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Alain de Botton Interview

You are here: Spoiled Ink >> Literary Magazine >> Author Interviews >> Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton is the author of three novels - Essays in

Love, The Romantic Movement and Kiss and Tell - and
four non-fiction works - The Consolations of Philosophy,
How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and,
most recently, Status Anxiety.
January is traditionally the season of self-help mania in
bookshops, and we at Spoiled Ink were keen to get in on
the action. With Status Anxiety due out imminently in
paperback, we asked Alain de Botton - a 'philosopher of
everyday life' - to give us some advice.
1) How far would you agree that your books constitute attempts to bring
philosophy back into the realm of practical life. Would you see your agenda
as following in the steps of writers such as Matthew Arnold, Francis Bacon,
Marcus Aurelius and St Augustine?

Ever since the early 19th century, we’ve been suffering from a great divide between
so-called ‘ordinary culture’ and ‘high culture’. Previous ages so no such schism.
Writers like Voltaire or Montaigne aimed both to be highly serious and to please a
wide and varied audience. They did not believe in the specialist. However, this
happy unity gradually eroded in the 19th century, giving way on the one hand to the
‘academic’, and on the other to the journalist. The idea of being at once serious and worldly, profound and light, general and
specific became harder to hold on to. In the early 21st century, it’s harder still.

My goal is, however, to occupy this difficult central terrain. I’m not a philosopher as defined by most academics. Philosophy is
simply one discipline that interests me among many in the humanities. I studied history at university, and my curiosity directs
me also towards psychoanalysis, sociology, literature and economics.

I believe that the role of culture, broadly defined, is to offer us tools that are going to help us to reflect on who to marry, what job
to do, how to behave in the community, how to bring up children, how to deal with the compromises of social life, how to face
death, what to make of suffering and so on. So ideally, we would have universities ‘of life.’ We need help in becoming not just
lawyers or teachers, but also, and primarily, citizens and human beings.

All societies need people who are going to be able to step back from the fray of practical life and analyse things, make them
intelligible, explain, and generally shed light on things that are going on but which we can’t make sense of because we are too
busy. Call this character a philosopher, or whatever one likes, but there continues to be a role for such a person.

2) Which school of philosophy would you align yourself with? Or wouldn't you?

I have always been interested in philosophy as a kind of therapy, a source of consolation. The opposition between philosophy
and therapy is, I feel, a false one because the choice isn’t between either philosophy or therapy: I think that therapy is just an
outgrowth of philosophy and follows almost all of its insights and even methods. The earliest therapists (Epicurus, Freud) were
therapists. It’s just that in the early to middle of the 20th century, psychoanalysis became a discipline in its own right. However,
it’s important to remember that philosophy was the mother and father of therapy.

I wrote a book a few years ago called The Consolations of Philosophy. In this book, I tried to look at all those philosophers who I
thought were most ‘therapeutic’ in their approach, philosophers who were interested in curing our everyday problems – the kind
of people who are most like therapists are today.
From a distance, few areas of knowledge seem more enticing or more profound than philosophy. In a secular age, philosophy
looks like the ultimate authority on life's great questions, the natural place to seek answers to the riddles of human
unhappiness. Philosophers, like rocket scientists, look as if they have access to some very complex and important truths. But
despite an enticing exterior, philosophy often disappoints those who study it more closely. Issues that seem so urgent to many
philosophers (is this a table? what is a sentence?) don't often echo our own priorities (why am I so shy? am I in the right job?).
Were it not for politeness and an ingrained respect for learning, novices might be tempted to declare the subject bunk. Which
would be a pity, because philosophy is like a lobster - with an impenetrable outer shell, certain dark sections that should be left
untouched, but also more nourishing flesh which can be hardest to reach. In spite of the vast differences between the many
thinkers described as philosophers across time (people in actuality so diverse that had they been gathered together at a giant
cocktail party, they would not only have had nothing to say to one another, but would most probably have come to blows after a
few drinks), it is possible to discern a small group of men, separated by centuries, sharing a loose allegiance to a vision of
philosophy suggested by the Greek etymology of the word - philo, love, sophia, wisdom - a group bound by a common interest
in saying a few consoling and practical things about the causes of some of our greatest griefs. It is these characters I have long
been interested in.

3) Has philosophy become too divorced from practice? In Europe philosophy is taught from secondary school level,
but this is rarely so in the UK. What do you think the significance of this is?

