Alain De Botton, FRSL

Alain de Botton, FRSL

Lazy Trout 5 Dec 2016 based on Wikipedia

1) Alain de Botton (born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born, British-based author and television presenter. His books and television programmes discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. At 23, he published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety(2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006

He was born in Zurich, his family was estimated to have been worth £234 million in 1999. De Botton's Swiss-born mother was Ashkenazi, and his father was from a Sephardic Jewish family He has one sister, Miel, and they received a secular upbringing. Alain spent the first twelve years of his life in Switzerland where he was brought up speaking French and German. He was sent to the Dragon School, a boarding school in Oxford, where English became his primary language. Describing himself as a shy child, he boarded at Harrow School, before going up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read History (1988–1991) and subsequently completed a master's degree (MPhil) in Philosophy at King's College London (1991–1992). He began studying for a PhD in French philosophy at Harvard University, but gave up this research to write books for the general public.

De Botton has described his relationship with his father as difficult, stating: "When I sold my first bestseller (and a million dollars was peanuts for my father) he was not impressed and wondered what I was going to do with myself."

In response to a question about whether he felt "pulled" to be a writer, de Botton responded:

"So I think where people tend to end up results from a combination of encouragement, accident, and lucky break, etc. etc. Like many others, my career happened like it did because certain doors opened and certain doors closed. You know, at a certain point I thought it would be great to make film documentaries. Well, in fact, I found that to be incredibly hard and very expensive to do and I didn’t really have the courage to keep battling away at that. In another age, I might have been an academic in a university, if the university system had been different. So it's all about trying to find the best fit between your talents and what the world can offer at that point in time."

2) In his first novel, Essays in Love (titled On Love in the U.S.), published in 1993, de Botton deals with the process of falling in and out of love. In 2010, Essays in Love was adapted to film by director Julian Kemp for the romantic comedy My Last Five Girlfriends. De Botton wrote a sequel to Essays in Love, published in 2016, titled The Course of Love.

3) In 1997 he published his first non-fiction book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, based on the life and works of Marcel Proust. It was a bestseller in both the US and UK.

4) This was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy in 2000. The title of the book is a reference to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, in which philosophy appears as an allegorical figure to Boethius to console him in the period leading up to 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. The book has been both praised and criticized for its therapeutic approach to philosophy.

5) In The Architecture of Happiness (2006), he 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 people every day, though people rarely pay particular attention to it. A good portion of the book discusses how human personality traits are reflected in architecture. He ends up defending Modernist architecture, and chastising the pseudo-vernacular architecture of housing, especially in the UK. "The best modern architecture," he argues, "doesn't hold a mirror up to nature, though it may borrow a pleasing shape or expressive line from nature's copybook. It gives voice to aspirations and suggests possibilities. The question isn't whether you'd actually like to live in a Le Corbusier home, but whether you'd like to be the kind of person who'd like to live in one”

6) In January 2012, de Botton published Religion for Atheists, about the benefits of religions for those who do not believe in them. De Botton put it: "It's clear to me that religions are in the end too complex, interesting and on occasion wise to be abandoned simply to those who believe in them"

7) In October 2013, he published Art as Therapy, co-written with the Australian-Scottish art historian, John Armstrong. Art as Therapy argues that certain great works of art "offer clues on managing the tensions and confusions of everyday life".

8) De Botton has written in a variety of formats to mixed response. Positive reviews of his books attest that he has made literature, philosophy and art more accessible to a wider audience.

Negative reviews allege that de Botton tends to state the obvious and have characterized some of his books as pompous and lacking focus.

9) In 2008, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life. Based in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Seoul, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, São Paulo, Berlin, Zurich and Melbourne, The School of Life offers an emotional education focusing in particular on the issues of Work and Relationships.

"The idea is to challenge traditional universities and reorganise knowledge, directing it towards life, and away from knowledge for its own sake. In a modest way, it’s an institution that is trying to give people what universities should I think always give them: a sense of direction and wisdom for their lives with the help of culture."

In 2014, De Botton founded a channel on YouTube for The School of Life". By May 2016, this had acquired a million subscribers. The YouTube site is updated three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

In 2014, De Botton founded a website called "The Book of Life", which publishes articles written by The School of Life's Content team