Complaining about self-help is almost as popular as self-help itself.
To begin with, there is somewhat of a contradiction in the notion itself, as comedian George Carlin points out:
The part I really don’t understand – if you’re looking for self-help, why do you read a book written by somebody else? That’s not self-help, that’s help!
There’s no such thing as self-help – if you did it yourself, you didn’t need help. You did it yourself! Try to pay attention to the language we’ve all agreed on.1
While this article tackles some of self-help’s shortcomings, the aim is not just to criticize it. Instead, the goal is to show how philosophy, its supposed adversary, can revitalize its efforts. By seeing philosophy and self-help as complementary rather than contrary, both their potentials to transform our lives are elevated.
Self-help offers a highly self-centred approach to the challenges we face. It seems to suggest that we don’t need the help of others to get our lives in order – a 200-page bestseller will do. In addition, it ignores the fact that a lot of our problems are not individual but social. Focusing on ourselves may help to alleviate distress, but it can stand in the way of facing the societal root of the issue.2
The idea that self-help fights symptoms rather than causes is reflected in the statistic that 80 percent of self-help customers are repeat customers.3 If self-help books were effective, one surely would not need to keep buying more and more books. And yet, the self-help industry keeps on growing – over the past decades, it has emerged as a multi-billion-dollar industry.
This leads us to the uncomfortable realisation that the goal of self-help is not actually to help you – the goal is to make money. Even if self-help authors are deeply convinced that their advice works (and even if they’re right about that), the incentive of profit will always function as an encouragement to oversimplify the nature of human adversity and overpromise on the power of their method.
Here the philosophical dimension of self-help, or rather the lack of it, enters the picture. Whenever self-help draws on a philosophical tradition, catchy quotes are often divorced from their philosophical underpinnings. Stoicism is a great example – the amount of self-help literature based on the Ancient Greek school of thought is staggering. Countless self-help books carelessly quote the words of great Stoic thinkers like Marcus Aurelius:
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.4
A powerful message in itself, but potentially harmful when taken out of context. The quote could be interpreted as an encouragement to cut off engagement with the social structures to which we belong: we can’t control what politicians do, but we can control our outrage. Alleviate the latter, and your problem disappears…
As this NY Times article mentions, however, this obscures the emphasis on social engagement inherent to Stoicism. What the Stoics offer is guidance, “not just for me and my impulse control but also for us in thinking about how to build a community so that fear and rage don’t rip us apart.”
What’s more, a lot of the practical ideas only make sense when seen in light of the metaphysical structure in which they are couched. The Stoic advice to ‘live according to nature’ only becomes intelligible when we understand what the Stoics mean by nature (something radically different from the popular understanding of the word).
Despite all its obvious shortcomings, self-help literature keeps drawing people in.
Why is this so?
In part, it may be because people don’t know where else to turn. While many still rely on the guidance of rabbis, priests and imams, an increasing number of people no longer turn to religious leaders.
The decline of trust in wise spiritual figures is partly counteracted by the rise of therapy. Yet, while therapy benefits countless individuals, many may feel that involving a therapist is too drastic a measure for their perceived problems. More and more, we are thrown back onto ourselves to cope with our anguish.
The decline of supporting community structures to which one may turn for help is another important factor in this development. The surge of neoliberalism in the past decades has led to a sense of social isolation. To succeed in the current economic climate, we must be self-sufficient so that we may compete with other individuals on the free market. When we fail to do so, it is tempting to blame ourselves by thinking that it is all due to our own failure rather than a failure of the society we live in. When we are too stressed to keep up with work, the solution is a 10-minute mindfulness session rather than less demanding working conditions. Self-help individualises and depoliticises social struggle.
A fundamental philosophical assumption lying at the heart of self-help is starting to reveal itself; this assumption entails both a description and a prescription of the self:
The self is not fixed – rather, it is our primary sphere of power. Since we have little control over what happens in the world around us, we should focus on perfecting the self.
Again – while this approach might ease individual distress, it ultimately promotes fatalism. If we truly want to improve our lives, quick fixes for our own stress and lack of productivity are simply polishing the brass on the Titanic. We have to engage with political, economic, social and ecological issues that affect all of us.
Here one may retort that working on oneself and working on social issues are not mutually exclusive – instead, they should be seen as complementary. When we improve ourselves, we equip ourselves to deal more adequately with the issues that all of us face. There is nothing wrong with the ambition to better ourselves – in fact, it is one of the noblest pursuits, especially in a challenging environment. It is vital to understand why the ship is sinking, but equally important to know our way to the life rafts.
This crucial point reminds us that self-help isn’t problematic in principle, it only becomes so when the structural elements of human adversity are ignored. The opposite, however, is also true: if all we do is focus on the miserable state of society, we are bound to be overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness and become miserable ourselves. This, of course, will not help our endeavours to bring about positive change.