We shouldn’t make too much of our lack of philosophical education in the UK. What is taught in, for example, French secondary
schools is hardly revolutionary or profound. The bigger question is how we direct our education generally. Undoubtedly, we
don’t enlighten children too much for fear that they won’t become the docile, unquestioning citizens that society needs them to
be. It isn’t an accident that school is boring. It has to be boring or we won’t take a job afterwards. School is there to break our
will and stifle our curiosity. It doesn’t have to be so, and I’d dearly wish it wasn’t, but for the curriculum genuinely to change,
we’ll have to be honest with ourselves about what sort of a society we want to build. Being a poorer, less economically
productive country might be the price we have to pay for raising children who are questioning and understand themselves and
their world a little better.

4) Could your books be considered a response to this problem, and does your own education have any bearing on
this?

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My books are an attempt to lay out clearly certain ideas that I don’t feel have enough of an airing, and to do so in a way that
anyone can understand.
They are in a way a protest against my own education, which I felt was shockingly bad, even though it was, according to
society, supposed to be a ‘good’ one.

I went to Cambridge university, where I found the teaching to be generally very poor and almost entirely disconnected from the
sort of issues that an intelligent human should be taught for three years before taking up a job that probably won’t leave him or
her much time for reflection for the next thirty years.

5) Are you trying to destabilise notions of 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow'?

These categories are deeply frustrating. In art, there is only ever good and bad. I hate the idea of there being ‘good’ art which is
boring, and ‘bad’ art which is ‘fun.’ We have to make choices. If you think opera is boring but worthy, perhaps you don’t really
think much of it. We should have the courage to stick by our own intuitions.

My own work is sometimes accused of being low-brow because it flirts with popular genres. I’m unbothered, and at times
secretly flattered by the snobbery behind such an accusation.

6) For those who have not read Status Anxiety, could you define what you mean by the term?

Status anxiety is a worry about our standing in the world, whether we’re going up or down, whether we’re winners or losers. We
care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we
have – if they hear we’ve been promoted, there’ll be a little more energy in their smile, if we are sacked, they’ll pretend not to
have seen us. Ultimately, we worry about having no status because we’re not good at remaining confident about ourselves if
other people don’t seem to like or respect us very much. Our ‘ego’ or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon,
forever requiring external love to remain inflated and vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect: we rely on signs of respect
from the world to feel acceptable to ourselves.

7) The theme of Status Anxiety is a little investigated one, do you find the shadowy areas of the human psyche
interesting?

It’s not so much the shadowy, as the painful side of life I find interesting. Maybe we all read to know we are not alone about
certain things that make us unhappy. It’s rare for people to read when they are delighted and happy. Pain is for me the source
of inspiration. I do think that pain can sometimes teach us useful things, it certainly teaches me and inspires me. Because none
of us will ever be able to stop feeling pain at some points in life, we might as well try to learn something from it. Poets and artists
have always to have known this. "Being happy doesn't provoke me to think or write a poem," once said Philip Larkin in an
interview, "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth." Even if we don't write poems ourselves, unhappiness can
always inspire us to think about things in a way we would never have done when smiling. Hiccups force us to notice and adjust
to hitherto unknown aspects of the respiratory system, being jilted by a lover is a perfect introduction to the mechanisms of
emotional dependency.

8) In Status Anxiety (and also The Art of Travel) there seems to be much subtle probing into psychology as well as
philosophy. Are both strands of thought equally important to you?

It’s the psychological side of philosophy that really fascinates me. It’s emotional life that is at the heart of my interests.

9) What is the lack that causes otherwise rational and intelligent people to seek the approval of others, indeed the love
and attention of others, through achieving high status?

While it would be unusual to be status anxious in a famine, history shows that as soon as societies go any way beyond basic
subsistence, status anxieties quickly kick in. In the modern world, status anxiety starts when we compare our achievements with
those of other people we consider to be our equals. We might worry about our status when we come across an enthusiastic
newspaper profile of an acquaintance (it can destroy the morning), when a close friend reveals a piece of what they naively – or
plain sadistically – call ‘good’ news (they have been promoted, they are getting married, they have reached the bestseller list) or
when we are asked what we ‘do’ at a party by someone with a firm handshake who has recently floated their own start-up
company.

10) Could it be argued that the guilty gap between what we are and what we desire to be is the engine that drives
Western economies? Do we carry status with us like original sin?

