New Frontiers in Philosophical Practice [1 ed.] 9781527509665, 9781527503557

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New Frontiers in Philosophical Practice

New Frontiers in Philosophical Practice Edited by

Lydia Amir

New Frontiers in Philosophical Practice Edited by Lydia Amir This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by Lydia Amir and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0355-0 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0355-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Lydia Amir Part I. Innovative Characterizations of Philosophical Practice Chapter One ................................................................................................. 4 Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa: Reflections on the Centenary of the Cabaret Voltaire Lou Marinoff (USA) Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 34 The Philosophical Gardener: A New Paradigm for Philosophical Practice Ran Lahav (USA and Israel) Part II. New Conceptual Frameworks for Philosophical Practice Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 56 Philosophy of Imagination: Imagination and Philosophical Practice Giancarlo Marinelli (Italy) Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 72 Acts, Processes, Thought, and Action in Philosophical Practice David Sumiacher D’Angelo (Mexico) Part III. Novel Issues for Philosophical Practitioners Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 96 Repositioning Philosophical Practice for the Next Decade Vaughana Feary (USA) Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 118 A New Field in the Practice of Philosophy Lydia Amir (Israel and USA)

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Part IV. Innovative Methods for the Practice of Philosophy Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 144 The Future of Philosophical Counseling: Pseudoscience or Interdisciplinary Field? Roxana Kreimer and Gerardo Primero (Argentina) Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 164 Learning Practical Wisdom: A Guided Imagery for Philosophical Practice on Self-knowledge Michael Noah Weiss (Austria and Norway) Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 186 Aphorisms as Stimulation in Philosophical Dialogue Detlef Staude (Switzerland) Part V. New Audiences, Novel Approaches Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 196 The Wisdom in Tragedy: Building a Flourishing Life in the Face of Hardship Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox (Denmark) Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 223 Friendship with the Company: Building Corporate Leadership through Philosophical Consultancy Aleksandar Fatiü (Serbia) Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 237 Searching for Wisdom the Dialogos Way Guro Hansen Helskog (Norway) Contributors ............................................................................................. 273

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for proposing a second anthology on the practice of philosophy, following the earlier volume Practicing Philosophy (2015), which I edited with Aleksandar Fatiü. My thanks go to Taylor Oddleifson for helping me with the final stages of editing the manuscript. It is to Miriam van der Valk that my deepest gratitude goes, however, as she took on herself all the work leading to those stages. This project would not have materialized without her. Thus, I dedicate this book to that great lady and wonderful friend, whose benevolence is equaled only by her professionalism. Finally, I thank the authors of this anthology for their good will and dedication to the completion of this project.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to explore new approaches to the practice of philosophy. Practicing Philosophy (2015), the previous anthology coedited with Aleksandar Fatiü, describes the state of the art of this relatively young theoretical and practical discipline. Apart from one exception, the current anthology includes essays from different authors than those who contributed to the previous anthology. I have mostly turned to prominent philosophical practitioners from various countries who, in the course of their extensive experience, have changed the ways in which they practice philosophy, or refreshed their methods, or challenged philosophical practice’s goals and means, or innovated in the problems and audiences they addressed. However, I have also solicited relatively new voices who bring fresh perspectives and methods to the field. This anthology does not exhaust its theme; limitations of space have obviously precluded the inclusion of all significant recent innovations and innovators in this discipline. I ask those who are not included here not to bear a grudge, as I hope there will be other opportunities for collaboration. Expanding its boundaries, the practice of philosophy is time and again reaching new frontiers. It is to pay tribute to the creativity this field requires that I have undertaken this project. I believe it is of value not only to philosophers, both practical and theoretical, as well as to professionals and students in education and the helping disciplines, but also to the general public, since this anthology exemplifies how philosophers can fulfill their responsibility towards their communities, and, ultimately, towards civilization at large.1 Lydia Amir Boston and Tel Aviv, 2017

1

Regarding philosophers’ responsibility towards their communities, see Amir (2017). Regarding philosophers’ responsibility towards civilization at large, see Amir (forthcoming).

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References Amir, Lydia B. 2017. Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. —. Forthcoming. Taking Philosophy Seriously. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Fatiü, Aleksandar, and Lydia Amir. 2015. Practicing Philosophy. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

PART I INNOVATIVE CHARACTERIZATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE

CHAPTER ONE DADA AS PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE, AND VICE VERSA: REFLECTIONS ON THE CENTENARY OF THE CABARET VOLTAIRE LOU MARINOFF

This calendar year, 2016, marks the centenary of the Cabaret Voltaire – the birthplace of dadaism. The cabaret itself has known periods of countercultural popularity, decline, neglect, and renaissance. Although its current incarnation nestles comfortably in Zurich’s trendy Bohemian-cum- boutique quarter, catering to tourists in the immaculately polite Swiss shopkeeper’s way, the Cabaret still retains something of the essence of its rebellious founders. Dadaists did not conceive that dada could (or should) be bottled, sold, marketed, or branded, let alone boutiqued. Then again, since the founders and patrons of the Cabaret Voltaire were all heretics of one stripe or another, as dada requires, it would be problematic to accuse its current proprietors of heresy against dada. The spirit of dada demands heresy against everything, including (if not starting with) itself. True dada is therefore also anti-dada. So as long as the Cabaret Voltaire stands, it stands for dada, even though one can now purchase souvenirs of dada there, using credit cards. More significant perhaps than the Cabaret, albeit the physical epicenter of the cultural earthquake of dada, were the palpable aftershocks that propagated throughout Europe and the New World in the ensuing decades. Surrealism, Bohemianism, The Beat Generation, Hippie Counter-Culture, and – I shall argue – Philosophical Practice, were and are infused with dada. A common denominator of all these movements is non-conformism, not simply for its own sake but, importantly, as identification and rejection of absurdities ensconced in status quos and standing orders. This kind of non-conformism, in any milieu or genre, is quintessentially dadaist. Indeed, consider that the Cabaret itself is named after the author of

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Candide, who savagely satirized conformity with Leibnizian optimism by situating its avatar – the ludicrous Dr. Pangloss – in the midst of the sanguinary Seven Years’ War, and the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake.

Cabaret Voltaire. Photo by the author

This chapter will make a number of salient comparisons between dada and philosophical practice, in several dimensions: linguistic, conceptual, aesthetic, and political. In the hands of practitioners of dada and philosophy alike, non-conformism with and ridicule of received absurdities unfailingly sheds the light of reason upon the darkness of ignorance, no matter wherever and however it obfuscates human minds. As expressed by Hugo Ball, the founder of the Cabaret Voltaire: “For us, art is not an end in itself . . . but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” Ball was implicating an array of arts, from painting and sculpture to poetry and theatre. Many contemporary philosophical practitioners could well identify with this paraphrase of Ball: “For us, philosophy is not an end in itself . . . but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” Inasmuch as most philosophical practitioners subscribe to Pierre Hadot’s notion of philosophy as a guide to the art of living (1995),

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“philosophy is not an end in itself” for us either. And insofar as much of our work with clients entails liberating them from Plato’s Cave – i.e. from mis-perceptions and mis-conceptions impressed on them partly by habitual human error, and increasingly by a culture of thoughtlessness – then our art also entails “true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” Thus Hugo Ball’s characterization of dada in 1916 can also apply, verbatim, to philosophical practice in 2016. Moreover, I contend that this is not accidental.

Linguistic Dimension What does “dada” mean? Hugo Ball addressed this question at the inaugural Dada Soirée, in Zurich, on July 14, 1916. (Coincidentally or not, July 14 is Bastille Day in France.) Dada comes from the dictionary. It is terribly simple. In French it means “hobby horse.” In German it means “good-bye,” “Get off my back,” “Be seeing you sometime.” In Romanian: “Yes, indeed, you are right, that’s it. But of course, yes, definitely, right.” And so forth.

One could add that “da-da” is a widely-occurring doubled phoneme, babbled by infants in countless Indo-European tongues, signifying “daddy” or “pappa” or “father.” Indeed, “ma-ma” and “da-da” are among the first works uttered by a majority of infants, who appear linguistically (as well as psychologically) predisposed to having fathers as well as mothers, current fashion notwithstanding. Hugo Ball apparently missed an opportunity to assert that “da-da” is innate. Now, consider the American Philosophical Practitioners Association, founded in 1999, and better-known as “APPA.” Over the years I have mentioned on many occasions, albeit obliquely, that APPA’s founders (at least, this one) were profoundly influenced by dada. In this chapter, some of those influences will be made explicit for the first time. What does APPA mean? Like Dada, Appa can mean many things. “Appa” in Tamil and Korean is similar to a word that means “dad” or “father.” Or, an anagram of the word “Papa.” “Appa” also sounds like “abba,” which is the Hebrew word for “father,” as well as the name of a famous Swedish rock band. In Urdu, “appa” is a word for a female elder or caretaker. In the Indonesian language, “appa” means “what.” Appa also means “water” in both Romanian and the Samkhya school of Hindu Philosophy. More recently, Appa is the name of a fictional character in the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender and the corresponding

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film, The Last Airbender. In the series, Appa is the only known living sky bison, and the animal guide of the protagonist, Aang. From father to guide, from hobby-horse to sky-bison, it seems that “Dada” and “Appa” have more linguistic overlap than first meets the eye.

Conceptual Dimension Although Dada is historically and conceptually associated with the antiwar backlash against World War One, it also took aim at some of the root causes that enabled that conflict to attain the apotheosis of carnage, and to perpetuate its relentlessly horrific slaughter for four years. Those root causes included colonialism and bourgeois nationalism, along with mindnumbing cultural and intellectual conformity. An entire generation of young men was wiped out savagely, pointlessly, and at crippling cost. Bertrand Russell, among other luminaries, protested publicly against the butchery, and managed to get arrested, but to no avail. Attempts to open the public’s eyes by swimming against the current of conformity were viewed as unpatriotic. The political blindness of the ultimate victors, who imposed crippling reparations on Germany, helped sow the seeds of World War Two. That unprecedented conflict dwarfed World War One and culminated not in world peace, but rather in Cold War, dozens of conventional “proxy wars,” and the unimaginable threat of nuclear war. It was against this postHiroshima backdrop that the pioneering generation of philosophical practitioners was born: we witnessed the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. Just as dadaists had protested World War One – its operational insanity and underlying cultural conformity – so the Hippies protested Mutual Assured Destruction, totalitarianism, Vietnam, and all the conformities of the emergent mass-age that had enabled these new horrors. Just as dada fostered a counter-culture to finger and skewer the foibles of its day, so hippiedom assumed that very name – “counterculture” – to promote its life-affirming values amidst rising tides of death and destruction; that is, before a critical mass of 1960s radicals transformed themselves into contemporary self-hating totalitarian “progressives.” Comparatively speaking, the convulsions of World War One were mild compared with the atrocities of World War Two and the convolutions of Cold War. Living in a simpler day, dadaists enlisted non-conformist art to elevate ordinary consciousness. To keep pace with the atomic age, hippies enlisted psychedelic drugs to inspire mind-expanding music (among other arts) to elevate ordinary consciousness. Timothy Leary’s mantra, “turn on,

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tune in, and drop out,” encapsulated the Hippie manifesto, while Bob Dylan and The Beatles, tie-dye and blue jeans paved the way to counter-

Timothy Leary’s mantra

cultural transformation. So potent was this music and garb that it served to spearhead protest not only in the free West – where “cookie-cutter” suburban lifestyles were viewed as a kind of sterile cultural death – but also behind the Iron Curtain, where they became contraband symbols of protest against brutal despotism. Even the original dadaists would have to admit that the hippies outdid them in bandwidth, providing unitary artistic remedies against bourgeois conformity, on the one hand, and Soviet enslavement, on the other. The times themselves had become so strange that hippies were obliged to transcend realism and surrealism alike. That was no mean feat, and yet (at least for a time) they managed it.

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Needless to say, hippies were also full-time practitioners of a wellcharacterized counter-cultural philosophy, aimed at dispelling illusions of their day, and at creating a nobler (if less materialistic) quality of life than that of the “rat-race” which had consumed their parents. In this sense, hippies were precursors of many of today’s philosophical practitioners, as well as an evident link between dada and philosophical practice. As one who came of age during the 1960s, I acquired a life-long love of artistic rebellion against any measures – be they cultural or political – that militate against the realization of human potential and otherwise attempt to crush the human spirit. Contemporary philosophical practitioners are incomparably more politically diverse than their dadaist and hippie forebears; in fact they are spread across the political spectrum extant. For example, APPA has members from the American political left, committed peace activists who stridently opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as members from the political right, of more hawkish bent, who strongly supported it. For another example, APPA has members who are devoutly religious, representing a variety of orthodox faiths, as well as members who are either agnostic or firmly atheistic. APPA has members who are ardent (but not militant man-hating) feminists, and members who just as strongly favor traditional gender roles. In the present American electoral context, APPA has some members who will vote for Clinton; others, for Trump; still others, for neither. This divergence of views is scarcely surprising; rather, it is a credit to the portability and applicability of philosophy. If you assemble in a room any number of philosophers, they will soon be found to disagree with one another, mildly or profoundly, over virtually any question that one cares to raise. But, if you assemble in a room any number of philosophical practitioners, they will similarly disagree, save on one overarching point: that philosophy itself can be useful and helpful to people generally. That singular convergence enables philosophical practitioners to collaborate with colleagues whose metaphysical, epistemological, axiological, and political views greatly diverge. The movement emulates this delightful description of the New England transcendentalists, by one of its members: “the club of the likeminded” in which “no two of us thought alike” (Myserson 2000, xxvi). The movement thus promotes the profoundest interpretation of tolerance: getting along with those with whom we disagree, without rancor or conflict, for the sake of something greater than our differences. But this diversity of views prompts an obvious question: If dadaism was a protest against World War One, and hippiedom a protest against the

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Cold War, against which (if any) major conflict is philosophical practice similarly in uniform protestation? Simply stated, philosophical practitioners stand united in protest against the occupation and colonization of the human mind itself, by a congeries of forces including cultural imperialism, economic colonialism, and predatory capitalism. Examples of cultural imperialism include the dumbing-down and politicization of education in the West, the marginalization of philosophy and critical thinking, the psychologization of the human condition, the pathologization of normal human problems, and the dismantling of the written tradition. Examples of economic colonialism include governance of the medical and psychological professions by insurance companies (in the U.S.) and big pharma (wherever possible), which has resulted in global pandemics of culturally-induced illnesses (e.g., obesity, depression, ADHD, ED, among a host of others) being diagnosed and treated as though they were primarily or exclusively body or brain problems (see Marinoff 2012). Examples of predatory capitalism follow from the foregoing: the mass-drugging of entire populations for decades has resulted only in the steady increase of these “epidemics,” which reap gargantuan profits but fail to solve the problems themselves. Another facet of predatory capitalism is the deluge of digital technologies sold to consumers, which have undermined attention span and social relations alike, and which severely impair one’s ability to distinguish between appearance and reality. Collectively, these forces have herded consumers into Plato’s Cave. But this cave is bugged: it tracks and monitors consumer behaviors in the service of further predation and yet more cultural imperialism. Just as dadaists and hippies inevitably became social and political activists in the performance of their arts and adherence to their principles, so too have philosophical practitioners become activists in the performance of and adherence to ours. Just as Ralph Nader pioneered consumer advocacy by exposing an auto industry that knowingly sold dangerous or dysfunctional vehicles, so too have philosophical practitioners pioneered noetic advocacy by exposing a constellation of forces that knowingly sell dangerous or dysfunctional doctrines. Yet another conceptual affinity between dada and philosophical practice lies in their respective perceptions by “establishment” artists and philosophers. Dada attracted accusations of “heresy” from entrenched artists, who declared, “This is not art!” Dadaists were not perturbed by the charge; far from it. In fact, they embraced it. Dada is not art, they admitted; rather anti-art, in the sense that it refused to pander to received tastes and fashions that directly or indirectly supported the sanguinary

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slaughters and structural violence against which dada railed. Philosophical practice initially attracted the same accusation from institutionalized philosophers, who similarly declared, “This is not philosophy!” And we embraced this accusation too, for philosophical practice likewise refuses to pander to received tastes and fashions, including the exclusion of philosophy from everyday life, that directly or indirectly support the noetic vacuum and culture of thoughtlessness in which too many consumers currently reside. By all these lights, consider again my earlier paraphrase of Hugo Ball: “For us, philosophy is not an end in itself . . . but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” Philosophical practitioners inhabit a conceptual dimension that extends vital elements of dada and hippiedom alike to our own times.

Aesthetic Dimension To illustrate an aesthetic congruency between dada and philosophical practice, let us compare two iconic images, one from each movement. First: Marcel Duchamp’s Mona Lisa epitomizes dada, and is one of its most recognizable icons. Second: the logo of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association, which has become a kind of “brand” in its own right, implicitly and explicitly incorporates dadaist elements and themes. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp committed a brazen act of anti-artistic insolence, by literally defacing a cheap reproduction of Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee. The classic portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, painted by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1503-1506, has been called “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.” That Duchamp created the “best known” parody of the world’s “best known” painting speaks volumes about dada’s dartsmanship: its ability to hit a bull’s-eye of anti-art.

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But Duchamp’s dadaist message runs deeper than mere defacement. His playfully obscene inscription “L.H.O.O.Q.” approximates in phonetic French “Elle a chaud au cul.” Politely translated by Duchamp, in an interview with Arturo Schwarz,2 it means, “There’s a fire down below.” More colloquially, it reads, “She has a hot derrière.” Thus Duchamp’s inscription mocks the deliberate and demurely chaste pose of Mona Lisa’s crossed hands, which Leonardo chose in lieu of a wedding ring, in order to illustrate sans artifice the virtues of marital modesty and fidelity. So Duchamp derides not only her beauty, but also her chastity, with the dadaist intent of stripping away our fanciful veneer of delicate human social mores, and exposing our coarser underlying grain of bestial carnality. In so doing, he allegorically strips away the veneer of bourgeois nationalist support for World War One and exposes the bestial conditions in the trenches. After all, the same bourgeois nationalists who habitually mingled at the Louvre to gawk at the Mona Lisa in peacetime had lately massed at the front to indulge in orgies of mechanized slaughter over her possession as a spoil of war. Thus Duchamp’s defacement of a classic 2

http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/interviews.php

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female portrait is not mere graffiti for the sake of aesthetic rebellion; it has distinctive political undertones. As founding president of APPA in 1999, I was inspired to conceive its logo and motto, approved by the co-founders and so adopted. Now, in light of our foregoing discussion of Duchamp’s Mona Lisa, the dadaist influence on APPA should be plain. A similar schema presents itself here, beginning with the apparent defacement of yet another masterpiece of the Italian renaissance, this time Raphael’s School of Athens (1510). Having excised the central panel, featuring Plato and Aristotle, APPA stamped its name on the marquee. We made sure to use a Roman font. But the School

Nemo Veritatem Regit – Nobody Governs Truth (APPA motto)

of Athens was now transformed, from an Italian renaissance depiction of an Athenian gathering of philosophers to an American branding of an Italian renaissance depiction of an Athenian gathering of philosophers. The torch, as it were, had been passed, from Athens to Rome to New York by way of Zurich. Contra what kinds of conformity, and against what kinds of imperialism, does APPA stand? First, since APPA’s members share the premise that

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philosophy is an invaluable guide to the art of living, APPA complements the parochial conformism of institutionalized theoretical philosophy, which had largely removed itself from the world, rendering itself both inaccessible and irrelevant to quotidian concerns. In the same sense that dada flouted convention, producing art deemed by establishment artists to be anti-art, but intended to utilize art as a medium to elevate public consciousness, so does APPA flout convention, producing philosophy deemed by some establishment philosophers to be anti-philosophy, but intended to utilize philosophy as a medium to elevate public consciousness. Second, APPA protests the economic and cultural imperialism that emanate from the pathologization of non-medical human problems by the psychiatric, psychological, and pharmaceutical industries, abetted and empowered by governments. These industries have exacerbated the spread of epidemics of culturally-induced illnesses – e.g. depressions, anxieties, attention deficits, among a host of other “disorders” afflicting affluent nations – to the extent that some of their proffered “cures” appear to be contributing causes. APPA’s members world-wide have been courageous in lambasting both the hubris and the associated consumer fraud of these industries of spurious diagnosis and gratuitous drugging of wholesale populations, which appear to be worsening many of the problems they purport to cure (Feary and Marinoff 2014). This points immediately to a deeper meaning of Raphael’s painting, which has been obscured by aesthetic diplomacy: its putative title, “The School of Athens,” is a convenient fiction. The history of philosophy testifies amply enough to the richness and variety of philosophical schools in ancient Athens. There was a philosopher on virtually every street corner, each one propounding his own brand of love of wisdom, and each one attracting his own following. Starting from the painting’s centerpiece of Plato and Aristotle, we know that they diverged so substantively that Aristotle did not become Plato’s successor in the Academy, and was obliged to found his own school, the Lyceum. In sum, Raphael was wellaware that there never existed any singular school of philosophy in Athens, and hence he never would have called his portrayal of such diversity “The School of Athens.” The original title was “Causarum Cognitio”: knowledge of causes. Contemporary philosophical practitioners are similarly seeking knowledge of causes of debilitating cultural epidemics, and daring to question why the received “remedies” are driving these “epidemics” in proportion to their consumption, even (or especially) if such questioning attracts accusations of “heresy.” Now let us reflect on APPA’s motto – Nemo Veritatem Regit. Nobody Governs Truth. Unlike Duchamp’s caption, this has no prurient content

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but, to a greater extent than Duchamp’s anagram, it possesses political implications. To begin with, I chose Latin not only for its consonance with the Italian renaissance, but also because benedictions and slogans alike sound somehow more authoritative in a dead language. In this case it’s a delightfully dadaesque irony, since the motto itself is quintessentially antiauthoritarian: Nobody governs truth. No dadaist could fail to appreciate the humor of an anti-authoritarian pronouncement cloaked in a mantle of authority. Yet this alone does not plumb the motto’s depths. Just as the “The School of Athens” represented a variety of viewpoints, so “Nobody governs truth” may bring to different minds differing (and perhaps mutually inconsistent) propositions that each one finds (respectively) questionable. No matter which ostensive truth anyone wishes to challenge, “Nobody governs truth” provides a suitable departure point – on the tacit assumption that the motto itself is true. Then again, if nobody governs truth then nobody governs the truth of propositions such as “nobody governs truth” – in which case if true, it might be false. But if it is false that nobody governs truth, then it must be the case that someone or something governs truth, or conceivably that everyone and everything governs truth, in which case some truths might be entirely arbitrary. So if false, it could also be true. Since no member of APPA has ever been troubled by this paradox enough to question the conundrum, at least to my knowledge, I suspect it is because our minds are focused elsewhere: not in the logical and epistemological quagmires associated with contending theories of truth or paradoxes of self-referential propositions (the analytic interest); rather, in the practical mission of assisting others to conduct deeper inquiries into the veracity of propositions they may happen to believe, or of dilemmas they need to resolve (the practical interest). Philosophical practitioners do not govern truth either; we conduct explorations of clients’ belief-systems, sometimes with a view to co-discovering truths. We assist people in a search for something that may or may not exist, and if it exists may or may not be found. But we insist, as did Socrates in the agora, that the “examined life” is well-worth the journey, whatever it reveals and wherever it leads. But if you read between the lines, we are also saying what philosophers have said from time immemorial: whatever you happen to believe, we can subvert it. Subversion is our métier. Be it a misconception that misguides one person, or an ideology that deludes a generation, or a myth that cripples an empire, philosophers can always be found to subvert them. At the best of times, we are dispassionate subversives, seeking only

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truth, or beauty, or justice for their own sakes. But in dire times we cannot declare neutrality, and are impelled to become passionately engaged with defending what we hold to be true, or beautiful, or just. As often as not we illuminate our path with elenchus, exposing and subverting that which is false, or ugly, or unjust. In this sense, purely academic philosophers busily subvert one another, while philosophical practitioners busily subvert everyone else. Surely dadaists would endorse APPA’s genre and scope of subversion, as for that matter they would have endorsed the psychedelic, musical, and sexual subversions of hippiedom. We were, and are, aesthetically compatible.

Political Dimension The attentive reader will have noticed that the four dimensions of this chapter are hierarchical: the linguistic informs the conceptual; both of these inform the aesthetic; all three in turn inform the political. If politics is the highest art, as Aristotle argued, then it also affords the most grist for a subversive’s mill. We have already seen, albeit briefly, that philosophical practice can and does entail consumer advocacy. A well-informed and well-educated civil sector is indispensable to the maintenance of fundamental freedoms. This was brought home to me in no uncertain terms one day in 2003, when out of the blue I received a phone call from Ralph Nader, the sine qua non of consumer advocates. He wanted to acquire a number of copies of Plato Not Prozac for his Washington D.C. library of civics. I gladly donated them. Nader had understood immediately that the ability of philosophical practice to boost consumer resistance to predatory capitalism by enhancing self-reliance via the inculcation of virtues situated us in the camp of consumer advocacy. His phone call was therefore also a “wake-up” call to me, highlighting the importance of philosophical practice as an educational activity in the interests of the civil sector (see Marinoff 2017). That said, the civil dimension too – along with the linguistic, conceptual, and aesthetic – falls ineluctably under the aegis of the political. What happens, then, when philosophy or philosophical practice itself is placed under political constraint? What can philosophical practitioners do when the delivery of their services is politically prohibited? At this juncture, and to address these political questions, I must remove my APPA hat and speak as a private citizen. Why? Because APPA is a non-profit organization, and one of the conditions entailed by its IRS classification is abstention from political activity. As an individual tax-payer, I am free to engage in politics, but as a director or officer of a

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non-profit organization I am obliged to avoid embroiling the organization itself in political activity. So, for the record, what follows is my own personal answer to the aforementioned questions, made as a private citizen exercising First Amendment rights (while they last) and in no other capacity. Once again, when confronted with political prohibitions, philosophers find themselves in familiar territory. From Socrates to Hobbes to Thoreau to Russell to Sartre, among legion examples, philosophers have engaged in political activities ranging from so-called “heresy” to civil disobedience to underground resistance, from risking life and limb to enduring exile, imprisonment, and even the death penalty itself. Tyrants of all stripes are so fearful of the liberating power of ideas, and cognate freedoms of expression, that they have habitually gone to great lengths to suppress free-thinkers, intellectuals, and artists. That said, owing to bizarre twists and turns that only politics and theology can navigate, the West’s former bastions of free and reasoned inquiry – namely the universities – have become, in Abigail Thernstrom’s oft-quoted phrase, “islands of repression in a sea of freedom.” 3 The irremediably foolish and fatuously anti-realist politics of the radical left (who call themselves with Orwellian irony “progressives”) have eradicated freedom of thought, speech, and inquiry in the Western academy, and have replaced them with a deluded and vindictive tapestry of politically correct ideology, which through their brainwashed graduates has metastasized like an aggressive cancer, invading and debilitating the very institutions – public, private, and civil alike – upon whose functionality the health of our polity and our civilization themselves depend. A similarly virulent strain of political correctness has lately dragged Sweden to the brink of selfdestruction at the hands of Muslim immigrants, which in turn gave impetus to the pro-Brexit vote in Britain this June 2016. 4 The same pervasive political correctness has pre-empted Western condemnation of the ongoing self-destruction of South Africa by a government of racist black thugs, and their complicity in genocidal violence against whites (e.g., Mercer 2011). Meanwhile the US is succumbing to its own epidemic of virulent black crime and violence, as Colin Flaherty courageously and relentlessly documents (e.g., Flaherty 2013; 2015). The self-destruction of America began in the universities, and continues to this day through their radicalized graduates. University campuses have 3

First quoted in Finn (1989); later re-quoted in Aberman (2014). See Konnikova (2014). 4 This catastrophe is well-documented. E.g., see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psFO_P-8gvU among myriad examples.

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been collectivized by political commissars, mental midgets, and soulless bureaucrats, pre-occupied above all with parroting and enforcing contentless slogans like “diversity,” and promulgating half-baked myths of “under-representation” in order justify reverse-racist and reverse-sexist hiring policies and career preferments. Race and gender are at the forefront of daily life on all fronts, from the classroom to the boardroom, under the constant scrutiny of party apparatchiks who monitor the minutiae of thought, speech, and deed, lest any objection whatsoever be raised at the plethora of dysfunctional educational policies that have rotted the foundations of Western civilization entire. Progressivism’s preposterous postulates and failed policies cannot withstand analysis and evidence, so counter-arguments are prohibited and evidence suppressed. The price of political incorrectness on campus is steep; nothing must be allowed to interfere with progressivism’s ongoing self-destruction of the U.S.A., particularly free speech and thought. One of Martin Luther King’s signature dreams entailed a future in which his children would grow up in a world in which they would be judged pre-eminently by the contents of their characters, and not by the color of their skins (King 1963). But the universities have instead ensured, by steadily poisoning the minds of half the US population, that everyone will be judged first and foremost by the color of their skins, in tandem with gender. Progressivism’s incessant divisiveness has stirred up civil discontents of ever-increasing incivility, and violent crimes of widening scope and riotous amplitude.5 Progressivism’s bogus “diagnoses” and selfrighteous “cures” are expedient vectors for these social epidemics themselves. Progressives have trained the American people to wage perpetual racial and sexual civil war, and have armed them with incendiary ideologies that lead only to ever-more vituperative conflicts. The universities have willfully inverted and rabidly violated King’s enlightened dream. Shame on them all. Character and its contents are apparently nowhere addressed outside of traditional Western and Asian philosophy courses, or so my students inform me at CCNY, where it is my happy lot to teach these subjects. Mainstream students are invariably relieved and gladdened by discussions of character and its contents, along with their inevitable implications for life experience, for worse or better. Such reflection – via for example the virtue ethics of Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius – kindles students’ individual capacities, furthers their intellectual curiosity, and refines their 5

E.g., see Colin Flaherty’s YouTube channels for daily exposure of this ongoing catastrophe: engendered, fomented, and defended by toxic doctrines of the deluded Left.

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

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moral agency. Contemplation of character and its contents immediately reawakens among discussants the nobility of being human, and therefore also the ability to value humanity in others – the opposite of the imposed yet toxic ethos of vicious and dehumanizing identity politics. Meanwhile, university administrations coast-to-coast are preoccupied not at all with contents of character, but rather with Orwellian mantras such as “diversity” – a code-word for a rainbow coalition of malcontents, agitators, revisionists, and hate-mongers – bent on rewarding “victims of historical disadvantage” über alles (see, e.g., Kimball 1998). Note that “diversity” applies to everything except belief, opinion, thought, and political or religious persuasion. Deviation from the politically correct monolithic party line that dictates what everyone must think, believe, and say is not tolerated in Western “higher” education. Jewish, Christian, conservative, and libertarian white males are openly persecuted, heterosexuality is demonized, the European enlightenment is vilified; while reverse racism and reverse sexism, along with every conceivable form of apostasy and aberration, are normalized, celebrated, sponsored, and promoted. As Kors and Silveglate attest: On virtually any college campus, for all its rules of “civility” and all of its prohibitions of “hostile environment,” assimilationist black men and women live daily with the terms “Uncle Tom” and “Oreo” said with impunity, while their tormentors live with special protections from offense. White students daily hear themselves, their friends, and their parents denounced as “racists” and “oppressors,” while their tormentors live with special protections from offense. Believing Christians hear their beliefs ridiculed and see their sacred symbols traduced – virtually nothing, in the name of freedom, may not be said against them in the classroom, at rallies, and in personal encounters – while their tormentors live with special protection from offense. Men hear their sex abused, find themselves blamed for all the evils of the world, and enter classrooms whose very goal is to make them feel discomfort, while their tormentors live with special protections from a “hostile” environment. (Kors and Silverglate 1998, 103)

Dissenting students are either shamed, chastised, suspended or expelled; while dissenting faculty are either fired, ostracized, marginalized, or sabotaged. There is only one remedy: political correctness must be rooted out and reversed, in order that the universities first, and larger polity soon after, regain their health. This practitioner would gladly take the case, and treat the patient, while there is yet time.

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Chapter One

I never foresaw that so much of my creative energy would be enlisted resisting the “velvet totalitarianism” of the contemporary academe. 6 Having studied theoretical physics in Canada and Philosophy of Science in England, all during the 1980s, I was temporarily shielded from the neoBolshevik revolutions that had already swept university campuses, dethroning merit and cognate values, Bolshevizing humanities and campus culture alike. I first heard of affirmative action from American graduate students in the mid-eighties, and was immediately appalled by it, although I was at that time beyond its reach. A meritocrat born and bred, I have always defended equality of opportunity, and expected unequal outcomes, in any and every endeavor. My version of egalitarianism entails that noone be disfavored on the grounds of race or gender, but by the same token that no-one be favored on those grounds either. I had evidently led a “sheltered life.” By the early nineties, it came time for me to join the job-market for entry-level professorships, whereupon I found myself in the thick of antimeritocratic politics. Canadian feminists had by now cloned affirmative action (they call it “employment equity”), hijacked the Canadian Philosophical Association, and implemented a set of hiring quotas which stipulated that females would hereafter be preferentially hired over males, regardless of (and with especial contempt for) criteria of objective merit. Carefully reasoned arguments against this lunacy were put up against a metaphorical wall and shot, much like the Tsar and his family. There was no going back. Whereas I had left Canada to earn a Ph.D. in England as a Commonwealth Scholar, and therefore to become a custodian of Western civilization, I had returned, unwittingly but verily, an Enemy of the People. What can one do in the face of such inane political persecution? I applied for every conceivable (and not a few inconceivable) positions, and was fortunate to be offered a professorship in one of the last reactionary bastions of unadulterated reason in the American academy: the Philosophy Department of The City College of New York. I wanted to thank the Canadian feminist empresses and their palace eunuchs for rusticating me to Manhattan, so I penned them a farewell gift – Fair New World – a satirical novel steeped in such acid royal that it has been favorably compared with works by Swift, Huxley, Orwell, and Vonnegut. I had never aimed so high, until feminists stooped so low.

6

This phrase was originally coined by John Furedy. See http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1007487501100

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

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Writing charged political satire of this kind entailed a combination of dadaist non-conformism, hippie protest, and literary disobedience. All in all, it was dada as philosophical practice, and philosophical practice as dada. My departure from Canada was that of a political refugee, from a liberal fascism that declared that there were too many white male professors in the universities. Although of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, I was reclassified as “white” for the purposes of demonization and exclusion. I asked these liberal fascists where they were when Jews really needed them, in 1936, when the Nazis declared that there were too many non-Aryan professors in the universities. These feminazis could have explained to their mentors that Ashkenazi Jews are actually white. My 1994 exodus made a splash in Canadian newspapers. Fair New World sold two thousand copies underground, from a post-office box in Vancouver. Canadian libertarian lawyer Karen Selick called it “the most politically incorrect work of art I have ever seen . . . hilariously funny and scathingly insightful” (Selick 1995, 46). Believe me, it is no mean feat to parody a farce. Once in New York I lost no time seeking a literary agent for Fair New World, but was told confidentially by several male agents that anyone who represented this novel would be committing professional suicide. Recalling Hugo Ball, how’s that for “true perception and criticism of the times we live in?” Apparently a little too true, too perceptive, and too critical of our times to suit the politically correct tastes of mainstream American publishing, controlled by the same “progressive” sorority which had hijacked the Canadian Philosophical Association. Fair New World painted a mustache and goatee on militant feminism’s Mona Lisa: dada as philosophical practice qua political action. Having escaped the fire of Canadian political correctness, I had landed in the frying pan of its American counterpart, on one of the most storied and subsequently politicized campuses in the entire American gulag:7 The City College of New York (CCNY). Founded in 1847 by Townsend Harris as The Free Academy of New York, with the mission of educating “the whole people,” CCNY offered first-rate higher education at no cost, mostly to children of impecunious immigrants. During its halcyon decades, the 1920s through the 1950s, CCNY earned the sobriquet “Harvard of the Proletariat,” numbering ten Nobel laureates to date among its distinguished alumni – more than any other public university in America. Competition to enter CCNY was fierce, and applicants had to sit entrance exams. Merit was the criterion of admission. 7

For a detailed treatment of the American gulag, see Marinoff (2007, chap. 11).

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Chapterr One

All this changed in 19961, with the birth of an edducational mo onstrosity called “CUN NY”: the Cityy University of o New York. CUNY amallgamated, swallowed, and politicizeed a number of o formerly freee-standing liberal arts institutions, including City C Collegee (its flagshhip), Hunter College, Brooklyn Coollege, Queenns College, an nd Lehman Coollege. It also spawned a gaggle of ccommunity coolleges and satellite schoolss. CUNY disingenuouslly appropriated CCNY’s date of foun ndation – 1847. To thiss day that act of o revisionist history h is sham me1essly promu ulgated to New Yorkerrs, from websiites to parade floats: “CUN NY, founded in n 1847.”

CCNY: founded 1847 CUNY: incorrporated 1961 (not 1847!)

What kind oof university would cemen nt a brazen hiistorical falseh hood into its very fouundations? Thhis is beyond d even the chhutzpa for wh hich New Yorkers aree renowned. It comminglees chutzpa w with hubris. A dadaist might call it “chutzbriss.” More grim mly, as Georrge Orwell cautioned c (1950), “W Who controls the t past, controls the futuure. Who con ntrols the present, conntrols the past.” By 19699, CUNY found itself at th he leading eddges of the cu ulture and gender warss that had enngulfed camp puses from c oast to coastt. Craven administratoors capitulateed to a cong geries of raddicals, who demanded d (among other things) thaat City College jettison sttandards and revert to open admisssions. Virtuallly overnight, CCNY C was traansformed fro om one of America’s ffinest public universities to t what Elie Wiesel descrribed (he 8 taught theree in 1972) as “a bad high school.” s Therre followed deecades of 8

Private com mmunication, 20003.

