Alain de Botton
Discussing the benefits of being Swiss, believing in chance, tasting weird, why he'd invite Keira Knightly to dinner and his greatest regret
When asked Proustian questions most people pause laboriously over each answer, struggling to find the right words to convey their thoughts and feelings. Writer and philosopher, Alain de Botton does not. His responses come swiftly, eloquently and with scarcely a pause for breath between each one. When I remark on this, he counters that these are the kind of things he thinks about all the time.
“I like tracking feelings. States of mind. The intuitively felt.”
Certainly, as the author of books entitled The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Essays in Love and Religion for Atheists, and the originator of the phrase, ‘Status Anxiety’, it’s true he’s grappled with many of life’s complexities — and, conveniently for us, translated them into snappy prose we can all understand.
[You can see all his books here: Alain de Botton]
He has a formidable precision of language, a way of saying complicated things simply, which prompts further pondering. For example, “We mustn’t just inspire dreams but put a ladder in place to achieve them.” Or, “defensiveness is a version of you-don’t-understand-what-it’s-like-to-be-me.”
“I believe that lots of things are out of our control. Things move in ways that are mysterious to us.”
Our conversation thus cheerfully roamed from why he doesn’t believe in horoscopes (“I’m scared to believe in horoscopes. I prefer the rational”) to the benefits of being Swiss (“It’s a very practical nation. Everyone knows how to take apart their car.”) And it’s evident that this ability, and desire, to communicate is what inspired The School of Life, an enterprise conceived as a new vision of education in London, with daily talks and weekend courses intended to inspire ways to ‘live wisely and well’ and to ‘tickle, expand and exercise your mind’. [‘Learn, Heal, Grow, is something of a mantra with online psychotherapy and retreats also on offer, and branches of the school now in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, São Paulo and Australia.]
“There are lots of parts of knowledge that aren’t useful.”
He’s also the driving force behind Living Architecture, an initiative that ‘provides access to the work of some of the greatest living architects’, realised as a series of houses for people to rent as holiday lets. “I’d written a book arguing for higher standards in architecture which went down really well, but nothing was changing, just lots of polite clapping. I wanted people to experience what it’s like to live in a space designed by an outstanding architect.”
There are not many provocateurs with the professional panache of Botton. I’m fascinated to see what he does next. But first, the Q&A, because more than anything I want to know what he thinks he’d taste like!