Alain de Botton believes that philosophy can help people enjoy happier lives. And since joining Penguin in 2000 when his Consolations of Philosophy became a bestseller, his unique blend of erudition and self-help has reached an audience eager to listen. In On Seeing and Noticing he takes everyday concerns - such as expressing sadness or being romantic - and dispenses advice and observations based on the works of some of history's greatest writers, artists and thinkers.
From 'On Authenticity'
1. It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest to confidently seduce those we are least attracted to, an intensity of desire interfering with the requisite indifference, attraction eliciting a sense of inferiority compared with the perfection that we have located in the beloved. My love for Chloe meant I had lost all belief in my own worthiness. Who could I be next to her? Was it not the greatest honour for her to have agreed to this dinner, to have dressed so elegantly ["Is this alright?" she'd asked in the car, "it had better be, because I'm not changing a sixth time"], let alone that she be willing to respond to some of the things that might fall [if ever I recovered my tongue] from my unworthy lips?
2. It was Friday night and Chloe and I were seated at a corner table of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a French restaurant that had recently opened at the end of the Fulham road. There could have been no more appropriate setting for Chloe's beauty, the chandeliers throwing soft shadows across her face, the light green walls matching her light green eyes. And yet, as though struck dumb by the angel that faced me across the table, I found [only minutes after an animated conversation] that I had lost all capacity either to think or speak, able only to silently draw invisible patterns on the starched white table-cloth and take unnecessary sips of bubbled water from a large glass goblet.
3. Out of this perceived inferiority emerged the need to take on a personality that was not directly my own, a seducing self that would locate and respond to the demands of this superior being. Did love condemn me not to be myself? Perhaps not for ever, but, if it was to be taken seriously, it did at this stage of seduction, for the seducing position was one which led me to ask What would appeal to her? rather than What appeals to me? I asked How would she perceive my tie? rather than How do I judge it? Love forced me to look at myself as through the imagined eyes of the beloved. Not who am I, but who am I for her? And in the reflexive movement of that question, my self could not help but grow tinged with a certain bad faith and inauthenticity.
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If you like this book, you may also like these:
Forgetting Things - Sigmund Freud
The View from Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins
Cogs in the Great Machine - Eric Schlosser