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

23

conflict and scandal, while CUNY consolidated its centrally planned economy of thought. By stages, it imposed a monolithic campus culture, proliferated a top-heavy bureaucracy, suppressed freedom of thought and speech, approved only programs and research that toed the party line, and prohibited dissenting voices. CUNY converted formerly free-standing liberal arts institutions into ideological prison camps, installing puppet presidents in its colleges, replacing higher education with political indoctrination, treating its faculty and students alike with undisguised contempt. CUNY colleges are governed from a distance, by a se1fperpetuating Central Party Committee, accountable and accessible to no one. By the time I landed at City College in 1994, CUNY had transformed New York’s storied “Harvard of the Proletariat” into something quite beyond imagination. A visiting Japanese Buddhist colleague called it a “maximum security university.” 9 This acute observation by a Buddhist sage and scholar showed clarity in both literal and figurative domains. In 1972, under one of its five-year plans during a great leap forward, CUNY erected at City College a gargantuan suffocating labyrinth designed chiefly for crowd control – so that rioting inmates could be sealed off in one or another of its windowless, brick-lined cellblocks. The architectural genus of this edifice is “campus brutalism,” and examples of it can be found from coast to coast. City College’s instantiation, a species known as “New York Soviet” style architecture, is called the “North Academic Center,” or NAC for short. The NAC is peculiar for at least two reasons. First, this “North” Academic Center lies to the south of the older campus – a cluster of exquisite examples of “New York Gothic” architecture of a bygone era. Second, NAC’s disjointed complexes and irregular wings defeat absolutely any concept of a “center.” But the Japanese Buddhist sage and scholar who coined the phrase “maximum security university” meant far more than the literal and foreboding physicality of the NAC, for he just as clearly understood the figurative meaning of campus brutalism. Although nominally an architectural style, the term portended far worse, namely the genre of the administration that governed its inmates: faculty and students alike.

9

Dr. Yoichi Kawada, private communication, 2009

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Chapter One

CCNY’s Harris Hall, New York Gothic style, 1908

CCNY’s North Academic Center, New York Soviet style, 1972

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

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For a short time, I was shielded from the brutality, as political friends and allies beyond CUNY’s clutches endeavored to further the growth of philosophical practice. That sat well enough with City College administrators at the time, for our efforts had accomplished good things, and anticipated better. But in 2000, anonymous apparatchiks caught wind of our endeavors, and denounced me to “The Kremlin” – that is, to CUNY Central. One morning the Dean summoned me to his office and spat “Not everyone agrees with your work.” How intolerable: difference of opinion on a university campus! Apparently accused of thinking unauthorized thoughts, and of conspiring to influence others to think unauthorized thoughts, I was automatically convicted, ex cathedra and in absentia. There was neither due process, nor disclosure of any accuser’s identity, nor any written accusation of any kind, nor any invitation to discuss the matter. I had suddenly become a political prisoner of The People’s Democratic University of CUNY. A few years later, a visiting scholar from China spent some months at City College, and remarked to me, “Your university’s administration is worse than our government.”10 That’s quite a feather in CUNY’s cap; or on second unauthorized thought, more like a red star. Indeed, for a while I took to wearing a Maoist cap and carrying his Little Red Book into meetings. Even the hard-core Trotskyites chuckled at these patently dadaist theatrics. Making a Trotskyite chuckle is no mean feat, either. From 2000 to the present, CUNY Central’s commissars have kept increasingly busy, regulating the thoughts of half a million students and tens of thousands of faculty, across their sprawling gulag that masquerades as America’s largest urban university. In the process, among a litany of inquisitions and persecutions meted out to dissenters, CUNY Central has lavished unstintingly generous attentions on me. I feel unworthy of their largesse. Highlights include CUNY’s prohibition of a Federally-approved IRB research protocol in philosophical counseling, their closure of a funded pilot project initiated by a former Vice President of Student Affairs to offer philosophical counseling at CCNY’s Wellness Center, their eviction of the scholarly journal that I edit (Philosophical Practice) from offices provided by CCNY, their denial of our Department’s proposed graduate program in Applied Philosophy that was resoundingly approved by every governance body at City College, their mummification in red tape of a proposal to establish a Center for Applied Philosophy by a 10 I must protect the identity of this source, not for fear of his safety in China, but in case he ever wishes to revisit CUNY.

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Chapter One

Department whose faculty leads the field, and so forth. You get the gist. Other CUNY faculty have no doubt suffered worse. The politically correct have fared incalculably better. This is the workaday campus brutalism of a maximum security university. Whatever is a dadaist to do? Make art, of course! So I created this magnum opus:

“Heroes of the Revolution,” montage by the author, based on a Maoist poster

You probably recognize everyone except the fellow at the right. He is former CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, a.k.a. “Big Brother.” Rather than defacing his visage simpliciter, as Michel Duchamp did with Mona Lisa, I transplanted his visage to deface a gallery of exemplary totalitarians, from whom he had learned so well. This is dada as philosophical practice qua political activism. It hangs framed, in my cell, in the NAC building. Understand that CUNY is publicly-funded by New York State and New York City. Technically, I am a civil servant of the State in addition to a political prisoner of CUNY. It remains a joy and a privilege to serve the tax-payers of New York, by awakening ideas in their progeny’s young minds. In my dual capacities as a custodian of Western civilization and an Enemy of the People, I delight in imparting to them what Matthew Arnold

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

27

called “the best which has been thought and said” (Arnold 1869). Even though such subversive pedagogy constitutes crimes against university administrations from coast to coast in the American gulag, my CCNY students seem to relish the experience. Perhaps it’s only the novelty of hearing unauthorized ideas that piques their interest. Or perhaps they enjoy being regarded as individual and unique human beings, rather than being judged on sight by crudely shallow classifications such as race and gender. Or perhaps they come to appreciate that human minds, in their unformed states, have no race or gender; and that “the best which has been thought and said” is accessible to any and every mind imbued with an unpoliticized love of learning. Just in case anyone who has read this far is tempted to pooh-pooh my foregoing work of dadaist political art, Heroes of the Revolution, as farfetched, I recommend a shopping trip to any tourist area in Beijing, and if possible a visit to Beijing’s 798 Art District. In any of these places you will find postcards and T-shirts bearing variations of the following image of Obama:

Obamao, an example of Chinese dada

Liberated Chinese dadaists have identified and satirized the same condition as has this political prisoner of the American gulag. We are kindred spirits. The only time the Chinese government reined in this image was during Michelle Obamao’s 2014 visit to China, out of courtesy and perhaps concern of offending America’s “First Couple,” who are first among leading offenders against liberty itself, chief executive officers of America’s educational free-fall, and ruthless fomenters of America’s

28

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current raciaal civil war. But B few in Ch hina are fooledd by them, as so many Americans ssadly are. As we aapproach the upcoming 2016 US presiddential electio on, barely weeks awayy at this writiing, you can rest r assured tthat my digitaal dadaist studio is chhurning out yet more political art. H Hillary Clinton n affords unusually riich prospects for dada as philosophicall practice quaa political activism. Inn retrospect, Michel Duch hamp had an easy time provoking p outrage by defacing the Mona Lisa, precisely be cause she rep presented beauty, chasstity, and modesty, among g other virtuess. By contrast, Hillary Clinton preesents an unrremitting spectacle of uglliness (e.g., relentless craving for power), debaauchery (e.g., prostituting political fav vors), and narcissism ((e.g., lying pathologically to protect heer self-image), among other vices. How can suchh a bottomlesss well of turpiitude be satirizzed? This dadaist discoovered two ways of doing so: s seriously, aand humoroussly. I also haad at my dispposal new tecchnologies unnknown to thee original dadaists, inccluding animaated photo “m morphing” sofftware, a digittal movie creation suite, and the World W Wide Web. W What foollows are still images from two shhort videos currrently on You uTube. Some tim me ago it daawned on me that Hillary’ s unbridled desire d for power had become deepply depraved, and that herr desperate crraving to regain “posssession” of thee White House resembled nnothing if not Gollum’s desperate crraving to regaain “possession n” of the Onee Ring. If the shoe fits, wear it. If thhe ring fits, crave c it. Thus I conceived a facial synth hesis, and came up w with Hillary Gollum G Clinto on. 11 The res emblance is uncanny.

Hillary Gollu um Clinton

In the viideo, the capttion that acco ompanies thiss horrifying liikeness is aptly providded by Gandaalf, in his diree warning to tthe Fellowship as they enter the miines of Moriaa: “Be on yourr guard – therre are older and a fouler things than oorcs in the deep places of th he world.” Byy now Hillary has been 11

https://www w.youtube.com m/watch?v=5eg9 9_meueL8

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called a lot of things, but “older and fouler than orcs” is probably a first, and it painted a wry smile on this dadaist’s face. But the similarity between Hillary and Gollum hardly ends there. The terminus of Hillary’s quest is Washington D.C.; of Gollum’s, Mordor. Comparing their skylines, it did not take long to discover another chilling

Washington D.C.

Mordor (or Washington, D.C. if Hillary wins)

congruency: “Vote Sauron-Clinton 2016: Your ticket to Mordor.” How’s that for a dadaesque condemnation of totalitarian “progressive” conformity?

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Following this rather serious treatment of the pathetic creature who craves her precious White House, I reverted to a humorous one: a more literal and original kind of dadaist mockery, yet one not less effective in exposing Hillary’s utter lack of scruples. In partial tribute to Duchamp, I literally “painted” a mustache on progressivism’s Mona Lisa. And not just any random mustache; rather, Groucho Marx’s whiskers, along with his eyebrows, glasses, nose, and usual cigar in hand. This produced a rather compelling likeness.

Rufus T. Firefly

Hillary “Windsock” Clinton

The prima facie funniness of dadaist moustachery points to a more substantive ethical irony. One of my favorite Groucho aphorisms is: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them . . . well, I have

Dada as Philosophical Practice, and Vice Versa

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others.”12 While Groucho naturally said this in jest, it’s abundantly clear that Hillary takes it quite seriously. Her “moral compass” is evidently a windsock, pointing in the direction of whichever self-serving prevarication suits her immediate purpose. That’s why Obama himself produced an antiHillary ad (when she ran against him for the party leadership) which claimed, “She’ll say anything, and do nothing.” Just so. If you don’t like Hillary’s principles . . . well, she too has plenty of others. The associated video explains that Hillary is a “graduate” (cum laude) of the Groucho Marx School of Ethics. However, it continues by observing that, like every talented student, she eventually surpassed her illustrious teacher. Hillary’s more advanced motto declares “You can’t dislike my principles; I have none whatsoever.”13 With this we have ascended the “Hillary Step,”14 and so attained the summit of our celebration of dada’s centenary. To recapitulate, I present one last time Duchamp’s defacement of Mona Lisa, side by side with my defacement of Hillary Clinton, so you can meditate on a century of dada, and political “progress.”

“You can’t dislike my principles; I have none whatsoever.”

Conclusion By the time the bicentennial of the Cabaret Voltaire rolls around, in 2116, all the living characters in this current farce will be long dead and gone. Gone too will be the copious catalogue of regnant absurdities and brutal 12

http://www.marx-brothers.org/info/quotes.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9KAwXBM8kg 14 The “Hillary Step” is the final ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, named for Sir Edmond Hillary. 13

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conformities that govern this farcical age, consigned to the dust-heaps and deleted files of history, and lost for eternity once attention spans are finally reduced to absolute zero. New and unforeseeable absurdities and conformities will arise in their place, to be mocked in their turn by neodadaists yet unborn wielding novel technologies yet unconceived. Art alone remains. The arts of dada, of philosophical practice, of dada as philosophical practice, and of philosophical practice as dada remain, while the rest is soon forgotten. Art has no power to arrest the course of political correctness or kindred malignancies, nor to prevent the suffering, strife, oppression, and bloodshed that are brutality’s foot-soldiers and conformity’s camp-followers. Yet the spirit that animates and produces art, though invisible, is indestructible. So while art is powerless in the moment, it is momentous in history’s judgment. And every century or so, someone will paint another mustache to remind us.

References Aberman, Arnold. 2014. “Blinkered Thinking in Academia.” Financial Post, 11 June. At business.financialpost.com/2014/06/11/blinkeredthinking-in-academia. Arnold, Matthew. 1869. Culture and Anarchy. London: Smith, Elder & Co. From the Preface. Feary, Vaughana, and Lou Marinoff. 2014. “The Case Against a ‘Philosophical DSM.’” Journal of Humanities Therapy 5: 47-70. Furedy, John. “Velvet Totalitarianism on Canadian Campuses: Subverting Effects of, and Research in, the Discipline of Psychology,” Canadian Psychology Abstracts, November 1997, 38. 4. Finn, Chester E. Jr. 1989. “The Campus: ‘An Island of Repression in a Sea of Freedom.’” Commentary, September 1. At www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-campus-an-islandofrepression-in-a-sea-of- freedom Flaherty, Colin. 2013. “White Girl Bleed a Lot”: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It. WND Books. —. 2015. “Don't Make the Black Kids Angry”: The Hoax of Black Victimization and Those Who Enable It. Kindle Books. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, edited by Arnold I. Davidson and translated by Michael Chase. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kimball, Roger. 1998. Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee.

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King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1963. “I Have a Dream.” Speech at the “March on Washington.” Retrieved from the National Archives. At https://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf Konnikova, Maria. 2014. “Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans?” The New Yorker, October 30. At www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-psychologybiased-republicans Kors, Alan C., and Harvey A. Silvergate. 1998. The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. New York, NY: The Free Press. Marinoff, Lou. 2007. The Middle Way. Sterling, New York: Sterling. —. 2012. “Humanities Therapy: Restoring Well-Being in an Age of Culturally-Induced Illness.” In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Philosophical Practice, Humanities Institute, Kangwon National University, 27-48. —. 2017. “Philosophical Practice as Political Activism.” In Socrate à l'agora. Que peut la parole philosophique?, edited by Mieke de Moor. Paris: Vrin, 107-25. Mercer, Ilana. 2011. Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa. Seattle, WA: Stairway Press. Myserson, Joel, ed. 2000. Transcendentalism (A Reader). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orwell, George. 1950. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York, NY: Signet, 34. Selick, Karen. 1995. “Brave New Work: Fair New World.” Canadian Lawyer, March, 46. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psFO_P-8gvU Duchamp in an interview with Arturo Schwarz: http://www.dada-companion.com/duchamp/interviews.php File:Appa and Momo.png

CHAPTER TWO THE PHILOSOPHICAL GARDENER: A NEW PARADIGM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE RAN LAHAV

The history of the philosophical practice movement, from the early 1980s until today, can be seen as a history of attempts to implement an ambitious vision: that philosophy can be meaningful to ordinary people, because it can touch their lives and make it better, deeper, and fuller (Lahav 2015). Unfortunately, the translation of this lofty vision into actual practice, so it seems to me, has not been very satisfactory so far. As I will argue below, existing forms of philosophical practice often tend to make philosophy applicable to life at the expense of trivializing it and making it superficial. Furthermore, instead of creating a new kind of practice inspired by the spirit of philosophy, they tend to imitate the familiar psychologist’s “talking cure.” I am making this critical assessment not as a cynical outsider or a disillusioned defector, but as a committed philosophical practitioner who believes in the power of philosophy to elevate and deepen life. I remember the aspirations that animated us in the early 1990s, when the tiny fledgling field was still struggling to be born, and it seems to me that philosophical practice has not yet managed to realize those aspirations. The concern I am expressing here is not that contemporary philosophical practice isn’t beneficial for clients – I leave the issue of benefit outside the scope of this discussion. The worry is, rather, that the activities that currently go by the name “philosophical practice” have little philosophical content. Their connection to the rich tradition that we call “philosophy” is flimsy, and as a result they do not really address the vision of applying philosophy to everyday life. If I am right, then the crucial issue for philosophical practitioners is how to add more philosophical content to what we are doing, so that it would truly be philosophical practice.

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This is the issue I will address in this chapter. I will propose an alternative direction that, I believe, goes beyond current paradigms and that is faithful both to the spirit of philosophy and to the vision of philosophical practice.

The Fundamental Challenge of Philosophical Practice The philosophical practice movement was born in the early 1980s in Germany and Holland (Lahav 2015). Its fundamental vision was ambitious and inspiring: that philosophy can be made relevant to the life of the person in the street. Philosophy need not be confined to university lectures and academic books, because it can belong to everybody. It can help Bill the taxi driver and Mary the receptionist make their lives better, fuller, more meaningful. After all, philosophy has always dealt with basic lifeissues: the meaning of life, the nature of true love, what it means to be authentic, what makes an action morally right or wrong. Everybody encounters these issues, not just professional philosophers. The early philosophical practitioners regarded this vision as clashing with mainstream Western philosophy, which tends to be general and abstract. Mainstream philosophical discussions deal not with specific individuals but with human existence in general, not with an individual’s concrete personal concerns but with basic principles. Bill or Mary, in contrast, are concerned with very concrete and specific issues – with the painful arguments they have recently had, for example, or with their boss’ aggressive behavior. They don’t care about the general definition of love or of work. Thus, a considerable gap seems to separate philosophy as it is practiced in the mainstream philosophical tradition from the everyday concerns of ordinary people. This implies that the idea of applying philosophy to everyday life, if at all possible, is not as simple as it might seem at first sight. Admittedly, not all traditional philosophies are distant from the individual’s life. Some ancient schools of philosophy – the Stoics and the Epicureans, for example (Hadot 1995; 1998) – attempted to translate their philosophies to everyday situations. The problem with these ancient philosophers, however, is that they did so quite dogmatically. Although the leaders of those ancient schools were probably creative and openminded, to their followers they prescribed specific behavioral guidelines. They did not give these followers the freedom to openly explore alternative ways of living, much less encouraged them to develop their own personal vision of life. Epicurus’ followers, for example, were expected to adhere to Epicurean principles, and to think only within the

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bounds of these principles (Epicurus 1994; Hadot 1994). They were expected to renounce false needs, such as the desire for possessions or entertainment or fame, and seek a life of simple and quiet “pleasure” in the company of friends. Likewise, followers of Stoic philosophy were expected to try to overcome their attachment to things and develop an attitude of tranquility and full acceptance of whatever happens to them (Hadot 1994). Although these two schools may have explained to their followers the philosophical reasoning underlying their philosophies – which suggests that they did not impose blind dogmatism – they were certainly not models of free, open-ended inquiries. These semi-dogmatic approaches do not seem appropriate for today’s world, in which we want to encourage individuals to engage in free selfreflection and personal journeys. It is not surprising that the early philosophical practitioners, in the 1980s and 1990s, were not interested in universal formulas and truths. Our aim was to encourage ordinary people to reflect philosophically for themselves, not to give them finished philosophical solutions; to accompany them in the open-ended process of philosophical reflection, not to supply them with philosophical products. In short, philosophical practice was to focus on philosophizing, not on already-finished philosophical theories. These considerations led to a basic challenge: How to make the process of thinking philosophically – in other words philosophizing – relevant to the life of ordinary people? This, it seems to me, has been the fundamental challenge of our field since its birth, more than 30 years ago. The different brands of philosophical practice that have been practiced in different corners of the earth can all be seen as different attempts to meet this challenge. Unfortunately, so far these attempts have all failed to attract the general public. Unlike other movements and approaches that have seen considerable popularity during the same period – Logotherapy, Alcoholics Anonymous, Transcendental Meditation, life coaching, etc. – philosophical practice has always remained marginal in our contemporary world. Most people in today’s world do not even know that such a thing exists. I suspect that this is, in part at least, a result of our failure to find a fruitful way to apply philosophical thinking to everyday life – in other words, to successfully address the fundamental challenge of philosophical practice.

The Two Dominant Paradigms of Philosophical Practice In the first fifteen years of the field, when philosophical practice was still miniscule, practitioners struggled to characterize what they were doing,

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and how whatever they were doing was presumably different from psychology. Already in those early years one could discern, I suggest, two central characterizations of the field, sometimes combined with each other. Although they were not always clearly articulated, my suggestion is that we can regard them as two basic paradigms about what philosophical practice is. In other words, they are two attempts to address the fundamental challenge of philosophical practice, namely, how to translate the lofty vision to actual practice by implementing philosophizing in everyday life. Today the field is much more consolidated. Books and articles offer principles and methods, and professional associations espouse clearly defined ideas. There are dozens of groups around the world, as well as unaffiliated individuals, and naturally there is much variation among them. Nevertheless, on the basis of dozens of interviews with active philosophical practitioners,1 it seems to me that most of them, though not all, are still adhering to the same two basic paradigms with which the field had started. The first paradigm, which in the early days was favored especially by the German group of philosophical practitioners, and which nowadays is still popular among members of the German association (IGPP), can be called the “open dialogue paradigm.” Its answer to the fundamental challenge is this: Philosophizing can be relevant to the person in the street because philosophizing means an open dialogue, free of assumptions and methods. Therefore (so the idea continues), philosophy is different from psychology which (presumably) imposes on clients fixed methods and analyses. It follows that making philosophizing relevant to ordinary people simply means carrying out an open dialogue with them, without imposing on the conversation any preconceived idea or method. Presumably, open conversations with individuals about their personal concerns is a muchneeded activity, which psychologists do not offer. The second paradigm, originally favored especially by the Dutch group of philosophical practitioners, may be called the “critical thinking paradigm.” Nowadays it is popular among several groups in the U.S.A., Italy, and elsewhere. It contends that philosophizing means using tools of 1

See more than sixty philosophical practitioners describing their work in videointerviews in the archives of the Agora website, which is directed by me and Carmen Zavala (Philo-Practice Agora). The distinction which I propose in this chapter between two paradigms is based on these interviews, as well as personal communication. Most of the interviewees who describe their philosophical counseling work in these videos clearly fall into one of these two paradigms, or a combination of the two. However, a handful of interviewees may perhaps diverge from these paradigms to some degree.

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logical analysis, or more generally critical thinking. “Critical thinking” is a term that is commonly used to refer to the practice of constructing arguments, detecting fallacious arguments, checking for consistency between two or more ideas, exposing hidden assumptions, analyzing concepts, and so on. Presumably, if you use critical thinking then you are thereby philosophizing. The philosopher can therefore help clients think critically about their personal concerns, whether in order to help them resolve these concerns or teach them how to think critically about their lives. Many current philosophical practitioners combine elements from these two paradigms. For them, philosophical practice is both an open conversation, and also one that employs critical thinking. Presumably, to philosophize means to conduct an open, free investigation that is guided by critical thinking tools. I should mention another kind of activity that is usually included in the field of philosophical practice, namely, discussion groups such as the philosophical café and the Socratic Dialogue group. However, since this kind of activity consists of group-discussions about general issues, and since it does not aspire to impact the individual’s everyday life, it seems to me that, as valuable as it might be, it does not fall under the central vision of philosophical practice. The two paradigms described above – the open dialogue paradigm and the critical thinking paradigm – have dominated the field of philosophical practice from its birth to this very day, whether separately or in combination with each other. In fact, in the 1990s I myself worked within their frameworks for several years, until I realized that they had serious shortcomings. Even then I could still not envision any viable alternative to them, and as a result I was forced to use them for lack of a better option. I suspect that other philosophical practitioners, too, have not really chosen to follow these two paradigms but have simply inherited them as givens. It was only a couple of years ago that I began to see an alternative paradigm to philosophical practice, the one that I present below.

Are the Two Dominant Paradigms Really Philosophical? Already at a first glance, the two dominant paradigms seem suspect: It is not clear what is philosophical in the “philosophical practice” which they prescribe, and for several reasons. First, it is hard to see how the activity of talking with clients about their personal issues, whether openly without methods or with the aid of critical thinking tools, is different from what we normally call “psychology”

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(psychotherapy, psychological counseling, etc.). 2 Talking with clients about their personal problems is precisely what psychologists do. The idea of using critical thinking tools does not help to distinguish philosophical practice from psychotherapy, because that same idea is also used in cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, which is a major family of approaches to psychotherapy (Corey 2016, 269-310). Nor can the distinction be aided by the idea of open, methodless conversation. A central feature of another major group of psychotherapies, namely existential-humanistic psychotherapies, is that clients should be treated as unique individuals, and that no preconceived formula should be imposed on them (Corey 2016, 129-230). Furthermore, many psychotherapists nowadays, at least in the U.S.A., define themselves as eclectic or integrative (Corey 2016, 427-60), which means that they avail themselves of tools from different approaches, in accordance with what seems appropriate for the specific client. These psychotherapists certainly do not impose blindly pre-determined methods without regard to the individual. Indeed, already in the early years, philosophical practitioners were preoccupied with the question of how to distinguish between philosophical practice and psychotherapy, and for a good reason: because there was virtually no difference between them. In order to reassure themselves that they were not merely imitating psychotherapy, philosophical practitioners have sometimes invented questionable caricatures of what psychologists allegedly do: that psychologists look at symptoms instead of looking at the unique individual, that they impose on their patients theories and methods without truly listening to them, that they treat patients as cases and numbers and not as unique human beings. Clearly, even if certain psychotherapists do work in this way, the contention that all psychotherapists do so and that this is the very nature of psychotherapy is absurd. For one thing, there are hundreds of different types of psychotherapies nowadays, and any simple generalization about all of them is bound to be patently false. In fact, as I said, some types of psychotherapy and counseling (existential counseling, person-centered psychotherapy, etc.) are precisely based on these concerns. Furthermore, even if many psychologists are indeed guilty of the sins ascribed to them, then the proper response is to improve those psychotherapies, not to call those improvements “philosophy.” This consideration casts doubts on whether the two dominant paradigms are really philosophical, in other words whether what they offer 2 See Corey (2016) for an excellent overview of the psychological approaches mentioned here.

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is an application of philosophy to life. They may perhaps be a little different in emphasis and detail from existing psychotherapies, but even if so, it is best to look at them as versions of good old psychotherapy, the familiar “talking cure” with cognitive and humanistic shades. A second problem with these two paradigms is that they ignore an important element of philosophy, without which very little philosophy is left. To see this, note that they characterize the activity of philosophizing in terms of its “how” at the expense of its “what”; in other words, they characterize philosophical conversation in terms of its methods (or lack of methods) and ignore its content. For them, what makes a conversation philosophical is the fact that it uses critical thinking tools, or that it uses no methods, regardless of what the conversation is about. This is curious, because it overlooks the treasures of wisdom that have been accumulated throughout the ages. Great thinkers throughout history have developed a rich inventory of philosophical ideas, containing insightful philosophies of love, of justice, of beauty, of the meaning of life, to name only a few. Those treasures of philosophy are ignored if all you do is chat freely and without method about your client’s marital problems, or alternatively if you analyze logically your client’s career concerns. If a practitioner converses with a client about the topic of love or of meaning without relating at all to those historical treasures, then the result is lacking in philosophical content. Philosophy is an ongoing discourse in which individual philosophers relate to each other, criticize each other, and build on each other’s ideas. Aristotle’s philosophy responded to Plato’s, Kant’s to Hume’s, and Kierkegaard’s to Hegel’s. If you do not relate to what other philosophers have said before you, then you are not really part of the historical discourse that is called “philosophy,” and you do not share its depth and value. Third, the excessive emphasis on methods (or lack of methods) implies that conversations can count as “philosophizing” regardless of what they are about. This is obviously false. What makes a discourse philosophical is not just its methods, but also, most importantly, the fact that it is about fundamental issues of life and reality. Philosophy, by its very nature, explores fundamental aspects of our world, usually by constructing theories about them. This is very different from discussing Bill’s marriage problems or Mary’s distress yesterday. And indeed, when one listens to the adherents of the two paradigms explaining what they do in a typical session, one often cannot help but wonder: But where is philosophy in all this? How is this connected to the kind of discourse that, over the past two-and-a-half millennia, has been practiced by philosophers?

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More specifically, the critical thinking paradigm seems to ignore the fact that critical thinking is not the main activity of those thinkers whom we call philosophers, nor is it their unique specialty. Lawyers, economists, scientists, police detectives, and cognitive psychologists, to give just a few examples, are critical thinkers no less than philosophers. Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, and Nietzsche were not in the business of analyzing Mary’s pain or Bill’s complaint, but rather of reflecting on basic life-issues. Furthermore, rather than analyzing or chatting methodlessly, they were primarily engaged in composing theories about reality. The same applies to the second paradigm. Conversing openly and methodlessly with clients about their personal problems has very little connection with the philosophical reflections of Aristotle or Descartes, Kant, Russell, or similar thinkers who are part of the philosophical tradition. Besides, open dialogue is certainly not the specialty of the philosopher. It is not something you find in philosophy books, or learn about at philosophy departments. Hair-dressers, party hosts, tour guides, and psychologists are good at open conversations no less than philosophers. I do not want to completely discredit the two dominant paradigms. One might concede that critical thinking and open dialogues are both elements of philosophical conversations. One might even argue that they are necessary elements – but they are certainly not sufficient to make a conversation philosophical. I conclude that the two dominant paradigms have little philosophical content, and are quite remote from the philosophical tradition. They do not offer a response to the basic challenge of philosophical practice, because they are not really making philosophy relevant to the person in the street – rather, they are replacing philosophy with a different kind of discourse. One might object to my criticism by saying that I am using the word “philosophy” too strictly and conservatively. Philosophy, it might be said, has no strict definition, and its boundaries are subject to change. But this objection does not seem to me very strong. Although the boundaries of philosophy are not rigid or sharp, they are not totally open either. Not every chat with your hairdresser or neighbor can count as philosophy. Some minimal affinity to the philosophical tradition of exploring fundamental life-issues is necessary in order to make a conversation philosophical. On a practical level, the question is whether a philosophical practitioner is justified in claiming the prestige and authority of the wisdom-tradition called “philosophy” when what he does has very little to do with it. It is also a question of whether practitioners who, for five or seven years, have studied Plato and Hegel and Nietzsche etc. at university

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have the right to claim that they are trained for open dialoguing, or for a logical analysis of Bill’s relations with his wife. There is, of course, nothing wrong with non-philosophical discourses. They may be helpful for many purposes. Philosophy is certainly not the only good thing in the world. However, such activities do not belong to the vision of philosophical practice, because they do not address the challenge of how to make philosophy relevant to the person in the street. The adherents of the two paradigms may be credited for creatively developing counseling methods, for articulating valuable insights, for helping clients deal with personal issues and developing their reflective abilities, but not, I believe, for successfully developing a practice that is truly philosophical.

The Power of Ideas in Traditional Philosophy How, then, can one develop an alternative activity that is more fully philosophical, and thus better addresses the basic challenge of philosophical practice? To answer this question, we don’t need to go far away from traditional philosophy. Throughout the history of Western philosophy, many major philosophers regarded philosophy as capable of making a significant impact on the individual’s life. I have in mind those philosophers who believed that we normally live a superficial, limited, automatic life, and that philosophy can help transform life and make it fuller, deeper, richer. Although many of them expressed this idea on a theoretical level only, without attempting to apply it to actual practice, they can serve as a source of inspiration for a new paradigm of philosophical practice. I call these philosophers “transformative philosophers” because they envisioned a philosophy that can help transform us. They include major philosophers such as Plato, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Bergson, and many others (Lahav 2016b, 10-14). Plato, for example, in his famous Allegory of the Cave, in Book 7 of The Republic (Plato 2004), tells us that we humans are like prisoners in a cave, and that philosophy can help us step out of the cave and encounter a greater and truer reality. Likewise, Epicurus teaches us that we normally follow our irrational desires that make us unhappy, and that philosophy can help us distinguish between true and false needs, and in this way lead us to quiet happiness, or what he calls “pleasure” (Epicurus 1994). For the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, we are normally controlled by our psychological attachments to perceived goods, but through philosophical exercises we can free ourselves from these attachments and attain inner tranquility, freedom, and harmony with the cosmos (Marcus Aurelius

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1991; Hadot 1998). Rousseau believes that social interactions from early age alienate us from ourselves and push us to play artificial social games, but that philosophy can show us the kind of education that could cultivate the natural self within us (Rousseau 1996). Nietzsche derides normal human beings for being weak, fearful, lifeless herd animals, and his philosophy is intended to inspire us to overcome our small selves and strive to live bigger, nobler lives (Nietzsche 1984). Bergson notes that we live fragmented lives that are limited to the surface of our selves, but that by developing our philosophical intuition we can learn to connect to our holistic depth (Bergson 1983). And the list goes on. These philosophers differ from each other in their visions about reality and life. Their descriptions of self-transformation involve different concepts and principles, and they promote different attitudes toward life. And yet, they all share a belief in the power of philosophy to help transform us towards a fuller and better life. Admittedly, these thinkers give philosophy different roles in the quest for self-transformation – awakening the inner self, training and strengthening the will, developing an appropriate kind of awareness, or simply charting the way to achieving self-change. Despite those differences, however, they all see philosophy as capable of helping us on the road to self-transformation. What is it about philosophy that can help bring about such a dramatic impact? I suggest that a common realization shared by those transformational philosophes is that philosophy has the power to create insights and understandings that are alive within us. These are not mere intellectual ideas that remain in our abstract thinking – they are alive, they fill us with motivation and inspiration and new energies. When we understand our human situation deeply, when we see human reality from the depth of our being, we do not remain the same. We are awakened by new ideas that penetrate our inner depth, and a profound change may take place within us. The suggestion that ideas can influence us deeply is not as strange as it might seem. Most of us have heard about someone whose life has changed profoundly as a result of a new insight or realization: a new existential awareness of one’s upcoming death, or a new social ideology, or a moral consciousness of the suffering of the poor. To be sure, not only philosophical ideas are capable of changing us. Religious and nationalistic ideas can also have a profound impact on us (not necessarily for the good). But the power of philosophical ideas is especially strong, because they deal with fundamental life-issues, and they can profoundly change our

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basic values and self-understanding. They can shake the foundations of our normal attitude and open us to broader perspectives on life. If we take seriously this lesson from traditional philosophies, we arrive at a new paradigm about how philosophy might be relevant to everyday life: A philosophical process can help us encounter fundamental ideas in a way that would awaken and inspire us to step beyond our limited ways of living and to explore the greater horizons of life. Of course, not every exposure to ideas is likely to lead to significant self-change. Academic lectures, for example, may be interesting, but no more than that. They typically engage only the surface of our personality, only our intellectual opinions, and these are largely disconnected from the rest of our inner life. Therefore, if we want philosophical ideas to change us significantly, we must encounter them in a special way. The question is how.

The Philosophical Gardener Paradigm A clue to answering this question can be found in ancient Stoic writings, which offer us fascinating examples of how philosophical ideas can be made to influence us deeply (Hadot 1994; 1998). For the Stoics, philosophy consists not merely of intellectual lectures or discussions – it also includes a variety of philosophical exercises designed to touch deeper aspects of ourselves. According to the Stoic worldview, a major predicament in our life is our attachment to the things we want and expect. We are attached to our comforts, to our preferred foods, possessions, conveniences, pleasures, and safety. When we don’t get what we expect, we become victims of negative emotions such as frustration, agitation, anger, sadness, or anxiety. This is because we are not in touch with the “guiding principle” within us, our “daemon,” which is the faculty of reason. The guiding principle is our true self, and it also expresses the Logos of the cosmos. When we are guided by it, we accept whatever happens to us peacefully, we are free from attachments and other psychological mechanisms, and we follow the ways of reason, which are also the ways of the universe. The problem is that our psychological mechanisms are powerful, and it is not easy to free ourselves from their grip. The Stoics knew very well that mere abstract knowledge about these mechanisms is not enough to overcome them. One must exercise continuously in order to awaken and empower one’s true, inner self. Notable examples of such exercises are found in the Meditations, an ancient philosophical journal written by the Stoic Roman emperor Marcus

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Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius 1991; Hadot 1998). The passages that he entered into this journal express philosophical reflections that he himself conducted periodically. His reflections were philosophical in the sense that they dealt with basic aspects of life and reality – the nature of freedom, death, suffering, the good life, human life, the ways of the cosmos, etc. Nevertheless, they engaged not only his abstract thinking, but also deeper dimensions of his inner being. This was achieved with the help of a variety of exercises such as talking to oneself and exhorting oneself, formulating and reformulating ideas in a vivid way, preparing oneself for the day’s activities, reflecting on oneself from a broader perspective, and so on. These philosophical exercises are very different from the kind of conversations found in the framework of the two dominant paradigms of philosophical practice. Several differences are worth noticing here. First, unlike the critical thinking paradigm and the open dialogue paradigm, Stoic exercises are not aimed primarily at deriving new conclusions, but rather at strengthening the power of already-familiar ideas in our minds. After all, when Marcus Aurelius writes a new daily entry in his Meditations, he is not working out new ideas that he did not know before – he already knows Stoic philosophy. Rather, he is trying to give life to familiar ideas so that they would impact his inner attitude and would awaken and empower the guiding principle within him. Although in the process he also formulates Stoic ideas in new ways, his purpose is not to create a new theory but rather to give life to a familiar theory. Giving life to ideas is a very different way of philosophizing from trying to reach new conclusions, whether through critical thinking or through methodless dialogue. Second, Marcus Aurelius’ exercises are not directed primarily at the faculty of abstract thinking, but at his deep self. This is why most of his exercises do not involve talking about his inner self, but talking to his inner self. This inner dialogue is different from the kind of objective reflections on oneself that one finds in the two dominant paradigms. Third, Marcus Aurelius’ exercises address basic life-issues, not just specific personal problems. When, for example, he tells himself to imagine himself from the perspective of the cosmos – a tiny temporary entity in the vast eternal universe (Marcus Aurelius 1991, book 2, 12) – he is dealing with the human condition in general. In short, Marcus Aurelius’ approach of bringing ideas to life and giving them motivating powers is hardly ever used in the existing paradigms of philosophical practice. And unlike these two paradigms, his approach is truly philosophical, because it is based on reflections on basic life-issues. Unfortunately, it also comes with a limitation, namely,

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considerable dogmatism. It allows us to explore new ideas, develop new arguments, and analyze concepts and situations – but only within the boundaries of Stoic philosophy, only as long as we do not diverge from Stoic principles. These exercises do not open us to alternative approaches to life. They do not allow us to freely question Stoic assumptions and develop new ideas that contradict them. For us, this is a serious limitation. As denizens of the 21st century, we want a kind of philosophizing that would be open-ended, free from dogmatism, one that would take us beyond any pre-conceived idea and allow for personal journeys. As philosophical practitioners we want to use philosophical techniques that would make philosophical ideas vivid in our minds, awaken our inner depths, inspire our behavior – but in a free, creative, personal way, without commitment to a pre-existing dogma. These considerations help to characterize more clearly the kind of new paradigm we are looking for. They suggest a form of philosophizing that would borrow from the Stoics the idea that philosophical exercises can touch us, awaken us, and motivate us – but in a different way. Instead of dogmatically channeling the impact of philosophical ideas in one specific direction, it would allow these ideas to act within us in an open-ended way. Furthermore, it would take seriously an important lesson from the transformational philosophies throughout the ages: that philosophical ideas can facilitate a wide variety of states of mind, from Stoic self-control to Nietzschean wild energies, from Bergsonian holistic experiences to Platonic otherworldly visions and to Rousseau’s self-sufficient natural self. Instead of trying to impose on life one specific state of mind – Stoic tranquility for example, or Nietzschean passion – it would allow life to choose its own path. It would trust each human life to respond to philosophical ideas in its own individual way. In short, according to this purported paradigm, philosophical reflection would provide inspiring and insightful nourishment for a personal exploration of new states of mind and new attitudes. It would empower individuals to go beyond their familiar boundaries towards new horizons of life. Here I would like to borrow Rousseau’s metaphor of the individual as a young tree, and the educator as a gardener (Rousseau 1966). The role of the philosophical practitioner would be like that of a gardener – to supply the soil, sun, and water that are needed for the plant to grow. Gardeners do not tell the plant how it should grow, they do not dictate to it which kinds of leaves it should have. Rather, they create the optimal conditions for life to use its own powers and its own wisdom to grow. Good philosophical gardeners know how to provide us with nourishing philosophical materials

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that awaken the powers of life to work within us in their own way. They inspire life to enrich and deepen itself without prescribing any predetermined agenda. I suggest that this can be the basis of a new paradigm about what philosophical practice could be like. The question is how to translate this general idea into actual practice.

