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A review by jcal9
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
4.0
"The Consolations of Philosophy" is absolutely everything you want from a Penguin classic. It is engaging, full of big ideas, and challenging. The concepts presented are broad but expressed in a simple manner to make them approachable. Such simplicity is complimented by the way Alain de Botton breaks the text into small, digestible chunks that makes it easy to have a break, contemplate what you have read, and come back to the text without losing the narrative flow.
While de Botton does hold back from really plumbing the depths of the ideas of such philosophers as Epicurus, Montaigne, and Nietzsche, the whole point of the text is to provide a hit-and-run introduction to many of the key ideas in classic philosophy. Therefore, de Botton only really outlines the ideas of the key philosophers, but does not providing critique or challenging those ideas (besides sometimes contrasting it to a previous philosopher).
Someone with training in philosophy will likely find this a boring read. However, for the few of the philosophers in here I had not read extensively, the writing style and succinct representation of their ideas made this an enjoyable book.
While de Botton does hold back from really plumbing the depths of the ideas of such philosophers as Epicurus, Montaigne, and Nietzsche, the whole point of the text is to provide a hit-and-run introduction to many of the key ideas in classic philosophy. Therefore, de Botton only really outlines the ideas of the key philosophers, but does not providing critique or challenging those ideas (besides sometimes contrasting it to a previous philosopher).
Someone with training in philosophy will likely find this a boring read. However, for the few of the philosophers in here I had not read extensively, the writing style and succinct representation of their ideas made this an enjoyable book.