Status Anxiety

In What Is the Good Life? Ferry argues that the question of the meaning of life, on which much philosophical debate throughout the centuries rested, has not vanished, but rather is posed differently today. Ferry points out the pressures in our secularized world that tend to reduce the idea of a successful life or "good life" to one of wealth, career satisfaction, and prestige. Without deserting the secular presuppositions of our world, he shows that we can give ourselves this richer sense of life's possibilities. The "good life" consists of harmonizing life's different forces in a way that enables one to achieve a sense of personal satisfaction in the realization of one's creative abilities.

Beautifully and engagingly written, What Is the Good Life? provides new insight and wisdom into one of life's most enduring philosophical questions. A major publishing event upon its publication in France, this elegant translation will reignite passionate dialogue about the meaning of life among readers in English as well.

Dipping into history, psychology, politics, and economics, de Botton considers a wide range of causes for status anxiety and an equally wide range of methods by which people have coped with their fears: through philosophy, art, religion, and bohemia. In his hallmark style, the author shows us how status instruction and solace can be found in some unusual places: in everything from fruit baskets to etiquette books, magazine recipe pages to office politics, comics to the communal experience of inspirational music.

Thought-provoking, wise, and eminently entertaining, Status Anxiety highlights de Botton's genius for finding the most unusual approach to the most unexpected but universal of subjects.

Part I - Creating the Good Life: Metamorphoses of the Ideal

1. Beyond Morality, After Religion

The New Age of the Question

2. The Meaning of the Question and the Slow Humanization of the Responses

Part II - The Nietzschean Moment: The Good Life as the Most Intense Life

3. On Transcendence as Supreme Illusion

The Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer: The End of the World, the Death of God, and the Death of Man

4. The Foundations and Arguments of Nietzschean Materialism

5. The Wisdom of Nietzsche, or The Three Criteria of the Good Life

Truth in Art, Intensity in the Grand Style, Eternity in the Instant

6. After Nietzsche

Four Versions of Life after the Death of God: Daily Life, the Bohemian Life, the Life of Enterprise, or Life Freed from Alienation

Part III - The Wisdom of the Ancients: Life in Harmony with the Cosmic Order

7. Greek Wisdom, or The First Image of a Lay Spirituality

The Secularization of Salvation

8. The "Cosmologico-Ethical"

Power and the Charms of Moralities Inscribed in the Cosmos

9. An Ideal-Type of Ancient Wisdom

The Case of Stoicism

Part IV - The Here and Now Enchanted by the Beyond

10. Death Finally Conquered by Immortality

Philosophy Replaced by Religion

11. The Renascence of Lay Philosophy and the Humanization of the Good Life

Part V - A Humanism of the Man-God: The Good Life as a Life in Harmony with the Human Condition

12. Materialism, Religion, and Humanism

13. A New Approach to the Question of Happiness

Notes

Index

What is status anxiety?

Status anxiety is a worry about our standing in the world, whether we’re going up or down, whether we’re winners or losers. We care about our status for a simple reason: because most people tend to be nice to us according to the amount of status we have – if they hear we’ve been promoted, there’ll be a little more energy in their smile, if we are sacked, they’ll pretend not to have seen us. Ultimately, we worry about having no status because we’re not good at remaining confident about ourselves if other people don’t seem to like or respect us very much. Our ‘ego’ or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring external love to remain inflated and vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect: we rely on signs of respect from the world to feel acceptable to ourselves.

When does status anxiety kick in – presumably basic sustenance needs have to be fulfilled first?

While it would be unusual to be status anxious in a famine, history shows that as soon as societies go any way beyond basic subsistence, status anxieties quickly kick in. In the modern world, status anxiety starts when we compare our achievements with those of other people we consider to be our equals. We might worry about our status when we come across an enthusiastic newspaper profile of an acquaintance (it can destroy the morning), when a close friend reveals a piece of what they naively – or plain sadistically – call ‘good’ news (they have been promoted, they are getting married, they have reached the bestseller list) or when we are asked what we ‘do’ at a party by someone with a firm handshake who has recently floated their own start-up company.

Is status anxiety at its height in the early 21st century – and why is that?

Status anxiety is certainly worse than ever, because the possibilities for achievement (sexual, financial, professional) seem to be greater than ever. There are so many more things we expect if we’re not to judge ourselves ‘losers.’ We are constantly surrounded by stories of people who have made it. For most of history, an opposite assumption held sway: low expectations were viewed as both normal and wise. Only a very few ever aspired to wealth and fulfilment. The majority knew well enough that they were condemned to exploitation and resignation. Of course, it remains highly unlikely that we will today ever reach the pinnacle of society. It is perhaps as unlikely that we could rival the success of Bill Gates as that we could in the seventeenth century have become as powerful as Louis XIV. Unfortunately though, it no longer feels unlikely – depending on the magazines one reads, it can in fact seem absurd that one hasn’t already managed to have it all.

Could David Beckham, for example, suffer from status anxiety?

Of course he does – because he compares himself to his own peer group. We all do this, and that’s why we end up feeling we lack things even though we’re so much better off than people ever were in the past. It’s not that we’re especially ungrateful, it’s just we don’t judge ourselves in relation to people far away. We cannot be cheered for long by how prosperous we are in historical or geographical terms. We will only take ourselves to be fortunate when we have as much as, or more than, the people we grow up with, work alongside, have as friends and identify with in the public realm. That’s why the best way to feel successful is to choose friends who are just that little bit less successful than you…

What solutions are there to get us to stop worrying so much about status?

Think about death. It’s the best way to stop worrying so much about what others make of you. To discover whose friendship you should really care about, ask yourself who – among your acquaintances – would make it to your hospital bedside. If need be, look at a skeleton: what others think about you will soon start to lose its intimidating power.

From the Hardcover edition.