ORGANIZATION
The School of Life
The institution Alain de Botton founded in London in 2008 to make emotional education — the teaching of practical wisdom for ordinary life — available outside the academy.
The School of Life, founded by Alain de Botton in London in 2008 and expanded internationally through books, films, and branches in multiple cities, represents the institutional expression of his philosophical project. Its premise is that the most important questions of human life — how to love, how to work, how to find meaning, how to cope with suffering — are treated by contemporary education as private matters to be figured out alone, or as subjects for therapy after things have gone wrong. The School of Life proposes instead that these questions deserve structured teaching, drawing on philosophy, literature, psychology, and the visual arts. In the AI moment, the institution's relevance sharpens: the emotional competencies it teaches are precisely the ones that tools cannot automate and that are most under threat when they go untaught.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The institution's curriculum covers relationships, work, self-knowledge, culture, and calm. The format is deliberately accessible: classes are taught in London