In Search of Ways to Implement the New Paradigm Two decades ago I came upon text-contemplation techniques in the context of several spiritual traditions. One of them was the Lectio Divina, a contemplative technique developed by Catholic monks in the middle ages, which is still quite popular among Christian contemplators. 3 For several months, in the community of contemplative monks, I learned the profound power of contemplating on a text. I learned that through contemplation, ideas from a text can touch us deeply and awaken us. But since I was not interested in authoritative dogmas, I asked myself: If religious texts can do this, why not philosophical ones? I started experimenting with contemplation on philosophical texts. The results were profound for me personally, but I was not sure whether they would apply to people who lacked my philosophical and contemplative background. Philosophical practice is intended for ordinary people, not just for experienced contemplators and philosophers. I was therefore hesitant. I was not sure how to translate my personal experience with philosophical contemplation to a user-friendly and structured activity for the general public. For several years I continued, sporadically and intermittently, experimenting with contemplative philosophy in retreats and workshops. About two years ago I finally met several philosophical practitioners from various countries who, like me, were enthusiastic about exploring this direction. With their help I started organizing weekly meetings online through a video-chat program. We called these groups “philosophicalcontemplative companionships,” or “companionships” for short (Lahav 2106a). Some participants participated briefly, others for several weeks or months, but all of them helped to develop, through a process of trial and error, a new online format of contemplative philosophy.4 3 See Reininger (1998) for a variety of modern adaptations of this ancient technique. 4 Among the more than 30 philosophical practitioners who took part in the companionship project in the past two years, I would like to acknowledge the creative contributions of Gerald Hofer, Andrea Modesto, Maria Joao Neves, Mike

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In its present form, an ordinary companionship session is about 90 minutes long. The group usually consists of five to ten participants, and the activity revolves around a short philosophical text and is guided by a philosophical facilitator. In the first few minutes we usually start with a centering exercise – a short meditation, for example, or a very slow reading of the text. Various exercises follow in which participants let the words of the text speak within themselves, and then resonate with them from their inner being as far as they can. Sometimes participants are asked to relate the text to a personal experience or to personal insights, depending on the exercise chosen. In many of these exercises we use an online application, Google Drive, that enables us all to write on the same document at the same time, and which we use as a common “blackboard.” We may use this “blackboard” to write down selected words or sentences, to sketch conceptual maps, or to compose together a group-poem. In this way, a field of new insights, some personal and some general, unfolds in the group. Towards the end of the session, those insights are consolidated through various summarizing exercises. The companionship is successful to the extent that the contemplation enables participants to give voice to new understandings from their inner depth. Evidently, the activity in such companionships is very different from standard methodless conversations or critical thinking discussions. They operate within a very different paradigm – the philosophical gardener paradigm – in which we cultivate ideas to speak and act within us rather than talking about ideas. Metaphorically speaking, this is like playing music versus talking about music, or like gardening versus talking about gardening.

The Philosophical-Contemplative Companionship To make all this more concrete, let me explain in greater detail how the companionship works.5 The goal of the philosophical-contemplative companionship is to arouse a sense of profound understanding. Just as in cooking we cherish the tasty, and in music we appreciate the beautiful, in the companionship we aim at the profound. Profoundness is like the “beauty” or “tastefulness” of philosophical contemplation.

Roth, Silvia Schwarz, Stefano Zampieri, and Carmen Zavala. I am grateful to them for their inventive explorations, which helped refine our techniques. 5 For more details about companionships, including a fuller list of techniques as well as case studies, see Lahav (2016a; 2016b).

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By “profound understanding” I mean not just the content of the understanding – what the understanding is about – but primarily how we understand it. A profound understanding touches hidden dimensions of our being, it awakens dormant aspects of our awareness, it inspires and elevates us. But since profoundness depends in part on the individual’s subjective appreciation, there is no ready-made formula for what counts as profound. The success of the philosophical-contemplative process depends on the participants’ openness to voice deep ideas and be touched by them. For this reason, certain procedures and exercises are used in order to maintain an appropriate inner attitude, and to enable the participant to think and interact not from their familiar opinionated or automatic mind, but from deeper aspects of their being. Three principles guide the contemplative activity in the companionship. First, companions make a conscious attempt to speak from a deeper dimension of their being. In other words, they try to give voice to their deepest understandings. Second, companions speak in togetherness, resonating with each other like jazz musicians who play together a common improvised concert. This means that when companions speak, they do not talk about what others have said, they do not agree or disagree or evaluate, they do not express opinions or make claims, but rather resonate with what has been said. Third, the same attitude of resonating, or speaking-with, applies to the way companions relate to any text used. Companions do not analyze or make claims about the text, they do not agree or disagree with it, but rather resonate with it. These three general guidelines allow the companions to relate to philosophical ideas from a different place within themselves, not from their opinions, not from their detached thoughts but by giving voice to their inner understandings. A variety of procedures are used in the companionship in order to follow these guidelines. To the participants they often feel “unnatural” or forced, but this is precisely their role: to pull us out of our “normal” way of thinking and speaking. Let me give here a few examples to demonstrate how they work. a. Precious speaking: This procedure is used in almost every session of philosophical companionship, helping companions to assume a different inner posture. It consists of several “intentions” that guide the way participants speak: First, treat each word you utter as precious, as a valuable gift to the group, and avoid repetitions or redundancies (such as: “Well, I wanted to say that…”). Second, speak not from your opinions, but from what is alive in you at the

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moment. Third, don’t talk about the text or your companions’ words, but talk together with them. Specifically, don’t agree or disagree with them or evaluate them, but rather resonate with them. And fourth, when another companion speaks, push aside all your thoughts, open a quiet space within yourself, and place the words in that space. Full listening to others is no less important than speaking. When the companions follow these four intentions, the result is a powerful sense of profound listening and speaking from a deeper place within oneself. b. Philosophical recitation: 6 This is another simple but effective procedure, and it consists of reading one single sentence again and again. More specifically, after the philosophical text has been understood, a sentence is chosen by the facilitator, and the companions repeat it, each one in his or her turn according to their sitting position (or in alphabetical order in online sessions). A second round of reading of the same sentence may follow, and then a third and a fourth, sometimes for ten or more minutes. At first, as companions start reciting the same sentence again and again, they may experience boredom or agitation. But soon new images and ideas will start floating in their minds in response to the words of the text. c. Sentence completion: 7 After the philosophical text has been understood, the facilitator chooses one sentence from the text and starts reading it without completing it, for example: “When I encounter another person, I . . . ” The first participant is then asked to complete the sentence according to his or her own personal understanding; then the facilitator reads again the unfinished sentence and a second participant completes it, followed by a third participant and a fourth, and so on. Several rounds of such group reading may follow. The key here is to keep a steady rhythm of responses without allowing participants to pause to think, so that they bypass their usual opinionated thinking and give voice to a different aspect of themselves. These three examples demonstrate how simple rules can help companions step out of their usual state of mind and address basic life-issues in a different, contemplative way, by giving voice to dormant dimensions of 6

This procedure was first introduced by Gerald Hofer in several sessions that he facilitated. 7 This procedure was first introduced by Maria Joao Neves in several sessions that she facilitated.

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themselves that are different from their usual automatic or opinionated thinking. If the atmosphere is serious and contemplative, deep understandings, accompanied by a sense of profundity, are likely to arise. If desired, towards the end of the session a more discursive conversation may be used to give closure to the meeting. This can help to bring together the various insights that have come up during the exercise, organize them, examine their implications, and even evaluate them. This may be done in various writing procedures, or in an ordinary conversation. The above procedures deal with philosophical life-issues in an impersonal way. But an alternative (or complementary) direction is to ask the participants to relate their contemplative insights to their personal experiences. For example, participants may be instructed to select a relevant personal experience, and then reflect on it from the perspective of the insights that have been achieved through contemplation. Obviously, the range of possible procedures is vast. The bottom line of all of them is that group-contemplation on brief philosophical texts can be used to think philosophically about basic life-issues from dormant aspects of our being, resulting in powerful experiences of deep reflection, moving insights, and a sense of inner depth.

Conclusion: Where Are We Heading? The companionship format is only one way to implement the philosophical gardener paradigm – the paradigm of using philosophical ideas to nourish the participants’ inner lives. I have no doubt that there are additional possible activities that can be based on the same general paradigm. In fact, my colleagues and I are currently developing a smaller format of one-ontwo encounters, but we have not yet consolidated this kind of activity and are still experimenting. The smaller size of this format, whose provisional name is “The Philosophical Trio,” allows the activity to focus more fully on the clients’ personal experiences. In terms of the companionship’s impact on the participants, the initial feedback from recent companionships that my colleagues or I have facilitated has been very positive. After my last two online companionships, which took place once a week for several months, most of the participants described the meetings as very meaningful to them. In this chapter, however, the main issue is not the impact of companionships on participants, but the extent to which the activity is genuinely philosophical. It seems to me clear that the philosophical-contemplative companionship is a truly philosophical activity, and for several distinct reasons. First, the companions’ main topics of reflection are basic life-issues: What is the

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meaning of life? What counts as true love? What does it mean to be authentic? Or whatever issue the selected philosophical text is about. These are issues that philosophers have been discussing for centuries. Although the activity sometimes shifts to individuals’ personal experiences, it does so only after a substantive reflection on the issues in their general form. This contrasts with the open conversation paradigm and the critical thinking paradigm, which focus primarily on personal issues. Second, at the center of a typical companionship meeting is a philosophical text from the history of philosophy. For example, in a recent four-month weekly companionship we have used excerpts from the writings of Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Bergson, Karl Jaspers, and others. In this way, companions are in a philosophical dialogue with the history of the philosophical tradition. This, again, contrasts with the two dominant paradigms, which very rarely relate to what previous philosophers have said. Third, the companions do not simply accept existing philosophical ideas, but work with them critically and creatively. They identify the main concepts within the philosophical text, examine how these concepts apply to specific cases and modify them accordingly when needed, expand them, replace parts of them to develop new ideas. In short, participants creatively compose networks of ideas about basic life-issues, which is to say, they philosophize. Fourth, the activity in the companionship does not resemble a psychology session at all. The central issue is never the individual’s particular concerns, and certainly not psychological mechanisms and causes, but always the individual’s dialogue with basic life-issues. Fifth, the vision guiding the companionship activity is deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition. It is inspired by transformational philosophers throughout the ages who believed that philosophy is capable of touching us and awakening us to live more deeply and fully. It is also inspired by philosophical exercises from ancient schools of philosophy. Lastly, the person most suitable for facilitating this activity is a philosopher, not a psychologist. The facilitator must be acquainted with the nature of philosophical thinking, familiar with a variety of philosophical issues and historical ideas, and able to read a philosophy text. Knowledge in psychology is only marginally relevant to this activity. Thus, in contrast to the two dominant paradigms, one needs philosophical education in order to work in the companionship format. These points imply that the companionship is truly philosophical, and is situated well within the family of activities that we call philosophy. But, one might insist, is the companionship also a form of philosophical

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practice? Does it, in other words, address the basic challenge of philosophical practice and relate philosophy to the everyday life of ordinary people? The answer is clearly affirmative. The philosophical companionship is relevant to ordinary people because it helps enrich and deepen their everyday lives. It does not attempt to resolve personal problems – that we leave for the psychologist to do. Philosophizing in the philosophical companionship is relevant for everybody because it does what the transformational philosophers throughout the ages envisioned: It adds a deeper dimension to life. I conclude that the philosophical companionship offers a truly philosophical alternative to the two old paradigms that have been with us for more than three decades. It demonstrates the fruitfulness of the philosophical gardener paradigm, and it also suggests that there is no reason to remain entrenched in the old ways. It is my hope that others will join us in the search for additional ways of implementing the philosophical gardener paradigm, and more generally for new ways of doing philosophical practice.

References Bergson, Henri. 1983. Creative Evolution. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Corey, Gerald. 2016. Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Epicurus. 1994. The Epicurus Reader, translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. —. 1998. The Inner Citadel. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lahav, Ran. 2015. “Philosophical Practice – Quo Vadis?” At https://philopractice.org/web/history Accessed November 16, 2016. —. 2016a. Handbook of Philosophical-Contemplative Companionships: Principles, Procedures, Exercises. Hardwick, VT: Loyev Books. —. 2016b. Stepping out of Plato’s Cave: Philosophical Practice and SelfTransformation. Hardwick, VT: Loyev Books. Marcus Aurelius. 1991. Meditations. New York, NY: Prometheus Books.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1984. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 115-442. Philo-Practice Agora. At https://philopractice.org Accessed November 16, 2016. Plato. 2004. The Republic. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Reininger, Gustave, ed. 1998. Centering Prayer in Daily Life and Ministry. New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1966. Emile, or On Education. London: Dutton Publishing.

PART II NEW CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE

CHAPTER THREE PHILOSOPHY OF IMAGINATION: IMAGINATION AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE GIANCARLO MARINELLI

The philosophy of imagination that I propose in these pages is based on the connection between imagination and sensation. In particular, it is based on the infinite, undefined aspects of sensation which in themselves “give food for thought.” When the sensation is captured in its intrinsic freedom – in its most open, undefined aspects – we have imagination. These aspects naturally develop as synaesthesia and ideas articulated in unexpected internal dialogues. The most profound level of sensation is what Immanuel Kant himself called “aesthetic ideas” (Kant 1914, 157). The aesthetic ideas give “food for thought” whilst remaining only sensations. In this sense, the treasure of each philosophical practice, of each philosophy that comes back to human experience, is imagination. At the core of imagination is the movement of awareness that always takes place in a sensation and that reaches constitutive ideas and thoughts. So, in simpler words, imagination is the bridge between sensation and thought. Developing and giving voice to this connection is in fact what unites the different forms of philosophical practice worldwide.

Imagination, Sensation, and Wonder Philosophical practice is a movement that was born, like its founder, Gerd Achenbach, in Germany. The promise it presented was that one could “think about the world in which one lives” and cease to “live in the world in which one thinks” (Achenbach 2004), in the world of pure thought, of pure intellect. Philosophy that turns towards experience must always be able to elucidate that level of perception in which sensation gives rise to aesthetic ideas:

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By an aesthetical Idea I understand that representation of the Imagination which occasions much thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language – We easily see that it is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational Idea, which conversely is a concept to which no intuition (or representation of the Imagination) can be adequate. (Kant 2014, 157)

They are, Kant continues, the basic elements that enliven the soul, that give “harmonious momentum” to all the parts of the soul, and place them “in a game that feeds on itself and strengthens the same belongings.” The aesthetic ideas do all this just to belong to the aesthetic character, the character of the senses, “without any thought or concept that they can be adequate to them.” The person who is inspired by this philosophy will never experience a session of philosophical practice in which she is separated from her genuine state and real sensations. Philosophical practice is meant to motivate this type of philosophizing, which is based in the tangible but not about the tangible. (This is the type of philosophizing described by Adorno and quoted by Thomas Gutknecht, the current president of the International Society of Philosophical Practice.) In this chapter, I wish to emphasize that philosophical practice should not be afraid of paradoxes. The paradoxes that characterize the “stream of experience,” according to the definition that Edmund Husserl gives in Cartesian Meditations, are intrinsic to the matrix of conscious activity (Husserl 2009, 54, 62). Focusing on the ideas that are in a sensation does not remove us from the sensation. In this chapter, I will critically examine practices that aim to grasp and develop this abstract-tangible connection. In particular, there are similar concepts in philosophical views in Carl Jung’s late thought, as seen in more detail in the penultimate paragraph of this chapter.1 Another term that is often at the center of reflection and proposed as an effective instrument for conversations and philosophical practice groups, as will shortly be explained, is “idea.” An idea is not a concept. Among the various philosophical schools of thought that come to emphasize this distinction is, in particular, the platonic school. According to the platonic interpretation, an idea is something that captures and expresses the fullness of the world’s reality. An idea is not a determinate phenomenon. Quoting the Russian idealist philosopher Pavel Florenskij, an idea is the tendency “to unite one thing with everything that is similar to it,” without distinction 1

I am speaking of thoughts which are clearly expressed in the Red Book, published posthumously for the first time in 2009, around fifty years after Jung’s death.

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between abstract and concrete (Florenskij 1982, 45-47). For example, a philosophical counseling group in which the facilitator starts the session by focusing exclusively on abstract contents, ignoring the participants’ experiences is no longer a philosophical counseling group. In producing philosophical practice activities, one must include opportunities to share experiences by listening to each other and seizing and enriching these filigree and crystal ideas that are expressed and which are really the material content of these situations. Philosophy, in its wide-ranging scope, is the total clarification of thought and human life when it turns towards its completeness, to the here and now, to everyday life. This is lived and experienced philosophy. However, if this has been present at different points of philosophical reflection over the centuries in the West, it is also true that all this has never become an established attitude, or, if it has, it has not been able to remain established. The philosophical attitude that abstracts away from experience is, according to Achenbach, an “excess of the upright position” (Achenbach 2004, 23) and represents a flaw in the Western philosophical tradition. Certain insights of Adorno, as well as of Benjamin, have the most original characteristics of the phenomenology previously examined (the “Stream of Consciousness”); in fact, they have understood and have moved from the ontological dignity of each experience. Although stimulated by the thoughts that preceded it, the current movement of international philosophical practice has achieved a much more radical and lasting tendency in this regard for more than thirty years now. This movement has succeeded where all other previous movements have failed, because it has never abandoned the centrality of experience – even when it attempted time after time to outline its theoretical framework. It has succeeded because it never developed a level of theoretical reflection which implicitly put existential experience in the dark. Philosophizing from the tangible, as discussed by Gutknecht, remained from the tangible, without ever being able to get out of this practice. It has never succumbed to any temptation of the purely abstract, and even the study of this method is typically an indirect and underhanded way to disconnect oneself from the centrality of experience. Despite the failure of other philosophical movements, philosophical practice has succeeded because it emphasizes the experience of dialogue and the problem of the “guest” that dialogue involves. This is the real beginning of philosophizing even in the core of the Western tradition, as demonstrated in a passage from Plato’s Theaetetus in which philosophy is described as born out of wonder from wonder, and

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amazement is presented as emerging from the core of sensation and from the complexity of any sensation. There, the sensation which in this specific case is sight, Iris, is called the “daughter of Stupor” (the daughter of what gives amazement, Thaumas) (Plato, 155d, 1-7). It is only in this sense that the beginning of science (meaning the philosophy that seeks clear knowledge) is sensations. Knowledge is a sensation but it is just the beginning. Not sensation as a form of clear knowledge, therefore, but as a certain and terribly problematic beginning to knowledge. In the words of Plato: SOCRATES: . . . that which you call white color is not in your eyes, and is not a distinct thing which exists out of them . . . [nothing] appears the same to you as to another man . . . it never appears exactly the same to you, because you are never exactly the same. THEAETETUS: Yes, Socrates, and I am amazed when I think of them; by the Gods I am! and I want to know what on earth they mean; and there are times when my head quite swims with the contemplation of them. SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder). (Plato, 155d, 1-7)

The centrality of sensation and the centrality of amazement, directly in the essential framework of the dialogue, have been collected here in one piece and demonstrated to be infinitely intertwined. As stated so far, a sensation, in its most profound inner aspect, is something naturally free, indefinite, subtracted from “decisive judgment,” the latter of which man needs daily for many reasons but by its nature excludes the deepest and most vital dimension of sensation.2 A sensation is something which is essentially open, indefinite; for this reason it is bound to wonder and, one could almost say, it is revealed in wonder. The term imagination seems right. In fact, it seems to express sensation as something which in itself opens, shows itself as undefined, and in this sense always gives us something to think about. Feeling . . . imagination. In suggesting this connection, reference can be made to the 2

This refers to the research of Kant, in which the faculty of judgment distinguishes between pure cognitive reason and practical reason founding a moral level. It is consistent in uniting in a free, constituted, and sensitive way: placing in action the distinction between “reflective judgment” (aesthetic and teleological) and “decisive judgment” (judgment which gives rise to certain specific and scientific knowledge).

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Renaissance philosophy of creation of Bruno or Campanella, coming before Kant and even before the seventeenth-century empirical tradition. It is for example in the book The Sense of Things that Campanella wrote that “imagination is the sensation that opens to another sensation” (Campanella 1987, 101). The feeling, if truly understood in its broadest sense and freely including the root of thought, partners with other sensations and is that which comes to be called “imagination.” After Renaissance philosophy, the significance of imagination also appears, in Hamann and at different points in romantic philosophy (Novalis, in particular).

Philosophical Practices and the Role of Ideas and Imagination The philosophical and even the rational language that interests philosophical practice does not separate us from sensations and emotions but originates in them. It is possible to glimpse the depth, dignity and incommensurability of our own experiences and those of our “guests.” Their profoundness and significance are the expression of an inherent greatness that is still evident, beyond most of our conscious intentions. The guest, whilst challenging the remaining philosophies of this profoundness, multiplies and amplifies the comparisons and proof of this discovery and sees that his situation, whatever it may have become, has been transformed. He sees his situation, whatever it may be, transforming, invariably revealing a vertiginous landscape. Reference was made to “eidetic filigrees” and “crystals of ideas” because the term “idea,” as has already been implied, permits us to grasp this fabric of imagining in its distinction from the concept. Ideas are like concepts in being abstract, but ideas differ from concepts in being closer, in various ways, to particulars, singular cases. When the same concept appears as an idea, it proves to be more complete, more transmissible, more applicable and even more bound, open, and woven to other concepts. The Idea is a form of complete universality, which does not exclude but rather implies and strengthens the single case and individuality in its own way. To clarify this point, Pavel Florenskij says: An idea is the knowledge that happens when the “en” (the one) extends in “pollà” (many), forming “en pollà kai” (one and many), as defined by

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Plato. Knowledge is possible only where “one (thing is) through many,” according to another definition given to an idea by Plato or using the Aristotelian definition, knowledge is possible where one is directed towards the manifold, it extends to the other where “to en epì pollon” (the one is to the many). This formula was also used in medieval thought intended as philosophy: “Unum” is aimed towards each other or towards other things. This was the interpretation of scholars, according to the etymology of “unum versus alia,” which defines universality as one and a multitude at the same time. (Florenskij 1999, 46)

This, of course, stimulates a plan of consciousness that is very close to the greatest intuitions of twentieth-century thought. This similarity comprehends not only a philosophical point of view (such as existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, etc.), but also a scientific and epistemological point of view (like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, certain underlying concepts of Einsteinian relativity, Popper’s principle of falsifiability, systemic and holistic conceptions of different areas of current science, etc.). This is a plan of consciousness and a way of thinking that listens to past experiences and captures the profound dignity of them, which is much more plural and paradoxical than what appears to the purely rational consciousness.

Imagination and Reason Imagination, however we understand it, and especially in its widest sense, is therefore rooted in feeling and includes thought or at least some form of thought. This comes out clearly in different parts of Western philosophical reflection, as has already been mentioned. However, among the several names that have been mentioned, one in particular is the pre-Romantic German philosopher Hamann. Hamann intercepts and gives voice to the deep-level functions of our souls. “The entire treasury of human knowledge and human happiness comes from images” (Hamann 1977, 114). He connects them to our senses: “senses and passions do not express themselves other than through images.” It is, as has already been seen, an opening, the split, open and undefined nature of sensation. Its nucleus which, resonating in the most diverse ways of totality, tirelessly brings in itself totality, indefiniteness, infinity even before the concept, including intellectual forms. This opening, however, is only truly an opening when it meets dialogue, the doubling, the “other voice,” the alter ego. This encounter is the full realization of the free and undefined nature of the sensation, because in this way the sensation opens itself up to what is

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radically beyond its essence. Referring to this, Husserl writes that the opening of the “primordial world” (primordinal) leads to the “constitution of the alter ego,” the “constitution of the foreign” in us (Husserl 2009, 134). We have seen that everything said about the imagination and its relationship with sensations and the intellect is given to us in a dialogue form, in one way or another as an encounter, an I-you encounter. Every opening implies the relationship, the double, the you, the other center, in order to ultimately affirm the abyss, the otherness, the greatness. Even the Russian philosopher Florenskij, as we have seen, calls the very formation of the universal consciousness of something, consciousness of something that turns towards another thing, the consciousness of the one who turns towards the other, “unus versus alia.” Reference to “one and the other.” The meeting, which is the opening that we live in the sensation, is necessarily an encounter with another, otherwise it would not be an encounter. The phrase “the Voice of the Other,” the function within the human consciousness of what appears to be the voice of the other, has been dealt with in depth by another Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, in his famous work on Dostoevsky. The irrepressibility of what is achieved and revealed in a dialogue is precisely what emerges (Bakhtin 1976). However, for this very reason, if the power of infinity is respected, and the completeness of imagination is realized and reflected, dialogue is central and totally free. This dialogue, however, includes the impersonal, the over personal: the relationship (dialogue), if carried through, implies totality. In other words, the totality reflected in the consciousness always implies that which is also impersonal and pure universality, that is the plan of intellect and reason, of course, a particular reason which is complete and does not betray its natural position beside it and also afterwards and inside the sensation, inside and starting with sentiments and sensations; that which emerges and settles on its sensation like on its matrix. It is the reason that we could say “living” or, according to Hegel, “sentient thought.” Therefore, imagination does not just disdain reason when this reason is alive, complete, or as it is naturally given but also and above all, it is required in its full implementation and expression. The impersonal reason. “My” impersonal reason. The personal-impersonal “sentient” reason. The continuous movement from the particular to the universal which involves contact and confluence between feelings, sensations, and thoughts makes the sense of liberation familiar. The living thought, the sentient thought, establishes itself in the consciousness of a single

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individual with the other forms of liberation and with other needs. However, a context of profound differences of measures and ways is delineated. The rational relationship and the involved reality implies a scope of behavior. Otherwise the completeness that is involved and integrated in the universal plan in feelings and reason open to feelings would not be complete. Imagination, rational universality (a plan of ideas and concepts), and choice are always related terms. They show the full activities of consciousness of each individual in their entirety. How is it possible that the liberation given by reason (if it persuades us by speaking to our hearts that the situation that we are living in is a wave of life) does not touch or even revive the narrowest and most immediate forms of need, demand, desire, hope, or tension in some measure? The universality in front of us however also consists of choices, differentiation, internal separation, and radical alternatives or otherwise it would not even emerge. It is universal and not against, but because of, the fact that it has a perspective, which is a choice of dimension and that it is from a perspective angle which in itself is a choice. Even this particular paradox belongs to our imagination stream, which is thus in itself a deep “thinking-imagining,” a deep “sentient thought.”

Active Imagination and “Creative Imagination” The sensation in its core and the emotions resonating in us remain while we understand how each of them involves the whole, and always involving intellect and reason. When discussing this point, philosophical practitioners refer, as in the beginning of this chapter, to the work and thoughts of Jung. This is precisely because Jung develops the deep connection between thoughts and feelings far beyond the practice he structures as active imagination. The philosophical value of Jung’s thought is recognized by all but is often disregarded by philosophers and psychologists when considering his therapeutic practice, to the extent that his thought was taken to sharply define a specific field of application, of its discoveries in the psychological tradition. However, his deepest intuitions invest all of his work with deep philosophical significance. This is especially noticeable today, more than thirty years since the birth of the international movement of Philosophical Practice. This happens because, with the practice of philosophy and its global diffusion, philosophy appears again, and indeed more than ever, as

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being the mental attitude that reflects the life of the soul, the inevitable and constitutive flow that makes thoughts come alive and feelings deep. It must be emphasized that what Jung is prolonging and commenting on, the results of his active imagination, cannot be exhausted in this practice. It is much more, although it is often something un-themed. Or, rather, it is themed but outside the therapeutic area and perhaps it is not sufficiently centrally placed. As it is, our intention to highlight this extension of the imagination towards a further and wider conscious plan which involves the intellect is correct. The same extension that Jung pursues was realized in different parts of his work, particularly in the Red Book, which was published recently. This has been highlighted by comparing the definition of active imagination as it appears in the essay “The Transcendent Function” to the definition given by Kant of “aesthetic ideas” connected with the power of the mind (creativity), where it is not difficult to see this explicit extension. In some sense again, it is as if Jung himself in many points of his psychology went beyond what he himself describes as active imagination to follow and perform jobs that seem to be inspired more by what Kant in his Critique of Judgment defines as “imagination” and, in particular, “aesthetic ideas.” This undeniably happens in the form of self-analysis, which he undergoes in different parts of his books and above all, in the Red Book. In these points, a “creative imagination” is at work or, rather, a particular faculty that Kant calls “soul” (Geist), which consists of the ability to show “aesthetic ideas” and it has the effect of vivifying a concept and the entire course of an inner experience. At the center of this definition there are “aesthetic ideas” and thus elements that, although ambiguous and indeed accurate because they are ambiguous, express elements of intellect, of abstraction inside the texture of sensitivity. The comparison has been set out in the table below: Active Imagination

Aesthetic Ideas

“To leave all possible freedom to the imagination without allowing it to leave the borders of its object, which is, affection, while it continues progressively to associate a changing tangent, one would say” (Jung 1965-2007, 8, 135).

“Spirit, in an aesthetical sense, is the name given to the animating principle of the mind. But that whereby this principle animates the soul, the material which it applies to that [purpose], is that which puts the mental powers purposively into swing, i.e. into such a play as maintains itself and strengthens the [mental] powers in their exercise.

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Now I maintain that this principle is no other than the faculty of presenting aesthetical Ideas. And by an aesthetical Idea I understand that representation of the Imagination which occasions much thought, without, however, any definite thought, i.e. any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language. We easily see that it is the counterpart (pendant) of a rational Idea, which conversely is a concept to which no intuition (or representation of the Imagination) can be adequate” (Kant 1914, 157). “Soul” allows the imagination to flow freely, associating ideas but always inspired by the initial image. It allows us to follow inspiration, conceptual sketches, made of hints of concepts, even many that are always present in sensations (and that should not be driven out, or kept away as in active imagination) and also very different and contradictory to each other; in fact it allows, recalls, exposes “aesthetic ideas.” In this way, the subject moves away from the “fire of affection” while orbiting around it.

We therefore repeat that many essential passages of Jung seem to show that the active imagination, the creative imagination, like Kant says, finds itself active in the power of the mind and particularly in the living part of the “Geist.” From this comparison it emerges that “creative imagination” has a greater range than the “active imagination” of analytical psychology. This “greater range” is the nucleus of philosophy of imagination. And this nucleus can be understood in five points. The first point is that the entire subject begins from the centrality of sensations and emotion (for knowledge and self-knowledge). The second point is that in the same sensation, there is an element of the process, a sort of heart, a particularly indefinable warm core. It

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represents an even more indefinable core, in other words, a sort of “ecstatic” element in every sensation. This can be perceived when thinking of the sensations that appear to be more powerful to us. By showing that they are more powerful and have attractive power over other sensations, their strange capacity becomes evident. This capacity to unite different times and experiences can also be elicited by the strength implicit in each sensation to affect various other perceptive elements and several other sensations too. The phenomenon, otherwise defined as synesthesia, which does not include weaker sensations but only more powerful ones, is alive and influential. The powerful sensations exert greater influence thanks to the aforementioned core and to an enhanced form, which goes beyond the activity of the presumed core. The third point deals with the powerful appearance of the act of imagining between the first and second element, which is the free activity of conscience, which prolongs the perception and the initial sensation. This is the dimension in which our processing nature of perception arises. Whereas the value of “representation” or mirror, as an intimate part of human sensitivity, increases even more forcefully and inevitably. The fourth point, with reference to the core of any sensation, is that this element is in itself an inspiration, and a kind of coming into being of abstract ideas, whose roots are deeply anchored in the very humor, in the sensation and in the body. This is actually the point where Kant’s “aesthetic ideas,” which are well-rooted in the flow of sensations, originate. The fifth point is the development and spreading of abstract, universal, and intellectual aesthetic ideas. It is exactly at this point where the “manifestation” of aesthetic ideas occurs, which for Kant are everything that “has got a soul (Geist)” in us (strong sensations and resonances) and what is fully affirmed by the natural faculty of our genius.

Practices of the Philosophy of Imagination There are various types of practices that are based on the parts highlighted in the previous pages as essential crossroads of the imagination in its philosophical depth. Two of them will be examined here: the group of “Inner Voices” and the group of “Socratic Polyphony.” The aim of the first practice is to awaken the philosophical depth of the voices that express themselves in our soul. They are mainly the voices that seem to arise from the unconscious or from elsewhere compared to the here and now of the difficulties. They reach us exactly there.

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The leader of this kind of group invites the participants to think of a difficult moment or situation in their life, which they may choose to remember and share with the group. It should all start from a sensory and emotive level apt to involve and explicitly stimulate every participant to contact, perceive, and fix the more conceptual resonances, the ones that intellectually express the emotion and sensation we are focusing on. What emerges is an increase in the wealth of both ideas and concepts and a sense of reducing the pervasive uneasiness and inner blocking. This increase is caused immediately by a “de-phlegmatization” of one’s soul as a result of having found ontological dignity, greatness in every intimate situation we experience. The central moment is the one when the leader asks all participants to recall the moment when the chosen situation of anxiety and difficulty diminished or when the person felt in some ways to have overcome the impasse (where this has actually happened). In this case, the leader will in fact ask the participants to focus on the happy outcome and to ask themselves which part of their soul, their affections, feelings and thoughts are connected somehow to the happy ending and to the “exit of the pain.” The participants are then invited to imagine these feelings and thoughts that have reached them in their pain and helped them leave the pain behind through a pure effort of imagination. They are thus an expression of the only voice of their soul, an expression of the only face, an inner figure and of the only part of their soul. One of the most important moments occurs when the participants are asked, on concluding the session, to form groups of two and reveal the inner voice that helped them. Finally, in turn, one of the two impersonates the inner voice of the other, playing the part while the other asks this voice about a more current matter. The session ends by sharing the experience that is summarized in some points by means of a questionnaire provided by the leader. The most relevant and successful aspect of these sessions is the participants’ newfound ability to express their feelings, emotions, and sensations in terms of ideas and concepts. The second exercise, the Socratic Polyphony group, is a kind of philosophical practice group that I have led for several years and which was inspired by the classic twentieth-century Socratic dialogue (Nelson model). It is called Socratic Polyphony to differentiate it from the previously mentioned group, and the intention is to put the phrases that are articulated, welcomed, stimulated and amplified by the polyphony at the

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center of the discussion, as a rich and principal resource for philosophical groups. From the beginning, this type of group stimulated a continuous connection between the rational level that tends towards universality, in logical but not only in logical terms, and the level of feelings, emotions and sensations. Someone proposes a classic philosophical topic that affects one’s daily life (such as freedom, friendship, responsibility, transformation, virtue, love, etc.). Participants are asked, as also in the classic Socratic Dialogue, to think about the episodes of their life that somehow relate to the object at the center of the encounter. This puts emphasis on feelings and sensations involved in the reported episode. The present thoughts are rooted in their true body. Then it proceeds with group sharing of any situation-definition while the facilitator writes down a few keywords and then asks for approval from the author of the definition, who can change the words at will until he is pleased with the summary of what he shared with the group. In order to have the necessary skills to conduct this phase as well as the other phases of the group, the facilitator must possess a high degree of refinement and experience in joining feelings and ideas (high degree of refinement and experience in “aesthetic ideas”): sensation, feelings and meanings. Unlike in the Socratic dialogue, the middle phase consists of the elaboration of a definition and even a simple collection that brings all the actions, voices, and individual definitions together as much as possible. The result is written on a whiteboard, outlining the obtained collection, the innermost circles containing the most common elements and the outer circles containing the less common terms. The work is not finished until the outer circles, the irreducible singularities, are integrated with the inner circles. In this way, too, through the respect and amplification of polyphony, the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and sensations rooted in the body becomes much more central than in the classic Socratic dialogue. The differences and the most inflexible elements emerge in all their inflexibility because they are rooted in these sensations, unique and yet profoundly connected with the formulation of the final collection from the time spent listening to the mutual enrichment of the various definitions. However, the common definition also, the central nucleus constituted by the common elements that are achieved by expressing the elements of the definition, appears resonant of various elements. It is to some extent harsh of certain elements that are not entirely flexible towards the common defined elements, even if they arise from a unanimous statement. A sort of

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contradiction. In this sense, this common nucleus will remain paradoxically open, not concluded. A layout of this Socratic dialogue-meeting philosophical practice is set out below: Socratic Polyphony Group: Description of the Phases

Essential and Characteristic Aspects

1

Reading different passages about the proposed topic. Transcription of the phrases that most affect the individual participant.

