![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
debithaNo pictures for Sunday and Monday. Have the Epic Book Review of Doom instead.
This one was a gift from J, who knows me well enough to that I would enjoy this book, and also well enough to know that I would probably not buy it for myself. :o)
I have to say that on the whole, I don’t feel all that consoled. But I do feel very well informed, which is nothing to sneeze at. I enjoyed this – Alain de Botton’s style is very warm and friendly, and the set up is charming and includes lots of pictures, sometimes to illustrate a point, and sometimes just for giggles. Although he is clearly a great deal smarter than me, he is in no way condescending about it. I’m looking at you, Mr Chesterton.
The book is split into six sections, each providing consolation from a particular philosopher for a particular ill. I may possibly have gone a little crazy and ended up doing a chapter by chapter recap. I have no idea how that happened, except to cry temporary insanity. Feel free to tl;dr.
The sections are:
Consolation for Unpopularity – Socrates
Consolation for Not Having Enough Money - Epicurus
Consolation for Frustration - Seneca
Consolation for Inadequacy - Montaigne
Consolation for a Broken Heart - Schopenhauer
Consolation for Difficulties – Nietzsche
It’s quite a line up.
Unpopularity
This one mostly outlines the history, along with some art history. I did initially wonder whether the moral of the story was that however unpopular you are at least it is unlikely that anyone will force you to drink hemlock. Fortunately the writer is better than that. He talks a lot about the unpopularity of new ideas and beliefs. Socrates’ greatest crime was being a PiA. He questioned everything, mostly in that annoying-4-year-old “But why”, kind of way. He wanted to make people question the basic assumptions about the way they lived their lives, and why. Sadly, as one might expect, they didn’t take kindly to it, hence the hemlock.
Socrates’ main point is that popular opinion and common knowledge often did not stand up to reason and logic. As such, popular opinion being against you is no reason to assume you are wrong. Although the writer does also warn against assuming that the opposite is true; that if popular opinion is against you, you must be right.
Not Having Enough Money
These days the term “Epicurean” usually refers to weird Haut Cuisine and menus with lists of obscure and lost-up-own-backside ingredients (eg Pork eye fillet wrapped in triple smoked bacon, served with parsnip & vanilla bean puree, apple & ginger marmalade, garnished with a sticky maple rib*). This has sprung up from Epicurus’ notion that it is better to have a little very good food than lots of rubbish food. I don’t think this was what he had in mind.
Essentially Epicurus and a bunch of his friends left “modern” life behind started up a little commune just outside Athens. They didn’t have jobs, and grew their own fruit and veg in a garden out back. They went vegetarian because they couldn’t afford meat, and didn’t feel they needed it anyway.
He split the common requirements for happiness into three sections: Natural and Necessary; Natural but Unnecessary; Unnatural and Unnecessary. Under Natural and Necessary came the basics like food, shelter and clothes, and his key requirements – friendship, freedom and thought. Things that are Natural but Unnecessary are a grand house, banquets, servants and meat. Fame and power were both Unnatural and Unnecessary to happiness. After spending a certain amount on the basics (eg, rent and food) your level of happiness will not increase all that much however much you spend if you don’t have the basics covered.
Epicurus’ consolation being that “happiness may be difficult to attain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.”
*My rule of thumb is that if an item has two or more ampersands or two or more components I can’t readily identify, the chef has probably lost the plot.
Frustration
Seneca is the philosopher behind Stoicism. Essentially he suggests that most anger stems from frustration and that “what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like.” Apparently “we will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful”.
In fairness, the sorts of examples Seneca uses is the man who hated the sound of breaking glass so much that when a slave dropped a tray of glasses, the man had the slave thrown in a pool of lampreys. (For reference, you know the giant sandworm thing in Star Wars that Jabba the Hutt tries to throw Han into? That’s what a lamprey mouth looks like, albeit smaller.) Seneca’s point is that it is overly optimistic to expect that no one will ever drop a glass.
He also talks about the sense of injustice; that sometimes our anger and frustration stems from a sense of how the world ought to be. Here the example is the furious grief of a woman whose son had died young. How could such a thing happen to her? She was a good woman, why was she being punished by having her son taken from her? I kept having Labyrinth flashbacks through this part. “It’s not fair!”
Seneca’s point is essentially that life’s a bitch and you shouldn’t expect anything else. It’s a fair point, but on the whole I quite like my anger. It’s not usually completely irrational, and it gives me something to do. I’ll hang on to my hope too, thanks.
Inadequacy
Here we leap forward to the C15. Montaigne studied the classical scholars extensively, but was ultimately a bit scornful of them. They suggested that you could achieve mastery over all of life’s ills with the judicious application of logic. You know who Montaigne thought looked to have a serene and content existence? Goats. What don’t they have? Logic.
Our bodies are beyond the power of rational thought. If a fart is going to happen, it’s going to happen because that’s what your digestive system needs to do, however much reason and logic you apply. Montaigne contends that there is nothing inherently shameful in our bodies doing what they do. He particularly applies this idea to stomach disorders and erectile dysfunction, the message being that it happens to everyone*, so don’t worry about it.
