This was a really great article. As a non-philosophy student in college, I had experiences in both the rigorous self-taught academic philosophy and the pop philosophy/SOL camp. In talking with other friends like me, I think the big appeal of SOL is, like you discuss, this direct applicability to life. But I don’t think the main effect for us was therapeutic (although you have to admit that de Botton’s voice is pretty soothing). It was more like, “intellectual compensation” for the hollowness of college.

I think a lot of students go to college with the hope of entering an intellectually rigorous environment where inspirational and well-spoken professors enlighten them about the world’s greatest canonical thinkers. What they get, and I’m focussing mainly on STEM/non-philosophy students here, is a much more dry, vapid experience of education that’s focuses on memorization and grades.

For me, this was where SOL was at its most seductive. It promised, like you point out, an alternative to college that really focuses on life/intellectual curiosity. And while I agree with you that philosophy itself should not be reductive/dumbed down, I do think that philosophy professors need to be better at teaching. I think the more students who go to liberal arts schools actually feel like they got a meaningful liberal arts education, the less people will turn their eyes on SOL’s videos.