Defending/Demeaning: de Botton

In the face of unprecedented UK government cuts to the funding of UK University Arts and Humanities programmes, the media-friendly philosopher ‘lite’, Alain de Botton, has mounted a ‘defence’ of the importance of ‘culture’. You may think that this is good news. However, as the wonderful film Old Boy demonstrated so clearly, one should never make the mistake of thinking that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Alain de Botton is not our friend. Nor is he the enemy of the enemy. Here is merely one tiny excerpt from his article on the BBC website:

 

"right now, at this difficult moment in the history of British universities, there is a need to acknowledge that at least some of the woes that have befallen academics is [sic] squarely their own fault. To put it at its simplest, academics in the humanities have failed to explain why what they do should matter so much. They've failed to explain to the government, but this really only means "us" – the public at large" [Alain de Botton]

 

After ranting and raving with colleagues and friends about this article and the BBC radio programme with which it is connected, one of my more astute colleagues (who shall remain nameless for now, unless he says he is happy to be named and famed for this) emailed me saying that he had lodged an official complaint with the BBC about Alain de Botton’s “defence” of the “value” of “culture”. He suggested that perhaps you all do the same.

 

So, come on people, let’s all lodge our complaints about the BBC’s broadcasting of this malformed stool. This could also be an important time to air some views on the cuts to university funding and the death warrant issued to the public university, plus the risks of a privatized education system in which “philosophers” who can barely string a correct sentence together feel they can arrogate the right to “teach us how to live”. Please read de Botton’s article and then listen to the podcast and then read the complaint drafted by my friend and then lodge your own.

 

Here is what my colleague wrote:

 

I have just used the BBC online complaints system for the first time - to complain about Alain de Botton. I did through this page - https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/ - defining the complaint as 'other' and naming it 'Covert Commercial Promotion'. I then wrote this:

 

"The programme 'A Point of View: What the Humanities Should Teach' was not a piece of public service broadcasting in the form of journalistic provocation. It was a subtle and subliminal advertisement for the commercial educational services of the programmes presenter.

 

In the programme, and in the context of current cuts to the funding of university Humanities departments, the presenter Alain de Botton criticized the way in which, he claimed, universities presently teach culture, philosophy, literature, history etc. He then proposed an alternative in which universities "should be required to identify the problematic areas in people's lives and to design courses that address them head on" adding that "There should be classes in, among other topics, being alone, reconsidering work, improving relationships with children, reconnecting with nature and facing illness. A university alive to the true responsibilities of cultural artefacts within a secular age would establish a Department for Relationships, an Institute of Dying and a Centre for Self-Knowledge".

 

What Mr. de Botton and the BBC did not make clear was that Mr. de Botton has a direct commercial interest in rubbishing the teaching of public universities while promoting this particular alternative. He runs 'The School of Life' (see his website here http://www.alaindebotton.com/pages/about/index.asp?PageID=199 and the website of the School here http://www.theschooloflife.com/). 

 

This school provides courses such as those de Botton described in his broadcast – for instance 'How Necessary is a Relationship', ‘How to Face Death’ or 'How to balance work with life'. The school also provides (for a fee of £70.00) one-on-one ‘bibliotherapy’ (i.e. advice on what to read).

 

Mr. de Botton is – at present – not in competition with public universities for the provision of undergraduate degrees. But his School is in competition with universities which provide a variety of extra-mural, part-time, one-day and evening classes to the general public, on subjects such as literature, history, culture and philosophy. Mr de Botton is of course at liberty to promote his pedagogical theory at the same time as putting it into practice on a commercial basis. He is also entitled to use the media to promote that product by indicating ways in which the alternatives may be imagined to fail. However, if he is to do so through public broadcasting then the fact that he has such a pecuniary rivalry (one which may be thought to explain his otherwise inexplicably misleading and unsourced caricature of university teaching) ought to be mentioned within the programme. Because, in this case, it was, and thus the fact that the one delivering this ‘point of view’ had an interest beyond the purely intellectual.”

 

Maybe you can get others to write complaints?