Were he to have lived beyond the Nazi period, however, everyone would rightly have despised him if he had asked what it had to do with him that his words were so often used to justify the most terrible crimes in history. So ferocious was his contempt for the weak and for those who took pity on them, so often did he express that contempt in biological and racial metaphors, that the Nazis had no need to distort him. Perhaps more than anything, it's the condescension, so evident in many of de Botton's drawings, that makes me distrust him. One should turn to it in the first instance for understanding. There is no saying in advance that understanding will produce consolation rather than despair.
Some philosophers offer consolation.
Some don't offer it but give it nonetheless. Whether it is the philosopher in them or something else is a deeply controversial matter. Gregory Vlastos, one of the finest of recent Platonic scholars, said of Socrates that he lived by a faith that he mistook for knowledge. To anyone aquainted with the history of philosophy, the issue comes up again and again in this book. It seems not to have occurred to de Botton even to raise it seriously.