He also goes into cultural inadequacy, and how different ¬ inferior. His example was the contemporary slaughter of the native tribes in South America. The Conquistadors reasoned that if the tribesmen didn’t wear breaches and live the way sensible Spanish men livedand had lots of gold and other things of value they must be so primitive and brutal as to be little more than animals, and therefore entirely worthy of slaughter. Clearly. Here Montaigne questions who is really primitive and brutal. He also gives a less extreme example, but I’m not actually trying to paraphrase the entire book. :oP
*I’m going to give him a pass on the grounds that he was writing 500 years prior to the feminist movement.
At this point we move to more modern philosophers (by which I mean C19-20). The opening sections of both these chapters are fairly amusing, as the writer begins with why you might write them off if you knew a bit about them. Schopenhauer was an emo whinger (“Arthur Schopenhauer is born in Danzig. In later years he looks back on the event with regret: ‘We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.’”) and Nietzsche was an arrogant arse (“’It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being,’ he recognised with a degree of embarrassment in the autumn of 1888. ‘I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy’”. Aw yeah.
A Broken Heart
Schopenhauer was basically a sad lonely pessimist who spent a lot of time pondering love (and why he was so spectacularly bad at it). He eventually came up with the theory of the “Will to Life”, which is essentially a biological imperative devoted to the successful perpetuation of the species – not just making babies, but making better babies. According to his theory we instinctively seek out a mate who will counterbalance our weaknesses, so someone bookish will seek out someone athletic.
His “consolation” was that one shouldn’t feel bad about rejection – one was not personally inadequate, one simply didn’t meet the requirements of the Will to Life, and it happens to everyone.
Essentially, Schopenhauer’s philosophy boiled down to: Keep your head down and avoid confrontation, and you will avoid pain. In his own words, “Fulfilment is an illusion”. I feel he had probably read too much Seneca.
Difficulties
Nietzsche was put in an asylum aged 44 following a very public mental breakdown. His mental state and physical health problems are consistent with syphilis, which he is thought to have picked up at age 20. Frankly, that means I run everything through a light crazy-filter.
Initially he was all over Schopenhauer until he had some kind of holiday-induced epiphany. Suddenly, Schopenhauer’s philosophy seemed cowardly. The people Nietzsche most admired were vivid and full of life. They could laugh despite difficulties, they could face difficulties and work through them. They had character. Nietzsche came around to the idea that you cannot be happy if you have never known unhappiness. (There were also lots of gardening and alpine metaphors to explain this.) Basically he came to believe that pleasure and pain come in roughly equal quantities through life, so that if you avoid pain, you will also have little joy. In short, “Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad”.
This one was a gift from J, who knows me well enough to that I would enjoy this book, and also well enough to know that I would probably not buy it for myself. :o)
I have to say that on the whole, I don’t feel all that consoled. But I do feel very well informed, which is nothing to sneeze at. I enjoyed this – Alain de Botton’s style is very warm and friendly, and the set up is charming and includes lots of pictures, sometimes to illustrate a point, and sometimes just for giggles. Although he is clearly a great deal smarter than me, he is in no way condescending about it. I’m looking at you, Mr Chesterton.
The book is split into six sections, each providing consolation from a particular philosopher for a particular ill. I may possibly have gone a little crazy and ended up doing a chapter by chapter recap. I have no idea how that happened, except to cry temporary insanity. Feel free to tl;dr.
The sections are:
Consolation for Unpopularity – Socrates
Consolation for Not Having Enough Money - Epicurus
Consolation for Frustration - Seneca
Consolation for Inadequacy - Montaigne
Consolation for a Broken Heart - Schopenhauer
Consolation for Difficulties – Nietzsche
It’s quite a line up.
Unpopularity
This one mostly outlines the history, along with some art history. I did initially wonder whether the moral of the story was that however unpopular you are at least it is unlikely that anyone will force you to drink hemlock. Fortunately the writer is better than that. He talks a lot about the unpopularity of new ideas and beliefs. Socrates’ greatest crime was being a PiA. He questioned everything, mostly in that annoying-4-year-old “But why”, kind of way. He wanted to make people question the basic assumptions about the way they lived their lives, and why. Sadly, as one might expect, they didn’t take kindly to it, hence the hemlock.
Socrates’ main point is that popular opinion and common knowledge often did not stand up to reason and logic. As such, popular opinion being against you is no reason to assume you are wrong. Although the writer does also warn against assuming that the opposite is true; that if popular opinion is against you, you must be right.
Not Having Enough Money
These days the term “Epicurean” usually refers to weird Haut Cuisine and menus with lists of obscure and lost-up-own-backside ingredients (eg Pork eye fillet wrapped in triple smoked bacon, served with parsnip & vanilla bean puree, apple & ginger marmalade, garnished with a sticky maple rib*). This has sprung up from Epicurus’ notion that it is better to have a little very good food than lots of rubbish food. I don’t think this was what he had in mind.