2

Each participant is encouraged to choose one or more situations in which he or she deems that the object (idea, concept, philosophical theme) is involved, to give a definition to the argument.

3

Various definitions are collected (shared on the whiteboard), summing them up in keywords or short phrases.

4

Work with the elaboration of a definition or simple collection, putting as many stimuli, voices and definitions as possible together. Realizing and outlining the obtained collection on the whiteboard with the innermost circles of the most common elements until the outer circles of the less common elements or individual items (single items but in fact belonging to the group and socializing with statements, active listening to each other and express intention of a final collection where all the elements are present) are integrated.

The fact that the passages proposed in the common reading are different already urges the element of continuous creative choice in the participant. The invitation to already give a single definition, starting from philosophical suggestions and from personal, described situations, allows a strong intensification of the fact that in these types of groups, each entry has a unique value and nothing is forgotten. The facilitator can choose some keywords for each “definition” given by the participants, but then leaves the ultimate decision about the keyword to be written on the shared whiteboard to the author of the definition. The primary purpose, unlike that of the Socratic dialogue, classically understood, is to collect each precious voice-definition that emerged from the situations and intentions of each participant. And also, according to the work of the same group and the last decision, to arrive at a definition and/or common collection, by even building progressive circles (from the inside to the outside) on the whiteboard, with a gradual thinning of the common elements. The central part of the exercise, however, is not the purely logical dimension, used in its

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5

Free reflection on all the experience.

Conclusion The innovative aspect of these practices of philosophy of imagination consists simply in the different ways of focusing on and amplifying the general characteristic of the philosophy that emerges in global philosophical practices. It includes continued access to ideas, even at a purely rational level, of arguments in the most different and contrasting ways, with situations, experiences, a consultant, feelings, emotions, and sensations constitutive of both lived experiences. The chapter proposes to realize and amplify the fact that this simple service of real connection between a rational plan and a plan of feelings gives rise to a specific type of philosophical language, a philosophical language that consists in activating imagination in its depth and complexity. Dialectical imagination rooted in aesthetic ideas. This continuous connection between a rational plan and a plan of the senses, feelings, and emotions characterizes the variety of possible philosophical practices. There are often, for example, other ways than a mere refinement of the logical capacity of argumentation and motivation that consists of a continuous emendation of the actual motivation, disabling the influence of the same feelings. Before being emended, our arguments should in fact be heard with competence and acumen. Hence the importance of active listening. This active listening requires competence in philosophical imagination.

References Achenbach, Gerd. 2004. La Consulenza Filosofica [Philosophical Counseling], translated into Italian by Raffaella Soldani. Apogeo: Feltrinelli. English translation by the author. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1976. Dostoevskij [Dostoevsky, Poetry and Style]. Italian translation. Torino: Einaudi. Campanella, Tommaso. 1987. Il senso delle cose [The Significance of Things]. Naples: Dioscuri.

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Florenskij, Pavel. 1982. Il Significato dell’ Idealismo [The Significance of Idealism]. Milan: Rusconi. English translation by the author. Hamann, Johann Georg. 1977. Aesthetica in Nuce. Naples: Bibliopolis. Husserl, Edmund. 2009. Meditazioni Cartesiane [Cartesian Meditations]. Milan: Bompiani. Jung, Carl. 1965-2007. “La funzione trascendente.” In Opere, by Carl Jung. Bollati Boringhieri. English translation by the author. Kant, Immanuel. 1914. Critique of Judgement, translated by J. H. Bernard. London: Macmillan and Co. —. 1985. Critica del Giudizio [Critique of Judgment], translated by Alfredo Gargiulo. Laterza. Plato. Theaetetus, translated by Benjamin Jowett. At: http://izt.ciens.ucv.ve/ecologia/Archivos/Filosofia-I/Plato-Theaetetus.pdf

CHAPTER FOUR ACTS, PROCESSES, THOUGHT, AND ACTION IN PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE DAVID SUMIACHER D’ANGELO

Human beings appear in the world – indeed, are thrown into it – and have to start living even when they do not understand what everything around them is about. Surprisingly, however, all human beings begin to configure schemata or patterns and to create ways of relating to their surroundings. Even before possessing the ability to speak a single word, our way of being and interacting with reality has a specific form (D’Angelo 2011). Anyone living or working around small children knows that this is true. Children have character, structure, and a modus vivendi to manifest and share with whoever is there. When a human being grows and further develops his or her capacities to think and reason, he or she amplifies these qualities and develops more complex aptitudes (as well as new problems). These same schemata develop continuously; adolescence and adulthood do not interrupt them but rather amplify them. These ways of being and living are possibly related to the most important things in our lives, to our personal philosophies. Socrates would have thought so. He always began by observing people’s ways of life. What puzzled Socrates when he was out on his strolls had to do with what his fellow Athenians were doing or going through at the moment. As we read in Lysis (Plato 1997, 203b-204a): “Hey, Socrates, where are you coming from and where are you going?” “From the Academy,” I said, “straight to the Lyceum.” “Well, come straight over here to us, why don’t you? You won’t come? It’s worth your while, I assure you.” .... “What is this, and what do you do here?” “This is a new wrestling-school,” he said, “just built. But we spend most of our time discussing things, and we’d be glad to have you join in.”

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Or else, as we can read in Euthyphro (Plato 1997, 4a): “What is your case, Euthyphro? Are you the defendant or the prosecutor?” “The prosecutor.” “Whom do you prosecute?” “One whom I am thought crazy to prosecute.” “Are you pursuing someone who will easily escape you?” “Far from it, for he is quite old.” “Who is it?” “My father.” “My dear sir! Your own father?” “Certainly.” “What is the charge? What is the case about?” “Murder, Socrates.”

For Socrates – first in line in a long philosophical tradition – the situations of everyday life and our surroundings were the ones that triggered inquiry. And these had mainly to do with what people were doing, or with what was happening in any particular situation. Socrates sought to approach what was taking place in concrete life situations, choices of lifestyle, or motions in real life. The history of philosophy is quite long and complex, especially if considered from a global point of view.1 But somehow in the 20th and 21st centuries, many philosophers became interested in Socrates’ knack for examining ordinary life. Inspired by his example, they sought to apply philosophy to real life, and from there philosophical practice was born. Philosophical practice is an attempt, not to teach philosophy, but to philosophize with another person.2 Thus, philosophical practice rests on 1

In other words, when we consider non-Western as well as Western philosophical traditions. The presence of philosophers and philosophies from other latitudes than the European-Western world is indisputable nowadays. It is worth mentioning that in the last World Congress of Philosophy, which took place in Athens in 2013, one could count over a hundred tables dedicated exclusively to Eastern, LatinAmerican, African, or Middle Eastern philosophies (Greek Philosophical Society & Fisp 2013). Many philosophers are currently thinking about how the history of philosophy should be written or narrated, one of them is Enrique Dussel (2007). Although Dussell himself admits that the number of traditions and amount of information about them are so massive that even what he presents is just an initial snapshot, it is possible that the inclusive trend is irreversible at this point. 2 This was indicated by Kant in his most important book, The Critique of Pure Reason (2007), and adopted as a principle by Leonard Nelson, one of the pioneers of the philosophical practice movement in the 1920’s, as well as by Gerd Achenbach much later. See the references list for more information about these

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the following principle: Not only can one do philosophy with people outside the academe, one can do philosophy with them that is a collective construction, a joint reflection, an inter-subjective work, an endeavor that relies on both participants. We have identified here an important element: in order to build or do philosophy with another, this philosophizing cannot be something completely alien to the other person. To be able to philosophize with an artist, a schoolteacher, an engineer, a factory worker, a medical doctor, or any other kind of person, one has to consider that that person has already some philosophy in him or her from the start.3 If we conduct a dialogue about friendship, justice, love, time, logic, existence, or freedom, our partner will contribute ideas grounded in their own personal experience. We have to assume that the person comes to the table already possessing background assumptions and beliefs about philosophical topics, either implicitly or explicitly. The question is, then: Where lies this philosophy, the one the other person has and with which I want to engage philosophically? I will try to reflect on this complex matter in the following pages.

Acts and Processes Let us begin from the basic notions, later to delve into more complex points. We’re going to analyze two very fundamental categories that help us connect with everything else: acts and processes. Firstly, I will say that an act is any change/unity distinguishable in anything human beings do; it is the minimal unit we can distinguish in human behavior. A change is always a movement, understanding “movement” as the smallest endeavor imaginable, from the contraction and relaxing of a muscle, to the synapses generated in the dendrites of a neuron. Hence, acts are the manifestation of the living, and when we die, we stop performing acts. The act is not a simple motion, but a motion made by the actor: all acts have agents. authors and about philosophical practice in general. Michael Weiss’ recent anthology (2015) also has a good number of perspectives about philosophizing with another person. 3 All proposals for philosophical practice adhere to this principle. Today, the variety of philosophical practices is amazing. The proposal of Matthew Lipman, the first great creator of philosophy for children, is worth mentioning, especially since it implicitly includes this principle, and, when applied to children, it becomes an even bolder principle. In the field of philosophy for children, we benefit from an abundance of theoretical foundations from pedagogy, psychology, and philosophy. See for example the works of Lipman (2003), Félix García Moriyón (2010), and Walter Kohan (2007).

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Additionally, all acts are performed in situ and in a determined context and, because there is no way for two situations to be totally repeated, acts are unique and unrepeatable. Each act tends to produce other acts, each one a distinguishable and particular manifestation of our existence, generating further acts. Because acts are a manifestation of the living, this means that more life comes from that particular action. The distinguished Chilean thinker Humberto Maturana rightly says so: Every act, as operations of a living system are done as part of their state dynamic . . . in this way, thinking, walking, speaking, having a spiritual experience, and so on, are all phenomena of the same type, operations of the internal dynamics of an organism (including the nervous system), but all are phenomena of a different type in the correlative dominion of the organism, where the observer manifests them. (Maturana 1995, 68)

Secondly, acts always respond to systemic qualities. I cannot here delve into a detailed description of the systemic qualities of acts in this text, but let me mention that systemic qualities proper to acts define tendencies of the present and future movement of the agent or subject that performs those acts. We will understand more about them in the future. Acts are, then, of all types, from remembering the cake I ate yesterday, to thinking of an appropriate term for a situation, to telling someone the words “be quiet!,” to touching velvet or pushing a cart. All these are acts, as long as we understand acts to be movements made by living creatures that respond to systemic qualities. Acts are also distinguishable from one another, even when many acts are produced at the same time, as certainly occurs in the life of any human being. The way to distinguish or individuate acts is through their senses, and their senses refer to the forms the acts take. The problem of distinguishing acts from human processes has been addressed multiple times, and some authors have been skeptical about the possibility of distinguishing clearly between the acts we humans perform. 4 From the systemic perspective, acts and processes can easily be distinguished, and this distinction is made in the systemic way through the sense an act has. The sense of an act is not merely the interpretation we give to it. In my 4

One such author is Wittgenstein. For him, all that humans do is engage in “language games.” These games, however, cannot be delimited: “How is the concept of game closed? What is still a game and what is not? Can you indicate the limits? No. You can trace one: because there isn’t one traced . . . . But then, the application of the Word isn’t regulated, the ‘game’ we play with it isn’t limited” (Wittgenstein 1988, 89).

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view, the sense refers to a combination of subjective, inter-subjective, and objective aspects that operate in a simultaneous and correlated manner.5 Thus, the sense has as much to do with the finality as with the form the act has and it is also related to the tendency the particular act subscribes to. This determines a materiality proper to the act, a form of manifesting in our biology and our bodies. It is important to understand that this is not a material criterion of distinction but a systemic one, since the sense that determines the limits of the acts or process represents not only the current form of the act, but also the tendency of its movement and the subsequent acts it tends to produce. Not long ago, while explaining these ideas to a group of scientists from the Center for Brain and Cognition in Barcelona, I was asked if the sense had to do with the finality of the act. The question is far more complex, however, because even if the sense is a type of “direction” that things we do take, it also refers to the form the act has in the present moment. We could have a determined act that produces another one of the same tendency, or we could have the same act that produces, immediately after it, its opposite, and the reason one happens rather than the other will really depend on the context in which the act is produced. I mean by “context” the previous and concurrent acts and processes. Acts are distinguished because they have their own shape, because they configure a form from the basis of the subject making them, conceiving them or understanding them, and from how other subjects conceive and understand them (intersubjectivity). For example, looking at a book can be a particular and individuated act, but it is different if I’m looking at it because I am – searching for an Albert Camus book– or if I look at it because I am – appreciating the beauty of the book’s spine–.6 In both of these cases, the act’s own materiality, the interpretation I make of it, and the interpretation others can make of it configures a different sense for each of these possibilities. That’s why I can distinguish between them as easily as between wildly different acts, even though they both include the same material objects. 5

In this respect, we can adopt Donald Davidson’s view of the mutual co-existence of these three areas, and the inability to renounce any of them while at the same time avoiding absolutizing them (1993; 2003). About my interpretation of Davidson, see Sumiacher (2012). 6 I am using in this article the following conventions: ‘…’ when trying to represent a thought in the shape of intuition. ‘“…”’ when representing a thought in the shape of conscience. –“…”– when representing a discourse. –…– when representing bodily actions.

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When we speak of processes, we refer to a group of acts that are also linked by a sense. The difference between acts and processes is that the latter contain more complexity and are composite. In this way, processes can be imbricated into each other and, at the same time, like acts, many processes can take place simultaneously, which doesn’t prevent their differentiation. They also tend to have a beginning, a development, and a closure, and each of these phases has its own particular characteristics. This entire hypothesis subscribes to the conceptions of the theory of systems founded by von Bertalanffy (1989) and continued by many others. Within this conceptual framework, we need to take into consideration the articular logic7 that links the different acts that make up a process between themselves and that have to do with the constitution of the sense that shapes this process. There’s also a systemic logic that has to do with the connections and relationships between different processes. 8 All human activities can be factored into processes, just as they can be factored into acts, but processes can vary widely in duration. A process could be, for example, the baking of a cake, the teaching of a subject to a group of third semester students, or, say, all of adolescence. As we can see, it’s not necessary for a process to happen all at once. It’s possible for many processes to remain open in our lives and to keep developing gradually. Perhaps the question arising now is: what does this have to do with philosophical practice and with philosophy itself? The answer is: a lot. We need some preliminary steps to be able to build a deeper understanding of what philosophy is. In my previous point, I mentioned that if we consider it possible to engage philosophically with another person we have to grant that other person with some philosophical element or aspect, at least in a germinal form. But how can we consider these types of possibilities if we 7

This logic doesn’t just refer to “rational sentences.” Instead it has to do with ways in which the different acts that living beings perform are related to each other. I can’t go into details about this conception of logic here. It is akin to a certain degree to the visions of logic seen in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2002) and many other developers of informal logic, and the theory of argumentation that links logic to the processes of everyday life. 8 This type of logic can be very useful and interesting in the field of neuroscience. The conception of acts and processes here described allows for two important things: tracing distinctions and creating relationships between acts and processes. This is fundamental if we wish to understand anything about what we human beings undertake. It’s possible that this conceptual framework can be useful in understanding what happens in our brains, because it allows us to separate and connect diverse processes, configurations and patterns of movement that could even use the same regions or same neurons, involved in several simultaneous processes.

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don’t have a way of understanding what people actually do? Philosophy has unfortunately been largely misinterpreted: it has been relegated to the dustiest corners of libraries, buried in solipsism, under tons of theories and excessive erudition. As important as erudition may be, it isn’t the essence of philosophy. If philosophy dwells in everyday life, in the everyday lives of human beings, then we have to first understand what we human beings do. The answer I’m trying to give in this space is as follows: human beings perform acts and processes, therefore philosophy lies in acts and processes. Philosophy is not only an idle reflection on love, justice, truth and time; it is the experience of love, justice, truth, and time that human beings may have, and philosophy happens through acts and processes human beings live and perform. It would be completely absurd to dedicate a reflection, or any thought, about something we are making up as we go along or imagining completely from scratch. Any philosophical reflection makes sense because it refers to an immense group of acts and processes that we as human beings live through. Philosophy, real philosophy, lies not in the enunciation of theses, but in the acts and processes the enunciations refer to. Let us now look at the forms that these acts and processes can take, and how we can benefit from trying to understand them and differentiating between them.

Thoughts and Actions It is difficult to think about the possibilities, the ways that our acts and processes could develop. So, in order to avoid arbitrary divisions or schemes, the point I will try to make here is mainly systemic, as I said before. Systemics enable us to study the form of acts or processes, so it allows us to trace clear distinctions based in the very constitution of the operations taking place, as I mentioned earlier. In this case, I will focus on a very simple distinction that has to do with two big forms of the movement our actions and human processes can take. I will call them thoughts and actions. These terms are both widely used in the history of the humanities, but I prefer to use non-technical terms, because we are, after all, going to talk about everyday things. The meanings that “thought” and “action” have for me differ only slightly from what our common sense might tell us about them. A thought is any act or process a subject performs towards himself or herself. I am calling “actions” any acts or processes that are directed towards the exterior. We now have a clear and precise distinctive criterion that we can use to separate both types of fundamental movements. The relations a subject can establish with itself, thoughts, can have very diverse forms. They could be feelings, memories,

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reflections, or even self-hugs, this also being a thought. What matters is the form of the thought, of the act or process, although I will also distinguish two general forms of thought presently: intuition and conscience. With regard to actions, they can also be of any kind, as long as they preserve their systemic relationships to the external world. Even though actions are various, including looking around us, or telling someone something, I will also mainly focus on two types: bodily action and discourse. We can now abandon the old criteria to distinguish “what part” was being used, namely brain or body, mind or matter, etc. What really matters is the form the movement has. In fact, to produce either a thought or an action, we need both “parts”: the body and the nervous system. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests, all cognitions, even the most developed rationality, operate on the basis of the very same bodily structures.9 Even though Damasio doesn’t make the systemic distinctions I’m proposing here, he does maintain that we have lived for a long time with dichotomies that do not make the slightest sense, in the same vein as phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty has argued. 10 However, considering a human being as a unified whole, a fantastic and complex device that combines multiple simultaneous processes, prevents us from distinguishing the acts and processes we produce towards ourselves from those we use to relate to exteriority. We can make this distinction because it rests on a systemic criterion. Since we are material beings, the form of our acts can be observed. For example, remembering a name is an act that starts somewhere in our nervous system and will end in another part of the nervous system. Grabbing a cup starts, perhaps, with the desire to grasp the object, the observation of our surroundings, the emission of a signal to our motor system, the motion of the arm, and then the motion of the hand until we reach the object. These processes can be distinguished and separated from prior and posterior processes, because they have a unifying sense: this is what allows someone to say “I remembered A’s name” or “I grabbed the cup!” Their distinction isn’t arbitrary, but based in the sense that constitutes them. That could of course vary but, given a specific 9

This is why he urges us to build a “neurobiology of rationality” (Damasio 2010, 230) and why he states, “I’m not saying the mind is in the body, what I’m saying is that the body gives the brain much more than just vital support and modulating effects. It contributes with content, which is a fundamental part of the mechanisms of a normal mind” (261). 10 This French philosopher considered the mind, and even the exteriority, to be all “included” in the notion of “body scheme,” and thus we can’t stop considering the body (Merleau-Ponty 1993, 69).

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reality and a determined act, the act has, then, limits defined by its own configuration.

Intuitive Thought, Conscious Thought On the one hand I will call Intuitive thought the fundamental and founding acts and processes of motion directed towards oneself that do not imply the presence of language. As Freud said, the majority of acts and processes are of this kind.11 By “intuitive” acts or processes we refer for example to feelings, images, emotions, sensations, memories, and a great variety of movements. It may be a very wide field of possibilities and it is not easy to separate them completely from our permanent use of language. Human beings are, evidently, entwined with the language they have created, the source of the culture and complexity that characterizes them. However, this doesn’t preclude identifying intuitive acts and processes, such as ‘being angry,’ ‘having a song in mind,’ or ‘scratching one’s leg.’ All these acts or processes are intuitive, because they don’t involve language in a direct manner and they are directed at oneself. Human beings live immersed in all kinds of intuitive acts all the time; we could even say that these are the basis of the very significance of words. These acts generally operate quickly and are related to spontaneity. They are less under our control than other types of structures. The experience of being in love is a good example of this. In general, the person who is in love experiences quite a big confluence of feelings and sensations all related to each other through articular and systemic logic that connects the diverse processes that take place. Suppose you stop and ask the person in love, what makes you so in love? Why do you act like this? What is it about the person you love that produces this in you? It’s possible that this person won’t find it easy to respond, because the dynamic he or she is developing in is mainly intuitive, spontaneous, and unconscious. On the other hand, consciousness requires another type of thought that is not intuitive. Thought is, from this perspective, a systemic movement directed towards oneself. Hence, conscious thinking is the process of directing language to oneself. This process takes place by automatizing the initial procedures by which we learned the language. As Wittgenstein rightly stated, “To pronounce a word is like playing a key in the piano of imagination” (Wittgenstein 11

I will not call this form of movement towards oneself “unconscious” because it would be tendentious, placing the “conscience” as the general denominator of the processes towards oneself. The term “intuitions” is useful to name in the same manner, and is more neutral, neither desirable nor undesirable in itself, and it doesn’t refer to anything but a particular type of movement.

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1998, 23). When we have used consciousness we have automatized and interiorized this “naming” and thus we don’t need to pronounce the sound: There is a perceptual similarity between saying a cluster of words out loud, whisper it, murmur it, mutter it, speak it to oneself and say it in our heads. These activities form a heterogeneous series. We could say . . . [that] they can be graded in a continuous scale, whose poles are publicness and privacy. (Kenny 1984, 144)

Consciousness throughout this process slows down events, stops the “natural” course of life and lets us manipulate what happens. This can be done thanks to the materiality that language contains, which was also mentioned by Michel Foucault (2002, 194). It is this materiality in the signs of our language that is manifested through sounds, images, or textures (perceptions), that allows us to do these operations that change or enhance the acts and processes we are performing. Thus, language operates by creating an “outside” from which we can see, “re-design,” and affect ourselves. Consciousness makes us see what is going on more clearly and allows us to manipulate ourselves; this is the power this tool gives us. Language, as a combination of materiality and thoughts, produced all the big differences we can trace within the animal world, creating disruptions using its own materiality. Finally, let us say for now that this particular human invention is the one that has allowed us to develop an array of possibilities both for our fortune and our misfortune. Going back to the example of love, we’ll see that the intuitive processes and the language processes work together. In general, the person in love lives through a large number of intuitive acts and processes that connect and enable each other. The person has particular enjoyable sensations, which awaken a feeling towards the other person. Let’s suppose that this feeling generates the resurgence of a memory, but this memory leads to a reflection about what is going on. Actions also happen in love, of course, but let’s focus only on the aspect of thought. In the course of the process or group of processes I am describing, referred to as “being in love,” there is a difference between the first set of processes (sensations, feelings, memories) and the second (reflection). The latter process implies using language directed towards oneself, just like when a person begins speaking out loud to better think about what is happening. In general, accentuating the materiality of language also heightens consciousness, since it is materiality that accentuates its critical strength

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(Sumiacher 2016).12 The point is that the process of reflecting on what is going on is part of the experience of love that this person has, but it is also a different process. Perhaps through the reflection this person has, he or she continues to love, or lets that love end. We cannot determine a priori if a reflection will be favorable or adverse to the experience of a determined concept. Indeed, it could be adverse sometimes, as happens, for example, if one thinks too much during an orgasm. To give a less far-fetched example, it’s very common that people who “think too much” have difficulties in love. But this doesn’t mean that consciousness is useless or shouldn’t be used, the whole point is to learn how and when to use the consciousness. This last point is quite important and refers to something a practical philosopher has to observe, since philosophical practice is devoted to working with the philosophical processes of others (Sumiacher 2014). The philosophical practitioner has to understand how the person or persons he or she is working with live or operate within the concepts. This is also valid for any philosophical experience. Although rationality will be very useful as a basic principle for the person who has not a shade of rationality or of conscience in his or her experience of any given concept, the person who over-reflects and excessively rationalizes will probably be advised to use other tools in the course of his or her life. Conscience plays a very important role in the course of actions and processes that form any philosophical experience and it is a very powerful tool that allows us to grow, observe, refine, improve, and change radically.

Discursive and Bodily Actions Let us now focus on actions for a moment. Actions, the relationships with exteriority that human beings can form, are fundamental to the development of human life. We can even claim they have to do with the will to live. Without action, there would be no need for ethics nor would it be possible to feed ourselves, protect ourselves, or survive in the world. When a human being is a fetus in a mother’s womb, there is no relation to the exteriority, because the entire “exterior” of the unborn baby is the body it finds itself connected to through the umbilical cord that feeds it. The fetus doesn’t perform actions, at least not directly, since everything is mediated 12

This is why saying something and writing it down are not the same. The writing process heightens consciousness in so far as the words are there and can be seen, because their materiality is made evident. This is relevant to the use of language that takes place in philosophical practice and in everyday life.

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by the mother. But once born, we experience the outside world directly and it is possible that this first relation is one of the weirdest and most painful. It is far more pleasant to be linked only to our own selves because there is more control and privacy. Exteriority is the source of permanent, strange, unexpected, and uncontrollable events. But action is fundamental to our survival in the world, so we have no choice: we have to engage with the world. Actions are critically important; for instance, they ground the existence of language, since language is ultimately composed of material elements that are captured through perception, a type of action. Let us analyze this structure further. All fundamental and founding actions in the field of actions, namely all the actions related to the primordial relations to the external world, I will now call bodily actions. These actions are not related to speech and are shared with animals. 13 Bodily action makes sense in itself and can basically be of two kinds according to its active or receptive quality. When bodily actions are receptive, we’re talking about perception, namely systemic movements of relation to the exterior which capture or put us in contact with what is out there through the senses. It is not the case that the subject does not matter or does not determine several aspects of his or her perception, as Kant and a whole tradition in occidental philosophy have tried to demonstrate.14 But the general sense of an act or process, if it is perceptual, is more fundamentally related to the exteriority, even if some parts of it are related to thought or to the subject. For example, the process of –looking at a painting– can imply important acts of thought, and movements towards the self. The general sense of this process, however, is linked to the exteriority: nobody could –look at a painting– without the presence of a painting in the world, or without the ability to perceive. This is why we can say that if someone is “looking at a painting” that person is performing 13 Humberto Maturana has several good examples that explain this type of relation: “The cockroach that slowly crosses the kitchen, and runs swiftly towards a dark place when we enter, turning on the lights and making noise, has had an emotional change and in its emotional flow has switched from one domain of actions to another. We can, in fact, recognize this in everyday life, by saying the roach has gone from tranquility to fear. By using the same terms we use to refer to human emotion, we’re not anthropomorphizing the cockroach, but recognizing that emotion is a fundamental aspect of animal operating that we also exhibit” (Maturana 1995, 23). 14 Kant considered the a priori forms of perception as very significant (2007). However, in eastern philosophies, for example in Buddhism, we can find analogical or even more complex conceptions, where perception varies depending on what stage-condition of life the person is in, and the very history of the subject of perception, so this is not “fixed” at all (Ikeda 2012).

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an action, because the very sense that constitutes this act is conformed through the relations the subject traces with the exteriority. On the contrary, if someone looked only at a detail of the painting, and recognized a shape he saw months back in another place, realized this was something important, and began a deeper analysis of this, we would undoubtedly be facing a process of thought (a relationship with oneself) motivated by an action. We are not here giving a priori definitions of how things are, nor are we forcing them in any way; we use this criticalsystemic apparatus to understand what humans do. The counterpart of perception we will call “intervention” here. Intervention is, from this systemic perspective, any bodily action a subject may undertake that affects, influences, changes, or transforms the external world. This is exactly what Karl Marx referred to when talking about praxis.15 Praxis for Marx is not just a way of referring to reality, but also a way of transforming our surroundings, and this is the purpose of interventions. Interventions are highly important for the understanding of human beings and life itself, because, without them, material subsistence in the world would not possible. 16 Unlike perception, interventions are always processes. In other words, they constitutively require perception because one cannot act or affect one’s environment without first perceiving the reality of the said environment. This is why interventions are more complex and harder to realize than perceptions. Of course, this is a broad tendency; we can always find cases where it is not like this. Intervention is constitutively more complex, because it also implies a bigger commitment: all interventions require the agent to “put their body to use,” they all make use of the motor system, and they all require bodily movements to affect reality. Interventions require the agent to be more committed because he or she risks his or her existence in the process, and this is also why we tend to give more credit to an active person than to one who merely has good ideas. As an Andalusian proverb says, “Hechos son amores y no buenas razones”: “To show your love – bring facts, not reasons.” This same thing can be seen in the general development of philosophy in any person’s everyday life, for example in the case of “justice,” a classical concept in the history of philosophy from Plato onwards. It 15

This is the classical term one can find in the Theses for Feuerbach (Marx 1981). In my case, I adopt the interpretations of Marx made previously by Karel Kosic (1967), who extracts and allows us to use diverse epistemological elements of Marxism. See Sumiacher (2012). 16 Enrique Dussel is a laureate Argentinean-Mexican philosopher who masterfully develops these points (1996; 1998).

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would be weird to think that someone can “be fair” if that person doesn’t act according to “justice,” whichever meaning or idea of justice we might have in mind. So, in order to develop a process or act that is fair, we have to perform a multiplicity of intuitive and rational thoughts, but it would be strange to think someone could “be fair” just by having fair ideas. These thoughts must connect in a complex way to bodily actions in the world, in which there have to be interventions as well, affecting the environment. The mere presence of perceptive actions is not enough; active bodily action, intervention, is needed to develop any concept. For example, in order to be fair, I have to –pay for what I bought–, –give people around me their due according to agreements–, or –put a limit to an action that hurts me unfairly–. Notice that the same happens with the majority of philosophical processes; they almost always require bodily actions to be brought to reality and in relations with others. Otherwise, they do not exist. There will, of course, be some philosophical notions that are directly related to thought, such as “inner peace” or “argumentation.” But all of these notions are ultimately related to the world. For example, if a person enjoys “inner peace” it would be strange for that person to react violently when relating to someone else. If this were the case, we would find their so-called inner peace rather dubious. If one enjoys inner peace, it’s probable that our relationships to things and people in exteriority will stay in operational coherence with that inner reality. We can usually tell when we are in the presence of a “peaceful,” “serene,” and “wise” person, but it is because we are not talking about mere thoughts, but also about actions. It would be very hard to see the development of a philosophical idea if it were just composed of thoughts.17 The subject who develops a philosophical idea in thought will naturally manifest their new understanding in action, given that they are operationally coherent. Philosophy as well has a propensity to expand. In the case of argumentations, this same phenomenon is also true: someone who knows how to argue with themselves will generally end up arguing with others. From the reasoning and conscious arguments a person makes as self-directed moves, it is probable that he or she will produce an 17

In order to avoid confusion, it is important to explain that thoughts are not only that which “is hidden” to our vision. Thoughts are acts and processes that start and end on the same subject or that contain that direction to oneself as the form of their development. My remark is not just that because they’re thoughts, we’re not going to see them, but instead I am arguing that because their movement is directed towards the same subject that produces them, they are harder to grasp than when the direction is towards the exterior, such as when someone takes a cup, kicks a ball, or looks at a painting.

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ulterior development linked to this first one in a more coherent form of acting, or it is likely that his sentences will be better formulated or founded. Argumentation is an adequate example of the last type of acts and processes I want to analyze here, namely, discourse.18 Discourse, unlike bodily action, is an action (a relation to exteriority) which operates through language. There are basically two forms of discourse: one is receptive (hearing) and the other is active (speaking), but both imply leaving our own systemic structures and relating to the external world. John Austin was interested in this and explained how saying words could turn into performing actions: When, with hand over scripture, and in presence of an adequate public servant, I state “yes, I swear!” I’m not informing about my oath, I’m giving it . . . . How shall we call a sentence or an expression of this kind? I propose calling it a performing sentence or performing expression, or for short “a performative” . . . this, of course derived from “performing” the usual verb that takes place before the noun “action.” (Austin 1982, 47)

Putting aside some differences with Austin, what matters to me here is the fact that we can use language in the form of actions. Discourse is an interesting form of action, because it is, in fact, an action for thought. Words are not magical invocations for things to take place. If a word or discourse is not “understood” then it has no effect at all. If an emissary of Singapore were to come in right now to let me know I’ve been given a royal palace for me and my family in his homeland, and if the emissary could only use discourse in his own language to express himself, it’s highly likely that I would miss the opportunity to have a beautiful palace, having no knowledge of it. What I’m trying to say is that discourse requires that we understand the codes in which we are speaking. Every time I explain this topic, the question arises: Isn’t discourse an action that produces things in the world? And the answer is: Yes, it is, but in an indirect manner. Let us say that what words can do firstly is generate a thought (a movement towards oneself that includes emotions, sensations, memories, and rationality) and that this produces effects, later on, that act upon the subject by generating a reflection or decision in him or her.

18

In formulating these ideas, I have partly based my work on the concept of discourse advanced by Ernesto Laclau, an important Argentinean thinker. Laclau’s discourse is linked to power relations and the relation between their significant and insignificant configurations (1993).

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Anyone who doubts this point should try telling someone “Get up!” and see what happens. If the result is not always –the person getting up–, it shows that the discursive action does not produce actions in a direct way. This happens because, first, you need to understand the language through which speech is operating, and you also need other types of processes of thought to take place, processes that can result in bodily actions. It’s important to point out that when we are talking about discourse (and conscience as well) we are referring to a very specific process developed with an arbitrary language19 and used only by humans. I’m not referring here to what is usually misconstrued as “non-verbal language.” This should really be called body language or natural language in order to avoid falling into a hypostasis of the verbal (this is what happened with the term the “unconscious”). In this natural language, there are no arbitrary signs, but there is a relation between the actions we use to express ourselves and their meaning, like when a dog bares its teeth and communicates that it can bite you (using the very same teeth it is displaying). I do not mean to say that this language is not important, nor that we aren’t constantly using it alongside human-created language. What I mean is that it is a different kind of thing, and when considering the processes we engage in, they ought to be examined separately. Knowing the power and limitation in the use of words and our human language, let us understand further what we’re doing when we engage in philosophical practice. Words have a lot of power because they allow us to grow, discover, amplify, inquire, problematize, point out, and sustain an idea. A lot of things happen in the adventure of thought; we see a similar adventurous path unfold when talking about consciousness. All this can nonetheless be insufficient, since discursive actions do not replace bodily actions. Discursive actions, unlike bodily ones, operate linearly; for this is the shape that discourse takes, due to the use of words that have to be pronounced one after the other in time.20 Bodily actions are always multi19

This very important term, introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure in relation to arbitrariness of human speech, is very valuable to the conceptions being developed here (de Saussure 1984). That human language is arbitrary means there is no link between sound/image/texture we use to represent the meaning of those. I understand these two parts as actions and thoughts, and, unlike Saussure, I think language always makes a link between these two movements. This shall be studied in future essays. 20 As can be easily seen in group dialogues, people can’t all talk at the same time. They have to wait and alternate in speaking, and only a person at a time can talk. This field has been widely covered by different philosophical practices, such as

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processual, which gives them at once advantages and disadvantages. Bodily actions support the discourse because they are historically older, both individually and at the level of the species. They are older at the individual level, because no baby is born with developed linguistic capabilities, but babies can immediately perform bodily actions. And they are older at the level of the species, because human beings emerged from the animal kingdom and speech started at some point as a surprising and revolutionary phenomenon 21 and shall likely never stop. This topic is crucial in order to understand philosophical practice, and philosophy in general, where so much importance is given to the word, or ȜóȖȠȢ, and to the myths that usually surround this concept. This characterization and understanding of the discursive processes does not intend to discredit the strength or value of language or of the processes human beings engage in through speech. Rationality can be strongly linked to emotion, or to feeling, and organically work with intuitions – amplifying, empowering and feeding the most fundamental vital processes. We have to understand that speaking and doing something corporeal are not the same thing. Take for example the case of empathy – a very popular and important trans-cultural concept. Empathy, as a philosophically experienced concept, requires a multitude of fundamental discursive processes, such as –“listening carefully”–, –“refraining from imposing my ideas on the other person”–, –“speaking using the words the other person used”–, or –“building ideas together”–, to name but a few. But that’s not all, empathy also requires –perception of the body and facial expressions of the other person–, –interaction with the other person, monitoring the course of their own actions–, or –sharing something–, all things that go beyond speaking and listening. No matter what the actions are, philosophy requires both discourse and bodily actions to function in the world. No one would trust a person who shows empathy only with words, and conversely our ability to empathize would decrease if we could not exchange with the other person, through language, benefiting from its enormous communicative potential. philosophy for children, which tries to educate in the correct form of speaking and listening, in the form of dialogues or debates. 21 The reader interested in these points should consult the work of Ángel Rivera Arrizabalaga (1998; 2004 et al.). He works with what he calls “archaeology of language.” This Spanish author tackles the historical (or pre-historical) question about the surge of speech in our species through neurological, anthropological and archaeological studies (not in Foucault’s less literal sense of “archaeology”). Knowing about these historical questions in relation to language gives important clues about the processes of human language.

