and criticized for its therapeutic approach to philosophy.

De Botton then returned to a more lyrical, personal style of writing. In The Art of Travel, he looked at themes in the psychology of travel: how we imagine places before we see them, how we remember beautiful things, what happens to us when we look at deserts, or stay in hotels, or go to the countryside.

In Status Anxiety, he examined an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned directly: the anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser.

De Botton's latest book, The Architecture of Happiness, discusses the nature of beauty in architecture, and how it is related to the well-being and general contentment of the individual and society. He describes how architecture affects us every day, even though we rarely pay particular attention to it. Also, a good portion of the book discusses how human personality traits are reflected in architecture.

He writes regular columns for several English newspapers, including The Independent (on Sundays). He also travels extensively to lecture on his works.

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Bibliography

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Filmography

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TV series

Writer

  • How Proust Can Change Your Life
  • Philosophy: A Guide To Happiness (from "The Consolations of Philosophy")
  • The Art of Travel
  • Status Anxiety
  • The Perfect Home (from The Architecture of Happiness)
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Linking in in 2023

500 Days of Summer, A Journey Around My Room, A Room for London, Adam Gopnik, Ahu Antmen, Andrew Copson, Arthur Schopenhauer, Awe, Boethius, Botton, Brené Brown, Ceremony, Ciudad de las Ideas (conference), Commodity fetishism, Dan Frank, December 20, Design Matters, Dragon School, Dumbo Feather, Edgware bus station, Erotic Review, Fashion Architecture Taste, Five Dials, GetAbstract International Book Award, Gilbert de Botton, Hamish Hamilton, How to Live (biography), Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, In Search of Lost Time, Index of philosophy articles (A–C), Insignificance, Jacob van der Beugel, James Grieve (Australian translator), James Runcie, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, John Armstrong (British writer/philosopher), John Armstrong (British writer/philosopher), John Safran, Jordan Todorov, Karen Armstrong, Lee Bo-young, List of atheist authors, List of atheist philosophers, List of English novelists, List of essayists, Listowel, Living Architecture, Maja Novak, Marcel Proust, Mercedes Cebrián, Miel de Botton, Min Hyo-rin, Munk Debates, My Last Five Girlfriends, Neil McKendrick, New Escapologist, On the Consolation of Philosophy, Paris to the Moon, Pastiche, Penguin Celebrations, Phaidon Press, Philippa Perry, Pocket Penguins, Relate, Religion for Atheists, Richard Bacon's Beer & Pizza Club, Robert Dessaix, Robert Wringham, Royal Society of Arts, Royal Society of Literature, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Skavlan, Status Anxiety, Steven Poole, Streets of Your Town (TV series), Sunday Night Safran, The Architecture of Happiness, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Idler (1993), The Museum of Curiosity, The Penguin Podcast, The Perfect Home, The School of Life, The Trews (web series), Theodore Zeldin, Timeline of Western philosophers, Tom Chatfield, United Biscuits, Walthamstow Granada, Walthamstow, Workmanship, Xavier de Maistre, Zi Zhongyun


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