Researching a piece on philosophy, ancient and modern, for the FT Magazine, I spoke to a number of big hitters. Here's something of my exchange with Alain de Botton.

'Philosophy' is largely owned by the academy and defined by its interests... That's why philosophy is largely irrelevant in this country.'

I'm not sure whether it's your own description but your philosophy has been called the philosophy of everyday life. Why do you think a philosophy of everyday life is worth doing?

Philosophers have traditionally been held back by notions of what is a fitting philosophical question. For example, for much of the last century, in the academic world, the question, 'what is the relationship between words and things?' has been viewed as a central issue. However, the question 'what is shyness?' has not been granted such prestige - and has therefore been ignored (it wouldn't be a good career move to chart this area). My fundamental belief is that the range of legitimate philosophical questions is far greater than the academy holds. Certainly questions of metaphysics are important, but so too are issues to do with everyday life - like friendship, desire, death, children and so on - issues that philosophers of previous eras paid far more attention to than our own.

Furthermore, it is possible to argue that some questions are of greater relevance to a greater number of people than others - this isn't an argument to ban the less 'relevant' questions. But it should mean that we ensure that the big and immediate questions are at least not discriminated against, as they are at present within academia.

Why do I keep stressing academia? The reason is simple. Academia is the only big player in the world of philosophy. It's more or less impossible to make a living as a philosopher outside of academia. Therefore, how academia defines philosophy will have a huge influence on what the subject is day to day. This is not the case in a subject like fiction, where there is no one body that 'owns' literature.

As the best selling philosopher in the UK, I'm interested in how you understand your audience. For example, what do you think people are looking for in your writing? If, say, they are looking for answers to the big questions of how to live, and so on, do you think philosophy can deliver on that?

Like many writers, I don't think of what an audience wants and then attempt to cater for it. This would be a recipe for disaster. I follow my own desires, issues that puzzle and interest me - and then if others take an interest, I am delighted.

I think any discipline, philosophy or anything else, has to be very cautious in promising to deliver big answers to the big questions. Modesty is a prerequisite when navigating such areas.

How would you characterise the state of philosophy today?

'Philosophy' is largely owned by the academy and defined by its interests. These interests tend be narrow and the way one is allowed to write in academia almost guarantees that no more than a handful of people will bother to investigate subjects. That's why philosophy is largely irrelevant in this country. However, there is clearly a great appetite among people to know what philosophy is - people seem incredibly willing to attend introductory classes on the subject and read introductory books. My own feeling is that this curiosity is generally abused.

Why did you turn to philosophy, at least in part, to ask, first, questions about love; and then why did you stick with it in your subsequent books to ask about travel, status and architecture?

I don't think of myself as a philosopher - because I'm aware of a large body of academic philosophers who see me as a 'bad philosopher', not rigorous enough, not logical etc. I agree that I am very bad as a philosopher if you define philosopher as they do. So I'd rather be thought of as an interesting essayist than a 'bad' philosopher. My role models are not Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson, they are Montaigne, Stendhal and the essayistic side of Virginia Woolf. Around 2000, when I wrote a book on philosophy, the academics became hysterical that I was an interloper on their hallowed ground. I have no interest on their patch, I wrote a series of essays around philosophers modelled on Virginia Woolf's Common Reader essays - and now see myself as an essayist. My last book on architecture was certainly not a book on philosophy.

What relationship do you think popular philosophy has to academic philosophy, and vice versa?

I think the phrase popular philosophy is unhelpful - because it suggests that there's real philosophy going on in academia which is serious but ignored, and then there's the popular stuff out there (done by people like you and me) which is the same thing but translated for 'the masses', made more appealling, sugar coated etc.

This is to demean what people like you and I are trying to do.

I believe that my work - and yours, isn't popular philosophy, it's an attempt to consider different questions from academia and in a different way. It's certainly not a dummed down version of the serious stuff going on in Oxbridge, because this stuff isn't going in universities at all.

I can't bear the distinction between 'experts' who do the serious stuff, and then the helpful friendly people who translate it for 'the common people'. Of course there are 'duffers' guides' to people like Wittgenstein etc. But that's what I would call 'introductions to .'

There's a category all of its own, not derivative of academic philosophy, entirely independent of it, where writers tackle important subjects in a lucid, sometimes personal way. This is a tradition I'd identify with. The patron saint of this tradition is Michel de Montaigne.

Throughout history, philosophers have said philosophy is various things - learning how to die, critiquing the present, no more or less than the effort to think clearly? Could you sum up in a sentence what you think philosophy is, and then why that particular emphasis so so crucial?

Philosophy should not be defined by its subject matter. It's a mode of thinking, dedicated to logical progression through an argument.

So you can have a philosophy book about any subject on earth - just as you can have a poem. The key point is how the material is handled, this defines philosophy.