What is the role of philosophy in all of this? The history of philosophy is rife with reflections on how to live the good life. Some philosophers even go so far as to say that focusing on anything else is pointless. In the words of Epicurus:
Any philosopher’s argument which does not therapeutically treat human suffering is worthless.5
The last century has seen philosophers shift away from practical matters towards more theoretical ones. As Alain de Botton points out, “There began an obsession with accuracy and a corresponding neglect of utility.”6 Current academic philosophy offers critical reflection on intricate ideas, which can help us further our understanding of ourselves and the world. But does the academic philosophy of our time still have the potential to offer consolation in moments of hardship?
To be sure, ethics is a highly active field of research in philosophy departments, so to say that philosophy has lost its practical focus would be mistaken. But the level of abstraction and impenetrability of many philosophical papers being published now, while often necessary to capture the complexity of the issue at hand, is not exactly helping us live our lives. If you want to be happier, you don’t read a philosophy journal.
This is not to deny the merit of close philosophical reflection on ethical concerns like inequality, climate change, and so on. Engaging with complex issues can change how we act in the world. The value that philosophy adds, in this respect, is undeniable. Academic philosophy also encourages and incorporates objections to arguments; while there may be issues with the peer-review system in academia, the incentive of profit is certainly not as strong as it is for self-help authors. For this reason, the latter may also be less inclined than philosophers to acknowledge shortcomings in their views.
Academic philosophy tends to be sceptical of self-help literature. This is mostly because self-help is usually philosophically naïve. It uses concepts such as self, happiness, freedom, reason, emotion, and so on, without stopping to ask what these concepts actually mean. Surely, if we want to help the self, we have to know what the self is – and to what extent altering the self is possible and desirable in the first place. We all have some rudimentary understanding of these terms, but philosophers are great at pointing out the shortcomings of our popular conceptions of these terms.
Self-help authors may respond by saying that at least their ideas are actionable. Even if not philosophically adequate, self-help strives to present ideas in a manner that allows us to integrate them into our lives in a very concrete sense. While there are exceptions, it is difficult to say the same of philosophy.
Philosophy cannot offer the same promises of self-improvement – but maybe that’s a good thing. What it can offer is a close engagement with the notions that define our worldview. By asking questions like: What beliefs have I inherited from society and my parents? Do these beliefs align with my personal values? What does happiness mean for me, and how do I achieve it? What are the things that make my life worth living? What is death, and how do I relate to it? How should I think about the self, and to what degree is it pliable? Insofar as it is, what are the virtues I wish to embody?
Self-help relies on these philosophical notions but does not always question them. Making these matters explicit through philosophy is a condition for dealing with them adequately.
The philosophical life is not one of obtuse abstractions and pointless pontifications. It is an attempt to engage with life as closely as possible, by grappling with fundamental questions and concepts. How we answer these questions determines how we live.
Philosophy can show us what ideas we consider true, what we deem achievable, and what we see as desirable. To live capably, we have to understand ourselves and the world.
While this understanding is necessary, it is not sufficient – we have to learn how to put our insights into practice. There is, therefore, yet a role for self-help, insofar as it can teach us how to integrate ideas into our lives, thus bridging the gap between abstract thought and immersive living.
Engaging with philosophy is not a guarantee for a happier life. Living a reflective life does not have the same promises as self-help. But at least we would be doing the job right. The goal is not just to refurbish the house but to renovate it from the very foundations. A demanding process, to be sure, but if anything has the potential to bring about meaningful and lasting change, this is it.
A marriage of self-help and philosophy will be something like a philosophical therapy. As hinted at in a previous post, this is close to what Carl Jung had in mind in developing his psychotherapy. Jung thought that psychological problems are partly philosophical in nature. In other words, the ideas and convictions that lie at the root of our worldview must be examined, if we are to take self-improvement seriously.
It is only after we have come to terms with the philosophical underpinnings of our worldview that we can begin to imagine a way forward. Such excavation is bound to entail hardship, but the promise is also significantly more noble.
Exactly how we embark on such a philosophical therapy will be the subject of a later article.
Worldview Encounters will be on holiday in July. Articles will still appear, but temporarily on a bi-weekly (as opposed to weekly) basis.
George Carlin, Complaints and Grievances (2001)
It goes without saying that working on ourselves is not necessarily antithetical to working on the social structures we inhabit – more on this further on.
Vicki Kunkel, Instant Appeal (2009)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 3 (popular freely translated version).
Epicurus, Fragment, Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31 (De Botton’s rendition: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/17/in-defence-of-self-help-books)
De Botton, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/17/in-defence-of-self-help-books