Status anxiety is certainly worse than ever, because the possibilities for achievement (sexual, financial, professional) seem to
be greater than ever. There are so many more things we expect if we’re not to judge ourselves ‘losers.’ We are constantly
surrounded by stories of people who have made it. For most of history, an opposite assumption held sway: low expectations
were viewed as both normal and wise. Only a very few ever aspired to wealth and fulfillment. The majority knew well enough
that they were condemned to exploitation and resignation. Of course, it remains highly unlikely that we will today ever reach the
pinnacle of society. It is perhaps as unlikely that we could rival the success of Bill Gates as that we could in the seventeenth
century have become as powerful as Louis XIV. Unfortunately though, it no longer feels unlikely – depending on the magazines
one reads, it can in fact seem absurd that one hasn’t already managed to have it all.

11) Can this lack, or absence, ever be filled, or are we forever doomed to "hug our chains"?

A feeling of incompleteness is central to what it means to be human. Previous societies have recognised it. Ours tortures us by
pretending that this lack is an accident that could be remedied – if only we worked harder, were more successful etc…

12) Feelings of low status that arise from failure in this and other Western societies presume that we live in a true
meritocracy and therefore if we fail the blame is only ours. Do you think we live in a true meritocracy?

It’s nice to reflect on how comparatively just society is today. In the distant past, when you saw a rich or successful person, you
could reasonably assume that he or she attained advantage through some unfair means – by killing someone, or inheriting
privilege or being in a monopoly. But for the last few hundred years, politicians have been striving to build a society which we in
the west nowadays call ‘meritocratic.’ That is, a society where if you have something to say, if you have talent and energy, you’ll
be able to achieve on a more or less level playing field.

But this sense of social justice has brought one big problem with it, for if you genuinely believe that the successful merit their
success, you have to believe that the unsuccessful deserve their failure. In a meritocratic age, a sense of justice enters into the
distribution of poverty as well as wealth. Low status comes to seem not merely regrettable, but also deserved. The rich are not
only wealthier; they could also be plain better.

The harsh attitude that a belief in meritocracy brings can be felt in language. 300 years ago in England, those at the bottom of
society were called ‘unfortunates.’ Nowadays, they are liable to be referred to as ‘losers’ – this harsh word suggesting a belief
those who fail have only themselves to blame.
Our very sense of opportunity makes failure more worrying to contemplate. After all, to fail in a land of plenty is infinitely more
shameful than to fail in a corrupt and caste-like society. You get a sense of this shame if you walk into any large American
bookstore and look at the offerings on the self-help shelves. You could divide them into two basic categories. Half the books are
telling you how to make something of yourself. They’re called things like ‘How to become a billionaire by Friday’ (a current
favourite of mine is actually called ‘The Courage to be rich’). Then there’s another kind of book – books teaching you how to
cope with low self-esteem. The two genres seem intimately related. It’s by the time it’s Saturday and you haven’t become a

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billionaire, you’ll be reaching out for something to help you to feel better about yourself.

The great cruelty behind the idea of meritocracy is that it’s crazy to imagine that we’ll ever build a society where you’ll be able to
rank everyone in order of goodness and reward them accordingly, the rich being the best, the poor the worst. A wiser course
might be to be inspired by the traditional Christian idea that the merit of others is in fact so hard to judge that only God is up to
the task, and even He can only start work on the Day of Judgment with the help of a thousand angels and a large pair of scales
– a crazy idea from a secular point of view but a useful corrective to the view that you can just look at someone’s resume and
judge how good he or she happens to be.

None of this is to say that merit is equally distributed or indeed theoretically immeasurable, but simply to insist that you or I are
in practical terms unlikely ever to know how to do the measuring properly and hence should display infinite care before acting or
thinking in ways that presume we can.

13) In these terms, is the concept of the Romantic Individual still in any way valid, or is it just a vicarious sop we
comfort ourselves with?

Whether it’s true or not, none of us could live without believing in ‘the individual.’

14) Could a society that succeeds in banishing status anxiety ever be envisaged?

The point isn’t to banish anxiety, it’s to ensure that the sort of things we feel anxious about are more or less the right ones.

All societies are status hierarchies, and so generate anxiety. But there are still some societies that are better than others.

15) In the second part of the book you suggest answers to status anxiety, one of which is “ Intelligent Misanthropy ”
do you practice this yourself?

Certainly – see my reading list for no.20

16) Would Ruskin see any differences between his society and ours?

John Ruskin excoriated nineteenth-century Britons (he had never been to the United States) for being the most wealth-
obsessed people who had ever emerged in the history of the world. They were, he wrote, at all times, never far from a concern
with who had what and from where: ‘The ruling goddess may be best generally described as the “Goddess of Getting-on’ That
sounds familiar…

17) What is it about the emptiness of Thomas Jones’s paintings that is so moving?

In much art, and particularly in the work of Thomas Jones, we re-encounter disowned examples of our own moods and
temperaments. There’s a loneliness in Jones that reminds us of our own. Beauty can be difficult to look at for long.

