.Ämne: Nur ein Artikel.. in aller Eile
Lieber ...,
Danke für dein wunderbares langes Mail.. Ich werde es bald beantworten
aber schicke dir derweilen diesen Artikel über Alain de Bottons Buch.
Somit kannst du ein wenig "brush up your English". :-)
Es freut mich dass du wieder in Schuss bist.
Liebe Grüsse
Marlena
Humphrey Carpenter in The Sunday Times, 2 April 2000
Six of the best, in deep thought
"There are more books on books than on any other subject: all we do is
gloss each other. All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a
dearth." So wrote the essayist Montaigne in the late 16th century, and,
at first glance, Alain de Botton’s new book seems to run a risk by
quoting this remark in its chapter on Montaigne, since the book itself
exemplifies this trend, which has continued unabated since Montaigne’s
day.
The Consolations of Philosophy is certainly a commentary rather than a
work of original thought; but few discussions on the great philosophers
can have been so entertaining. De Botton takes us on a brisk, playful
tour of the lives and ideas of half-a-dozen of the big names in the
history of philosophy, done in the manner of his celebrated How Proust
Can Change Your Life.
Short, often whimsical passages of prose are punctuated with little
pictures dotted around the text. As in the Proust book, these have
occasionally been chosen with irritating facetiousness - for example,
the passing mention of chocolate milk gives rise to a photograph of a
packet of NesQuik. Yet most are thoroughly justifiable. The pictures of
Schopenhauer sunk in a typical angry gloom and of Nietzsche sporting a
ridiculous moustache like a hearth-brush superbly complement de Botton’s
verbal portraits of these two restless thinkers. Even better, the
weeping Adam and Eve from Masaccio’s fresco of the Expulsion from Eden
provides an eloquent visual climax to the excellent chapter about
Schopenhauer’s analysis of misery.
De Botton’s title alludes, unacknowledged, to the De Consolatione
Philosophiae of the 6th-century philosopher Boethius, but de Botton uses
"consolation" in an entirely modern sense. His tour begins with a
chapter called Consolation for Unpopularity, which is about Socrates.
The title and its subject-matter don’t really mesh here, since Socrates
didn’t care two figs that he was unpopular with the Athenian rabble, who
had him sentenced to death because they blamed him for the city’s
misfortunes. Moreover de Botton’s exposition of the Socratic method
(philosophy by question-and-answer) doesn’t improve on, or add to,
Plato’s readable accounts of his old teacher. How could it?
In contrast, the Greek philosopher Epicurus gets a witty chapter with a
fresh feel, entitled Consolation for Not Having Enough Money. De Botton
begins it by listing the constituent parts of his imaginary ideal
lifestyle but, as it progresses, the chapter shows us that Epicurus,
supposedly the high priest of hedonism, actually preferred water to
wine, bread and cheese to fancy cooking, and the company of friends to
limitless wealth. Consequently, de Botton (aided by appropriate
illustrations) revises his list to a few simple needs, of which the most
important is friendship.
The chapter Consolation for Frustration unpacks the stoicism of Seneca,
who (among other things) warns us against getting into rages with
inanimate objects. De Botton might have cited John Cleese in Fawlty
Towers beating his car with a tree-branch when it won’t start. Instead
he retells the legend of Cyrus, king of Persia, who was so furious with
the river which had drowned his favourite horse that he wasted military
time by ordering his army to punish it by dividing it into 360 feeble
little channels.
Following current fashion, de Botton makes the book into something of a
personal quest. Every so often he drops little pieces of autobiography -
or maybe fiction - into the narrative. In the chapter on Montaigne,
Consolation for Inadequacy, we glimpse him experiencing impotence on
holiday; and in the Schopenhauer chapter, Consolation for a Broken
Heart, he chats up a girl on a train, but is rejected. Finally, in the
Nietzsche chapter, Consolation for Difficulties, he climbs one of
Nietzsche’s favourite Alps, and recites some of the philosopher’s words,
but it exhausts him.
These self-deprecating personal touches are quite unnecessary. When de
Botton sticks to the facts, he always has a story to tell - and tells it
with sparkle. Montaigne is the most charming member of his cast, a man
who should have been a book-reviewer, since he declared that if we find a
book incomprehensible we should blame the author rather than ourselves.
On the other hand, the prize for ideas-ahead-of-their-time should
probably go to Schopenhauer, who wrote with immense shrewdness on
falling in love, despite - or perhaps because of - being rejected by
every woman he ever wooed. He anticipated Richard Dawkins in perceiving
that the apparently selfless process of falling in love is, in fact,
governed by the extreme selfishness of our genes. De Botton writes with
tender sympathy about the eccentric philosopher, who argued "this world
could not have been the work of an all-loving Being, but rather that of a
devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in
the sight of their sufferings".
Nietzsche, with whom the book concludes, began as a disciple of the
deeply depressive Schopenhauer, but then developed his own manic views
about mankind. (Of course, at this point de Botton’s account of
Nietzsche’s theory of the Ubermensch has to be comically illustrated
with a drawing of Superman.) Not altogether surprisingly, Nietzsche
eventually went mad, and throughout The Consolations of Philosophy there
is a slightly uncomfortable contrast between the usually painful,
struggling lives of the philosophers themselves and de Botton’s urbane,
faintly giggly detachment as he narrates their stories.
Nevertheless this is an ingenious, imaginative book which will not
disappoint fans of How Proust Can Change Your Life, and might even win
over a few readers to study philosophy at a more demanding level.
