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A review by wanderingmole
Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
4.0
Thoroughly enjoyed this book, which joins the rest of de Botton’s books for me as a wonderful example of accessible philosophy and storytelling. I always appreciate the dry humour, outlook of kindness, and wide-ranging source material.
“However unpleasant anxieties about status may be, it is difficult to imagine a good life entirely free of them, for a fear that one might fail and disgrace oneself in the eyes of others is only a natural consequence of having ambitions, a preference for one set of outcomes over another and a respect for individuals besides oneself… Yet although our need for status may be fixed, we retain a choice of where to fulfil the need, we are free to ensure that our worries about being disgraced will arise principally in relation to a public whose methods of judgement we both understand and respect… Philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and Bohemia did not seek to do away with a status hierarchy; they attempted to institute new kinds of hierarchy based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority. While retaining a firm grip on a distinction between success and failure, good and bad, shameful and honourable, these five groups endeavoured to remould our sense of what could rightfully be said to belong under these weighty headings” (pp 302-303).
“However unpleasant anxieties about status may be, it is difficult to imagine a good life entirely free of them, for a fear that one might fail and disgrace oneself in the eyes of others is only a natural consequence of having ambitions, a preference for one set of outcomes over another and a respect for individuals besides oneself… Yet although our need for status may be fixed, we retain a choice of where to fulfil the need, we are free to ensure that our worries about being disgraced will arise principally in relation to a public whose methods of judgement we both understand and respect… Philosophy, art, politics, Christianity and Bohemia did not seek to do away with a status hierarchy; they attempted to institute new kinds of hierarchy based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority. While retaining a firm grip on a distinction between success and failure, good and bad, shameful and honourable, these five groups endeavoured to remould our sense of what could rightfully be said to belong under these weighty headings” (pp 302-303).