How Proust Can Change Your Life
by
by
Alain de Botton (Goodreads Author)
BlackOxford's review
it was amazing
bookshelves: british, criticism, philosophy-theology, epistemology-language Words Are Your Homeland
One of the most important deficiencies in the philosophy of science (and business, which prides itself as a practical science) is the idea of efficiency of inquiry in scientific method - how to get an answer to a question at hand with the least possible effort. Efficiency is predicated on the idea that it is possible to pare down the world to some essential core - somewhat like finding the right principle in law - such that the matter seems to resolve itself through compelling factual evidence.
Efficiency of inquiry is a false friend however. One is reminded, for example, that over the last few decades things like eggs, meat, and dairy products have been classified as healthy, dangerously unhealthy and definitively life-invigorating by successive scientific studies. Or consider the pharmaceutical industry which makes a living by conducting efficient inquiry under government supervision for whole classes of drugs from amphetamines to minor tranquilizers, to opioids. Each of these has been shown to be dangerously biased and incomplete by yet more efficient inquiry. Efficiency, it would seem, is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The problem of course is that the efficiency of inquiry - or of economic production, or of medical treatment or, for that matter, of reading - is crucially dependent upon the definition one uses for what constitutes a successful result. What constitutes a relevant fact is determined by what success means in human terms. Eating red meat, for example, may be correlated with an increased incidence of heart disease. So the dietary advice is ‘eat less red meat’. On the other hand, red meat may improve, say, liver function. So the contradictory advice to ‘eat more meat’ is appropriate. Or as obvious with a drug like the Sackler family’s OxyContin, it is very efficient in relieving chronic pain; it is however even more efficient in creating mass opioid dependency.
It should be obvious therefore that the issue of which criterion to choose as a measure of success, of value, is logically and practically prior to any issue of efficiency. This implies an inescapable paradox: if inquiry about the correct criterion of ‘good’ action is subject to the demands of efficiency, the inquiry will fail. Without an enormous amount of apparently senseless chat about ‘why’ it is simply not possible to give an efficient answer about ‘how’. This applies to all aspects of human life: scientific, commercial, personal and moral. There is no way to discover or articulate what philosophers call the Good, without seemingly pointless, and endless, discourse with oneself as well as others.
This I think is the central thesis of de Botton’s little book: method is rational; value is political. The discussion and choice of method is necessarily a matter of politics, that is of resolving the conflict about what is important. This is simultaneously obvious and unpalatable. In brief (and therefore with entirely inappropriate efficiency): Wasting time in political argument is a necessary condition for saving time, as well as one’s life. Cutting short the argument compromises the result of inquiry. De Botton is much more elegant: “The more an account is compressed, the more it seems that it deserves no more space than it has been allocated.” Efficiency of expression, that is, can trivialize what is expressed - joy, sorrow, death, deprivation and, most important, life. One only need observe the quality of feelings expressed on Twitter for example to appreciate the depth of the problem.
De Botton presents this problem as profoundly present and fundamental for human existence and marvels “how vulnerable much of human experience is to abbreviation.” When we abbreviate the experience of others - either through ‘scientific’ inquiry or merely the way we read the newspaper - we condition ourselves to abbreviating our own experience as well as everyone else’s. The Twittersphere, as it were, is a consequence not a cause of inadequate appreciation of what might constitute the Good, and therefore the criteria of right action - that is to say, ethics.
So de Botton is keen that we recognize the therapeutic value not only of Proust’s technically rather inefficient memoir, In Search of Lost Time, but also of Proust’s life itself, which he devoted to finding as many words possible that might help others to appreciate their own experiences: “Far from a memoir tracing the passage of a more lyrical age, it was a practical, universally applicable story about how to stop wasting time and start to appreciate life.” It takes a long period of concentrated effort to discover a vocabulary for describing one’s experience of something like wine. Inexplicably, the vocabulary comes before the experience. Appreciation of life also leads with the words necessary to describe its experiences. Many more words and much more time is required to collect the words for living - one’s internal politics - than for wine-tasting. De Botton suggests a Proustian slogan for increasing one’s life’s vocabulary. In its linguistic brevity it is apt but rather un-Proustian: “n’allez pas trop vite.” Don’t rush it!