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Concluding Remarks Having these four fields (intuition, conscience, discourse, and bodily action) gives us a less diffuse vision of human beings than if we think that human beings “simply act.” They are the four ways in which we manifest ourselves through acts and processes in life. And it is also in these four ways in which philosophy exists. For example, someone who is friends with someone else ‘has a sense and feeling of fraternity,’ ‘“remembers the name and punctual characteristics of the other person,’” or simply ‘“thinks about the other person,’” in the same way he –“speaks to the other person”– and –shares corporeal interactions with the other–. This is what friends normally do, and what friendship implies. The same happens in the wider spectrum of philosophy. It is almost impossible to find philosophical concepts that are solely linked to thought, because philosophy, when it exists, tends to expand beyond the mind, and thus tends to manifest itself in the actions performed towards others and the world. In order to conclude this chapter, I would like to express four ideas in relation to philosophical practice and philosophy. First, these inquiries, enunciations, dialogues, arguments, and thoughts proper to philosophy are very important, but can only make sense if one doesn’t forget the things they refer to. I mean by that that philosophy is not the enunciation, but rather the object of the enunciation. Philosophy is not the discourse on love, freedom, equality, justice, wisdom or existence, but that to which these words point in human reality. It refers to acts and processes in the shape of intuitions, conscience, discourse and bodily actions. This is philosophy and even though discourses or dialogues which we can generate around this can be fruitful, they should not forget their references without losing all sense. Secondly, the variety of philosophical practices that exist and have developed using discourse or language is very interesting and productive. These philosophical practices have an enormous potential, as proven by their worldwide expansion. However, in order to be successful, the practitioners should keep in mind that human beings are not exhausted by the discourse generated during the counseling, workshop or philosophical experience. I mean by this that the words exchanged during a practice session in the form of enunciations, judgments, questions or problems have to go beyond themselves and reach the intuitions and bodily actions of subjects if they are to have a real significance. This implies that in order for a discursive philosophical practice to be effective, it also has to affect people’s emotions, sensations, memories, as well as touching on their perceptions and interventions in the world. This is what happens when

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words are related to human beings and when mere rational discourse is transcended, and this usually happens if one is working correctly in philosophical practice. Thirdly, these ideas are also an invitation for the practitioner of philosophy to create philosophical practices that use more than discourse or rational processes. Philosophy is much more than rationality. Philosophy lies at the core of the existence of every person, in everything we do, and this is why it makes sense to speak, think and rationalize various aspects of our lives. My intention here is to motivate the creation of new philosophical practices that would be more attuned with the body and intuitions. Some practicing philosophers may object to this by asking, Won’t this turn my practice into something similar to the practice of a psychologist? Or, how can I make sure that I am indeed doing philosophy? But there are simple ways of tracing this difference if one understands what one is really working with. Psychology usually stays in the particular and singular spaces of the person’s experience: “your mother told you. . .,” “the emotion you felt.” Even if philosophy sometimes works by associating itself to memory (the past) and to the present feeling, it always goes beyond them. Philosophy is interested in the larger picture, namely, processes that go beyond the particular, that which Socrates understood as a concept. But Socrates did more than inquire with his questions. He mainly observed situations and interacted with them, as I mentioned at the beginning. Philosophy is not concerned with the particular or that which is contingent in itself; philosophy seeks the fundamental principles that operate in existence, and this can be done in many ways. For the same reasons, Zen masters sometimes abandoned discourse completely and simply slapped their disciples without a single word. They understood that words are only part of a larger process and sometimes they are not what we need. To come back to the third point I wanted to make: my purpose was to invite the reader to create new philosophical practices that involve the body and intuitions.22 Fourthly, I would like to address practitioners of philosophical practice more specifically, since this book is dedicated to them. Amidst the very diversity which is characteristic of philosophy, and amidst the great 22

This isn’t entirely new. These perspectives are nowadays being developed, such as Narelle Arcidiacono’s Dramatic Philosophy (Arcidiacono 2014), José Barrientos’ work around experiential rationality (Barrientos 2013), and a lot of other projects worldwide. They are working in relation to the body, to arts and the theatre. At the Centro Educativo para la Creación Autónoma en Prácticas Filosóficas in Mexico (CECAPFI), we adopt this perspective in relation to philosophical practice too (see www.cecapfi.com).

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number of practices and methods that have been developed, a practitioner might feel confused: Which philosophical practice am I to follow? From this perspective, it doesn’t matter what type of philosophical practice one engages in – what matters is the impact it generates on the practitioners themselves. Philosophical practice cannot leave unmoved and unchanged the consultants, groups, or organizations that are interested in philosophy. We can adopt very rigorous methods using discourse, logic and judgment. Or we can make use of more experimental exercises involving provocation, action and bodily interaction. What philosophical practice cannot avoid doing is moving others: it must affect their existence beyond the limits of the session or workshop, and, in this way, it incorporates itself into the modus operandi, into the modus vivendi, of those who approach it.23 Which philosophical practice has a larger impact, transcends more borders, is better remembered or felt? Which practice has truly affected the people in attendance? These should be the criteria used to select which form of philosophical practice we should engage in.

References Arcidiacono, Narelle. 2014. Dramatic Philosophy: Imagine a World. Brisbane: NAC. Austin, John. 1982. Cómo hacer cosas con palabras [How To Do Things With Words]. Spain: Paidos. Barrientos, José. 2013. “La orientación experiencial en la Filosofía Aplicada (FAE) como ampliación de la tendencia lógico-argumental (FALA).” Revista TEPANTLATO 5 (47) : Difusión de la cultura jurídica. Bertalanffy, Ludwig, von. 1989. Teoría general de los sistemas. México: FCE. Brenifier, Óscar. 2011. Filosofar como Sócrates. Spain: Diálogo. D’Angelo, Patricia. 2011. Caminos en Psicoterapia. Rosario: UNR Editora. 23 We might think that it’s not enough to talk about an impact or effect on the other person – we also need to think about the direction of the said effect. Philosophical practice generally operates with a methodology that greatly helps with this concern: maieutics. Since most processes are built from each other or with each other, it is the very search and characteristics of those who approach philosophical practices that gives it its direction. I am aware that this is not the last word on the matter. The coordinator of counseling, a workshop, or a philosophical space has also to think about the direction this impact should take. This has to do with his or her ethical position. This should become the topic of an entirely new article, so I shall leave it at maieutics for now as a preliminary answer to this question.

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Damasio, Antonio. 2010. El error de Descartes. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Davidson, Donald. 1992. Mente, mundo y acción [Mind, World, and Action]. Barcelona: Paidós / ICE UAB. —. 2003. Subjetivo, intersubjetivo, objetivo [Subjective, intersubjective, objective]. Madrid: Cátedra. Dussel, Enrique. 1996. Filosofía de la Liberación. México: Nueva América. —. 1998. Ética de la liberación. En la edad de la globalización y la exclusión. Madrid: Trotta. —. 2007. Política de la Liberación. Historia Mundial y Crítica. Spain: Trotta. Eemeren, Frans van, and Rob Grootendorst. 2002. Argumentación, comunicación y falacias. Una perspectiva pragma-dialéctica. Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile. Foucault, Michel. 2002. La Arqueología del Saber [The Archaeology of Knowledge]. Argentina: Siglo veintiuno editores. García Moriyón, Félix. 2010. Personas Razonables. México: Progreso. Greek Philosophical Society & Fisp. 2013. XXIII World Congress of Philosophy: Philosophy as Inquiry and Way of Life. Athens: University of Athens. Ikeda, Daisaku. 2012. Develando los misterios del nacimiento y de la muerte. Argentina: EMECE. Kant, Immanuel. 2007. Crítica de la Razón Pura [The Critique of Pure Reason]. Buenos Aires: Losada. Kenny, Antony. 1990. El legado de Wittgenstein [The Legacy of Wittgenstein]. México: Siglo XXI. Kohan, Walter. 2007. Infancia, política y pensamiento. Buenos Aires: Ed. Del Estante. Laclau, Ernesto. 1993. Nuevas reflexiones sobre la revolución de nuestro tiempo. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión. Lipman, Matthew. 2003. Thinking in Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marx, Karl. 1981. Tesis sobre Feuerbach [Theses on Feuerbach]. Moscu: Progreso. Maturana, Humberto. 1995. La realidad ¿objetiva o construida? I. Fundamentos biológicos de la realidad. Barcelona: Anthropos, Universidad Iberoamericana e Iteso. Merleau Ponty, Maurice. 1993. Fenomenología de la percepción [Phenomenology of Perception]. Barcelona: Planeta. Nelson, Leonard. 2008. El método socrático. Spain: Hurqualya. Plato. 1997. Complete Works, edited with an introduction and notes by

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John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publish Company. Rivera Arrizabalaga, Ángel. 1998. “Arqueología del lenguaje en el proceso evolutivo del Género Homo.” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma 11: 13-43. Spain: Serie I, Prehistoria y Arqueología. —. 2004. “La conducta simbólica humana: Nueva orientación metodológica.” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma 16-17: 313-35. Spain: Serie I, Prehistoria y Arqueología. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1984. Curso de lingüística general. Barcelona: Planeta. Sumiacher, David. 2012. Críticas a la educación filosófica. Hacia las nuevas prácticas filosófico-educativas del Siglo XXI. México: UNAM. —. 2014. “Criterios e instituciones en la práctica filosófica.” Childhood & Philosophy 10 (19): 179-97. —. 2016. “Critical and Creative Philosophical Practices.” Journal of Humanities Therapy 7 (1). South Korea: Kangwon National University. Weiss, Michael, ed. 2015. The Socratic Handbook. Vienna: LIT Verlag. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1988. Investigaciones filosóficas [Philosophical Investigations]. Barcelona: Grijalbo.

PART III NOVEL ISSUES FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTITIONERS

CHAPTER FIVE REPOSITIONING PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE FOR THE NEXT DECADE VAUGHANA FEARY

I argue that certain misconceptions of philosophical practice will impede it from addressing the most urgent social problems which will confront society in the next decade. These problems are the staggering economic and human costs of substance abuse, mental illness, incarceration, and homelessness. Three theoretical prejudices among many philosophical practitioners prevent philosophical practice from playing a significant role in addressing current social problems. First, there is an assumption that philosophical expertise alone will suffice for all philosophical counseling and consulting. By contrast, I will argue that there are many fields of philosophical practice which require multidisciplinary skills. By failing to develop them, philosophers have relegated much terrain to psychologists, which they should share. Second, there is an assumption that individual counseling and organizational consulting can always be pursued independently of one another. By contrast, I will argue that frequently expertise in both areas is required by a single client, and that the kinds of projects which will serve as paradigms for cutting edge social programs require both skill sets. Third, many practitioners still adhere to an outmoded anti-psychiatry orientation. By contrast, I shall argue that in contemporary American society the main problem is not that psychiatry unduly restricts negative liberty rights. Rather, it is that society does not recognize positive rights to mental health care, substance abuse treatment, offender rehabilitation, and housing for poor and chronically mentally ill populations who are often in and out of hospitals, homeless shelters, drug rehabs, and prisons in what has become an endless cycle. In sum, philosophical practitioners should acquire multidisciplinary skills for counseling in areas in which mental health professionals now enjoy a monopoly, and they should combine individual counseling and

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organizational skills. They should recognize that there are genuine psychiatric problems which require medical intervention and that the poor and chronically mentally ill have a right to mental health care, rehabilitation, and substance abuse treatment. Philosophical practice must be repositioned and begin constructing social and political arguments and philosophical programs designed to resolve these acute social problems. This paper will conclude with a brief case study involving a pilot program illustrating how such initiatives might begin.

The Costs of Substance Abuse, Mental Illness, Incarceration, and Homelessness It is really impossible to marshal uncontroversial statistics about the economic costs of substance abuse, mental illness, criminal justice, and homelessness problems. There are major problems even in defining “substance abuse,” “mental illness,” and “homelessness,” so estimates of the size of such populations vary based upon ways in which these concepts are defined. Frequently these concepts are defined in ways conducive to obtaining maximum allocations of funds. In addition, estimates vary in including indirect as well as direct costs of these problems. Suffice it to say that the statistics quoted here should be counted merely as indicators that these four social problems create massive costs for the United Sates and, ultimately, for the entire world to bear. One estimate by the American Institute of Mental Health claims that abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit substances costs the U.S. in excess of $700 billion annually in crime, lost work, productivity, and health care. Tobacco results in $130 billion in health care costs. Alcohol results in $25 billion, and illicit drugs in $193 billion (https://www.nimh.nih.gov). Furthermore, it claims that 1 in 25 people live with a major mental illness such as schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, or chemical depression at some point in their lives. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims that the direct costs of mental illness are $55 billion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41,149 individuals committed suicide in the US in 2013, the most recent year in which such data is available (Insel 2015). Just the costs of substance abuse and mental health administration were $147 billion in 2001. The World Economic Forum estimates that the global cost will be $6 trillion in 2030 (https://www.nimh.nih.gov). National leaders also recognize that criminal justice issues cost staggering amounts of money that could be allocated for other social needs; thus sentencing and prison reforms must be a social and political

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imperative. According to a 2016 article by Brian Kincade, “The Economics of the American Prison System,” the American prison system costs $74 billion annually, more than the individual GDP’s of 133 nations, with 10% now going to privatized correctional companies like Corrections Corporation of America. According to a 2012 Vera Institute Report, the number of prison inmates has increased by 700% over the last decades, with the prison system now housing over 2.2 million inmates. The increase is largely the result of harsh drug sentencing policies adopted under President Nixon and perpetuated by subsequent administrations. While private corporations seem to reduce costs per inmate, there are social, political, and ethical problems about allowing public punishment to be administered by private corporations. There have been public scandals about improper discipline, escapes, and increased recidivism, which are probably due to overcrowding, reduced rehabilitative programs, etc. (Kincade 2016). The economic costs of homelessness are also troublesome. While the National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates that homelessness (which is defined as sleeping outside, or in an emergency shelter, or transitional housing) has declined by 2.3% since 2013, it also estimates that on any given night in January, 578,424 people are still homeless. According to the report, the national rate of homelessness was 18.3 homeless people per 10,000 in the general population, but given a continuing affordable housing crisis, the poor are still at great risk of becoming homeless. The number of households in poverty (spending more than 50% of their income on housing) actually increased to 7.7 million in 2013. According to Terence McCoy, in 2015, a University of Pennsylvania study showed that New York City was spending a staggering $40,500 per year on each “chronically homeless person,” defined as a homeless person with mental problems. Refugee problems will no doubt exacerbate homelessness and mental health problems. By mid-2014 there were more than 1.2 million asylum seekers in the world. The Syrian crisis has had a major impact and, in response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Obama administration has proposed significant increases in the number of refugees America accepts each year, to a proposed 100,000 in 2017 (Zong and Batalova 2017). Given the trauma experienced during migration, mental health problems will probably constitute difficulties for many refugees in achieving selfsufficiency, as well as in obtaining and retaining employment. There are many disputes about the relationship between mental illness, substance abuse, homelessness, and criminal behavior. There are arguments about whether mental illness and substance abuse are causes of

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homelessness or its effects (Wasserman and Clair 2010, 69-93). Clearly, however, since the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care, prisons have now become today’s de facto psychiatric hospitals with sometimes as many as 33% of incarcerated offenders having psychiatric diagnoses. Having increased numbers of psychiatric patients in jails and prisons creates numerous management issues, as well as longer stays in prison, thus incurring greater human suffering and greater economic costs (Torrey 2014, 115-25). Given the severity and complexity of the social problems just discussed, and the fact that philosophical practitioners have already reclaimed some areas in counseling once regarded as the exclusive territory of mental health professionals, it seems inappropriate that the majority of philosophical practitioners have been so slow in addressing these pressing social problems. Unfortunately, outmoded assumptions about philosophical practice seem accountable for the failure of philosophical practice to address social problems.

The Role of Philosophical Practice in Addressing Social Problems In a previous paper, I argued that that there are three traditional conceptions of a philosophical practitioner: professional, social activist, and sage (Feary 2013a, 80-87). These conceptions are not mutually exclusive. As Lou Marinoff has shown, a professional practitioner is one who has a graduate degree in philosophy, education and training in philosophical practice, familiarity with basic literature pertaining to philosophical practice, and a commitment to some recognized code of professional ethics (Marinoff 2002, 109-207). Part of the mission of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) is to train and serve such professionals and to secure recognition for philosophical practice as a profession. Some professionals, and other individuals with sophisticated philosophical skills, also become social activists, using their philosophical skills outside of the academy to implement or critique social or political goals or policies, or to educate the general public. Some philosophical practitioners function as individual counselors or consultants in hospitals, prisons, and shelters, as well as a few who work with clients diagnosed with mental illnesses; they may also indirectly contribute to social change. What is missing, however, seems to be some basic unifying conception of what changes philosophical practitioners, qua social activists, might be

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trying directly to effect. I believe that the absence of such a theory reduces the perceived relevance of this area of philosophical practice and undermines its effectiveness. Finally, there is also a third classic conception of a philosophical practitioner as a kind of sage or “life master” (to use Gerd Achenbach’s term; see Achenbach 2002). Such a person supposedly embodies philosophy as a way of life and serves as a mentor, guru, companion, or sage for those attempting to understand their life in philosophical terms. No doubt, great practitioners like Socrates, Buddha, and Gandhi were regarded as sages by their followers, but they also contributed directly or indirectly to social change. In fact, educating or enlightening individuals may be the most enduring catalyst for social change. Let me hasten to add that I am not arguing that all of philosophical practice should have an explicit social activist, problem focused, or therapeutic orientation. I am arguing that the assumption made by some practitioners that no philosophical counseling should have these orientations is a mistake. And I am making two more modest claims. First, I will argue that some current assumptions about philosophical practice have, pari-passu, unduly restricted its scope and influence in directly addressing social problems. Second, I will argue that practitioners should recognize that we have acute social problems and that they can play a major role in addressing them through becoming clear about their objectives. To avoid legal wrangles which less psychologized cultures like Korean culture can side step (as in “Humanities Therapy”), let me avoid calling this type of practice philosophical “therapy,” and refer to it as “proactive philosophical practice” (PPP) instead.

The Need for Multidisciplinary Cooperative Orientations to Social Problems As philosophers like Pierre Hadot (1995) and Martha Nussbaum (1994) have shown in their work, philosophical counseling constitutes a revival of very old philosophical traditions where philosophy was regarded as a way of life and care of the soul, not a dry arcane academic discipline. It is natural that the first few publications and conferences in philosophical practice focused a great deal on delineating differences between philosophical counseling and psychotherapy. Ran Lahav, in his influential early essay “A Conceptual Framework for Philosophical Counseling: Worldview Interpretation” (Lahav 1996, 9-25), did a wonderful job of delineating, for other philosophers, differences in methods and problems between philosophical counseling and psychotherapy,

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carefully pointing out that, given the degree to which psychologists have borrowed from philosophers, no absolute bifurcation can be maintained. Lou Marinoff, in Plato Not Prozac (1999), did an equally masterful job in introducing philosophical practice to non-philosophers, distinguishing it from psychotherapy in less technical terms. In developing the American Philosophical Practitioners Association, and in providing certification programs, APPA’s board and trainers have been careful to define the scope of practice of philosophical counseling and to teach trainees to recognize when they will need to refer clients to psychologists and psychiatrists. Marinoff has also been the leader in developing a scope of practice description for philosophical practice to satisfy internal review boards supervising research projects in philosophical practice in university settings. A priori, however, none of the work alluded to above precludes developing programs in a pro-active philosophical practice (PPP) with clearly stated therapeutic objectives. There are already philosophers working with offenders, addicts, homeless populations, and psychiatric patients, but they are few in number in part because APPA trainees and experienced practitioners start out in private practice and recognize that the primary problem of such populations is not philosophical in character; it is criminal behavior, addiction, mental illness, or some combination of the three. Most such individuals are not likely to seek philosophical counseling, but if they do (as in the case of some clients with psychiatric problems) then presumably in these circumstances they need to be referred to a psychiatrist, psychologist, or substance abuse counselor with the expertise to address the primary problem. Unfortunately, however, these populations also have philosophical problems and these problems are seldom addressed in the contexts to which they are referred. Furthermore, philosophical problems such as poor critical reasoning, illogical thinking, irrational beliefs, poor decision making skills, lack of self-respect, etc., are usually fundamental problems for offenders, addicts, psychiatric patients, and the homeless even when such persons are highly intelligent and well-educated, and they have a major impact on the development and treatment of primary problems. There is plenty of empirical evidence that shows that cognitive (i.e., philosophically based) programs have the best prospects for success in working with offender and substance abuse populations (Feary 2013b). Furthermore, philosophy (logic, critical reasoning, and mindfulness) is the basis for Cognitive Therapy and Rational Emotive Therapy as well as for Dialectical Behavior Therapy. As a result, it seems reasonable to think it is time for philosophers to begin reclaiming some of the turf they have

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relegated to mental health professionals. They can do so by beginning to work in cooperation with psychologists, social workers, substance abuse counselors, etc., in prisons, drug rehabs, homeless shelters, and psychiatric facilities, and documenting their work. To be effective with the populations discussed in this paper, however, philosophers need to develop multi-disciplinary and specialized skills. Some very effective philosophical counselors have other degrees, such as a Masters in Social Work, but additional degrees are not really necessary; philosophical counseling supplements and complements other types of counseling, but seldom wholly replaces them. In-service training, continuing education courses in substance abuse, courses in group counseling, and simply mastering relevant literature may be all that is necessary, for example, for a philosopher to challenge the irrational beliefs and poor critical reasoning of substance abusers, to address their philosophical issues, and to recognize what differences may exist in the reasoning of heroin users versus the reasoning of cocaine users. Some of this expertise can only be acquired through doing the work. In acquiring multi-disciplinary skills, I have found it very helpful to work with social workers who have worked with such populations for long periods and have a deep understanding of some of their non-philosophical problems. The key point I wish to emphasize here is that a philosopher who knows nothing about criminal offenders or prisons is not likely to be very effective in counseling in prison settings, and the same applies to the other settings mentioned in this discussion. One can only hope that eventually philosophers can develop graduate programs in philosophical practice and set up internship programs in psychiatric hospitals, prisons, rehabs, shelters, etc.

Combining Individual, Group, and Organizational Counseling Expertise Unduly restrictive conceptions of what it means to be a philosophical practitioner, as well as the absence of multidisciplinary skills, account for two of the reasons philosophers have been slow to address social problems, but there is also a third reason. Many philosophers tend to emphasize either individual or organizational counseling. If they do both, they tend to operate as if these activities were unrelated. I think this is another reason why philosophers have ceded turf to mental health professionals, which they could equally well occupy. In many cases, to make a significant impact upon either organizations or individuals, some attention has to be directed towards both. Experience

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in group counseling is certainly necessary, as peer interaction is key to obtaining the best therapeutic effects with these populations. As I pointed out in a recent article (Feary 2015), reducing sexual harassment problems in a corporation involves not only having sound policies in place, but also in providing some individual or small group counseling for key sections of middle management, thus securing their understanding and commitment, as well as encouraging them to share their beliefs about where such problems are likely to originate. Similarly, to change the way in which adult or juvenile offenders think and behave, it is often necessary to begin changing the institutional culture by working with officers, program staff, or offender tier representatives and coordinators. The old Marxist insight that it is not consciousness that creates social being, but rather social being that determines consciousness, is especially relevant here. Certified APPA practitioners are encouraged to develop their marketing skills and given some initial suggestions about how to do so, but many philosophers new to practice are at sea with how to begin marketing their skills to correctional facilities, psychiatric facilities, rehabs, etc. One suggestion, by way of illustration, might be to submit a one to two page’s proposal to the director of programs in a given facility with a request for an appointment. It is useful to treat the first program as a learning experience and to offer it pro bono. After offering subsequent programs, the philosopher might offer to provide an in-service training for staff in using philosophical techniques in other groups. Similarly, the philosopher might offer to write a grant for the facility to fund further programs. Most of the early correctional programs for Excalibur: A Center for Applied Ethics were financed by matching grants I wrote and administered for foundations funding substance abuse programs. There is nothing more likely to ensure a warm reception than bringing money with you to an organization. It is worth adding that new practitioners would be well advised to emphasize what their programs can accomplish that is new, different, and useful, rather than beginning with a discussion of philosophical counseling. Program directors have limited time for long theoretical explanations. Attending conferences in relevant areas is useful in learning non-philosophical skills and in making contacts for consulting work. In short, given a PhD, a good program proposal, and perhaps some grant money as well, philosophical practitioners should have excellent prospects for doing pro-active philosophical counseling in contexts now occupied almost exclusively by mental health professionals.

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The Theoretical Foundations of Pro-active Philosophical Practice (PPP) Philosophical practitioners, like philosophers in general, have been quick to criticize psychotherapy and psychiatry, and certainly much of the criticism is legitimate. In training future practitioners, I point out that there are five major criticisms of even humanistic and existential psychotherapies. First, they tend to be egoistic with the focus being on the self-interest of the client. I agree with Christopher Lasch and others that this approach has the unfortunate effect of creating a culture of narcissism and perpetuates a social atomism which some theorists argue is inimical to feminine and feminist thinking. Second, psychotherapies, even multicultural psychotherapies, tend to be relativistic. At best, they attempt to understand a client’s problems in terms of a client’s culture, but this is of no assistance in resolving generational conflicts within cultures. In general, they provide no real insight into normative problems and value conflicts which are especially troublesome for women, given the vastly changed roles of women. Third, they tend to narrow rather than expand the thinking of clients. The emphasis is on particular feelings and experiences of individuals, not upon universal questions. A question like, “What is true for you?” is trivial compared to the question, “What is truth?” This accounts for the fact that people in therapy are sometimes extremely boring. The questions they are exploring may be significant and necessary for them to explore for a time, but they are of little interest to anyone else. Fourth, as psychotherapists themselves (as in Positive Psychology) have begun to recognize, psychology has focused exclusively on psychopathology or, as Marinoff says, on what’s wrong with you, not on what’s right with you. I would suggest that this characteristic often encourages clients to stay in therapy, focused on what is wrong with them, in lieu of beginning to move beyond past traumas. Fifth, psychology tends to be reductionist. Every problem is treated as a psychological problem. The psychologizing of ethical and political issues is particularly objectionable. Despite the criticisms I have just made of psychotherapy, I do think psychotherapists have their own legitimate sphere of expertise. I think Ran Lahav’s early essay is correct in holding that the clinical psychologist focuses mainly on the inner psychological processes which are causes of a client’s predicaments. As Paul Sharkey (1999) observed,

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Psychology as a clinical discipline is concerned with the diagnosis, prevention, treatment and amelioration of psychological problems and emotional or mental disorders of individuals or groups . . . it assumes etiologies of trauma, history and/or conditioning; its primary emphasis is on affect or behavior.

It is reasonable to see philosophical counseling and psychotherapy as different yet complementary sorts of counseling which sometimes overlap. While I am arguing that philosophical counseling can contribute to most of the same areas of life, it does so with different methods and different theories. And clearly philosophical counseling is needed in just those areas outside of the psychologist’s concerns identified by Sharkey, for people with wholly philosophical problems, who are not seeking psychological interventions. I am also in sympathy with the usual criticisms philosophical practitioners make of psychiatry. There is an overuse of the medical model without sufficient use of empirical evidence to support it, an expansion of the DSM and the list of so-called psychiatric disorders to include very problematic cases, and an overuse of medication. Many psychiatrists themselves are questioning the emphasis put on fifteen-minute medication appointments, and believe that modern psychiatry is driven by the pharmaceutical industry. However, I find many philosophical practitioners still voicing complete sympathy with the anti-psychiatry movement and making wholesale criticisms of the mental health field. I am less in accord with this latter orientation. To put the matter bluntly, I believe that denying that there are psychiatric disorders which are brain disorders and require medication is like denying the existence of climate change. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide any very extensive survey of the anti-psychiatry movement here. Michel Foucault, R. D. Laing, and Thomas Szasz were all essential contributors to the movement’s main themes, and seem to have had the most influence on philosophical practitioners. Michel Foucault (1965) argued that there was a historical shift in the perception of madness as being a delusion about truth and reality, to seeing it instead as being a disorder of the will and normal behavior. Thus madness was no longer treated by walking, engaging with nature, or retiring from the artificialities of the social world, or highlighting them by exposure to the theater, but rather by a psychiatrist struggling with the patient to control the patient’s will and to subjugate his character. Thus, Foucault (1965) argues in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason that mental health fields had become a source of social oppression, leading to the birth of the asylum with the doctor

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becoming a kind “master of madness.” Coincidently, there were also other writers protesting the medicalization of mental illness. Laing (1959), another well-known critic of psychiatry, worked primarily with schizophrenics. He argued that psychosis was an understandable response of the injured inner self to environmental trauma, especially that inflicted by parents. Like Szasz, Laing did not see mental illness as a disease. Szasz is arguably the most important critic associated with antipsychiatry themes although he rejected any affiliation with the so-called “anti-psychiatry movement” on conservative political grounds; Szasz was a libertarian and associated the anti-psychiatry movement with radical political philosophies. He also was very critical of Laing and his existentialist focus. Szasz (2013) argued that the term “mental illness” is a social construct, a kind of metaphor, and that it is a confused blend of mental and physical terms. At base, psychiatry is a pseudoscience. Mental illnesses are not diseases and have no causal efficacy; in particular, they do not cause aberrant behavior. Instead, mental illnesses are defined in various versions of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual in terms of various behaviors. Both of the concepts “mental illness” and “mind” are indeed myths in this sense. Szasz (1965) also claimed that substance abuse is not a disease. It is a social construct created by those in power. As substance abuse is not a disease, it is not within the scope of medicine to fix it. It is a moral problem in that it is associated with behavior of which society does not approve, and it is the task of ethics, education, and religion rather than medicine to influence the behavior of which society disapproves. While Foucault, Laing, and Szasz have quite rightly influenced philosophical practitioners to criticize many current approaches to psychiatry, psychology, and substance abuse counseling, by themselves such arguments do not support any conclusion that that there are no psychopathologies which are the result of brain chemistry, or that addiction does not involve some genetic and biological features. Indeed, while there are no biological tests for bi-polar disorder or for schizophrenia, the behaviors in terms of which these disorders are defined are responsive to various types of anti-psychotic medications. Organizations like the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) have done a service to the community of families confronting mental illness in their families by educating the general public to recognize that major mental illnesses are a manifestation of problems with the brain, not the result of character flaws or bad parenting. “Mental illness” may be a myth, but there is nothing mythical about brain disorders. There is already ample evidence that schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and some depressive disorders are disorders of the brain.

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Review of recent research findings is beyond the scope of this paper, but we already know that PET scans show marked sluggishness in circulation and metabolism, a cortical dysfunction researchers call “hypo-frontality,” in patients with schizophrenia and depression. There is also a loss of gray matter in the brains of schizophrenic patients. One study detected loss of more than 10 percent in the parietal lobes; over five years this loss spread to engulf the rest of the brain and subjects with the worst brain tissue loss had the worst symptoms. A post-mortem brain study found a 40-90 percent loss of glial cells in subjects with depression and bipolar disorder (Burland and Brister 1997, 4: 17-18). The notion that psychosis in patients is the result of bad parenting is false, and denying that major psychopathologies are brain disorders does a disservice to philosophical counseling akin to the disservice done to psychiatry by psychiatrists who want to take a vote about what needs to be included in the latest version of the DSM rather than advancing sound empirical research findings to support their claims. Furthermore, while the question of whether substance abuse proves to be a disease remains to be answered, there is already some evidence to suggest that after progressive use of alcohol and drugs, addiction becomes a medical problem. There is also reason to believe that there are genetic factors which influence the development of addiction. It is certainly clear now that dual diagnosis approaches to substance abuse which treat it on a biopsychosocial model seem to promise the most hope for successful treatment. In sum, psychopathology and substance abuse are almost certainly multi-dimensional problems. For such clients, while the primary problem is not philosophical, philosophy as a kind of advanced cognitive therapy may have much to contribute to clients in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, intensive outpatient programs (IOPs), or substance abuse programs. Again, there is reason to suppose that while psychiatry and philosophical counseling are wholly different, they can be complementary and function cooperatively even as philosophers, especially philosophical practitioners, retain their legitimate function of serving as critics of other disciplines, including psychiatry and psychology. There has never been a greater need for cooperation between philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry. The main moral and socialpolitical problem today regarding psychiatry and substance abuse is not that the freedom of patients is being curtailed by their being committed to psychiatric facilities for long periods of time, as they were in the past. The main problem is that patients in need of mental health or substance abuse treatment cannot get it; the whole focus is upon minimal hospitalization,

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stabilizing patients on medication, and then releasing them often long before they are ready. And, there is no real choice; since the deinstitutionalization of American psychiatric care, there are 4-6 times the number of beds needed than are available to patients (Torrey 2014, 12538). In the long run, it seems that mental health and substance abuse treatment is being dictated not so much by pharmaceutical companies as by the insurance industry. To date, there has not been much work done on arguments for a moral or legal right to treatment. One basis for such arguments may be the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which holds that healthcare is a not merely a moral right, but a human right. Article 25 holds that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family including food, clothing, and medical care and necessary social services. (Gostin and Cable 2000, 32)

The International Covenants further protect and promote human rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) specifically mentions positive rights to mental health: Article 12 says that there is a “right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” (35), and the World Health Organization is currently working on a Mental Health Legislation Manual and related materials which will assist in reviewing and analyzing legal provisions at the national level (45). Clearly, however, there is much work that remains to be done. Human rights theorists have tended to work on negative liberty rights as opposed to positive rights, but conceptualizing mental health as a human right suggests that “states possess binding obligations to respect, defend, and promote that entitlement.” However, as the author quite rightly points out, there is considerable disagreement as to whether “mental health” is a meaningful, identifiable, operational and enforceable right, or whether it is merely inspirational or rhetorical. (103)

Stephen A. Green (2000) does an excellent job of summarizing and evaluating grounds for holding that the right to mental health care is a robust moral right, which can serve as a basis for justifying and criticizing legal rights to mental health care. He holds that the “authenticity” of a moral right is defensible if the right confers benefits to individual members of society and to the common good; he then argues that a right to mental health is defensible on both grounds. He points out that bioethical

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literature shows widespread support for the rights of all members of society to be able to meet their basic needs. He thinks Norman Daniels provides the best justification for a right to health care, including mental health treatment: it is a right because illness imposes a burden on what John Rawls calls “fair equality of opportunity,” where “those with similar abilities and skills should have similar life chances . . . the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social system.” He points out that Daniels’ argument is grounded in the maintenance of rational autonomy because, if people have reduced opportunities to secure resources for treatment, their autonomy is compromised in that they have fewer options to develop, restore, and exercise their autonomy. People with mental problems clearly have heavy burdens imposed not merely on the exercise of their autonomy, but on their autonomy itself, where ‘autonomy’ is defined as the ability to devise and revise life plans. Green then argues that a rights based claim to mental health care also serves the public good, as the widespread prevalence of mental health and substance abuse problems suggests that there is a high likelihood that there are substantial harms to family members and to the public at large. Providing mental health care will serve the public good by eliminating some of these more pernicious effects, e.g. violence, criminal behavior, sexual and domestic abuse, etc. Because mental health problems like depression often undermine treatment of physical health problems, mental health care would also decrease the costs associated with physical health care. The considerations adduced above also apply to a right to substance abuse treatment and counseling. While there are controversies about treating substance abuse as a disease, there is widespread agreement that at some point, addiction does become a medical problem. However, while the broad outlines of a right to medical (e.g., psychiatric) treatment can be established, all kinds of difficulties remain for further investigation. These include providing some analysis of what constitutes mental illness, the extent and types of treatment for mental illness to which people would have a right, how treatment is provided and by whom, etc. The same arguments based upon prima facie moral rights to autonomy and wellbeing presumably apply to justifying rights to counseling of various sorts, including philosophical counseling for mental illness and substance abuse. I would like to suggest that perhaps the model I developed to justify a right to rehabilitation for offenders will serve to justify rights to counseling for mental health and substance abuse clients. Part of the basis of that right rests upon a right to autonomy or, more

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specifically, to a right to develop the right sorts of competencies for making rational moral decisions. I have argued (Feary 2013a) that for people to make rational moral decisions they must at the very least: 1. Acquire the knowledge to recognize and to manage any problem or disease which impairs rational thought and action. Such problems involve the full battery of psychiatric and psychological problems (psychoses, neuroses, personality disorders, etc., together with addictive diseases involving drugs or alcoholism). Such problems include difficulties in managing stress or in recognizing psychological factors such as denial, projection, introjection, etc., which impair rational thinking; 2. Develop critical thinking skills which include competencies to recognize and articulate problems, to gather and assess relevant facts, to distinguish fact from opinion, to acquire, remember, and process information, to recognize alternatives and consequences, and to detect fallacies in their own thinking and the thinking of others; 3. Master at least minimal social and communication skills, together with some basic understanding that we live in a world with others who think, feel, and communicate differently, and that these differences must be understood and respected; 4. Learn to manage, modulate, and express emotions appropriately, to restrain impulsivity, to develop sufficient self-discipline to work towards aims, goals, and objectives chosen by and for themselves; 5. Develop the ability to reason morally through deciding what fundamental principles, beliefs, and values they may wish to choose, given some minimal knowledge of existing alternatives, to regulate their own thinking and conduct towards others; 6. Develop a personal identity, a secure and realistic sense of self, and an ability to maintain at least minimal self-esteem and self-respect in the face of criticism and peer pressure (Feary 2013b, 30-31). As I have argued in earlier articles, philosophy-based counseling programs can be very useful in helping clients develop these competencies. There are numerous controversies about the causes of homelessness. Many homeless clients are also mentally ill and substance abusers, but clearly the stressful conditions of being without shelter can contribute to both mental illness and substance abuse.

