Five minutes with Alain de Botton

London’s Shepherd’s Bush roundabout probably isn’t the first place you’d go in search of a modern philosopher but it is close to the home of Alain de Botton. He was born in Switzerland, hence our lame home page reference to an exotic-sounding brand of Swiss coffee.

There’s a haiku-like quality to de Botton’s words — their gravity outweighs their number, as you’re about to experience from his responses to our questions — and his TV shows, especially The Perfect Home, so perfectly sum up the failings and successes of 21st Century architecture that they’re inclined to have viewers cheering in front of their screens.

He’s also a co-founder and an ambassador of The School of Life, which came as something of a surprise to those here at NZBC, since according to our résumés we were educated there, before we graduated to the university of hard knocks.

I’ll get my mortarboard, but before I go I’d like to say I wish more writers and TV personalities were just a little bit like him.

A celebrity TV scientist broadcasts evidence that the world will end at a particular time. As the hour approaches, her prediction is confirmed by other scientists. What would the effect be on the population in the time remaining before cataclysm, and what would you do in your last hour?

“It’s so hard getting the most out of life when there’s just an hour left. But your thought experiment is more broadly a wake-up call to remember that we’re all potentially an hour or less away from death, and this gives us a responsibility to keep focusing on how we genuinely want to lead our lives, whether that’s at work, with family or with relationships.”

Germaine Greer recently espoused the view that Proust used too many commas in Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time and not enough full stops, and that he was “snobbish” about diction. Any comment?

“Like a lot of very privileged and cultured people, Germaine Greer occasionally likes to kick against her own: to say that things that are high culture are really all nonsense and not worth bothering with. She’s right in a way: a great reverence for high culture is not always a helpful way to truly enjoy things. If you’ve had it drilled into you at school that Shakespeare is the best playwright on earth, you’ll be in a very bad frame of mind spontaneously to enjoy his work. So a calculated dose of disrespect does seem to belong to the preconditions necessary to enjoy art. All this said, Proust is a lot more interesting than Greer makes out. Just pick it up and judge for yourself.”

When you were working on The Consolations of Philosophy did writing certain passages depress you — for instance, the appalling treatment of the Tupi Indians by European explorers?

“I was generally really amazed by the relevance of the philosophers I was dealing with. Though many of them lived hundreds of years ago, the dilemmas they were addressing are those we all face. So they ended up being like virtual friends and when I have difficulties, I still turn to them as one might to a friend.”

Do you think there have been many philosophers through the ages whose work has been forgotten because their ideas were destroyed or remained unrecorded and who might otherwise have been great?

“I’m sure — that’s the great tragedy of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. There are bound to have been some wonderful books there. That said, we have enough to be getting on with. There are some great philosophers, my favourites are Nietzsche, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Seneca.”

In ‘The Perfect Home’ you looked at mass developer housing and made a case for the need for developers to give people a choice if they’re to claim a particular architectural style is what they want. Is there any evidence that poorly executed modern architecture is any better for the human spirit than well-executed mock Georgian and mock-Tudor mass developer housing?

“The choice is a depressing one, with all due respect. Surely what we need is good quality modern housing, which doesn’t have to be ‘cold’. Modern architects have often been really bad at creating cosiness. Cosiness is one of the most essential of virtues in houses and yet so often, modern architects fear it as a one-way road to kitsch, which it doesn’t have to be.”

What do you make of New Zealand architecture — are Kiwi homeowners any less conservative than their British counterparts?

“I have made three book tours around New Zealand. I found the architecture to be much more adventurous and much more high-quality. New Zealand architects are some of the best in the world, they know how to respond to the scenery and your fascinating climate. They know how to frame the view, bring the outside in and give you a feeling of living with and on the land.”

Do you owe Charlie Brooker money or did you steal his girlfriend? He seems to hold a remarkably hostile view of your work. How do you deal with such extreme criticism?

“As a writer, you always hope to please readers — but realise that pleasing some people is almost unavoidably linked to offending others. The worst books are those that somehow neither offend, nor truly delight anyone. So offending some people seems to be the price for having some genuine fans.”

In The Consolations of Philosophy there’s a huge chasm between the Epicurean view that pleasure is the beginning and goal of a happy life and the Nietzschean view, that the most fulfilling human projects are inseparable from a degree of torment, that cannot be reconciled. Can the two views be held and lived by a single person simultaneously?

“I think philosophy teaches us that you can hold a number of contradictory points of view and this doesn’t make one illogical, it’s a sign that reality is complex, and one can, for example, both be a fan of austerity and luxury, of war and peace, or socialism and capitalism. It depends on the situation.”

What do you think of supermarkets — do you ever shop in them?

“The UK supermarkets are big beasts and it’s frankly impossible not to use them. That said, there are signs that some little local shops are coming back into business. Just near my house, there’s a new bakery opening up, a sign that the days of steamroller capitalism may be nearing a close…”

In films like Love Actually, airports show off the goodness in society, “love is all around”. How has your view of airports changed since you became Heathrow Airport’s writer in residence?

“Airports always bring us into greater proximity with the possibility of death — and this unconscious or semi-conscious awareness has the habit of releasing us from inhibitions and therefore making love potentially more possible. We break free of everyday habits and, sensing our mortality, are more open to the unusual encounter. People who have been in loveless marriages for decades will suddenly say unexpectedly romantic things in airports. The prospect of an air crash can do wonders for a sagging relationship.”

Have you read Billy Collins’ poem ‘Passengers’ and do you have a fear of flying?

“By flying, unconsciously we all know that we are tempting the gods, that we are going up into the skies, which is their home, and that an engine may break or a wing may snap off and, all too easily, we may be reduced to flames. We don’t speak about this, but it’s impossible for the mind not to have this thought somewhere in its neuronal processes. That is why we shop at airports — duty free is an attempt to flee from our sadness at the brevity and fragility of life.”

When did you last take a holiday and how many times a year do you generally allow yourself one?

“I was in Tenerife with my family for Christmas, I generally take three weeks off a year — but I much prefer working!”

Do you listen to podcasts and, if so, are there any you can recommend to NZBC readers?

“I wish I did but shamefully don’t, aside from the excellent Philosophy Bites ones done by a philosopher called Nigel Warburton.”