One of the most important deficiencies in the philosophy of science (and business, which prides itself as a practical science) is the idea of efficiency of inquiry in scientific method - how to get an answer to a question at hand with the least possible effort. Efficiency is predicated on the idea that it is possible to pare down the world to some essential core - somewhat like finding the right principle in law - such that the matter seems to resolve itself through compelling factual evidence.
Efficiency of inquiry is a false friend however. One is reminded, for example, that over the last few decades things like eggs, meat, and dairy products have been classified as healthy, dangerously unhealthy and definitively life-invigorating by successive scientific studies. Or consider the pharmaceutical industry which makes a living by conducting efficient inquiry under government supervision for whole classes of drugs from amphetamines to minor tranquilizers, to opioids. Each of these has been shown to be dangerously biased and incomplete by yet more efficient inquiry. Efficiency, it would seem, is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The problem of course is that the efficiency of inquiry - or of economic production, or of medical treatment or, for that matter, of reading - is crucially dependent upon the definition one uses for what constitutes a successful result. What constitutes a relevant fact is determined by what success means in human terms. Eating red meat, for example, may be correlated with an increased incidence of heart disease. So the dietary advice is ‘eat less red meat’. On the other hand, red meat may improve, say, liver function. So the contradictory advice to ‘eat more meat’ is appropriate. Or as obvious with a drug like the Sackler family’s OxyContin, it is very efficient in relieving chronic pain; it is however even more efficient in creating mass opioid dependency.
It should be obvious therefore that the issue of which criterion to choose as a measure of success, of value, is logically and practically prior to any issue of efficiency. This implies an inescapable paradox: if inquiry about the correct criterion of ‘good’ action is subject to the demands of efficiency, the inquiry will fail. Without an enormous amount of apparently senseless chat about ‘why’ it is simply not possible to give an efficient answer about ‘how’. This applies to all aspects of human life: scientific, commercial, personal and moral. There is no way to discover or articulate what philosophers call the Good, without seemingly pointless, and endless, discourse with oneself as well as others.
This I think is the central thesis of de Botton’s little book: method is rational; value is political. The discussion and choice of method is necessarily a matter of politics, that is of resolving the conflict about what is important. This is simultaneously obvious and unpalatable. In brief (and therefore with entirely inappropriate efficiency): Wasting time in political argument is a necessary condition for saving time, as well as one’s life. Cutting short the argument compromises the result of inquiry. De Botton is much more elegant: “The more an account is compressed, the more it seems that it deserves no more space than it has been allocated.” Efficiency of expression, that is, can trivialize what is expressed - joy, sorrow, death, deprivation and, most important, life. One only need observe the quality of feelings expressed on Twitter for example to appreciate the depth of the problem.
De Botton presents this problem as profoundly present and fundamental for human existence and marvels “how vulnerable much of human experience is to abbreviation.” When we abbreviate the experience of others - either through ‘scientific’ inquiry or merely the way we read the newspaper - we condition ourselves to abbreviating our own experience as well as everyone else’s. The Twittersphere, as it were, is a consequence not a cause of inadequate appreciation of what might constitute the Good, and therefore the criteria of right action - that is to say, ethics.
So de Botton is keen that we recognize the therapeutic value not only of Proust’s technically rather inefficient memoir, In Search of Lost Time, but also of Proust’s life itself, which he devoted to finding as many words possible that might help others to appreciate their own experiences: “Far from a memoir tracing the passage of a more lyrical age, it was a practical, universally applicable story about how to stop wasting time and start to appreciate life.” It takes a long period of concentrated effort to discover a vocabulary for describing one’s experience of something like wine. Inexplicably, the vocabulary comes before the experience. Appreciation of life also leads with the words necessary to describe its experiences. Many more words and much more time is required to collect the words for living - one’s internal politics - than for wine-tasting. De Botton suggests a Proustian slogan for increasing one’s life’s vocabulary. In its linguistic brevity it is apt but rather un-Proustian: “n’allez pas trop vite.” Don’t rush it!
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ September 09, 2018
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