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Patricia Ann Murphy, in an intriguing article (1994), suggests major reasons why homelessness violates rights. Only the most basic contours of her careful and sophisticated argument can be mentioned here. She argues that we have a premier right to personhood and that “if there are impediments to this right, then all other rights, legal or moral, cannot find their proper mark” (Murphy 1994, 56-57). She then goes on to argue that a right to place follows from a right to personhood; what she calls “an existential right.” As she says, to be without a place is to be, at least experientially, diminished in personhood. Placelessness forces upon its victims a linguistic and psychological disenfranchisement. The diminishment bleeds into the social and psychological fabric of life. The constitutional quality of persons and the complex social construction of life are diminished if there is no place or enduring specific location, which is an opportunity for the accumulation of values and memories. (Murphy 1994, 60-61)

Furthermore, as “the clarity of self-definition” is impaired, little social integration is possible. Thus, Murphy’s argument suggests why homeless clients may lack a secure sense of self and the ability to feel a sense of community with others, which I have argued is part of the competencies essential for making rational moral decisions and why, like the mentally ill, substance abusers, and offenders, the homeless have rights to programs to address these problems. I omit here discussion of the additional necessity of permanent rather than merely temporary shelter for the homeless. In sum, there are grounds (albeit somewhat different grounds) for arguing that mentally ill patients, substance abusers, offenders, and homeless people have moral and existential rights to programs necessary to habilitate or rehabilitate them, so that they have the competencies to make rational moral decisions. Philosophical methods and theories are fundamental not only in justifying and arguing for such programs, but also in devising them.

A Philosophical Pilot Program: “Philosophy for Life” A pilot program, “Philosophy in Life,” which I developed for Excalibur: A Center for Applied Ethics for homeless shelters, is only a first small step in the direction of developing a program targeting clients who cycle between psychiatric hospitals, prisons, and homeless shelters. Our mission is to break the cycle and through programs, case management, and mentoring to

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help our clients escape what one theorist has called “the perpetual treadmill” (Wittington 2014). We began with a grim recognition of the logistical problems. The first of these is rapid turnover of clients in all three institutions and the geographical obstacles presented by release or discharge in different areas of the state. Longer programs are possible in correctional facilities, but even here, inmates are often transferred, reclassified, or released before a program can be completed. Any philosophical programs should be offered as part of a pre-release program so that the issues are fresh in clients’ minds at time of release or discharge. It did not seem advisable to start a program in prisons, however, because there is no guarantee about where or when offenders will be released. There are also major problems in initiating a program in a psychiatric hospital; one has to secure cooperation about recruiting appropriate patients for a cognitive-based program with similar discharge times. Because of these considerations, I decided to initiate the program in a homeless shelter where there are fewer bureaucratic hurdles. HIPPA and shelter confidentiality rules preclude the provision of psychiatric and criminal justice data, but program participants like offenders are usually willing to volunteer such information. My initial findings are that, typically, one might expect of an initial program of eighteen participants that fourteen will finish, all will be on parole or mandated by drug court, and at least twelve will be diagnosed with some psychiatric problems for which they are receiving medication or have been subjected to involuntary hospitalization. All will be technically homeless at the time of referral, but some will be planning to return to parental or spousal residences after parole and mandated treatment is concluded. There is no formal machinery for tracking clients, other than voluntary contact by them. This should improve when a system is in place assigning them trained mentors who would be available (through Skype). Finding a convenient location where computers are available to program participants is a further logistical problem; the institutions involved will not allow people who have been discharged or released on their properties. Dictated by risk management considerations, face-to-face meetings between mentors and clients must be restricted to one supervised day-time meeting. The philosophical counseling program that I developed consists of eight (depending upon scheduling) stand-alone group sessions for 8-15 participants. At Session One (“Your Philosophy of Life”) I distribute folders, copy books, and pens to the participants, encouraging them to keep philosophical journals and to organize any handouts they will receive at subsequent sessions and any papers essential to their lives at present. We

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then have a dialogue about philosophy, with an emphasis on the fact that they each already have a philosophy of life and they need to be aware of it and able to recognize what parts are productive or unproductive for them. By the conclusion of the dialogue, they should have some appreciation of the fact that the way you think affects the way you feel and behave as well as the sorts of relationships you have, and that philosophy will afford them the opportunity to examine their thinking in a deeper way than any psychotherapy. Session Two (“What Gives Your Life Meaning?”) is devoted to a dialogue about the meaning of life. The objective of the session is to encourage participants to think even more deeply about their own philosophies of life by examining what makes life significant for them. We discuss two or three philosophers and what they have had to say about the meaning of life. Usually, we discuss Tolstoy’s religious account of the meaning of life because it can be related to the issue of “turning their lives over to a Higher Power” which is part of their Twelve Step Program. Usually, at least two thirds of participants in Twelve Step programs have difficulty with this spiritual step. It can be very useful not only to discuss a religious approach like Tolstoy’s, but also to introduce other conceptions of spirituality (Feary 2014). Usually, I try to conclude with a brief introduction to Plato as an example of a secular spiritual approach, which provides a nice segue to the next two sessions. Sessions Three and Four (“The Rational Self”) open up the discussion to ways of leading the examined life and to the understanding that one way to see the self is to see it as rational. I usually ask for a volunteer to read a few paragraphs of the Allegory of the Cave and have participants talk about what has constituted a cave for them, and what has led them to undertake their journey to attain a higher vision or a better form of life of some kind. We always discuss Plato’s metaphor of the soul as charioteer and discuss the sorts of problems participants have had with emotions and appetites and how these problems might be addressed. I usually tell the group a little about Aristotle, particularly about rationality as sometimes involving the choice of a mean between two extremes, asking them to recollect cases when they made good and bad choices in this connection. Depending upon what I have heard and my assessment of the group, I will open up a discussion of other dimensions of rationality. This may involve talking about Epictetus and the effect of beliefs on emotion. It is useful to engage participants in speculating about the irrational beliefs and emotions which trigger their substance abuse and relapse. Sometimes it is useful to look at the concept of pleasure and friendship in Epicurean philosophy and about what types of friends it is rational for people in

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recovery to seek. Sometimes I talk about logic, mention a few common informal fallacies and invite participants to discuss some times when they, or someone else, have committed a fallacy, such as ‘over-generalizing.’ I may introduce some techniques to help them with rational decisionmaking. I also encourage them to write in their journals about relevant experiences or about being or becoming a rational self. Sessions Five and Six (“The Social Self”) are devoted to discussing topics in Ethics and Social Political Philosophy. These vary, but I always try to discuss Social Contract Theory and look at grounds for obeying the law, allowing ample time to discuss what a State of Nature might be like. This can be a good time to introduce different conceptions of human nature – egoistic versus social and altruistic – and to suggest that one’s vision of human nature can influence one’s relationships with others. We also explore what positive and negative rights they think participants have, and what sorts of correlative obligation they have to others. Usually, I introduce some discussion of Marx’s theory of alienation and work. These men need to obtain and retain jobs and their conception of work and their choice of work is fundamental to their success. Sessions Seven and Eight (“The Free and Responsible Self”) involve discussions of freedom, determinism, autonomy, and the competencies necessary for taking responsibility for their own lives. It is important in these final sessions to stress the importance of various support groups which can help clients continue to take responsibility for their own lives and support rational choice through being members of therapeutic communities. As yet, Excalibur has not begun training volunteers, but volunteer training and coordination is a topic for another paper. Our next objective will be to provide programs for homeless women. Thus far, I have found no really significant differences between homeless and incarcerated men. It remains to be seen whether there will be similar commonalities between homeless and incarcerated women. Obviously, there will be more differences in problems and needs when a homeless population includes refugees as clients. Discussions of the social self presumably will need to be expanded, and cultural differences in values and conceptions of the self and the good life will have to be explored.

Conclusion I have shown that the problems of mental illness, substance abuse, criminal behavior, and homelessness will probably be major social problems and a drain on the economy for the next decade. I have argued

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that a pro-active philosophical practice (PPP) has much to contribute to resolving these problems, both through influencing public policy by arguing for the rights of such populations to programs designed to help them, and through devising and delivering some of the programs necessary for habilitation and rehabilitation which take into account philosophical issues not addressed by current programs in prisons, drug rehabs, psychiatric hospitals, and homeless shelters. By reclaiming philosophical turf from other disciplines, philosophical practice can play a major role in resolving social problems and securing public recognition for the practical use of philosophy.

References Abbarno, G. John M, ed. 1999. The Ethics of Homelessness: Philosophical Perspectives. Amsterdam: Brill. Achenbach, Gerd B. 2002. “Philosophical Practice Opens Up the Trace to Lebenskonnerschaft.” In Philosophy in Society, edited by Henning Herrestad, Anders Holt, and Helge Svare, 7-15. Oslo: Unipub forlag. Ascoli, Micol, Andrea Palinski, John Arianda Owiti, Bertine De Jongh, and Kamaldeep S. Bhui. 2012. “The Culture of Care within Psychiatric Services: Tackling Inequalities and Improving Clinical and Organizational Capabilities.” Philosophy, Ethics, and Medicine 7 (12). At http://peh-med.com/content/7/1/12. Accessed June 30, 2016 Burland, J., and T. Brister, eds. 1997. NAMI Family-to-Family, A Nami Peer Education Program for Family Members of Adults Living with Mental Illness. 5th ed. National Alliance on Mental Illness: Education, Training, and Peer Support Center. Dudley, Michael, Derrick Silove, and Fran Gale. 2012. Mental Health and Human Rights: Vision, Praxis, and Courage. Oxford: Oxford University Press Feary, Vaughana. 2013a. “Vaughana Feary.” Philosophical Practice, 5 Questions, edited by J. Bresson Ladegaard Knox and J. Kyrre Olsen Friis, chap. 4. Birkerød, Denmark: Automatic Press. —. 2013b. “Philosophical Therapy in Correctional Facilities: Theory and Practice.” Journal of Humanities Therapy 4 (19). —. 2014. “Spirituality and Philosophical Practice: Counseling Clients in Crisis.” Philosophical Practice 9 (3): 1413-25. —. 2015. “Philosophical Practice from Feminist Perspectives.” In Practicing Philosophy, edited by Aleksandar Fatiü and Lydia Amir. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

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Foucault, Michel. 1965. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York, NY: Random House. Goodman, Sid. 2014. Clinical Psychology, The Psychodynamic Approach to Addiction Treatment; the Biopsychosocial Model Revisited. Boca Raton, FL: Caron Renaissance. Gostin, Lawrence, and Lance Gable. 2010. The Human Rights of Persons with Mental Disabilities: A Global Perspective on the Application of Human Rights Principles to Mental Health. Georgetown University Law Center. At http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/98 Green, Stephen A. 2000. “An Ethical Argument for a Right to Mental Health Care.” General Hospital Psychiatry 22: 2-26. Insel, Thomas 2015. “Director’s Blog: Mental Health Awareness Month: By the Numbers.” At: nimh.mih.gov/about/directprs/thomas-insel/ blog/2015/mental-health-awareness-month-by-thenumbers/blog/2015.shtml Kincade, Brian. 2013. “The Economics of the American Prison System.” Nov, 2013, at: http://bfelonyfree.com/archives/2264 Lahav, Ran, and Maria da Venza Tillmanns, eds. 1995. Essays on Philosophical Counseling. Boston, MA: University Press of America. Marinoff, Lou. 2002. Philosophical Practice. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Marinoff, Lou, and Daisaku Ikeda. 2012. The Inner Philosopher: Conversations on Philosophy’s Transformative Power. Cambridge, MA: Dialogue Path Press. McCoy, Terrence. 2015. “Meet the Outsider Who Accidentally Solved Chronic Homelessness.” The Washington Post, May 6. At: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/05/06/ meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic-homelessness/?utm – term=.e178edd1a5cc Accessed June 30, 2016. Murphy, Patricia Ann. 1999. “Home is Where the Heart Is: Homelessness and the Denial of Moral Personality.” In The Ethics of Homelessness, edited by G. John M. Abbarno, 63-79. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Nussbaum, Martha. 1994. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Radden, Jennifer H. 2012. “Recognition Rights, Mental Health, Consumers and Reconstructive Cultural Semantics.” Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine 7: 6-12. Sharkey, Paul. 1999. The Examined Life; Newsletter of the APPA 1 (1): 10. Szasz, Thomas. 1973. The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Conduct. New York, NY: Harper and Row.

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—. 2013. “The Ethics of Addiction.” In Applied Ethics in Mental Health Care: An Interdisciplinary Reader, edited by Dominic A. Sisti et al., 201-10. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sisti, Dominic A., Arthur L. Kaplan, and Hila Rimon-Greenspan. 2013. Applied Ethics in Mental Health Care, An Interdisciplinary Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Shutt, Russell K., and Stephen M. Goldfinger. 2011. Homelessness, Housing and Mental Illness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Torrey, E. Fuller. 2014. American Psychosis: How The Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wassserman, Jason A., and Jeffrey M. Clair. 2010. At Home on the Street, People, Poverty and A Hidden Culture of Homelessness. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner Publishers. Wittington, Dean. 2014. The Perpetual Treadmill. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse. Zong, Jie, and Jeanne Batalova, “Refugees and Asylees in the United States” October 28, 2015. Migration and Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, March 2017. info@migration policy.org.

CHAPTER SIX A NEW FIELD IN THE PRACTICE OF PHILOSOPHY LYDIA AMIR

What has the sexual act, so natural, so necessary, and so just, done to mankind, for us not to dare talk about it without shame and for us to exclude it from serious and decent conversation? . . . This is an action that we have placed in the sanctuary of silence, from which it is a crime to drag it out even to accuse and judge it. (Montaigne 1967, III, chap. 5, 644)

Sexuality is intrinsically amoral. This leaves us with the responsibility of devising our own sexual ethics. As an ethical field, party to the good life, sexuality is the business of philosophers and especially of practical philosophers. However, sexuality has not been addressed in philosophical practice’s literature or conferences. 1 This topic usually taint negatively those who discuss it, especially women. Yet this is an important subject which has to be put it on the agenda of philosophical practitioners. I thus chose it as the topic of this chapter, hoping that my advanced age would shelter me from the consequences involved in doing so. Philosophical practitioners cannot ignore sexuality for various reasons. First, sexuality is an ethical field; and philosophical practitioners should not ignore ethical concerns. By deeming sexuality an ethical field, I do not merely mean that it raises difficult ethical questions, such as related to adultery, fidelity, and jealousy, and, on another register, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia, sexual harassment, rape, perversion, etc. This view of sexuality unnecessarily restricts the quotidian

1

I proposed and chaired a panel on this topic in the 14th International Conference of Philosophical Practice in Bern, Switzerland, 2016, which included five short lectures followed by a discussion with the public. Written versions of all the lectures can be found in Amir et al. (forthcoming); an elaboration of my own lecture can be found in Amir (2016a).

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role of philosophical practitioners in relation to it. I rather mean that everything that is related to sexuality is entangled with ethics. As we well know, sexuality sometimes involves at least one other person, usually in his utmost frailty and vulnerability, whom we encounter not only with our own nakedness and frailty, but also with what soon becomes a display of egoistical desires. This alone makes of sexuality a highly sensitive ethical topic. And to make things worse, because the criterion of success here is measured by pleasure rather than by virtue, the ethical aspect of sexuality, even if resolved, is not a guarantee of good sexuality; it may even hinder it. As André Comte-Sponville rightly notes, reciprocity and equality are required from a moral point of view but are secondary from a sexual point of view (Comte-Sponville 2012, 253). As sex is amoral in itself, it is necessarily up to us to develop an ethic of sexual life. Second, one’s sexual relations involve philosophic views of oneself and one’s body, of others, of one’s relations to others and others’ to oneself, of beauty, attractiveness, age, gender, and most importantly, of pleasure and entitlement, of the senses and their role in one’s life, as well as of “giving” and “receiving,” of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance. All these significant and value-ridden philosophic conceptions are bound up in our sexual behavior. Bringing them to consciousness and outlining the controversies they generate among different persons is illuminating and has far-reaching consequences for the way sexuality is experienced. Significant outcomes follow from thinking through different views of what sexuality is and how it is related to the good life and to various elements of it, such as love or friendship, authenticity and freedom. Indeed, one could simplify the issue at stake by saying that because sexuality is commonly considered to be part of the good life (as is reported in many introductory anthologies of ethics), it is yet another reason to make it our business as philosophical practitioners. Third, sexuality has far-reaching consequences for one’s life, as it may bring much misery as well as ecstatic happiness. Yet it is a topic on which people are unusually shy and reserved, partly because of education, which makes it a shameful subject, partly because the grass being always greener on the other side, we assume that we give others a superior vantage-point to judge us; but mainly, as with common human problems, because everyone falsely assumes that one’s sexual problems are personal rather than representative of the human condition. Fourth, the psychologist or the sexologist may be rarely useful when common sexual problems, interests, and reflections are at stake, as I believe that most people would avoid consulting such professionals unless utterly convinced that they have a problem they cannot solve and which

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can be solved only by those professionals. In this area, however, we all have problems that cannot be solved, as our sexuality confronts us with contradictions, limitations, and frustrations which are ultimately rooted in the human condition, Fifth, the unofficial position of liberal states towards sexual and ethical matters – that they should be left to personal preference – is not satisfactory. There is a need to bridge the gap between liberty and equality by creating equal capacity to fulfill one’s liberty. This can be done by complementing people’s education with philosophic capacities that facilitate becoming responsible and autonomous – necessary condition for devising the kind of sexual ethics one needs. Bridging the gap between liberty and equality, especially when it is not sufficiently recognized (as in liberal states), is the role of philosophical practitioners. Thus, a philosophic and practical path has to be walked in order to incorporate harmoniously in one’s life the power of sexuality, or alternatively, accept gracefully the tensions it continuously generates. A sexual authenticity has to be reached, renewed, and practiced within one’s life amongst the political jargon and ideologies that mar our pleasures, now more than ever.3 Between the extremes of libertinism and Spartanism, a specific virtue can to be practiced – eroticism – which involves leisurely enjoying that which is. In that sense, a good sexuality is a path to wisdom, as plenitude teaches us to enjoy that which is instead of that which is not (really) there. This makes of a happy sexuality an achievement, not a given. As with all achievements, it cannot be reached once and for all, but has to be renewed as life itself. Defined in this way, sexuality is the business of philosophers of life or, as they are more commonly called, practical philosophers. Allow me to elaborate on these themes.

Mapping the Conceptual Terrain There are various ways in which a practical philosopher can contribute to the topic of sexuality. The first is mapping the conceptual terrain. This is a significant step as it may dispel much contemporary confusion. A good beginning consists in differentiating between the two great forces that love and sex represent. This is not an easy task, as the Romantic tradition of love has blurred the difference between them, and to make things worse, has linked them both with marriage and children. But as the founder of the 3

It is possible to read tens of books on sexuality, without finding anything directly related to sex, as social and political discussions have taken over this field.

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Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, Alan Soble, says, children, marriage, love, and sex are four different things that can and do exist separately of each other (Soble and Halwani 2017, 11), each, of course, deserving its proper mapping. While we understand that contemporary structures have made children and marriage independent of each other (having children today is also dissociated from sex and from love of one’s partners), and we know that marriage can exist without love or sex or children, most of us still find it hard to accept that Romantic love and sex can be differentiated. This Romantic view has been recently under attack as well: Soble (and others)4 insist that sex without love can be better as sex; and Romantic love’s historic relation with sexual exclusiveness is revisited (in part thanks to generous Canadian grants) 5 with the aim of establishing a theory of polyamory that legitimizes the difference between sex and love (Jenkins 2016). Let’s begin with love. I introduced this topic at the 2nd International Conference on Philosophical Practice, and have written on it since (Amir 2000), as well as on the role philosophical practitioners can play regarding this significant subject (2001; 2002; 2004). 6 For a conceptual and historical analysis of the topic, as well as a good discussion of the relations of love and sexuality, I recommend Irving Singer’s three volumes on the nature of love (Singer 1984-1987). Singer describes there the Western traditions of love, each claiming that its understanding of love is superior to the others. “What is the nature of love?” appears as a controversial question, with four main mutually exclusive answers (Platonic, Christian, Romantic, Realistic), each with its own view of sexuality and of how sexuality relates to love. As not all four answers can be true, I find this approach illuminating: it clarifies the options and makes us choose. According to the Platonic tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and later Platonism and Neo-Platonism), love (eros) is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good. Sex, though not evil or forbidden, cannot provide what eros aims at. Its insufficiency is clear once the quest for love is clarified. Plato considers sexuality a powerful force on its own, the famous black horse that has to be tamed. But the status of sexuality is less respectable in Aristotelianism, which exchanges eros for philia 4

See Vannoy (1980), Goldman (2002), and Promeratz’s discussion of sex as pleasure (1999). 5 See the Metaphysics of Love Project, and the first pages of Carrie Jenkins’s book (2016). 6 See also Amir, Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility (2017) and Taking Philosophy Seriously (forthcoming).

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(friendship), and even less so in Neo-Platonism, given the negative attitude toward matter and the mystical goal of merging with the Alone. For the Christian tradition, love (agape) is a free bestowal, best exemplified by God’s attitude toward us, and is thus unrelated to desire and most certainly unrelated to sexuality. The origin of sexuality is evil, part of original sin, according to a specific Christian reading of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve’s fall. This negative view of sexuality is partly at the source of the ideal of abstinence that has been followed first by monks and nuns and later by priests in Medieval Christianity and Catholicism. While this ideal was rejected as untenable and itself a source of much sin by Martin Luther and subsequent Protestants, in the Christian tradition, sexuality is governed by strict rules and confined to married couples. The Romantic tradition has made love between two persons the sole redemptive force and has incorporated sexuality as a natural expression of this love. It is with marriage and children that this tradition is mostly at odds, more in practice than in theory. Yet the very feasibility of the ideal of lasting sexual love has been debated among optimistic and pessimistic Romantics. The Realist tradition (the Epicureans, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Freud, among others) considers sexuality to be the most fundamental drive, and reduces all love to thwarted attempts at it. This tradition antedates Sigmund Freud and finds a notable expression in Epicureanism, especially in Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things. To sum up, the Platonic tradition maintains that we love best when we love the Good, the Christian tradition, when we love God, the Romantic tradition, when we love another human being, and the Realistic tradition, when we recognize that love is nothing but sex. According to the latter tradition, love is merely sexuality, for the Romantic tradition, however, sexuality and love are two different things which are meant to harmonize, for the Christian tradition, sex is a stranger in the picture, whilst for the Platonic tradition, it is a merely a confusion. These traditions are very much alive today. Confusing the Realistic and the Romantic traditions may be at the root of many contemporary predicaments. It is thus important to clarify this issue. But this does not mean that one should endorse a tradition of love once and for all. Life is long enough to allow for changes in one’s perspective, according to one’s needs as well as one’s deepened understanding of love and human limitations. Although examining the nature of love may be called for in a discussion of sexuality, we now understand why we cannot further clarify

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sexuality by explaining love. “What is sexuality?” however, turns out to be just as controversial as the nature of love. Igor Primoratz’s analysis in Ethics and Sex (1999) shows that sexuality has been conceived as a means of reproduction (mainly by religious thinkers), as involving love and intimacy (Scruton 1986), as a form of body-language (Solomon 2002), and as no more than pleasure (Vannoy 1980; Goldman 2002). Sexologists have usually a tolerant vision of sexuality: they leave it to mutual agreement between consenting adults. But I believe this assumes a degree of autonomy and authenticity that is rarely attained without effort. Autonomy is necessary to retain one’s independence without being susceptible to pressure to conform or to please the other. Authenticity is the outcome of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. We can simplify the issue by saying that “I like it” and “I don’t like it” are the sole relevant criterion for sexual practices. This may well be the last criterion but it cannot be the first, I believe. This means that contrary to common opinion sexuality is not an immediate experience. Rather, it is mediated by various values, beliefs, and customs, which call for a philosophic revision if authenticity and autonomy are to be attained. If there is a field in which conceptual elucidation alone seems ridiculous (apart from humor), it is surely sexuality. Sexual selfknowledge involves a personal exploration whose purpose is mapping the field and finding out one’s particular configuration in it. Very much like a scientific investigation, we should have hypotheses to refute and we should look for situations which would help us advance in self-knowledge. Progress is made not by confirming what we think we know, but by exploring uncharted territory in as safe an environment as possible, and by drawing sound conclusions from our experiences. This is not as simple as it sounds, because there are many variables to take into account. Concern with one’s reputation may get in the way, as well as other societal introjected norms, but one’s level of anxiety when trying something new should be also taken into account. All these as well as other factors 7 influence one’s arousal, which in turn impacts our 7

Shame at our vulnerability and disgust at our bodily functions and eventual decay may be projected by men onto women and interiorized by the latter. These are significant hurdles, whose effects I described and hopefully showed how to counter in Amir (2015). On quite another level of problematization, Luce Irigaray argues that the “imaginary” (or imagination) is lacking in women, due to their being objects of desire for men, used as commercial commodities and pitted against each other by competition, which creates jealousy amongst them. This makes women incapable of desiring. Unless they develop such a female imagination, authentic desire won’t follow. But such development is impossible in today’s society, she

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capacity to change the initially disgusting or ridiculous into the sexual and pleasurable. Ian Miller has pointed out in The Anatomy of Disgust that the sexual intersects with the disgusting, and rightly so (Miller 1997). But this points to the possibility of being pressured into disregarding how one immediately feels, which should be avoided at all costs, if one’s sexual authenticity is to be revealed. This means that while one’s preconceptions should be systematically evaluated, some will still be held dearly while others will be abandoned, as one attempts to harmonize the human being and the woman or man one is. Finally, one’s views of one’s relation to sexuality, its goals, and its place in one’s life at this point should be made explicit and readily available if the aim of graceful action emanating from a harmonious self is to be attained. Following the Platonic model, in such a self, desires, emotions, and thoughts correspond to each other and work harmoniously together. But if they don’t (in principle or in practice), the elaborate epistemological tool that humor represents may prove necessary to hold one’s contradictions together. This is not a simple task for another reason as well: in this realm we are not solo dancers. We are rather dancing tango with partners who not only have psychological make-ups and philosophical views of their own, but who were raised in particular societies, with specific gender preconceptions. Harmony here, as Plato already noted following Socrates’ death, is not only an internal matter; it also involves the conditions to fit in society. We can consider this further complication as proof that society at large will benefit from the philosophic discussion this field affords, especially since political and ideological overtones have monopolized this subject. Instead of saying that the private is the political, we could now say that the private is the philosophical, for the political has to be criticized as well. In particular, the new pressure to define oneself as homosexual or heterosexual, and various feminist critical views of heterosexuality – when they overstep their role as consciousness’ awakeners and protectors of difference – should be criticized as standing in the way of autonomous and authentic searching, a search philosophers should endorse, if not assist.

believes. See Irigaray’s “Female Desire” (1985, 23-33); and, for a feminine view of sexuality, which differs from contemporary accounts such as Thomas Nagel’s and Robert Solomon’s (Soble 2008), see Moulton (2002).

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Pessimistic Views of Sexuality The depth of the sexual drive, obscure as the origin and purpose of life and ambiguous as its best manifestations, could be echoed in the philosopher’s understanding of sexuality. In most religions, sexuality is either venerated as a divine power, or suppressed as the worst enemy, or regulated to an uncommon degree. As an aspect of human embodiment, sexuality was considered ancillary to the canonical concerns of Western philosophy due to its close affinity with merely animal pleasures. It was conceived as directly opposed to, and often capable of overpowering the supposedly uniquely human faculty of rationality (Pryba 2015, 192). The philosophers who fought rationality’s supremacy found a place for it. Exemplary here is Arthur Schopenhauer, who introduced the issue of sexuality into Western philosophy. Sexuality embodies the Schopenhaurean will to life more strongly than any other urge or desire; hence it is responsible for the misery of the human condition more than anything else. Even the most elevated form of romantic love is nothing but a mental addition or justification for the natural need for sex and the species’ desire to maintain itself. After succumbing to our sexual desires, we realize that we have once again been deceived by the instinct of survival that seeks procreation through us. We are constantly sexually drawn to persons who do not otherwise suit us. This suits the interest of the procreation of the species rather than ours. “Love,” whose purpose is to blind us, leaves us as soon as a child is born, but not without pain and terrible consequences. Thus, the lessening of sexual desire with age is to be welcomed as a liberation, from the viewpoint of the individual. But philosophically, sexuality is a very important subject, Schopenhauer argues. Through it, we can glimpse the will’s workings, as it is “the most complete manifestation of the will-to-live, its most distinctly expressed type” (1844, 2, 514). And provided we live as knowers more than as sufferers, as he recommends, reality itself is revealed to us through sexuality, for the sexual drive “springs from the depths of our nature” (1844, 2, 511). Indeed: Man is concrete sexual drive; for his origin is an act of copulation, and his desire of desires is an act of copulation, and this impulse alone perpetuates and holds together the whole of his phenomenal existence. (1844, 2, 514)

Schopenhauer’s explanation enables to account for the political and religious interest in sexuality, and for its scarcely veiled significance in our lives:

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It is sometimes forgotten than Schopenhauer considers life not only as tragedy, but as tragi-comedy. The futile attempts to subdue sexuality are a source of amusement for him: This . . . is the piquant element and the jest of the world, that the chief concern of all men is pursued secretly and ostensibly ignored as much as possible. But, in fact, at every moment we see it seat itself as the real and hereditary lord of the world, out of the fullness of its own strength, on the ancestral throne, and looking down from thence with scornful glances, laugh at the preparations which have been made to subdue it, to imprison it, or at least to limit it and if possible to keep it concealed, or indeed so to master it that it shall only appear as a subordinate, secondary concern of life. (1844, 2, 513)

As “it is evident that human consciousness and thinking are by their nature necessarily fragmentary” (1844, 2, 138), the unconscious processes that fill up the gaps and provide psychological continuity are expressions of the will. And, as “the sexual impulse is the most vehement of all craving, the desire of desires, the concentration of all our willing” (1844, 2, 514), we gain through it and its workings an intimation of the human condition we could not have gained otherwise. 8 This passage is not unique. Here is another: “Next to the love of life, [sexual love] shows itself . . . as the strongest and most active of all motives, and incessantly lays claim to half the powers and thoughts of the younger portion of mankind. It is the ultimate goal of almost all human effort; it has an unfavourable influence on the most important affairs, interrupts every hour the most serious occupations, and sometimes perplexes for a while even the greatest minds. It does not hesitate to intrude with its trash, and to interfere with the negotiations of statesmen and the investigations of the learned. It knows how to slip its love-notes and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts” (1844, 2, 533).

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Whilst Schopenhauer follows Plato in making eros the most important force in the world, he gives sexuality a significant philosophic place that is denied in Plato’s philosophy. Plato further elaborates on love rather than sex; yet by reducing love to sexuality, Schopenhauer endows sexuality with the most important role. This view of sexuality has been adopted by Freud, along with various other Schopenhauerian ideas, as many have shown and Freud himself has acknowledged. 9 The centrality of sexuality is commonly but unjustly considered the discovery of psychoanalysis. It may be thus significant to highlight philosophy’s contribution to the matter. Freud’s own contribution is important as well, however, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains in his own discussion of sexuality: Whatever the theoretical declarations of Freud may have been, psychoanalytical research is in fact led to an explanation of man, not in terms of his sexual substructure, but to a discovery in sexuality of relations and attitudes which had previously been held to reside in consciousness. Thus the significance of psychoanalysis is less to make psychology biological than to discover a dialectical process in functions thought of as “purely bodily,” and to reintegrate sexuality into the human beings. (Merleau-Ponty 1981, 138; quoted in Welton 1999, 158-59)

It may be interesting to highlight here Freud’s pessimism about sexuality. Freud presents sexual love as the model for all happiness, but argues that 9

See, for example, the Preface to the fourth edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), where Freud links his view(s) to Schopenhauer and Plato: “Some of what this book contains – its insistence on the importance of sexuality in all human achievements and the attempt that it makes at enlarging the concept of sexuality – has from the first provided the strongest motives for the resistance against psychoanalysis . . . . We might be astonished at this . . . . For it is some time since Arthur Schopenhauer . . . showed mankind the extent to which their activities are determined by sexual impulses – in the ordinary sense of the word . . . . And as for the ‘stretching’ of the concept of sexuality . . . anyone who looks down with contempt upon psychoanalysis from a superior vantage-point should remember how closely the enlarged sexuality of psychoanalysis coincides with the Eros of the divine Plato” (1905, 134). “Divine Plato” was Schopenhauer’s way of referring to Plato, too (1844, 1, xv). In a lecture at the Vienna Psychiatric Clinic Freud commented in 1917 on his Schopenhauerian tint: “You may perhaps shrug your shoulders and say: “This isn’t natural science, that is Schopenhauer’s philosophy!” But Ladies and Gentlemen, why should not a bold thinker have guessed something that is afterwards confirmed by sober and painstaking detailed research?” (Freud 1933, 107). There are various studies on Freud and Schopenhauer, see, e.g. Young and Brook (1994).

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sexuality is entangled with the origin of our unhappiness in such a way that sex cannot resolve it. As the remarks at the end of the fourth chapter of Civilization and Its Discontents make clear, something inherent in the sexual function itself thwarts complete sexual happiness: it is the aggression built into it. Indeed, an aggressive destructiveness, described by Freud as a libidinal destructive fury, is at the basis of human love. This leads to a heightened sense of guilt, which brings about the loss of happiness. Even if the guilt we feel about it is somehow taken away, that aggression cannot be quenched, as that would be tantamount to the successful breaking down of the world’s resistance to, or, more fundamentally, difference with, the ego. Thus, Leo Bersani explains that for Freud, “we can adapt to that which makes us incapable of adaptation.” However, “to go any further would be to cure ourselves of being human” (Bersani 2009, 132). Freud’s thoughts on aggression have been compared with those of Georges Bataille (Moore 2015, 70). When sexuality is concerned, however, Bataille considers aggression the only force at play. 10 The interest in Bataille’s view of eroticism lies in his concept of nonknowledge or the impossible, to which eroticism necessarily leads. For Bataille, this is the Divine. 11 Bataille endows sexuality with a specific mysticism, in which the victim who is symbolically put to death fulfills a religious ideal. Bataillean mysticism may be erroneous, but its concept of the impossible or non-knowledge, which points to the boundaries of our understanding, may explain the epistemological role sexuality is endowed with in many mystical paths and the predominant role it plays in sexuality either overtly or covertly. Freud noticed that masochistic and sadistic perversions were so widespread between the two wars that they should not be called perversions anymore (Moore 2015, 72). This may partly account for JeanPaul Sartre’s view of sexuality as necessarily sado-masochistic, yet the influence of the Hegelian philosophy of master and slave relationship is also a good contender. For Sartre, each partner attempts to subjugate the other by denying his or her freedom or consciousness. But this attempt is futile not only because subjectivity cannot be annihilated, but also because if it were possible, one would be left in the presence of an object rather than a subject, which is not what is initially desired. Both sadism and

10

For violence and aggression and its relation with sexuality, see Barak (2003, chap. 7). 11 Bataille (2007, chap. IX, 119, 104; X, 122). On Bataille, see Amir (2016b).

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masochism are thus disclosed as defeated projects, but for Sartre, human sexuality necessarily hovers between these two poles.12 To this pessimistic trend within modern philosophy and psychology (Schopenhauer, Freud, Sartre) one should add the Nietzschean view that love is nothing but war between the sexes, his misogyny as well as Schopenhauer’s, and Immanuel Kant’s view of sexuality as not respecting the other as an end, and of sexuality as morally faulty unless redeemed by consent of mutual sexual “use” which the marital contract represents. Looking back at the history of philosophy and thus necessarily to ancient philosophy as well, we may note that, except for the Cyrenaics, no philosophical school advocated sexual pleasure. The Epicureans considered it a natural but unnecessary desire, and the Cynics emphasized in often shocking public demonstrations how easily the sexual drive can be satisfied. As mentioned above, by recommending philia instead of eros as the right attitude between lovers, Aristotle toned down Plato’s recognition of the power of this “madness” (Phaedrus). Already Plato had divested sexuality of a significant role by denouncing it as an inauthentic means to the ends of love. And, in Neo-Platonism’s mystical reading of Plato, sexuality was tied up with matter, the lowest manifestation of the Divine, thus making overcoming it a condition for the mystical end of merging with the Divine. It remains to be asked, then, what can philosophy contribute to sexuality, if these cautious, maybe discerning, but surely pessimistic views are discarded?

A New Somaticism Sex is considered a somatic activity. If “soma” is too narrowly defined, the somatic view of sex could be accused of disregarding the part that imagination and desire plays in it. As the first obvious example of mindbody dysfunction in the Cartesian famous distinction, it is odd that impotence and other disharmonies between mind and body are not discussed by René Descartes. Michel de Montaigne, whom Descartes knew well, did address this topic, but more importantly, he commented on the soul-mind’s association with the body in relation to pleasure and sexuality: 12

For the impossible project sexuality carries see Sartre (1957, part III, chap. III, sections I-II), Bataille (2007), and Plato’s Symposium, discussed in Amir (2001 and 2017). For Sartre, it is an impossible project because sexuality aims to annihilate the other’s subjectivity; for Bataille, because it aims at reaching the divine; and for Plato, because it cannot provide that which loves aims at, the perpetual possession of the good.

