In attempting to “battle through” Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1818/19), Dib admitted that she “got frustrated with his dusty ass pretty quick.” Had she been patient enough to slog through the dense text, she would’ve encountered a very interesting observation from Schopenhauer, who remarked, concerning Kant and the complexity of philosophy, that “what is obscure is not always without meaning.”[13] Unfortunately, Dib dropped Schopenhauer in favor of de Botton. For the bragging rights of being able to boast that one understood a certain philosopher or a concept, one, in fact, may have only settled for a dumbed down, overly simplified, or at times, an unmistakably wrong interpretation of it. Of course, one could easily invoke the impossibility of a purely objective reading, but just because there’s no such thing doesn’t mean there are no objectively wrong, misleading, and trivialized ones. Case in point is de Botton’s therapeutic conception of philosophy, best described by his use of a quote from Epicurus, on the back cover of the first edition of The Consolations:

Any philosopher’s argument which does not therapeutically treat human suffering is worthless; for just as there is no profit in medicine when it doesn’t expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy when it doesn’t expel the sufferings of the mind.

De Botton’s gravest offense was perhaps already pronounced by Edward Skidelski, in a critical review published almost two decades ago. In confusing the practicality of philosophy with flattery, de Botton fails to communicate that “something may be useful or appropriate in your life without necessarily making you feel better.”[14] It is a common misconception that philosophy ought to solve our problems. “To comprehend what is,” Hegel declared in 1820, “that is the task of philosophy.”[15] Likewise, Theodor Adorno admitted that the question “what is to be done?” is “asking too much” of him, and he confined himself only to the task of analyzing “relentlessly what is.”[16] Even Ludwig Wittgenstein challenged the idea that “philosophy hasn’t made any progress” when he asked: “if someone scratches where it itches, do we have to see progress?”[17] The medical analogy is misleading; for unlike medicine, philosophy isn’t always concerned with end results. Theories are not at once to be followed as though they were the teachings of a wise guru. Its chief value is that it stands in conflict with other theories, which allows us to view the world from a variety of perspectives.

The practicality of philosophy must never be a justification for dumbing it down for the sake of accessibility. Far from the dominant misconception, it’s never the case that philosophers are keeping philosophy from the public, given the plethora of readily available recorded talks, lectures, and podcasts, open access philosophy journals and publications, and a variety of freely available resources online. The democratization of knowledge can optimistically be viewed as an invitation to improve the quality of thinking. After all, in the words of a certain British rock band, “nobody said it was easy.”

Public libraries as well as the World Wide Web abound with readily available academic philosophy sources which should entice us to look beyond the comforting and the therapeutic. “Claiming that academics are failing to engage with the general public,” Adam Kotsko wrote, “is intellectual laziness at best and anti-intellectual posturing at worst.”[18] We’ve gone from the age of enlightenment to the age of entitlement in which not only must knowledge and information be spoon-fed, it must also be easily consumable. The democratization of knowledge is an invitation for engagement, which, in its ideal form, is a “two-way street.”[19]

That accessibility is a prerequisite of engagement is indeed a convincing argument. In an interesting response, Justin Weinberg questions Kotsko’s “faulty generalization” of depicting the public as “close-minded and unreceptive to academic expertise.”[20] He invokes the “availability heuristic” as the primary reason why the public find it difficult to engage. Yet, while the simple answers to this are time, humility, and patience, Maxwell’s defense of the necessary complexity of philosophical language is more persuasive. He insists that:

[J]ust as one wouldn’t expect to be able to perform brain surgery or build a rocket without decades of study and practice with the instruments and theories of those endeavors, so too should one not expect to be able to do real philosophy, or even to understand it very well, without years of study and practice. Of course popularly accessible explanations of difficult philosophical concepts are necessary and important. …. Still, the often-repeated demand that all philosophy be understandable by non-specialists is as misguided as the demand that a brain surgeon or rocket scientist should be able to do their work without the tools of their trade …[21]

The complexity of philosophy represents the complex subjects it engages (no matter how simple it appears). This is why academics often feel offended by an oversimplification, much less misinterpretation, of what they devote years of study to. De Botton and his defenders espouse the thesis that a philosophy that isn’t directly relatable is a weak kind of philosophy. As a result, philosophy is forced to become overly simple resulting to some trite clichés and truisms that often do injustice to the philosopher or the concept. It is indeed tempting to go on into detail, although the brevity required of this piece suggests that I must postpone such a trajectory for the moment. Yet, for the sake of example, we may succinctly consider de Botton’s brainchild, The School of Life.

The School of Life is an educational company that publishes books, articles, and films on philosophy and emotional intelligence.[22] Premised by the (false) promise of the democratization of wisdom, SOL is a profiteering company that entices its consumers promising answers to life’s biggest questions. In the company’s introductory video, they describe themselves as an “open-minded, rigorous, unideological organization devoted to helping you deal with the important things that you were never taught at school.”[23] It betrays, however, those descriptions when almost all content are created and narrated by de Botton, whose very ‘philosophy’ reflects the contents published. There is nothing open-minded, rigorous, and unideological in a philosophical ‘lecture’ that fails to address, or at least, present opposing views from the ideas being advanced. We need not even talk about how ‘philosophy’ as it is presented is noticeably prejudiced at best and misleading at worst, for all of this is hidden in de Botton’s cut-glass accent, near-perfect enunciation, and a soothing voice that reassures us, toward the end of almost every SOL video, using a tone that suggests ‘don’t you worry, we’ve got it all figured out, everything will be just fine.’ Hegel once said that “[w]e do not need to be shoemakers to know if our shoes fit, and just as little have we any need to be professionals to acquire knowledge of matters of universal interest.”[24] He refers to right and freedom, though much of the subjects covered in philosophy are matters of universal interest too. And while this is the case, any philosophy worth its salt must invite the learner to pursue more questions.