On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times

Timely and profound philosophical meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music, and art searched for solace while facing tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize finalist Michael Ignatieff. When we lose someone we love, when we suffer loss or defeat, or when catastrophe strikes—war, famine, pandemic—we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary, and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the sixteenth century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology, and the therapeutic. How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works—from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi—Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and continue unafraid, On Consolation argues that we can revive these traditions to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.