SOURCE: Skidelsky, Edward. “Comforting, but Meaningless.” New Statesman (27 March 2000): 53-4.

In the following negative review, Skidelsky contends that The Consolations of Philosophy fails because “the conception of philosophy that it promotes is a decadent one, and can only mislead readers as to the true nature of the discipline.”

I don't want to be accused of intellectual snobbery when I say that The Consolations of Philosophy is a very bad book. It is bad not because it makes unsupported generalisations, fails to define its terms, or any of the other conventional academic failings. All these are perfectly legitimate in a work of popular philosophy. It is bad because the conception of philosophy that it promotes is a decadent one, and can only mislead readers as to the true nature of the discipline.

This is all the more dangerous because the decadent notion of philosophy as “consolation” is actually very...