The Consolations of Philosophy

I have slowly been reading Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy for at least a month and finally finished it. What a wonderful book! Each chapter explores a specific philosopher, looking at the life lessons one can extract from their work. So, it isn't an intellectual theoretical treatment of the philosophers; it's a kind of emotional personal reading of them -- which is how I tend to read philosophy anyway.

He covers Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Each chapter has a title like, "The Consolation for Inadequacy" (Montaigne) and includes a lot of information on the philosophers' life, on how they lived, as well as copious quotes and even pictures, sometimes oddly chosen.

My favorite sections were the ones on Montaigne and Schopenhauer -- both whom I personally related to. Neither whom I've read. I can't wait to go out and read Montaigne's Essays, although that will probably have to wait until after January. Surprisingly, I am most familiar with Nietzsche and was least engaged with that chapter ("The Consolation for Difficulties")

Some Schopenhauer quotes:

"We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness"

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy... So long as we persist in this inborn error... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment."

I have never forgotten my Freshman Seminar professor exclaiming one day, for no reason I could discern, "Oh, poor Schopenhauer!"