We live in an age not given to deep or extended reflection. The phenomenon of lifestyle philosophy is part of a sporadic and slightly tortured effort by philosophers to make themselves relevant to such an age. For better or worse, philosophy stopped being what it once was, the much vaunted queen of the sciences, several centuries ago. And the times are definitively over when a literary or philosophical education was seen as a necessary preparatory to life in the wider world. A fair portion of academic philosophy has coped with that by remaking itself in the image of a technical discipline, with its own sub-disciplines, journals and professional cadres. Lifestyle philosophy has struck out in the opposite direction. Its working assumption is that philosophy can be made as applicable to everyday life as the individual lifestyle philosopher dares to make it.
Damon Young's Distraction is very much in this vein. Subtitled A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free, it takes up the perennial theme of individual liberty and does something with it very much along the lines of Alain de Botton or John Armstrong. It shares the attractions and the pitfalls of Armstrong's work, which at its best can give readers a gentle introduction to a philosophical theme but at its worst reduces the history of ideas to something colourless and quaint, a sort of boutique blandness.
Young argues that distraction is the very opposite of freedom - it is what robs us of our authentic selves and radically narrows our ability to give shape to individual character. This all seems unambiguously true; we live in times that are rife with diversions of dubious value, a seemingly endless array of trivia. For Young, we can all be happier, healthier and wiser if we concentrate on what we truly value, and the lives and works of great philosophers and artists apparently show us how we can go about it - they're quintessentially edifying, or so the argument goes.
In seven chapters Young surveys the areas of contemporary life where distraction exercises its devilish and humdrum charms - in the world of work, in our dealings with technology, in war and politics. But he also takes us on a Cook's tour of Western cultural history in search of a cure. This is where the problems begin. The meanings of thousand-page novels, philosophical systems and their authors' lives are condensed into paragraphs or single sentences - the meaning of T.S.Eliot's life is that "hard work pays off", with Marx it's that "in the economy there's no such thing as a free lunch", while Plato's idealistic disaffection with the Greece of his day suggests to Young we shouldn't "flinch or close our eyes" when confronted with "the opportunity to live".
The potted versions of the lives seem slightly irrelevant to Young's theme and he often strains to derive much coherent, reflective meaning from them. Too often the result is stereotyped life-stances that Young plays off against one another. Thus too much romanticism in life is a consistent no-no. On the other hand, adhering too strictly to reason, order and principle underplays the importance of emotion and imagination. Yes, indeed. But can any of the great philosophers really have recommended a life of unadulterated romance or the reasoned eradication of passion? Young writes as if they might have, so he can guide us to the middle ground, from which freedom gently beckons.
The difficulty is not so much Young's style, which is at times lively and (maybe a touch predictably) amusing. It's a problem with his self-help-y point of view. The overall cast of Distraction isn't equal to the grand idea of a new book about freedom. Flattening writers' lives into a digestible series of underpsychologised set pieces isn't enough to make a compelling case about liberty or individuality in our times.And even if we'd like to think that the wisdom of past ages could be transferred into our personal philosophical bank accounts without further ado, the question remains whether the historical context of an Eliot or a Plato's life was so different from our own that the project of letting them speak to us directly is bound to fail.
Young is right that we live in distracting times. But is more freedom or self-realisation quite the solution? There are good reasons to think the opposite but they don't get a look in. Might not some of our ills - from stockmarket turmoil to climate change - be the byproducts of the very liberty Young advocates? To see that, the cruel problem of freedom needs to be grasped from a less comfortable point of view than that of Distraction.
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I like the way you've been able to fit a sardonic kind of humour into the corset of the genre of the newspaper book review -- for me "quintessentially edifying" was the first signal.
ReplyDeleteHave you elsewhere, or do you mean to say more about the cruel problem of freedom?
Luke.
Cameron, you appalling elitist you, where do you get the GALL to suggest that a book on popular philosophy is facile and inane?
ReplyDeleteDon't you realise that when a book claims to be popular (by it's style or by it's reduction of philosophers to bumper sticker platitudes) than it lays a claim to be above criticism. At the very least, it claims the right to label any and all of its potential critics soulless academic pedants, who simply cannot endure the dance of witty, terse prose unencumbered by citations or pompous grant-application style declarations of intent?
What, now you protest that, you too, are yourself an inveterate advocate of the crisp salad of epigrammatic prose over the stodgy, refried and torpor inducing stew of academic blathering...but that cannot be, amigo. You are a liar as well as an elitist, i.e., you are not paying enough attention to the syllogistic aspect of all this. Let me explain:
1) Damon Young's book is a book of popular philosophy.
2) Shingleton does not like Damon Young's book.
3) Ergo, Shingleton does not like Young's book BECAUSE it is popular.
Corrolary: Shingleton would prefer for philosophy to be nothing more than a pomopus echo rebounding off the walls of an ivory tower with no windows. He is, ergo, an enemy of casual dress, democracy, sex between consenting adults and, further, of anyone who does not actually limp because of the multiple degrees (and WWI German helmet) inserted into their rectum...
You still protest? Dr. Shingleton, if you had ANY belief that philosophy could be expressed in a popular fashion without betraying its depths, heights or creamy middles than you and I both know that you would have given an unequivocal praise of D.Y.'s book. ("Knocks Proust into a cocked hat" to quote Orwell)
And you would have gone on to saythat John Armstrong can feel sad [sips wine] about barbarism [swallows oysters], and happy [rapturous sigh] about beauty while still being the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE WHO WILL ONE DAY BRING YOU DOWN FROM YOUR PEDESTAL.
Sic semper tyrannis!
-Mal.
(associating with elitists since 1977).