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New York Times‘ Best-selling Author
Lectured on PKU Campus:
By Zhang Yuan
PKU NEWS 2004--05—10
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=84262759
PKU News, Beijing, May 10th, 2004: ―People may go to two extremes as they
assert either that philosophy can do everything or philosophy can do nothing. I stand
in between.‖ In his lecture ―The Power of Philosophy‖, Alain de Botton, New York
Times‘ best-selling author, made this moderate but pertinent remark.
Alain de Botton is a British writer who graduated from Cambridge. Just 35 years of
age, he has already written 7 books altogether, many of which are on New York
Times‘ best seller list. Tonight he was invited to make his lecture in Room 208,
Democratic Building about his new books.
At the beginning of his lecture, Alain de Botton pointed out the changes philosophy
study had undergone from the ancient time till today. In ancient times, philosopher
should be like a doctor who dealt with people‘s soul. But in today‘s universities,
philosophy department paid more attention to the technological aspect and it was
believed that wisdom was impossible to teach.
Then Alain de Botton talked briefly about the impressive ideas concerning life and
love of four western philosophers: Epicurus of ancient Greece, Seneca of ancient
Rome, Montaigne of France and Schopenhauer of Germany.
He thought philosophy should not be an abstruse discipline in front of which the
majority would flinch but be understood and enjoyed by the mass and be applicable
to their daily life. Regarding himself as a layman of philosophy, he talked in a plain
but attractive way which made everyone understand and interested. For example,
when mentioning Epicurus‘ three basic human needs --friendship, freedom and
thought, and his division between what one needs and what one desires, Alain de
Botton associated it with modern advertisements as the typical confusion of the two.
After the speech was a 20-minute Q&A section. Questions ranged widely, from those
general one such as ―how to become a writer‖, ―the intellectuals‘ social status in
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