About the book
Alain de Botton's 2004 study examines the worry over whether others judge a person a success or a failure, and argues that the pursuit of status is driven less by material comfort than by a longing for love from the world. He traces the worry to five causes, namely lovelessness, expectation, meritocracy, snobbery and dependence, drawing on figures from St. Augustine and Machiavelli to Andrew Carnegie and Anthony Robbins, and on events such as the French Revolution. It then turns to remedies found in philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemianism, with detours into sandal-less philosophers, skulls kept on sideboards and the lessons of ruins. De Botton also wrote a two-hour documentary film on the same thesis.
Ryan Holiday put it on his list of 38 books for young and ambitious men, saying it examines the costs of wanting to be somebody and how to handle ambition and envy.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Ryan Holiday (Founder/Brass Check)
Ah yes, the drive that we all have to be better, bigger, have more, be more. Ambition is a good thing, but it’s also a source of great anxiety and frustration. In this book, philosopher Alain de Botton studies the downsides of the desire to “be somebody” in this world. How do you manage ambition? How do you manage envy? How do you avoid the traps that so many other people fall into? This book is a good introduction into the philosophy and psychology of just that.
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