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Others feel the sweetness of some satisfaction and of prosperity; I feel them as they do, but it is not in passing and slipping by. Instead we must first study it, savor it, and ruminate it . . . . They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without being conscious of them . . . . I meditate on any satisfaction; I do not skim over it, I sound it, and bend my reason . . . to welcome it. Do I find myself in some tranquil state? Is there some voluptuous pleasure that tickles me? I do not let me senses pilfer it, I bring my soul into it, not to implicate herself, but to enjoy herself, not to loose herself, but to find herself. And, I set her, for her part, to admire herself in this prosperous estate, to weigh and appreciate and amplify the happiness of it. She measures the extent of her debt to God for being at peace with her conscience and free from other inner passions, for having her body in its natural condition, enjoying controlledly and adequately the agreeable and pleasant functions with which he is pleased to compensate by his grace for the pains with which his justice chastises us in its turn. (Montaigne 1967, III, chap. 13, 854)

And: Is it not an error to consider some actions less worthy because they are necessary? . . . To what purpose do we dismember by divorce a structure made up of such close and brotherly correspondence? On the contrary, let us bind it together again by mutual services. Let the mind arouse and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body check and make fast the lightness of the mind. (Montaigne 1967, III, chap. 13, 855)

Not only is sexuality not merely somatic, and sometimes, with age and physical impairment, not somatic at all, it is an activity where the whole human being participates, making it a unique practical instrument for the unification of all faculties. That sexuality is not only somatic strikes me as good news, because as Donn Welton makes clear in his introduction to one of the anthologies on the body that he edited, a unified theory of the body does not exist (Welton 1999; see also 1998). Whilst he deems this field “one of the most active areas of philosophic reflection at the present” (1999, 6), philosophical practitioners cannot wait for such a theory to exist. Nor is glancing at the sophisticated continental theories especially helpful. As is well known, Descartes’ treatment of the body as ultimately a machine and making the mind the real problem for philosophy has been extended into analytic philosophy. This treatment has been challenged by continental theories, beginning with Edmund Husserl’s (or Max Scheler’s) differentiation between the lived-body (Leib) and the body under a strict

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physical description (Körper). 13 Husserl sought to problematize the body instead of the mind. Descartes’ 17th century dissident follower, Benedict Spinoza, has already famously written that no one knows what a body can do. But one had to wait until the 20th century (notwithstanding forerunners in the 19th century, such as Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, who each used concepts of the body to subvert Cartesian dualism) for attempts for find an interest in unlocking the concept of the mind and of personhood through a new understanding of the body. Husserl’s followers include those who mainly focused on human embodiment (such as Martin Heidegger and Sartre), and Merleau-Ponty’s rich theory (1945; 1964) of the interrelationship among intentionality, the body, and the earth. A second cluster of theories uses appropriations and insights from psychoanalysis, social history, literary theory and gender theory, and include Lacan, Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Irigaray (see Welton 1999). For a defense of sexuality, we have to go back to Montaigne. Apart from a vision which reduces love to sex, we find in Montaigne, in contradistinction to others in the Realist tradition, who by lowering love do not elevate sexuality (such as the Epicureans), a defense of sexuality which is shared by Freud, but associated with an optimism regarding sexual happiness and happiness tout court. Beginning with a criticism of religious attitudes that condemn the sexual act, he follows with criticizing those philosophers who dismiss it by stressing the angelic in the human, and who recommend transcending human materiality and its pleasures. Montaigne’s criticism could be applied to his dissident readers, such as Descartes and Blaise Pascal, but especially to his most faithful yet aspiring follower, Friedrich Nietzsche. It can be read in his chapter, “On Some Verses of Virgil” (1967, III, chap. 5), among other places, and, as I will continue to refer to Montaigne below, his criticism can be summed up for the moment with the following quotation: “What a monstrous animal to be a horror to himself, to be burdened by his pleasures, to regard himself as a misfortune” (III, chap. 5, 670).14 His more positive account of sexuality is predicated on the significance of experience, pleasure, and the acceptance of humanity as it is, without finding unnecessary flaws in it, thus leading to a unified vision of the human being as a condition of happiness and sexual happiness. The unification of the human being and the emphasis on the whole of human experience as relevant to human life found expression, after

13 14

On this issue, see Welton (1999, 7n5). See the list of references for my work on Montaigne and Nietzsche.

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Montaigne, and arguably, after Spinoza,15 oddly enough in a 18th century religious thinker, Johann Georg Hamann. Because of his attack on rationality in the midst of the Enlightenment movement that venerated it, this friend and neighbor of Kant rehabilitated sexuality, and did so on unexpectedly religious grounds. His conversion to the religion of his youth, Lutheranism, led him to argue that the religious significance of human life is the total human being in its materiality, nutrition, excrements, and sexuality. Self-knowledge meant, after a descent to hell, a joyful embrace of our materiality (see Amir 2014). The view that calls for cultivation of the total human being has often been repeated since Hamann. A common view of Romanticism, Existentialism, and Pragmatism, it has recently been at the center of Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics. Before engaging with Shusterman’s view, sexuality’s fate in Western philosophy is worth recalling. An aspect of human embodiment, sexuality has been viewed as ancillary to the canonical concerns of philosophy due to its close affinity with merely animal pleasures. It was conceived as directly opposed to, and often capable of overpowering, the supposedly uniquely human faculty of rationality. Russel Pryba explains that as a result, in the Western tradition at least, if sexuality was addressed by philosophy at all,

15

Though Spinoza does not address sexuality particularly in this passage, he is renowned for the following emphasis on pleasure’s role in the good life: To use things, therefore, and take pleasure in them as far as possible – not, of course, to the point where we are disgusted with them, for there is no pleasure in that – this is the part of a wise man. It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theatre, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another. For the human Body is composed of a great many parts of different natures, which constantly require new and varied nourishment, so that the whole body may be equally capable of all the things which can follow from its nature, and hence, so that the Mind also may be equally capable of understanding many things. This plan of living, then agrees best with our principles and with common practice. So, if any other way of living [is to be commended], this one is best, and to be commended in every way. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part 4, Proposition 45, Corollary 2, Scholium) For Spinoza on pleasure, see Amir, Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (work under contract).

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it was as instances of irrational appetites that could be properly controlled by the pursuit of a philosophical life, rather than as subjects for philosophical reflection which could deepen and enliven the most basic aspects of human experience. (Pryba 2015, 192)

That means that, in the West, sexuality has not often been incorporated into the central philosophical projects of self-formation and selfknowledge. The conceptual resources for investigating sexual pleasures are much richer in non-Western traditions. But a woman may be at a disadvantage here, as in many other places, as most texts and reflections do not make her the subject of investigation. At best, her pleasure is conducive to more masculine pleasure or other benefit (for example, ars erotica was recommended in Chinese philosophy because it was good for [the man’s] health).17 Pryba treats ars erotica and ars gastronomica on the same level and diagnoses the approach to both as similar. Yet he does note the singular fate of eroticism in the reception of the new field of somaesthetics. Let me tell this story in order to relate, albeit somewhat anecdotally, somaesthetics to practical philosophy, and emphasize both the responsibility of practical philosophers and their solitude amidst philosophers. Following his work on pragmatist aesthetics, Shusterman published Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (1996), which he presented in a key-note lecture on the art of living in an international conference on philosophical practice (2004). As a certified teacher of the Feldenkrais method, Shusterman has been one of the few philosophers to insist on the need for somaticism (see Amir 2017). He followed through with Body Consciousness (2008) and Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics (2012). Yet Pryba explains that “the initial formulation of somaesthetics avoided directly treating the obvious topic of ars erotica . . . in favor of a less controversial theoretical approach.” In the former book, however, Shusterman began to treat in earnest the erotic arts with a discussion of Michel Foucault’s criticism of heteronormative sexual practice. The latter book transcends the limitations of this approach by discussing ars erotica on the basis of ancient Indian and Chinese texts (Pryba 2015, 193). In a recent symposium on his work on somaesthetics, however, Shusterman confesses that he is “cautiously hesitant” about the “research” related to “dimensions of his work in somaesthetics that have so far received much less discussion.” He further explains that “my best friends in China specifically advised me not to publish a Chinese translation of my 17

For ancient Chinese eroticism, see Goldin (2002).

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article of erotic aesthetics because it might be misunderstood and damage the very positive Chinese reception of my pragmatist and somaesthetic theories.” Thus, he has developed since then another part of his research, “ars gastronomica” instead of “ars erotica.”18 By treating ars erotica and ars gastronomica on the same level, Pryba ignores the fact that in contemporary culture eating is public and sexuality is not, and, to use a telling example, eating is the topic of many hours of television broadcasting and sexuality of none. The delicacy of the subject coupled with the reluctance to accept a public discussion of it, which Shusterman acknowledges, makes the concern with sexuality all the more significant and philosophical practitioners all the more solitary if they were to embark on the mission of incorporating it within the good life. Now, turning to somaesthetics, the following recommendations can be gathered from Shusterman’s remarks on sexual somaestheticism. First, somaesthetics is a theoretical framework that takes the entirety of human bodily experience as a proper object for philosophical reflection, and which also regards the sites of bodily experience as opportunities to engage in the meliorative practice of creative self-fashioning. Following John Dewey, and illustrating the fact that somaesthetics at least partially emerged from the tradition of Pragmatist Aesthetics, Shusterman notes that instrumental value is not inconsistent with intrinsic value as “our intrinsic enjoyment of good sex is no less knowing that it is good to us.” By rejecting the intrinsic/instrumental distinction as it pertains to aesthetic value, he opens up the possibility of somatic education and selfimprovement. Thus, he writes, Ars erotica – with its cultivation of sensory perception, sensuous mastery, psychological insight, ethical sensibility, and artistic and cognitive skills – can surely be recommended somaesthetically for its wide-ranging values of edification. (Shusterman 2012, 287)

And: When studied and practiced with careful mindfulness and sensitivity as part of one’s project of melioristic self-cultivation, the art of lovemaking can bring rewarding cognitive, ethical and interpersonal improvements that transcend the limits of momentary sexual pleasure, thus promoting the somaesthetic projects of augmenting our perceptual and performative powers and enriching our work of self-creation. (Shusterman 2012, 21) 18

See Pryba (2015). Shusterman went on to publish “Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating,” in an anthology on Body Aesthetics (2015b; see Shusterman 2015a, 207).

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While all that Shusterman says is true, I believe sexuality is more than a ground for aesthetic self-creation and sensual self-perfection, as the authors discussed in the previous section rightly sensed. It is also an epistemological tool,19 which provides a unique insight into the other and ourselves, our bodies, our animal-nature, as well as our limitations in knowing, our finitude and mortality, but also which clarifies our vitality, and through it, enables a direct intimation of life itself, call it metaphysical or spiritual. The plenitude good sexuality affords is not only a-political but also deeply irreligious, which may explain why it is never encouraged. Because plenitude desires nothing more, it frees us from transcendent aspirations, from conceptions of desire as lack and of wisdom as acceptance of misery. It is a practice of desiring that which is, thus, of satisfying oneself with reality. In that sense, it is no less than an initiation to wisdom.20 These lofty considerations should not obscure the intrinsic relations of sexuality with humor. I began this chapter with a quote from Montaigne referring to the shame and honest shame (“modesty” in English, “pudeur” in French) that are attached to sexuality. Shame ensures that talking about it would be almost impossible and that she who does would be tainted. The reasons for shame are controversial: it may originate in our education, or stem from the habit of clothing ourselves, the necessary egoism sexuality involves, or the transgression, even the aggression, inherent in it.21 Whatever its origins are, however, shame calls for indirect ways of alluding to sexuality. .

19

Merleau-Ponty briefly commented on the kind of epistemology that eroticism involves: “Erotic perception is not a cogitation which aims at a cogitatum; through one body it aims at another body, and takes place in the world, not in a consciousness . . . . There is an ‘erotic comprehension’ not of the order of understanding, since understanding subsumes an experience, once perceived, under some idea, while desire comprehends blindly by linking body to body . . . . Thus sexuality is not an autonomous cycle. It has internal links with the whole active and cognitive being, these three sectors of behaviour displaying one typical structure, and standing in a relationship to each other of reciprocal expression.” He added, however, that “here we concur with the most lasting discoveries of psychoanalysis” (“The Body in its Sexual Being,” quoted in Welton 1999, 158). 20 This kind of wisdom is defended by Montaigne, Spinoza, and by the disciple of both, the contemporary French philosopher Comte-Sponville (2012, 318). For these early modern philosophers, see my two monographs, Laughter and the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana, and Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (works under contract). 21 Schopenhauer’s view, oddly enough found already in Montaigne, is worth noting: we feel ashamed of creating life or acting as if we were, because we

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Apart from obscene jokes – despite the sexual revolution, still a very popular genre – gentle humor comes to mind when we consider talking about sexuality. The thesis of Homo risibilis, the ridiculous human being, on which I have elaborated elsewhere (Amir 2014; 2017), seems especially appropriate to conceive and experience sexuality. Because the appropriation of this thesis – which is predicated on unresolvable incongruities in human nature – purports to unify the self by gradually accepting its rejected parts, Homo risibilis is relevant in more than one way to the topic of this chapter. For eroticism is impossible without (sexual) authenticity, and the latter is not immediately attainable. It is predicated on self-acceptance more than on self-knowledge, since much of sexuality stands in the way of knowledge, being opaque, to repeat Paul Ricoeur’s observation (Ricoeur 2001, 225, 235) or senseless, to use Jacques Lacan’s and Bataille’s expression (Lacan 1966, 451; Bataille 2007). In order to enjoy our animal-nature, as well as our partners’ – an experience that may be singularly human – or to accept our transient place within the human species, a threatening breach in our regular self-perception seems necessary. A gently humorous attitude cultivated beforehand would help this transformation by enabling the holding together of incongruous aspects of the self which otherwise threaten to tear us apart. It would soothe the transitions from the known to the unknown and back, and would transform the uncanny into a pleasurable voyage to the limits of human perception. As one of Homo risibilis’ precursors, Montaigne brings this chapter to a close. The sole philosopher who wrote about sexuality with appropriate “alacrity, lightness, profundity, liberty, lucidity, and humor” (ComteSponville 2012, 195), he makes clear why authentic sexuality requires a sense of humor: And considering often the ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, witless, and giddy motions with which it stirs up Zeno and Cratippus, that reckless frenzy, that face inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest act of love, and then that grave, severe, and ecstatic countenance in so silly an action; and that our delights and our excrements have been lodged together pell-mell, and that the supreme sensual pleasure is attended, like pain, with faintness and moaning; I believe that what Plato says is true, that man is the plaything of the gods: What savage jest is this (Claudian), and that it was in mockery that nature left us the most confused of our actions to be

perpetuate suffering and death (Schopenhauer 1969, 1, IV, section 60; Montaigne 1967, III, chap. 5, 669).

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the most common, in order thereby to make us all equal and to put on the same level the fools and the wise, and us and the beasts . . . . The most contemplative and wisest of men, when I imagine him in that position seems to me an impostor to put on wise and contemplative airs; here are the peacock’s feet that humble his pride: Against truth said in laughing, is there a law? (Horace). (Montaigne 1967, III, chap. 5, 668-69)

Conclusion Sexuality is a powerful and puzzling force to contend with in everyday life. Its opacity, its senselessness, its inherent incapacity of successfully completing the confused project it aims at (be it Sartrean, Bataillean, or Platonic), as well as its transgressive nature have been amply discussed in the philosophic and psychoanalytic literature. But sexuality seems also to afford a unique opportunity to enjoy our animal-nature, an experience that may be singularly human. Doing sexuality full justice whilst incorporating it harmoniously among other forces that shape one’s life seems to be a difficult project, but one that is worth undertaking and which may benefit from a humorous view of the human condition. Eroticism seems to be the relevant virtue of sexuality. As with all virtues, it has to be learned and cultivated, but cannot be so unless founded on authenticity and autonomy. Whilst the philosopher can contribute to defining and exploring the significance of sexuality, her help in implementing eroticism may well bring to the practice of philosophy many disciples, but also various concerns regarding how to manage this without compromising the field’s moral integrity. Yet we cannot be unprepared22 or unnecessarily coy about this topic if we want to serve our clients well by remaining faithful to philosophy’s empowering role. This role is all the more significant nowadays when the various narratives of liberation, by being entangled with social and political agendas, obscure the individual’s duty to himself. And it is absolutely necessary in liberal states, where, without proper bridging between liberty and equality, that duty can scarcely be fulfilled. Thus, were we to embrace Montaigne’s view, that “it is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully” (1967 III,

22

I have read quite a few texts while researching for this essay, not all of which I can mention here. The literature on the subject is immense. A good place to begin is Soble (2006), Soble and Power (2008), Soble and Halwani (2017), Primoratz (1999), and Solomon and Higgins (1991).

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chap. 13, 857), we would realize that this “know how” is no less than an initiation to wisdom.

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Solomon, Robert. 2002. “Sexual Paradigms.” In The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings, edited by A. Soble and N. Power, 21-30. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Solomon, Robert, and Katheleen Higgins, eds. 1991. The Philosophy of (Erotic) Love. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Spinoza, Benedict. 1985. Ethics. In The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vannoy, Russell. 1980. Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus. Young, Christopher, and Andrew Brook. 1994. “Schopenhauer and Freud.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 75 (1), 101-18. Welton, Donn, ed. 1988. Body and Flesh: A Philosophical Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell. —. 1999. “Introduction: Foundations of a Theory of the Body.” In The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Donn Welton, 17. Malden, MA: Blackwell. —, ed. 1999. The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

PART IV INNOVATIVE METHODS FOR THE PRACTICE OF PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER SEVEN THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELING: PSEUDOSCIENCE OR INTERDISCIPLINARY FIELD? ROXANA KREIMER AND GERARDO PRIMERO

The last 200 years of professionalization in philosophy have had upsides and downsides. Philosophy has generated many research programs, with their specific backgrounds, problems, aims, and methods, and each research program has evolved and become more specialized and systematic. These changes can be valued as a form of philosophical progress. But there have been some downsides too. In the words of Guillermo Hurtado (2012), analytic philosophy has become “a sophisticated precision tool that only serves to adjust a small screw.” It has abandoned political engagement in search of a better world, and the ideal of offering a worldview (i.e., a set of answers to questions concerning human existence, which may allow people to transform their lives through the exercise of critical reason). Academic philosophy is often considered irrelevant by laypeople. There have been some remedies to these downsides of professional philosophy. Philosophical counseling has explored the application of philosophy to existential issues. Several grassroots movements (Evans 2013) and educational projects (e.g., Philo Cafes, TED talks, online open courses, online encyclopedias of philosophy, online personal blogs and websites) have disseminated philosophical and scientific knowledge to a broader audience. The movement of Philosophical Practice has emerged as a project with the aim of thinking about the relevance of philosophy for everyday life and engaging in different practices related to such relevance. Philosophical Practice is now over twenty-five years old and has partially fulfilled one of its fundamental objectives, which is to create a bridge between philosophy and society, a link that was weakened by the

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development of academic philosophy, which mostly became a specialized discipline that has become incomprehensible and irrelevant for laypeople. However, philosophical counseling has also acquired some features of a typical pseudoscience, because it showed no interest in testing its own claims with empirical studies. Through various practices that have become public, it is also possible to see how many philosophical counselors do not correctly apply the tools of critical thinking, and ignore scientific evidence that is relevant for philosophical thinking. Some of the assumptions and beliefs that we want to discuss are not usually mentioned in academic publications, but they can be found in more informal sources (e.g., personal communication, blogs, and conferences). This is the reason why we have used videos and blogs to approach these kinds of issues. We will summarize our criticisms of the philosophical counseling movement using the following categories: (1) Lack of evidence that philosophical counseling is beneficial (and not harmful, or ineffective); (2) Lack of training in assessment skills; (3) Professional intrusion (unlicensed practice of psychology); (4) Misconceptions about psychology and psychotherapy; (5) Misconceptions about science and empirical testing; (6) Lack of training in critical thinking and knowledge of cognitive biases; (7) Problems with the arbitrariness of methods and goals. Finally, we will suggest some strategies to prevent philosophical counseling from becoming a new pseudoscientific practice.

1 Lack of Evidence that Philosophical Counseling is Beneficial (and Not Harmful, or Ineffective) How can we know whether philosophical counseling is beneficial, ineffective, or harmful for a counselee? How can the counselor choose between different options, according to each counselee’s needs and characteristics? This information is relevant for the counselor and the counselee, because an incorrect choice can cause direct and indirect harm (e.g., consuming time and money that might have been used in more effective treatments). Even if philosophical counselors say they don’t work within the medical or psychological paradigm, their practice has empirical aspects

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(for example, the encounters between counselor and counselee might have beneficial, neutral, or harmful effects on the counselee). It’s important to understand that not every psychological problem or goal is “clinical.” For example, at Fasce’s talk (2015), one member of the audience said, “You are trying to transform everything into a medical issue.” In this statement, “medicalization” is confused with “demand for empirical evidence.” The first term refers to situations in which general problems (fear of change, mourning a recent death) are illegitimately addressed with medication. But it is wrong to confuse “medicalization” with “demand for empirical evidence.” Empirical claims might refer to non-medical issues and yet require empirical testing. Barlow (2004; 2006) has distinguished between “psychological treatments” (which work with disorders, with the aim of eliminating symptoms) and psychotherapies (which work with life problems, with the aim of personal growth). Only the first category is related to clinical problems, but both categories require empirical research of their outcomes. Therefore, even if philosophical counseling aims to work with nonclinical problems and obtain non-clinical outcomes, these issues require empirical research (they cannot be assessed through purely conceptual methods). This is a reason why philosophical counseling should be conceived as a kind of interdisciplinary project that includes both philosophical components (e.g., ethical analysis of actions, clarification of concepts, and identification of logical fallacies) and psychological components (e.g., emotional traits and states, personal values, communication skills, and problem solving skills). In both clinical and non-clinical psychological problems, it is relevant to assess whether the interventions and encounters have positive, null, or negative effects. If a counselee has depression, for example, the Philosophical Counselor will not be able to diagnose it, or inform the counselee about the available options of treatment and their cost-benefit analysis.

2 Lack of Training in Assessment Skills In the Conference on the Employment Opportunities for Philosophers (University of Valencia, November 19, 2015), the philosopher Angelo Fasce quoted several websites of philosophical counselors that offer their practice as treatment for several psychological problems, like anxiety and depression. Fasce argued that “anxiety is not stress, phobias are not mere fear and depression is not just being sad. For these disorders, neurological etiology is well studied, there are a number of well-established diagnostic criteria, and therapies that have shown effectiveness above the placebo.”

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Fasce points out that philosophical counselors say that they don’t diagnose, but the mere fact that they determine whether the counselee should be referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist is a form of diagnosis for which they are not trained. After Fasce’s talk (2015), Cavallé asked, “Why would fear be a clinical problem?” Fasce answered: “How do you know if it’s fear or phobia?” The problem here is that assessing the difference between clinical and non-clinical issues requires skills that philosophers have not learned, and for which they have not been evaluated. The consultant may have clinical problems, and in such cases, philosophical counseling has no evidence of being an effective treatment. It might be ineffective, or even harmful. Philosophical counselors sometimes argue that there is no need for empirical research because the kind of problems they address are different from the kind of clinical problems that are usually treated by psychologists and psychiatrists. They argue that they do not use diagnosis, and that they acknowledge the need to refer the counselee to other professionals (e.g., psychologists, psychiatrists) whenever it’s necessary. However, the mere fact of deciding when a counselee should be referred to a psychologist or psychiatrist is a kind of assessment that requires knowledge and training far exceeding the competence of philosophers. Lou Marinoff (quoted in Duane 2004) argued that “We have never, not ever, had a single case in which philosophical counseling caused psychological harm.” But even if that statement is true, it does not mean that it couldn’t do harm in the future. We already have evidence that some psychological treatments can be harmful (Lilienfeld 2007), and there is no reason to think that the same cannot happen with some interventions within philosophical counseling. This problem might be solved in several ways. Philosophical counselors might receive training in assessment skills and be subject to the same legal regulations that other clinical professionals currently are subject to, or they might ask the counselee to have a clinical assessment from a licensed professional before the initiation of the encounters.

3 Professional Intrusion (Unlicensed Practice of Psychology) Is philosophical counseling a form of “therapy?” Some philosophical counselors have argued that the word “therapy” has different meanings. Mónica Cavallé (2004, 30) has proposed that ancient philosophy presented itself as a “soul therapy,” but this meaning is unrelated to the contemporary

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meaning of the term “therapy,” which is linked with the health sciences. Fasce (2015) argues that this strategy is misleading: it confuses the counselee, because the term is used in the 21st century, and not in ancient Greece. Also, several websites of philosophical counselors offer treatment for clinical and non-clinical psychological problems (Fasce 2015). Therefore, philosophical counselors cannot avoid the responsibilities incurred by presenting their practice as a form of therapy. Fasce (2015) showed screenshots of websites in which philosophical counseling is offered as a treatment for “depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, sexual problems, etc.” He argued that if philosophical counselors treat those clinical problems, they are committing the crime of “professional intrusion.” The article 403 of the Spanish penal code states that the treatment and diagnosis of these disorders can only be carried out by medical or clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, or physicians. Fasce argued that we should not give philosophical therapy a privileged status in relation to other psychological treatments: both should have the same standards of evidence and legal regulation. Practicing a professional discipline without a license may be legal or illegal in different jurisdictions. This kind of legal regulation aims to protect the counselees from malpractice occasioned by individuals who lack proper standards of accreditation for some kinds of professional practice. In the field of health, the relation between professionals and clients is not merely based on informal trust. Legal regulations aim to guarantee that the professional meets minimum conditions of knowledge and ethics. Academic institutions regulate the fulfillment of knowledge requirements, and professional institutions regulate ethical behavior through deontological codes that have to be approved by government institutions. Regarding the former, the undergraduate and master’s degrees in philosophy do not contain any credit training for health practice. Philosophical Counseling Masters Courses in Spanish universities, which often offered training in pseudoscientific disciplines, have already disappeared, and other training courses have no official endorsement. Fasce also objected to some philosophical counselors (as Rayda Guzman) and associations like the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) that have proposed their own code of ethics, because codes should regulate all professionals of a particular practice, and should be approved by governmental institutions.

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4 Misconceptions about Psychology and Psychotherapy Philosophical Counselors are unaware of contemporary psychology, which they generally confuse with psychoanalysis. They usually adopt an incorrect conception of psychotherapy, which is transmitted in several proposals for the demarcation between philosophical counseling and psychotherapy. For example, Ben Mijuskovic (1995) has summarized his beliefs about the differences between philosophical counseling (PC) and psychotherapy (PT) with the following statements: • • • • • • • • • •

PT makes a DSM diagnosis. PC does not. PT has a focus on symptoms. PC has a focus on worldviews. PT is guided by the psychotherapist. PC is guided by the counselee. PT is committed to a theory. PC is not. In PT, patients are under the control of their symptoms. In PC, the counselee is an active agent capable of change. In PT, the symptom’s intensity is judged by the patient. In PC, the criterion of validity is an ideal of consistency and communicability. In PT, the goal is to alleviate the symptoms. In PC, emotional relief is judged by conceptual satisfaction. In PC, philosophical positions always remain open to question. PT conceives symptoms as caused by dysfunctional experiences in the past. PC is atemporal. In PT, symptoms cause occupational/social distress. In PC, philosophical concerns generally do not impair social/occupational functioning.

But this proposal is based on several errors. We can correct its mistakes with the following statements: • •

• •

Only a subset of PT has a focus on DSM diagnoses and their symptoms. The rest of PT (“generic PT”; see Barlow 2004) has a focus on many other issues, including worldviews (Koltko-Rivera 2004) and personal growth. In both PT and PC, directivity/non-directivity and determinism/ freedom are a matter of degree and context. In both PT and PC, counselors are influenced by theories, both in conscious and unconscious ways (observations, interpretations, and beliefs are theory-laden).

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•

•

In both PT and PC, outcomes should be judged according to a plurality of criteria, including subjective (e.g., emotional relief), intersubjective (e.g., interpersonal agreement), and objective criteria (e.g., evidence). In both PT and PC, causal hypotheses should not be restricted by any aprioristic reductionism (e.g., a restriction to “early childhood trauma” or “brain dysfunction”). There’s a pluralism of levels of explanation (bio/psycho/social) and temporal frameworks (proximal/distal).

The field of PC has often been characterized by antinomic definitions, which say “what PC is not” (Louw 2013). Most of these definitions are based on a sharp demarcation between PC and PT. But a sharp demarcation can only be made by making a strawman of PT, and neglecting the more philosophical approaches to PT (e.g., humanistic/existential therapy, cognitive therapy, third-generation behavior therapies). This strategy has disseminated an inaccurate conception of PT, and has prevented a more fruitful dialogue between PC and PT. It’s preferable to avoid such neglect and therefore to accept that there’s no sharp demarcation between PC and PT.

5 Misconceptions about Science and Empirical Testing Fasce (2015) points out that “doing things right” implies (1) Generating a working hypothesis, (2) Elucidating the hypothesis, making clear which techniques are being used and what our terms mean, (3) Seeing if the hypothesis is consistent with existing scientific knowledge, (4) Testing the hypothesis in a randomized controlled trial, and (5) Implementing it in a regulated manner and offering guarantees. In the discussion that followed Fasce’s talk (2015), philosophical counselor Cavallé objected to the demand for empirical research. She said, “You haven’t talked with my counselees . . . . The counselor and the counselee may feel it is an enriching experience.” She asked, “Shouldn’t we take into account the counselee’s feeling as a criterion of validity? Do we always need an external validation?” Fasce answered, “They can feel whatever they want, but this is not evidence that philosophical counseling is helping him with his problem.” Here we can see an erroneous assumption about empirical testing. The counselee’s subjective experience is relevant as a source of information about the counselee’s attitudes about the counselor and the encounters, but it is not enough to assess whether an intervention was effective or not. If

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we want to understand empirical testing, we need to know that usually there are several hypotheses that might be compatible with an observation, and that empirical research usually tries to devise a situation in which we can compare rival hypotheses and find out which one is better-supported by the observations. In this example, the counselee might have positive feelings about the counseling, even if the process is not effective in reaching some intended outcome. There are competing hypotheses that could explain the same observations (e.g., the placebo effect, our tendency to recover from many of our problems over time, biases from the person who reports the information, etc.). Subjective reports are influenced by several cognitive biases. We cannot rely only on the report of the counselee or on that of the counselor because the counselee might be biased toward answering what the counselor wants to hear (conformist bias), or affected by the confirmation bias (the tendency to favor information that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses), the Bandwagon effect (the tendency to do or believe something because many people do or believe it), the illusion of control (the tendency to overestimate the degree of one’s influence on external events), or overconfidence bias (in which a person’s subjective confidence in his or her judgments is reliably greater than the objective accuracy of those judgments). 1 Also, subjective experiential reports cannot serve as tests for causal hypotheses (the counselee might simply assume that some changes happened because of the encounters, committing the fallacy called “post hoc ergo propter hoc”: the fact that B has occurred after A doesn’t mean that B was caused by A). Counselors might be influenced by the confirmation bias (e.g., the counselor’s attention and memory might be biased toward evidence that confirms the belief that philosophical counseling is effective, while potential negative evidence is more easily neglected). This bias leads to a selective use of evidence (cherry picking fallacy). Empirical research allows us to explore which hypotheses are better supported by observations, with the help of several methodological strategies oriented to control the influence of our cognitive biases. There are different methods of empirical research: case studies without experimental control, single subject experimental designs, randomized controlled trials. Each method has its own benefits and costs. Each study allows us to answer some questions, while leaving other questions to be answered by further studies. In a randomized controlled trial, participants

1

For an introduction to the topic of cognitive biases, see Pohl (2004) and Barone et al. (2012).

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are assigned to different kinds of treatments (sometimes including a condition without treatment), and the results are compared. At Fasce’s talk (2015), one member of the audience said, “Empirical research treats human beings like rats.” This commentary shows the degree of misrepresentation of empirical research that does not treat human beings like rats: they are different topics, with different theories, and different methodological strategies. Cavallé argued against Fasce: There is a clear scientistic approach [in your talk]. I don’t understand how in a philosophical field someone can operate with an approach that not only invalidates philosophical counseling but philosophy itself. Your criticism could be applied to philosophy itself, for example, to Socrates.

Fasce answered, You are saying that I have a scientistic approach, but I’m not saying that the only thing in the world that has value is science. Literary criticism, ethics and other disciplines that do not belong to the sphere of science are very valuable, but when it comes to health care, you need to test things, and science takes precedence. Socrates didn’t do pseudoscience because he lived before the appearance of science. You do not have evidence that what you do is better than the Enneagram.

The accusation of “scientism” is a very common argument, but it’s fallacious. The word “scientism” might be used with different meanings. It might refer to a defensible stance toward the scientific method (Bunge 2014; Raynaud 2015; Verhaegh and van der Kolk 2015), but it might also refer to problematic positions: the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measurable, or the self-contradictory view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not itself a scientific claim (Carroll 2015). It’s not legitimate to assume without proper evidence that one's interlocutor adopts this problematic position (e.g., the demand for evidence to support an empirical claim is not enough evidence to conclude that one’s interlocutor “dogmatically endorses” the scientific method). This argument is fallacious because its persuasive effect comes from the emotional usage of a derogatory word, and not from the provision of good reasons to support a conclusion. In the tenth ICPP’s Seminar on Philosophical Practice, Anders Lindseth (2010) argued that the method of proposing and testing hypotheses is worthy for exploring the external world, but that it cannot (or should not) be applied to the realm of personal experiences. Such

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restrictive advice does not seem to be well-justified; there are experiences that can be fruitfully explored with the method of proposing and testing hypotheses. For example, a woman may think and feel that she does not like to dance, but, after a deeper exploration of this experience, she might realize that in fact she does not like the kind of music that is very repetitive, the loud volume that hurts her ears and prevents dialogue, the lack of communication between other people, the shame that she feels for not dancing as well as she wants, and the loneliness when she feels that nobody notices her presence. But then, she also might realize that none of those things means she does not like dancing. If she changes the kind of music, its volume, her dancing skills, and the social context, perhaps she might enjoy dancing. In this example, the process of “proposing and testing hypotheses” might allow her to realize that she was committing an overgeneralization, from some contingent and narrow aspects of her previous experiences, to the whole experience of dancing. So there’s no good reason to dismiss the application of this method to personal experiences. Carmen Zavala (2015) argued that social psychology studies “flocking behavior,” and philosophy’s goal is “the questioning of flocking behavior” (the proposal of new ways to change ourselves and our society). Kreimer (2015) replied that science can study many issues besides “flocking behavior.” It can even study the behavior of examining our own lives and society. It would be wrong to assume an opposition between the “scientific study of human behavior” and the “philosophical questioning of flocking behavior”; empirical knowledge of behaviors and their characteristics offers us new tools and arguments for questioning some behaviors, and our questioning of behaviors opens up new space for the exploration of new behaviors, whose characteristics will also have to be empirically explored and questioned. In this way, philosophical thinking and empirical research have evolved through reciprocal interactions. Knowing more about human tendencies (either universal, or specific to some cultural groups) does not imply denying the specific characteristics of each individual and the possibility of modification of some of those tendencies through reflection and learning. The study of more general and more specific issues is not a dichotomous choice: both levels of analysis should be studied and complemented. Cavallé has tried to defend the effectiveness of her practice by appealing to several fallacious arguments: Many of my clients are psychologists and have degrees in philosophy . . . . I am constantly in contact with psychologists and they tell me that they would never have a session with a colleague . . . . I teach philosophical

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These arguments are fallacious because they appeal to some features (e.g., authority, popularity) that do not support the conclusion (even if those features might have a persuasive effect on some listeners).

6 Lack of Training in Critical Thinking and Knowledge of Cognitive Biases Many philosophical counselors seem to be unaware of our tendencies to make cognitive errors. During the sessions, both counselor and counselee are exploring and trying to make sense of different situations and experiences, by constructing and improving their respective hypotheses and framings (Mattila 2001; McGee et al. 2005). In this process, they are exposed to many cognitive errors, immunizing strategies, and epistemic defense mechanisms (Boudry and Braeckman 2010; Gilovich 1991), including the confirmation bias and the confusion of correlation with causation. If philosophical counseling doesn’t promote critical thinking and the systematic exploration of alternative hypotheses, those cognitive errors might be easily accepted by both the counselor and the counselee. There are several areas of empirical research that can be considered relevant to the identification of cognitive biases and unintentional fallacies, including the literature about heuristics and biases (Tversky and Kahneman 1975; Gilovich et al. 2002; Gigerenzer and Selten 2002), critical thinking (Pithers and Soden 2000; Lai 2011) and attitude change (Crano and Prislin 2011). Research in critical thinking has explored how we can teach the necessary skills to identify and avoid fallacies. Some philosophical counselors take the words of the counselee and, without evidence, judge that those words reveal fundamental personality traits (e.g., Brenifier 2011; Sumiacher D’Angelo 2013). Those speculative conjectures are assumed to be true, without any sign of awareness of their lack of evidence. The communicative style is restricted to a question/answer modality, and the counselors often demand a restricted choice between two answers that they have selected and imposed on the counselee, without any justification or discussion. The frameworks used to interpret the counselee’s statements are arbitrarily chosen by the counselor, and there’s no attempt to explore possible alternative frameworks with the counselee. Sumiacher D’Angelo (2013) imposes interpretations on what he considers to be significant words. His questions are full of assumptions.

