How Philosophy Babe Alain de Botton Can Change Your Love Life

By Samuel Leighton-Dore

It’s a strange thing to fanboy over a starkly bald middle-aged English writer/philosopher. But here I am, desperately counting down the days to Alain de Botton’s talk on the subject of love at The Sydney Opera House in July.

The day before my birthday. Best. Present. Ever.

My ongoing love affair with Alain’s writing began several years ago, sitting on the cool tiled floors of Sydney’s International Departure Terminal. I was feeling particularly crappy after being rejected by yet another in a seemingly undending list of unrequited loves. My solo trip to the United States – funded by a credit card I’m yet to pay off – was my attempt at escape from a growing sense of emotional and psychological unrest. Sensing my existential/romantic woes prior to departure, my father leant me a book titled Essays on Love – Alain de Botton’s first novel – suggesting it might be helpful in gaining a necessary perspective on relationships.

Long story short – it did.

I suspect de Botton’s particular brand of accessible philosophy speaks so profoundly to us millennials because he began writing so young. Despite only being in his early twenties at the time of publication, Essays on Love went on to sell over two million copies worldwide – and it’s no exaggeration to say the book has changed my life in a number of meaningful ways. Flipping through the pages at the airport, my father’s notes pencilled messily in the margins, felt more deeply therapeutic and calming than if a shrink were to hand me a complimentary 50-pack of Valium and say “everything’s going to be okay”. It was as though De Botton had somehow managed to reach into my psyche, retract my most troubling and embarrassing anxieties, and present them for analysis in a palatable narrative context.

I found a friend and confidant in his young protagonist – and I revisit him regularly.

Alain speaks openly about his belief that modern society has largely rejected the idea of orienting knowledge specific to the task of consolation, assistance, and, in a loose sense, therapy. Where once we were guided by spiritual leaders – a wise rabbi or priest – we now turn to education and historic analysis. Which would be fine and well if we and our relationships weren’t so chronically misguided by the ongoing reign of romanticism.

Interestingly, he argues that love isn’t so much an enthusiasm as it is a skill-set to be learned and mastered. And yet we wait until our mid-40’s to start learning the practice.

“We should look for ways to accommodate ourselves as gently and kindly as we can to the awkward realities of living alongside another fallen creature,” de Botton counsels, dropping truth-bombs like he’s in the midst of a philosophical Hiroshima.

“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.”

What makes Alain truly exceptional isn’t his commitment to self-examination and philosophy, but his dedication to creating multi-faceted and exciting ways for his audiences to experience them. He’s the founder of The Book Of Life which, like any old book, contains various chapters on different subjects of self-help. However, the chapters never end, being updated regularly to create an incredible re-gifting literary experience. Furthermore, he started up the international organisation The School of Life, where curious, hurting, or lost souls around the world can attend classes, lectures, and courses on any number of philosophical areas.

He’s quite literally making philosophy cool again – and I couldn’t be fucking gladder.

Having attended a class at the recent School of Life pop-up in Sydney (How To Make Love Last) I can unreservedly attest to the sheer importance of Alain’s work. At a time when we’re so collectively driven by anxiety, impulse and business, we don’t seem to pay enough mind to the peculiar subtleties of the human condition. While it’s often tempting to render ourselves raving mad at the first niggling of panic or psychological peculiarity, it’s important to remember these are often the very things connecting us all – and should therefor be the subject of curious examination, not self-loathing.

Alain and his writing have helped me do just that.

Alain de Botton speaks at the Sydney Opera House July 9th and 10th (my birthday). His new book The Course of Love is out now.