The School of Life

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The School of Life
Three 13 Solutions, Campus London LLP, ELOE Limited, STOA Limited. [1]
Founded2008;17 years ago (2008)
Founders Alain de Botton, Sophie Howarth
Headquarters
London, England
Website www.theschooloflife.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

The School of Life is a British multinational [2] social media company founded in 2008 by British author and public speaker Alain de Botton. [3] [4] The company is headquartered in London. [5] It publishes various materials dealing with the topics of anxiety management, [6] emotional intelligence, relationships, work, creativity, and spirituality. The company also offers talks, workshops, and counseling services.

Contents

History

The School of Life was founded in 2008 [4] by Alain de Botton and Sophie Howarth. Its publishing arm was launched in 2016, with books produced by a content team, some of which were (in 2023) training to the be therapists. [7] [8]

Publishing

As of 2016, The School of Life owns a publishing press named "The School of Life Press." [9] As of 2025, the company's website sells 98 titles in its "books" category, some of which are workbooks.

Books (incomplete selection)

Reception

The company has been criticized for its representations of philosophers and philosophical arguments. The Los Angeles Review of Books criticized a series of books by the School of Life as being a "vortex of jargon pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat." [11] Professor Hans-Georg Moeller of the University of Macau has criticized the School's video on Lao Tzu, stating that it used fabricated quotes and misrepresented the Tao Te Ching . [12]

The New Republic criticised The School of Life's self-help books for being poorly written and pretentious with little or no useful insight. [13]

The philosophy blog, Erraticus, praised the company for its critiques of romanticism and efforts to foster emotional intelligence using philosophy, arguing that The School of Life offers "self-help for those who might need a bit more engagement with the intellect to consider the complete living that comes with also employing our faculties that operate from the neck down." [14]

References

  1. ↑ "Campus London LLP – Overview (free company information from Companies House)".
  2. ↑ "A Brief History of the School of Life". Happiness.com. Retrieved 2 February 2024.
  3. ↑ "The School of Life: An Interview With Alain de Botton". HuffPost . 12 May 2016. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  4. 1 2 Wyndham, Susan (29 June 2016). "Alain de Botton and his School of Life come to Sydney". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  5. ↑ "Londoner's Diary: Alain De Botton and his school exit Europe". London Evening Standard . 10 April 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
  6. ↑ Dynes, Robin (28 April 2017). "Preparing for Anxiety Management Training". Anxiety Management. pp. 1–18. doi:10.4324/9781315172941. ISBN   9781315172941.
  7. ↑ "By combining self-help and literature, the School of Life's first novel does both a disservice". The Guardian. 7 July 2023.
  8. ↑ "Faculty". The School of Life. Archived from the original on 6 December 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2016.
  9. ↑ "The School of Life | Your Path to Mental Wellbeing". The School of Life. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  10. ↑ Dillon, Melanie (28 April 2024). "Big Ideas From Literature by The School of Life". School Reading List. Retrieved 1 September 2024.
  11. ↑ Levy, Lisa (11 May 2013). "How To Think More (But Not Better): Alain de Botton's School of Life". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 15 June 2021.
  12. ↑ WORSE Philosophy Videos! School of Life on Eastern Philosophy - Lao Tzu, 17 March 2021, archived from the original on 20 December 2021, retrieved 15 June 2021
  13. ↑ "How to Be a Pseudo-Intellectual". The New Republic. 3 January 2013.
  14. ↑ Howard, Jeffrey (5 November 2019). "'The School of Life' Preaches Pessimism over Romanticism". Erraticus. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
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