Alain de Botton – De troost van de filosofie (04-035)

Alain de Botton – De troost van de filosofie (04-035)

Number: 04-035
Title: De troost van de filosofie (The consolations of philosophy)
Author: Alain de Botton
Language: Dutch (Orig.: English)
Year: 2000
# Pages: 304 (6598)
Category: Popular science
ISBN: 90-254-1962-3

Sometimes you lay your hands on a book that you wouldn’t normally pick. This is one of them. Several philosophers explained and adapted to modern life, seemed to be the idea. It was great fun as well, especially in the beginning reading about Socrates and Epicurus. Then at some point I found myself reading and not remembering what I had read the last pages. An omen. Not many consolations then. It dragged, which is a shame, because I quite like the idea. Not even an avid reader like me does the effort to read into the complete works of Nietsche or Schopenhauer. But I would like to know more about classic philosophers. I’m still not sure if the book was too big for one go, if it just became boring or if it is was my state of mind that set me back after reading the first hundred plus pages.

Anyway, worth a try for everybody who, like me, would love to be the arrogant bastard to end a discussion by quoting Socrates or solving problems by summarizing Epicurus theories. Or who is just curious about their ideas. Try it yourself.

Requests

Perhaps the idea wasn’t as good as I thought. I saw it on someone else’s blog and it worked really well. The series ‘You asked for it’ seemed like fun to me. You give me an idea and I write. Challenging, funny, sometimes deep, sometimes nonsense.

The first episode was requested by joy_joy

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gerbie/333146.html

The second request needed some searching and surfing, request by spiralstairs

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gerbie/335229.html

Then finally I got a request by geordiecat76 which was a bit more complicated.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/gerbie/339196.html

Then it stopped. No more requests. Nobody wanted me to write anything anymore. But because I still believe in the idea, I just bring it to your attention once more. Because you might have missed the above posts. Because you didn’t understand the idea. Because you didn’t have inspiration at the time. Perhaps I missed a comment (both LJ and Yahoo have been difficult lately) and you thought I ignored you. So here’s another chance for you.

(You asked for it, a series I started to give anyone the opportunity to tell me what to write. You want to tell me as well: leave a comment or mail me (email in user info). No requests waiting at the moment.)