18) Why is the thought of eternity a strangely comforting one?

It’s the best way to stop worrying so much about what others make of you. To discover whose friendship you should really care
about, ask yourself who – among your acquaintances – would make it to your hospital bedside. If need be, look at a skeleton:
what others think about you will soon start to lose its intimidating power.

19) What is your next area for enquiry?

I am currently writing a book about architecture, looking at the question of what’s beautiful and what’s ugly – and why it matters
what’s around us.

20) In the spirit of the new year drive toward self-improvement, which five books would you recommend for Spoiled Ink
readers who have stared into the abyss of Christmas ennui and require philosophical succour?

What about 10 books?

1. Michel de Montaigne, Essays
The wisest, most entertaining philosopher ever to have written. Alive in the second half of the 16th century, Montaigne mixes
high-brow discussion of classical philosophy with ruminations on his horse, his wife, his cabbages and his proclivity for farting
after large meals. Montaigne is one of those rare philosophers whom one wishes could have been a friend, so human does he
still feel across the centuries that separate us from him. ‘Even on the highest throne, we are seated, still, on our arses.’ ‘Kings
and philosophers shit, and so do ladies,’ are examples.

2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human

This is perhaps Nietzsche’s most readable book. The writing is crisp, witty and consolingly bleak. Here is a flavour of what’s
inside: "Some men have sighed over the abduction of their wives, most however over the fact that no one wanted to abduct
them." "There will be few who, when they are in want of matter for conversation, do not reveal the more secret affairs of their
friends." "It is to be doubted whether a traveller will find anywhere in the world regions uglier than the human face."

3. La Rochefoucauld, Maxims
Behind almost every one of these maxims, there lies a challenge to an ordinary, flattering view of ourselves. La Rochefoucauld
shows that we are never far from being vain, arrogant, selfish and petty – and in fact, never nearer than when we trust in our
own goodness. For example, we might believe that we’re kind to be concerned about the worries of our friends. Nothing of the
sort, mocks La Rochefoucauld, writing a century before the Germans had even thought up the notion of Schadenfreude: ‘We all
have strength enough to endure the troubles of others’.

4. Chamfort, Reflections on Life, Love and Society

Another gloomy highly readable frenchman. My favourite of his selection of aphorisms is: ‘A man should swallow a toad every
morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.’

5. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

One of the few and best philosophical travelogues. De Tocqueville travelled to the United States in the early 19th century to
look into what he called ‘the shape of the future.’ What he found in the States left him both pleased and frightened for all of us.
His main concern is what happens to values in a democratic, mercantile age. The answer, in short, is that they can become
depressingly commercial.

6. Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers

Ignatieff’s book is a beguiling attempt to answer the question of what we owe other people. He takes ideas from a number of
philosophers and artists of the past. He does a brilliant reading of King Lear, of St Augustine’s Confessions and Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations. This is the perfect liberal’s answer to the problems of life in a market economy.

7. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

In this book, Adam Smith tries to give an overall picture of the nature and origins of our emotions, but what stays in the mind is
his analysis of how our selfish impulses can be ‘tamed’ to render us fit for social life. Smith is particularly acute on how very
selfish, rich people can be persuaded to behave in seemingly very unselfish ways if society is clever enough to reward them
and flatter them for giving away their money.

8. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion

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Gombrich’s book is an attempt to write a psychology and philosophy of seeing, as it applies to our responses to the visual arts.
It’s one of the most thrilling books on art ever to have been written, largely because of the ingenious way in which Gombrich ties
together high and low culture, comparing the way we read a Constable to a Tube poster.

9. Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

The great gloomy German philosopher proposed that nothing could more quickly correct our desire to be liked by others than
focusing on their true characters, which were, he reasoned, for the most part, excessively brutish and stupid. Here is one,
utterly typical gem, from the sage of Frankfurt: ‘We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other
people when we acquire an adequate knowledge of the superficial and futile nature of their thoughts, of the narrowness of their
views, of the paltriness of their sentiments, of the perversity of their opinions, and of the number of their errors… We shall then
see that whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour.’

10. E.M.Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

Many have complained that philosophy in the 20th century lost the humanity and poetry it had possessed in previous ages. The
work of the Romanian-French philosopher is a triumphant exception to the depressing norm. He worked in the tradition of
Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Chamfort. Like them, he was gloomy and funny and cynical. Like them, he wrote beautifully, in
short finely crafted sentences. He is a hero in France, typically, his books are hardly read over here.

Interview By: sean merrigan

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