Essentially Epicurus and a bunch of his friends left “modern” life behind started up a little commune just outside Athens. They didn’t have jobs, and grew their own fruit and veg in a garden out back. They went vegetarian because they couldn’t afford meat, and didn’t feel they needed it anyway.
He split the common requirements for happiness into three sections: Natural and Necessary; Natural but Unnecessary; Unnatural and Unnecessary. Under Natural and Necessary came the basics like food, shelter and clothes, and his key requirements – friendship, freedom and thought. Things that are Natural but Unnecessary are a grand house, banquets, servants and meat. Fame and power were both Unnatural and Unnecessary to happiness. After spending a certain amount on the basics (eg, rent and food) your level of happiness will not increase all that much however much you spend if you don’t have the basics covered.
Epicurus’ consolation being that “happiness may be difficult to attain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.”
*My rule of thumb is that if an item has two or more ampersands or two or more components I can’t readily identify, the chef has probably lost the plot.
Frustration
Seneca is the philosopher behind Stoicism. Essentially he suggests that most anger stems from frustration and that “what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like.” Apparently “we will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful”.
In fairness, the sorts of examples Seneca uses is the man who hated the sound of breaking glass so much that when a slave dropped a tray of glasses, the man had the slave thrown in a pool of lampreys. (For reference, you know the giant sandworm thing in Star Wars that Jabba the Hutt tries to throw Han into? That’s what a lamprey mouth looks like, albeit smaller.) Seneca’s point is that it is overly optimistic to expect that no one will ever drop a glass.
He also talks about the sense of injustice; that sometimes our anger and frustration stems from a sense of how the world ought to be. Here the example is the furious grief of a woman whose son had died young. How could such a thing happen to her? She was a good woman, why was she being punished by having her son taken from her? I kept having Labyrinth flashbacks through this part. “It’s not fair!”
Seneca’s point is essentially that life’s a bitch and you shouldn’t expect anything else. It’s a fair point, but on the whole I quite like my anger. It’s not usually completely irrational, and it gives me something to do. I’ll hang on to my hope too, thanks.
Inadequacy
Here we leap forward to the C15. Montaigne studied the classical scholars extensively, but was ultimately a bit scornful of them. They suggested that you could achieve mastery over all of life’s ills with the judicious application of logic. You know who Montaigne thought looked to have a serene and content existence? Goats. What don’t they have? Logic.
Our bodies are beyond the power of rational thought. If a fart is going to happen, it’s going to happen because that’s what your digestive system needs to do, however much reason and logic you apply. Montaigne contends that there is nothing inherently shameful in our bodies doing what they do. He particularly applies this idea to stomach disorders and erectile dysfunction, the message being that it happens to everyone*, so don’t worry about it.
He also goes into cultural inadequacy, and how different ¬ inferior. His example was the contemporary slaughter of the native tribes in South America. The Conquistadors reasoned that if the tribesmen didn’t wear breaches and live the way sensible Spanish men lived
*I’m going to give him a pass on the grounds that he was writing 500 years prior to the feminist movement.
At this point we move to more modern philosophers (by which I mean C19-20). The opening sections of both these chapters are fairly amusing, as the writer begins with why you might write them off if you knew a bit about them. Schopenhauer was an emo whinger (“Arthur Schopenhauer is born in Danzig. In later years he looks back on the event with regret: ‘We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.’”) and Nietzsche was an arrogant arse (“’It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being,’ he recognised with a degree of embarrassment in the autumn of 1888. ‘I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy’”. Aw yeah.
A Broken Heart
Schopenhauer was basically a sad lonely pessimist who spent a lot of time pondering love (and why he was so spectacularly bad at it). He eventually came up with the theory of the “Will to Life”, which is essentially a biological imperative devoted to the successful perpetuation of the species – not just making babies, but making better babies. According to his theory we instinctively seek out a mate who will counterbalance our weaknesses, so someone bookish will seek out someone athletic.
His “consolation” was that one shouldn’t feel bad about rejection – one was not personally inadequate, one simply didn’t meet the requirements of the Will to Life, and it happens to everyone.
Essentially, Schopenhauer’s philosophy boiled down to: Keep your head down and avoid confrontation, and you will avoid pain. In his own words, “Fulfilment is an illusion”. I feel he had probably read too much Seneca.
Difficulties
Nietzsche was put in an asylum aged 44 following a very public mental breakdown. His mental state and physical health problems are consistent with syphilis, which he is thought to have picked up at age 20. Frankly, that means I run everything through a light crazy-filter.
Initially he was all over Schopenhauer until he had some kind of holiday-induced epiphany. Suddenly, Schopenhauer’s philosophy seemed cowardly. The people Nietzsche most admired were vivid and full of life. They could laugh despite difficulties, they could face difficulties and work through them. They had character. Nietzsche came around to the idea that you cannot be happy if you have never known unhappiness. (There were also lots of gardening and alpine metaphors to explain this.) Basically he came to believe that pleasure and pain come in roughly equal quantities through life, so that if you avoid pain, you will also have little joy. In short, “Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad”.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 12:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-31 10:37 am (UTC)Perhaps we should Book-Club Heroditus?