When Philosophy Becomes

Therapy
By Lauren Davis
Philosophy has earned a reputation as a complicated, inaccessible, and irrelevant pursuit, consigned
mostly to old white men in wood-paneled offices. Its vaguely associated with asking the kinds of big
questionsDo we exist? What does life mean? Is there such thing as right or wrong?that can seem
frustrating, impractical, and, perhaps, pointless.
But for the past ten years or so, Alain de Botton, a Swiss-British philosopher, writer, and TV presenter,
has made it his mission to rebrand philosophy by stripping away its crusty, academic trappings and
restoring its day-to-day value. His own chatty, intelligent, and highly readable books, with titles like
How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy, have been bestsellers in the
UK. In 2008, he founded The School of Life, an enterprise which seeks to offer good ideas for
everyday life. Since then, The School has been expanding steadily from London into other major
European cities like Paris and Amsterdam. Campuses will open in the U.S. within the next year; a
large percentage of the organizations followers are American, the director told me.
The School of Life is a cozy space that hosts classes and lectures; the organization also consults with
big-name businesses and sells books, objects, and tools to help anyone who walks through its doors
make headway in the quest for a more fulfilled life. Its offerings are playful yet sincere; unique, even
if occasionally verging on the overly cutesy. Its philosophy that borders on therapy; take, for example,
one-on-one classes like Bibliotherapy, or Visual Arts Therapy, in which trained psychologists
prescribe novel-reading or painting instead of pills. Or the tongue-in-cheek emotional baggage tote
bagthe trick is to carry it elegantly, The School of Life advises. At the beginning of the year the
organization also launched its own alternative news source for Britons sick of the relentless negativity
and senselessness of tabloid newspapers: The Philosophers Mail.
All of this has been a savvy move by De Botton, spiritually and financially. His product line targets
self-styled intellectualspeople who see themselves as too classy or high-brow to be caught flipping
through a self-help book, but still feel practical dissatisfactions. De Botton has become a
well-recognized public intellectual in the UK, and bringing The School of Life to the United States may
help him raise his profile here.
But even those who are cynical about the combination of profit and philosophy may find The School of
Lifes non-fiction series substantive. In these short books, sophisticated wisdom from philosophers and
other great thinkers is made digestible and fresh. Old, powerful ideas are re-explained simply and
packaged between colorful covers. Each is authored by a different writer with a background in
philosophy or an overlapping and related field, like psychotherapy. How To Stay Sane, How To Find
Fulfilling Work, How To Change The World, and How To Think More About Sex (by De Botton
himself) have a characteristically dry British sense of humor and no-nonsense approach to topics that
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are often considered taboo or clichd. Ultimately, De Botton is trying to bring philosophy back to its
rootsa source of enlightenment and cure for daily ills, accessible to anyone who can reason and
reflect. After all, Socrates, the bearded, besandled grandfather of much of todays philosophical
thought, did nothing more than wander the streets observing and playfully testing the beliefs and
behaviors of those around himno big words or citations involved.
Even though The School of Life hasnt fully made its way across the Atlantic yet, it is releasing two of its
books in U.S. editions this month: How To Be Alone and How To Deal With Adversity. The first is a
clever and surprising analysis of the modern, deep-seated fear of being alonepeople tend to unfairly
and unwisely brand those who are solitary either bad, sad, or mad, the book argues. The author, Sara
Maitland, is an expert on solitudeshe currently lives alone in a nearly isolated highland in Scotland,
where she has been, contentedly, for the past 20 years. Maitland tries to understand the human fear of
being alone and how it can be overcome to reap the many rewards of solitude, like creativity,
attunement to nature, and a deeper understanding and connection to ourselves.
In Adversity, religion professor Christopher Hamilton systematically and empathetically tackles a
selection of the struggles everyone faces: in our families, in love, in our own fragile and vulnerable
bodies, even in dying. In his introduction, Hamilton describes the book as a part of the ancient and
noble tradition of philosophy as therapy; his book shows that the line between the two is blurrier than
might be expected. Psychology came out of philosophy, after allas did all forms of scientific inquiry.
Though the language used to describe human minds and emotions has become steadily more
specialized and technical in the past couple thousand of years, and we have fancy new ways of
measuring neuron activity or revealing subconscious biases in the way we think, questions of meaning
and purpose remain as relevant as ever. Although the details and context of life have changed since the
time of Plato, the most essential philosophical question remains: How can I live a good life?
What these authors seem to be saying is that philosophy does not have to be aloof and pretentious. Its
as simple and natural as asking questions about ourselves and the world around us, using logic and
skepticism as tools. Its the process of looking for meaning and guidance in how to act. Its curiosity
and common sense, passed down over hundreds of years of human experience. Its living your life in an
engaged, intentional, contented wayor, more fancifully, in the pursuit of wisdom. It can, and should,
be utterly practical.
To call these School of Life books an overview of philosophy is certainly an overstatement. The study of
philosophy today overlaps with psychology, history, physics, and mathematics. But for people who
dont keep a copy of Platos Republic or Kants Critique of Pure Reason on their bedside tables, picking
up one of these bright little gems could provide valuable insightnot just on philosophy, but what it
means to be a person.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/when-philosophy-becomes-therapy/380531/
Copyright 2014 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
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