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Whatever the answer is, the counselee implicitly accepts the assumptions of the question. Without any principle of charity, he disqualifies the views of the counselees, aligning himself above them. People who participate in a session usually have a desire to identify themselves with what the philosophical counselor tells them. Sometimes a counselee debunks Sumiacher D’Angelo’s interpretation but, forced by his insistence, he or she ends up accepting it. And when the counselee doesn’t support the interpretation, he accuses him or her of not collaborating (saying “if we don’t move forward, it is difficult to continue”). This kind of intervention assumes without evidence that the conjecture of the counselor is the correct one, that exploring other conjectures is pointless, and that the counselee’s disagreement is a mere obstacle caused by his or her stubbornness. But each of these assumptions might be wrong, and no effort is made to explore that possibility. The strategy is similar to the psychoanalytic accusation of “resistance,” which is illegitimate from a philosophical point of view, because it rejects by default the plausibility of alternative views. If counselees reject an interpretive hypothesis, they are accused of not collaborating, and if they accept it, the conjecture is considered to be correct. However, the counselee’s agreement with a counselor’s hypothesis does not imply that the hypothesis is correct. The agreement might be caused by the Barnum effect (people who want to know something about themselves see their personal situations and characteristics reflected in phrases that could be applied to anyone) or by manipulation through questions. It would be better if counselees were asked, “What do you think about this hypothesis?” Leon de Haas (2012, 1) has described Brenifier’s method in the following words: Indeed, the backbone of Brenifier’s method is questioning. But his questions are closed and strongly directive; they have a determined structure, which guides the guest’s answers rigidly. With his personality and persistency, he forces his guest to answer his question, and to answer the way he wants, i.e., following a bivalent logic. The guest is forced to make choices between two possibilities, yes or no, this or that. No inbetween is allowed; no maybe, no perhaps, no both this and that. By complying with this procedure, the guest leaves her own train of thoughts, to follow Brenifier’s.

The interventions of other philosophical counselors often illustrate the same mechanism of wild speculation followed by directive and closed questions. If one participant in a collective exercise finishes first, the counselor’s hypothesis is that being anxious is one of the counselee’s

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personality traits. If the counselee reports a dream, the counselor assumes that each element of the dream is significant. The questions used by counselors usually have embedded presuppositions (i.e., propositions whose truth is necessary for the question to have an answer), and those presuppositions exert a framing effect on the respondent, because they establish the conceptual space where the respondent will search for an answer, and at the same time, they implicitly exclude other potential conceptual spaces (Sintonen 1996). This framing effect is very important, because it can generate beneficial or harmful consequences, depending on the case. Counselees often have a tendency to believe their counselors, so we should be very careful with questions that can induce an answer. There is always a risk that the counselee accepts some assumptions just because the counselor insists on them. There is strong evidence that authority figures can exert a strong influence on people’s attitudes (e.g., Albarracin et al. 2014). Given that our values will have inevitable effects on our practice, whether we like it or not, it would be a better option to be more explicit in our reflections on the different axiological perspectives and their influences on our practices, instead of neglecting the whole issue with the excuse of a mythical “neutrality” (Bunge 1989; Kreimer 2005; Savater 2003). We should exchange the unreasonable ideal of neutrality for the more reasonable ideal of “not imposing our own perspective on the counselee” and “making explicit the different perspectives at stake, including our own, in order to critically analyze each one of them.” When we think that there is a combination of an authority-based influence, a lack of research about interventions, a lack of critical thinking about speculative conjectures, and a lack of legal regulation of the practice, it’s reasonable to have concerns about the potential risks of philosophical counseling.

7 Problems with the Arbitrariness of Methods and Goals Fasce (2015) argued that philosophical counseling has no method, and that each counselor chooses his own. He described it as a practice in which each philosophical counselor takes his favorite philosopher “and does what he wants”: “a person talks about his/her problems and the other one speaks slowly with quotes of Kant.” We think that this is a straw man argument, a simplification that misrepresents its target. Most philosophical counselors share a set of methods, which are largely (but not exclusively) related to critical thinking: clarification of concepts, analysis of types of arguments and

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logical fallacies, analysis of conflicts of values and ethical dilemmas, identification of implicit assumptions and logical implications, analysis of the social context in which a problem appears, exploration of the history of ideas, discussion of arguments and justifications, identification of contradictions and inconsistencies, identification of assumptions and general worldviews of the consultant, and exposure to alternative frameworks and worldviews (LeBon 2001; Barrientos 2005; Kreimer 2002; Schuster 1999; Raabe 2001). But we also think there’s some truth in the criticism, because there are no clear and evidence-based criteria to assess which methods should be used with each counselee, and how each method should be applied. This might be called “the problem of the selection of interventions and conceptual frameworks,” and was clearly described by Julia Galef in her interview with Lou Marinoff (Galef and Marinoff 2011). Galef said: It wasn’t at all clear to me how philosophical counselors choose which philosophy to cite. For any viewpoint in the literature, you can pretty reliably find an opposing one. In the case of the father afraid of spoiling his kid, Lou cited Aristotle to argue for an “all things in moderation” policy. But, I pointed out, he could just as easily have cited Stoic philosophers arguing that happiness lies in relinquishing desires. So if you can pick and choose any philosophical advice you want, then aren’t you really just giving your client your own opinion about his problem, and just couching your advice in the words of a prestigious philosopher?

We think the answer to this problem is that the selection of interventions and conceptual frameworks should be based on a hypothetical-deductive method. Conjectures (about the counselee’s current conceptual framework, and the alternatives worthy of exploration) are proposed, based on previous evidence, and tested in further dialogue. The effects of each strategy should be studied with single subject and group designs. Fasce also argued that philosophical counselors “say they use maieutics . . . but Socrates knows in advance where he wants to go,” as if this were necessarily negative. Although assuming a conclusion in advance can be a negative disposition when people are investigating a phenomenon, when a psychologist or a teacher applies this method by which a person discovers something, assisted by a series of questions, knowing the conclusion is not necessarily problematic. This method should be used with responsibility, because its persuasive effects might be either beneficial or harmful. At Fasce’s talk (2015), one member of the audience said that the criticism of the multiplicity of methods of philosophical counseling could

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be made of philosophy itself, given that there are different schools of thought. Fasce replied that all schools of psychotherapy are legitimate if they have empirical support. The problem with philosophical counseling is not its pluralism, but the lack of empirical research supporting it.

8 The Role of Philosophy in Clinical Treatments and Broader Psychological Interventions If philosophy can overcome the misconceptions and prejudices that we´ve mentioned, it has an important role to play in relation to both clinical and non-clinical problems and goals. It can facilitate, through philosophical counseling, the development of valuable tools to assess life from an ethical and a political point of view, it can provide conjectures about ways to help people that should be tested through empirical methods, and it can be useful in the analysis and criticism of available psychological and psychiatric treatments. Some of the problems we have mentioned can be easily solved (e.g., training philosophers in the relevant psychological skills, or incorporating psychologists in the initial assessment of potential counselees), while others require more effort in order to build a genuinely interdisciplinary project between philosophy and science. Nowadays, there is a lack of dialogue between philosophical counseling and empirical research. There are many empirical issues that could be explored through interdisciplinary research between philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, and educators (e.g., interpersonal communication, personal experiences, belief systems, argumentation, reasoning, cognitive errors and biases, meaning of life, etc.). Why is this dialogue underdeveloped? Possibly because of the many misconceptions and prejudices that we have mentioned. We agree with Mosterín’s proposal when he writes, “Science and philosophy are continuous. Philosophy is the most comprehensive, reflective and speculative part of science, the area of discussions that precede and follow scientific developments. Science is the most specialized, rigorous and well-tested part of philosophy, the part that is incorporated in standard models and textbooks and technological applications. Science and philosophy develop dynamically, in constant interaction. What was philosophical speculation yesterday is established science today. And the science of today serves as the starting point to the philosophy of tomorrow. The critical and analytical reflection of philosophy detects conceptual and methodological problems in science and pushes it towards greater rigor. And the new results of scientific

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research debunk old speculative hypotheses, and encourage philosophy towards progress” (Mosterín 2014, 22). This naturalist meta-philosophy sees philosophy and science as engaged in the same enterprise (Papineau 2010). Philosophers (including philosophical counselors) and psychologists (including psychotherapists) have much to gain by increasing their mutual dialogue. Psychology can contribute to the systematic testing of empirical claims that are relevant for philosophical practices. Philosophy can contribute the critical analysis of concepts, assumptions, and arguments that are relevant for psychological practices. This complementation of empirical and conceptual methods might allow a joint exploration (between the Counselor and the Counselee) of implicit assumptions and worldviews, and alternative conceptual frameworks. This exploration might result in the acceptance, challenge, or reframing of conceptual frameworks, something similar to the kind of cognitive interventions of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, which were inspired by the philosophy of Epictetus. At the same time, an interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers and psychologists might offer more sophisticated philosophical methods than those currently applied in cognitive psychology, without losing the demand for empirical evidence (both related to general regularities of human groups, and specific regularities of the counselee’s experiences, behaviors, and life events).2

References Albarracin, Dolores, Blair T. Johnson, and Mark P. Zanna, eds. 2014. The Handbook of Attitudes. Hove: Psychology Press. Ariely, Dan. 2009. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York, NY: Harper. Barlow, David H. 2004. “Psychological Treatments.” American psychologist 59 (9): 869. —. 2006. “Psychotherapy and Psychological Treatments: The Future.” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 13: 216-20. Barone, David F., James E. Maddux, and C. R. Snyder. 2012. Social Cognitive Psychology: History and Current Domains. Springer Science & Business Media.

2 For further information related to the arguments presented in this chapter, see Kreimer (2012a, 2012b, 2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b).

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Barrientos Rastrojo, José. 2005. Introducción al asesoramiento y la orientación filosófica. De la discusión a la comprensión. Tenerife: Editorial Idea. Boudry, Maarten, and Johan Braeckman. 2010. “Immunizing Strategies & Epistemic Defense Mechanisms.” Philosophia 39 (1): 145-61. Brenifier, Oscar. 2011. “Consultoria Filosofica 22 min de Oscar Brenifier a Katty en Lima.” At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NJSdaF6geA Bunge, Mario. 1989. Ethics: The Good and the Right, vol. 8 of Treatise on Basic Philosophy, by Mario Bunge. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. —. 2014. “In Defense of Scientism.” Free Inquiry 35 (1): 24-28. Carroll, Robert T. 2015. “Scientism.” In The Skeptic’s Dictionary. October 27. At http://skepdic.com/scientism.html Cavallé, Mónica, and Nacho Bañeras. 2016. “Las salidas profesionales de la filosofía: El Asesoramiento Filosófico - UV 2015.” January 13. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOHIh2lH3h0 Cavallé, Mónica. n.d. “Filosofía sapiencial o la ciencia de la vida.” At http://www.monicacavalle.com/filosofiasapiencial/filosofia-sapiencialo-la-ciencia-de-la-vida/ Cavallé, Mónica. 2004. La filosofía, maestra de vida. Santillana Ediciones Generales. Comesaña, Juan M. 2001. Lógica informal: Falacias y argumentos filosóficos. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Crano, William D., and Radmila Prislin, eds. 2011. Attitudes and Attitude Change. Hove: Psychology Press. De Haas, Leon. 2012. “The Philosopher’s Workplace.” At http://www.platopraktijk.nl/resources/The_Philosopher's_Workplace.pdf Duane, Daniel. 2004. “The Socratic Shrink.” The New York Times Magazine, March 21. At http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/magazine/the-socraticshrink.html?src=pm& – r=1 Evans, Jules. 2013. “Grassroots philosophy.” The Philosophers’ Magazine 60: 83-88. Facione, Peter A. 2000. “The Disposition Toward Critical Thinking: Its Character, Measurement, and Relationship to Critical Thinking Skill.” Informal Logic 20 (1): 61-84. —. 2004. Critical Thinking: What it is and Why it Counts. Millbrae, CA: Insight Assessment. Fasce, Angelo. 2015. “Terapia Filosófica: la filosofía como pseudociencia.” November 22. At

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https://lavenganzadehipatia.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/terapiafilosofica-la-filosofia-como-pseudociencia-2/ —. 2016. “El asesoramientofilosófico. Debate sobre la ponencia de Angelo Fasce - UV 2015.” Filo Profesiones. January 13. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1GWbLYfO3I Galef, Julia (interviewer), and Lou Marinoff (interviewee). 2011. “Rationally Speaking.” Episode 48, November 22. At http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs48-philosophicalcounseling.html Gigerenzer, Gerd, and Reinhard Selten. 2002. Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gilovich, Thomas. 1991. How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Free Press. Gilovich, Thomas, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman. 2002. Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Horák, Otakar. 2014. ”Filozofické poradenstvo-kritika.” Filosofie Dnes 5 (2): 62-86. Hurtado, Guillermo. 2012. “Qué es y qué puede ser la filosofía analítica.” Diánoia 57 (68): 165-73. Kreimer, Roxana. 2002/2005. Artes del buen vivir. Filosofía para la vida cotidiana. Buenos Aires: Paidós. —. 2012a. “Philosophical Practice and Scientific Research: Controversies and Proposals on Happiness, Gratitude, Generosity and Aging.” Paper presented at the International 11th Conference on Philosophical Practice, University of Chuncheon, South Korea. At http://www.filosofiaparalavida.com.ar/Philosophical-Practice.pdf —. 2012b. “Philosophical Counseling. Asesoramiento Filosófico.” June 28. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgjQUH7lKQ8 —. 2013a, December 13. “Happiness and Philosophical Practice.” At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIMTu1AcbQU —. 2013b, June 20. “Qué es un Café Filosófico.” At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JiJFAYj9P0 —. 2014a, August 30. “Thought’s Vices.” At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhDNkAy-uTY —. 2014b, November 1. “Philosophical Practice and Science.” At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G5ZsBby-jc —. 2015. “Strawman of Scientific Research.” January 18. At https://philopractice.org/web/all-comments-on-videos?view=comments Kreimer, Roxana, and Gerardo Primero. 2011. “Argentinian Perspectives on the Tenth ICPP.” Philosophical Practice 6: 744-48.

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Kreimer, Roxana, Gerardo Primero, and Lydia Amir. 2014. “On Rationality.” September 18. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5N3y3fGf_w Lai, Emily R. 2011. “Critical thinking: A Literature Review.” Pearson’s Research Reports 6: 40-41. LeBon, Tim. 2001. Wise therapy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lilienfeld, Scott O. 2007. “Psychological Treatments that Cause Harm.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 2 (1): 53-70. Lindseth, Anders. 2010. “Philosophical Practice: A Method of Experiencing.” Seminar presented at the 10th International Conference on Philosophical Practice (10th ICPP) at Leusden, Netherlands. Mattila, Antti. 2001. “Seeing Things in a New Light.” In Reframing in Therapeutic Conversation. Helsinki: Rehabilitation Foundation, Research Reports 67. McGee, Dan, Agustin Del Vento, and Janet B. Bavelas. 2005. “An Interactional Model of Questions as Therapeutic Interventions.” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 31 (4): 371-84. Mijuskovic, Ben. 1995. “Some Reflections on Philosophical Counseling and Psychotherapy.” In Essays on Philosophical Counseling, edited by Ran Lahav and Maria Da Venza Tillmanns, 85-100. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Mosterín, Jesús. 2014. Ciencia, filosofía y racionalidad. Editorial GEDISA. Papineau, David. 2010. “Naturalism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. At https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/ Pithers, R. T., and Rebecca Soden. 2000. “Critical Thinking in Education: A Review.” Educational Research 42 (3): 237-49. Pohl, Rüdiger F. 2004. Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Hove: Psychology Press. Primero, Gerardo. 2015. “Philosophy and Psychology.” March 3. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXblLHKG_-M Raabe, Peter B. 2001. Philosophical Counseling: Theory and Practice. Westport, CT: Praeger. Raynaud, Dominique. 2015. “Cientificismo metodológico.” In Elogio del cientificismo, edited by Gabriel Andrade, 51-74, 220-224. Pamplona: Editorial Laetoli. At https://www.academia.edu/14133088/Cientificismo_metodol%C3%B3 gico Savater, Fernando. 2003. El valor de elegir. Buenos Aires: Editorial Ariel.

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Schuster, Shlomit C. 1999. Philosophy Practice: An Alternative to Counseling and Psychotherapy. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sintonen, Matti. 1985. “Separating Problems from their Backgrounds: A Question-theoretic Proposal.” In Logic of Discovery and Logic of Discourse, edited by Jaakko Hintikka and Fernand Vandamme, 25-49. New York, NY: Plenum Press. —. 1996. “Structuralism and the Interrogative Model of Inquiry.” In Structuralist Theory of Science: Focal Issues, New Results, edited by Wolfgang Balzer and C. Ulises Moulines, 45-74. Berlin: de Gruyter. Sumiacher D’Angelo, David. 2013. “Consultoría filosófica y presentación.” CECAPFI Centro. December 7. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxzy2GflLbw Tannen, Deborah. 1990. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York, NY: William Morrow. Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1975. “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” In Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making, edited by Dirk Wendt and Charles Vlek, 141-62. Netherlands: Springer. Verhaegh, Sander, and Pieter van der Kolk. 2015. “Towards a Moderate Scientism.” Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 107 (3): 285-99. Walton, Douglas N. 1989. Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zavala, Carmen. 2015. “Social Psychology = Study of Flock Behavior.” January 18. January 18. At https://philopractice.org/web/all-commentson-videos?view=comments

CHAPTER EIGHT LEARNING PRACTICAL WISDOM: A GUIDED IMAGERY FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE MICHAEL NOAH WEISS

In this chapter, I present a guided imagery exercise for philosophical practice. Following the Socratic injunction, “Know thyself!” this imagery investigates the topic of self-knowledge in a practice-oriented and experiential manner. Since self-knowledge, according to Plato’s Socratic dialogues, can be understood as a key feature for developing phronesis, practical wisdom is also introduced as a fruitful conceptual framework for philosophical practice. Thus, philosophical practice is described as an “educational” approach, with the potential to foster not the teaching, but rather the learning of practical wisdom.

1 Philosophical Background Before presenting a guided imagery for philosophical practice on the topic of self-knowledge, I would like to make a few remarks on the philosophical background relevant for this exercise. Both Plato (and with him, Socrates) and Aristotle have emphasized the relevance and importance of phronesis in their works. The term phronesis is translated in several ways; mainly as practical wisdom, yet sometimes as moral knowledge, virtue (Gallagher 1992, 197), prudence, and even mindfulness (McEvilley 2002, 609). For Plato and Aristotle alike, acquiring phronesis is indispensable to living a good and virtuous life. Living a good and virtuous life is also the highest goal of any human being, according to Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a). What is special about phronesis, however, is that unlike theoretical knowledge (episteme) or technical

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knowledge (techné), it cannot be taught, only learned (Meno, 96d). And the question is, of course: How can it be learned? In Plato’s dialogue, Meno, Socrates and Meno are investigating the nature of phronesis (here translated as “virtue”). It is Meno who brings up the question of how virtue can be learned, now that they had established that it is not teachable. Socrates already hints at the answer when he replies: We are probably poor specimen, you and I, Meno. Gorgias has not adequately educated you, nor Prodicus me. We must then at all costs . . . turn our attention to ourselves and find someone who will in some way make us better. (Meno, 96d; as quoted in Gallagher 1992, 198)

With regard to Socrates’ answer, Shaun Gallagher (in his book Hermeneutics and Education) concludes that if I turn my attention to myself I will find only one person; me. Socrates suggests that one must look to oneself in order to become virtuous. In effect, the knowledge that one can learn but not be taught is selfknowledge. If virtue is knowledge, it is in some sense self-knowledge. There is no teacher who can tell me who I am in a way that is superior to my own possibility of finding out for myself. (Gallagher 1992, 198)

What Gallagher points out here is not only that developing phronesis requires self-knowledge, but that self-knowledge is different from other (more objective) forms of knowledge, such as episteme or techné. And, furthermore, that one of the most fundamental questions in the history of philosophy – “Who am I?” – can only be answered by the person who is posing the question. There is no theory, no teacher, no therapist, etc., who can, could, or even should tell us. Since part of the nature of selfknowledge is that it lacks an objective character, it seems rather challenging to deal with it in a more conventional manner. For example, developing a concept which defines self-knowledge in more general terms might appear useful, but it would, paradoxically, miss the point. That is, even if people would understand and share such a general conception, it would not necessarily mean that they have knowledge of themselves; they would know the concept, but that does not necessarily imply that they know themselves (Lahav 2015, 369). Especially for those who assume that philosophy is concerned with the investigation of general aspects of the human condition (Teichmann and Evans 1999, 1) this poses quite a delicate dilemma. For how does one approach and gain self-knowledge if not by treating it as a general concept? Or, in other words, can self-

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knowledge be dealt with philosophically at all? The short answer is “Yes,” as long as we are willing to suspend the idea of a general form that selfknowledge must take – at least temporarily. The imagery exercise presented in this chapter is a suggestion of how such a suspension could succeed, while still keeping the exercise philosophical. But before going into the exercise, let us have a further look at Socrates’ remarks on selfknowledge. Socrates is known for urging, “Know thyself!” – gnothi seauton. In Plato’s Socratic dialogues, the importance of self-knowledge is pointed out on several occasions (Phaedros, 229e; Philebus, 48c; Protagoras, 343b; Charmides, 164d). In Phaedros, for example, Socrates assumes that selfknowledge is of greater relevance then all other forms of knowledge (Phaedros, 229e). In the dialogue Philebus, he takes it even a step further; here, people trying to gain knowledge about all kinds of things before they know themselves appear ridiculous to him (Philebus, 48c). In Protagoras, Socrates points out – though in a more transferred sense – that the maxim “Know thyself” is not made true by the words themselves, but through the practice of what they suggest, namely, self-reflection (Protagoras, 343b345a). Lastly, in the dialogue Charmides, Plato lets Socrates investigate how one might gain knowledge of oneself (Charmides, 164d) – a question that will also be a guiding light in this chapter. Taking Gallagher’s remarks (Gallagher 1992, 198) into account, we can say that Socrates assumed that self-knowledge is a prerequisite for developing virtue (phronesis). And virtue, Socrates assumed, is both necessary and sufficient for Eudaimonia, i.e., a good and virtuous life (Meno, 88c). The maxim “Know thyself,” however, was invented by neither Socrates nor Plato, but borrowed from an inscription at the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (Protagoras, 343b). At this temple, the so-called Pythia – the highest priestess – was practicing as an oracle. She was also known as the “Delphic Oracle” (Irmscher and Johne 1990, 4762). When performing her oracle duties, the Pythia was sitting on a tripod seat in the temple near a cleft, from which some sort of smoke or pneuma evaporated, making her fall into a kind of trance (ibid.). In Plato’s The Apology of Socrates, Socrates’ friend Chaerophon visits the oracle to ask whether there is anyone wiser than Socrates. Pythia’s prophecy states that, indeed, no man is wiser than him (Apology, 21a). Word has it that when Socrates heard about this, his fame in Athens was still in its early stages. Nevertheless, the words of Pythia triggered him in his self-investigations throughout his life (Apology, 23b). He wanted to figure out whether Pythia was right or not – not least because he remained convinced that the only wisdom he would possess was the “wisdom of

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ignorance” (“I know that I know nothing”) (Apology, 21e). And with that, paradoxically, Socrates continuously practiced the maxim he learned from the inscription of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: gnothi seauton. Now let us go over to the guided imagery exercise – the main part of this chapter.

2 Guided Imagery 1 A Short Introduction to Guided Imageries In guided imagery, one imagines something and someone else – a facilitator – guides you in what you imagine. Let me give you a very short example: Imagine a red rose. Did it work? Probably it did. Here you can see that I guided you in your imagination – at least to a certain degree. Of course, this is an oversimplified example, but it demonstrates why this technique is called “guided imagery.” Maybe you have already participated in guided imageries, and maybe the imagery that I present here is completely different from what you normally understand by the term. This can easily be the case, since there are many different approaches to guided imagery today. They occur mainly in the field of psychotherapy (Leuner 1969), but also in education (Day 1994), sports (Morris, Spittle, and Watt 2005), and cancer treatment (Murray 2004). The guided imagery presented here, however, is an imagery for philosophical practice. Methodologically, the following imagery exercise is influenced by the so-called “Trilogos” method, a method developed by the Swiss pedagogue Linda Vera Roethlisberger (Roethlisberger 2006; 2012; 2013a; 2013b). The pedagogical intention of this Trilogos method is to support individuals in unfolding their cognitive, emotional, and spiritual potentials (hence, ‘tri’-‘logos’). The overarching purpose is personal development (Weiss, Roethlisberger, Bliemel, and Weiss 2011). Empirical studies at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, have shown that practicing this method, among others, significantly increases one’s well-being as evaluated by means of the WHOQOL 100 test (Palatinus 2016). Personally, as a philosopher, I would call the Trilogos method a method for learning phronesis, i.e., practical wisdom. In principle, the following imagery is like a short story. So, the writing style that I will use from now on is written as though I were reading the story to you. There is a simple reason: You can do this exercise on your own, auto-didactically, so to speak, or use it in a group (as the facilitator of this exercise). If you want to do this imagery in a group or together with a

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guest in your philosophical practice, you can use this chapter as a manual and as a script for reading to your audience. Finally, I would like to mention that there are some important elements included in this imagery – elements that you should take into account in order to help you make the experience as joyful and as safe as possible. When working as a philosophical practitioner, you never know for sure whether one of your guests or group participants is mentally unstable, under the influence of medication, or simply not in the right mood. Therefore, everyone must feel free to decide whether or not they want to participate in this exercise. Furthermore, you as the facilitator have to take the full responsibility for whatever happens. I am merely the author of this script and, as such, I neither can nor want to take any responsibility for other philosophical practitioners’ work with this manual. Hence, before doing this exercise with a group, I advise you to read this script carefully several times. It’s also a good idea to record it on tape and listen to it. Then analyze and interpret the experiences you had during the imagery. You may find the scheme in section 2.2.3 (“Interpretation and Analysis”) helpful. Only when you feel “safe and firm” with this manual should you start using it in a group or together with one of your guests. Never perform this imagery when you feel over-challenged, distracted, or insecure, for whatever reason. Doing this imagery under such conditions could lead to quite negative, unexpected, and unwanted effects. Having presented these words of caution, I will now introduce the manual.

2 A Guided Imagery Manual 1 Introduction We are now going to do some guided imagery, the topic of which is “selfknowledge and practical wisdom.” Maybe some of you are already familiar with guided imageries; maybe some of you have never heard the term ‘guided imagery’ before. To keep things clear and simple: The guided imagery that we are doing now is like a short story. This means that I will simply read you a story now. But before I start to tell you the story, I would like to give a short introduction so that you know a bit more about what this exercise will be about. First, you can listen to this story, to this guided imagery, in two ways: One is to listen to it more passively, meaning that you leave your eyes open and listen to my words, just as you would normally listen to any other story.

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The other way is to listen to the story more actively, that is, you close your eyes and imagine the story – it is as if you yourself were participating in it, and you experience it in your imagination. Of course, you can always open your eyes at any given time, should you want to. It is up to you whether you want to listen to the story passively or actively. If you are not so sure whether to participate actively or passively – or if you don’t feel fine for whatever reason – just listen to the story passively this time, so you know what to expect the next time you’re invited to participate in a guided imagery. Now a few remarks on the content of the story: a) If you participate actively, this story will bring you into ‘the world of your imagination.’ And there, you will meet an ‘inner guide,’ who will take you through the whole journey in this world of your imagination. In a metaphorical sense, the inner guide is like a mountain guide, when you hike in the mountains. So, whenever you need help, or when you don’t understand something in the imagery, you can always ask your inner guide for support. b) If you participate actively in this story, it can be that you discover a gift or a present in the landscape of the imagery, together with your inner guide. We will have a closer look at this gift after the imagery. The central question then will be, “What could this gift that I received have to do with me and my everyday life?” However, since an important part of this story, this exercise, is to relax – not only physically but also emotionally and mentally – it could be that you want to do nothing but relax, and you do not find a gift either. This is also possible. In any case, we will all come back together to the ‘here and now’ at the end. c) If you are listening actively to the story, you might experience this exercise almost like a little meditation; like a meditative journey into the world of your imagination. For that reason, there will be an explicit option for you to make your ritual; to send your prayer to God, Allah, Atman, the Great Nothingness – or whatever you call it – in order to intensify this meditative state and your relaxation. In this way, people from different denominations, including atheists, have the opportunity to gain deeper trust and relaxation during the imagery, so that everyone can feel safe and secure. d) Now the last point, before I start with the story: I would like you to switch off your mobile phones, so that you are not interrupted during the exercise. Then, I would like you to make yourself

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comfortable in your chair. And all of you who want to participate actively in the story – close your eyes now. 2 Guided Imagery Script Like most stories, this one starts with “Once upon a time...” Once upon a time – on a warm and sunny day – there was a beautiful garden somewhere in Greece . . . Many olive trees grew there, offering a nice and cooling shade . . . It was quiet here in the garden, absolutely quiet – only some crickets made their relaxing sound in the distance. The air was refreshingly clear, and filled with the scent of Mediterranean herbs . . . More and more you can imagine this garden in the sunshine now, with its olive trees and their cooling shade below . . . The relaxing sound of the crickets in the distance . . . As well as the refreshingly clear air, with the nice scent of those Mediterranean herbs . . . And maybe you can almost imagine being there . . . Being in this garden on a beautiful summer day. And you can make yourself comfortable here in the garden – maybe under one of the olive trees, where you can relax . . . Relax your body, your emotions, your thoughts . . . Here in the garden, you can, more and more, come to a rest . . . You can breathe in soothing and refreshing air – and you can breathe out everything that still reminds you of your everyday life – all sorrows and wishes; you can breathe them out . . . Only to breathe in soothing and refreshing air again. And while you can increasingly relax, and enjoy the quiet and almost meditative atmosphere of this place here, a soothing feeling of trust begins to evolve inside of you . . . And, inspired by this feeling of trust, you are now invited to make your ritual with God, Allah, Atman, the universal force of nature, the Great Nothingness, or whatever you call it, so that you feel safe, and know that you are safe and secure, and that you can relax even more. And while you still enjoy the peaceful and soothing atmosphere here, you sense that someone is coming into the garden now to pay you a visit – it is your inner guide – a good force who comes to you in unconditional support, and who welcomes you as a friend . . . Maybe you can’t see your inner guide, but you can feel his or her presence, or you just know that he or she is here . . . You believe, and trust, that this good force is with you now and you know that if you don’t feel comfortable with your inner guide, you can always ask for another one. Your inner guide invites you now to visit an old Greek temple nearby – your inner guide would like to show you something there . . . But if you are not up for any tourist activities at the moment, and if you just want to continue to relax here in the garden, then your inner guide brought you a

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nice hammock and hangs it between two olive trees, so you can make yourself comfortable there and enjoy the atmosphere . . . If you are curious about the old temple, however, then you follow your inner guide, who tells you that the whole temple area will be reserved for you alone today . . . It doesn’t take long and you and your inner guide come to the entrance of a temple facility, where you discover the inscription, “Know thyself,” written on the building . . . You enter this old facility now, together with your inner guide, who leads you through the temple complex towards its center . . . And when you approach the center of the temple now, you sense that there is a little hole in the ground from which a little smoke cloud, or vapor, starts to come out . . . Curious about this cloud, you observe it with all your senses and soon you realize that in the cloud something is manifesting and revealing itself to you. What is it that you begin to sense in the cloud now? Is it a colorful image; a certain form or symbol, or a situation from everyday life? Maybe it is a certain smell? Or something completely different. It could also be that the cloud makes a certain sound while flowing out from the ground . . . Or that you sense a certain feeling – a feeling inspired by this cloud . . . And whatever it is that comes to your mind now, you are thankful for it, and more and more you can focus your “inner senses” on it . . . And you know that your inner guide is always there to help you if you have any questions, or if you need any support, while you can more and more concentrate on whatever it is that appears in the little cloud now. [1 minute of silence] Whatever it was that you sensed in the little cloud . . . The cloud disappears now again . . . And it is about time for you to leave the temple, together with your inner guide. On the way back to the garden, you can engage in dialogue with your inner guide – to clarify unanswered questions about the little cloud, and whatever you sensed in it . . . Now, back at the garden, you thank your inner guide for their cooperation, and you say goodbye . . . That goes also for those of you who continued to relax in the hammock here . . . And then, your inner guide goes back to where he or she came from, while you leave the garden too . . . You let go of all impressions that you sensed . . . But one important memory remains . . . You close the gates to your imagination thoroughly now . . . And, after you closed the gates to the world of your imagination, you remember your physical body again – it almost fell asleep a little here on the chair . . . Gently, you wake up your body . . . You start to move your fingers – as well as your toes . . . You tighten your muscles for a moment, and then you relax them again . . . More and more, your body

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awakes now . . . You breathe in deeply, and then out deeply . . . And then, when you feel ready for it, you open your eyes again and you are back here, in the room. 3 Interpretation and Analysis 1 Remarks on the Imagery After the imagery . . . Did you come back safely from this journey? Are you well back in the here and now? If you participated actively in the story, you can write down what you experienced during this journey – have your focus especially on the cloud in the temple and whatever appeared in it. For now, it is not important what your experiences of this imagery mean – don’t try to interpret them just now. At the moment, it is only important that you try to make a short, but accurate, description of what you sensed and experienced during this journey. If you sensed nothing, or if you could only sense certain feelings or smells or sounds but had no visual impressions, then write that down too, because this can also be very valuable information. [If you work in a group: While the participants make their notes, you can open a window so that some fresh air comes into the room – after a couple of minutes close the window again and continue with the following steps.] Remarks on the imagery . . . The main focus now will be on the cloud, and what appeared in it. However, before having a closer look at that, I would like to make a few remarks on some earlier steps of this imagery. a) In the beginning, you imagined the garden with the olive trees and maybe you even had the impression that you were there, in the garden. In case you couldn’t imagine anything during some parts, or during the whole imagery – no garden, no olive trees, no nothing – don’t worry! No one is born a master at anything, and this does not mean that you cannot do it very well at some other time. The same goes for guided imageries as for jogging or climbing – you need regular training. So, if you train regularly, you will see that images and perceptions start to come almost automatically. (Just try right now to imagine a blue elephant. Did it work? Probably it did – so you see, you do have this ‘power of imagination.’)

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b) Then, there was a point in the imagery where you could make your prayer, your meditation, your ritual with God, Allah, Atman, the universe, the Great Nothingness, or whatever you call it. How did you experience that? This part is very individual, depending on your faith and denomination – atheists can perform this step too, of course. However, this step too might require regular training to figure out what kind of technique suits you best. The meaning and purpose of this part of the imagery is to deepen your relaxation, and to gain more spiritual or, if you will, basic trust. c) After this step, an inner guide came to visit you in the garden. Did you welcome him or her? Could you see him or her, or feel his or her presence, or did you just know that he or she was with you? In case you couldn’t sense an inner guide, don’t worry – this part, too, takes regular practice and patience. Next time, just trust and believe that an inner guide is with you, even if you can’t sense him or her. d) The next step in the imagery was to decide whether you wanted to continue to relax in the hammock, or whether you wanted to visit the old nearby temple. Did you decide just to continue to relax in the hammock, and not to visit the temple? If so: This is fine. You made your decision self-responsibly according to what felt right for you, right then and there – and that kind of self-responsibility is absolutely necessary in this kind of exercise. 2 Philosophical Reflection Process Now, the focus will be on the cloud that you may have sensed in the temple. The guiding question here will be, “What could this cloud and your experience with it have to do with you and your everyday life?” This question is now investigated in four steps: a. Description, b. Associations, c. Interpretations, and d. Reflections. a. Description Now, in case you didn’t decide to continue to relax in the hammock, did you visit the temple instead? (If something else happened, describe what it was and continue with b. Associations.) If you visited the temple, were you also able to sense the inscription, “Know thyself,” at the entrance? And after you entered the temple, were you able to sense a little cloud coming out from the hole in the ground – perhaps something even manifested itself in the cloud? Describe your experience with the cloud, and what you sensed in it:

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Remarks: In case you did this exercise with a group, let one participant start to describe what he or she experienced in the temple and what he or she sensed in the cloud. (Of course, nobody should be forced to share his or her experiences with the others. Furthermore, as a matter of confidentiality, everything that is said in the group, remains in the group and must not be shared with any ‘outsiders’). After one participant has finished his or her description of the experience with the cloud, you continue with step b. Associations, then c. Interpretations, and, finally, with step d. Reflections. After that, the next participant starts with step a. Description and you continue with b. Associations, c. Interpretations, and d. Reflections, and so on. It can happen that a participant sensed nothing in the cloud, or that it was empty – or that he or she didn’t sense a cloud at all. This is all right. However, it could be that instead of an image in the cloud, there was a certain smell, or a certain feeling that came up when the participant sensed the cloud. If the participant insists that the cloud was empty, you can linger on the theme of “empty,” or “emptiness,” for example. It is a very common human predicament, although its manifestation in one individual is distinct from that in another. Investigate what this particular individual associates with “empty” or “emptiness,” and what it means for him or her in their everyday life. It is very important that the participant gets the chance to communicate this – some people feel that their smell or particular feeling is ‘nothing’ compared to a solid object. However, as you will see in the course of this reflection process, feelings, smells, sounds, or just ideas can be of high value for this kind of exercise. b. Associations In this step, you are invited to make free associations, and to formulate ideas that spontaneously come to your mind concerning your cloud and whatever you sensed in it. This a bit like dream interpretation; you see this cloud and what appeared in it as a phenomenon, and now you are invited to philosophize a bit about it. So, what comes to your mind when you imagine this special cloud? What is it in, or with, the cloud that catches your attention? What kind of associations and ideas; which intuitions cross your mind? You can be quite creative here – there are no ‘wrong’ associations or ideas:

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Remarks: If you do this step in a group, then the person who described his or her cloud is not making associations right now; only the rest of the group is invited to do so. The reason will be explained in the next step. c. Interpretations This step overlaps somewhat with the previous, but here you (or the group) are invited to formulate your associations and ideas about the cloud into more concrete interpretations. There can be several; “There are as many interpretations of the truth as individuals” (Roethlisberger 2006, 45). The goal here is to figure out possible topics of the cloud experience, based on the associations and ideas that you already have. Topics could be, for example, self-care, not giving up hope, being brave, working in a more disciplined manner, just to name a few. Have a look at your collected associations and ideas, and try to formulate sentences beginning with, The cloud experience could be interpreted to be about . . .

Remarks: The reason why the person telling his or her story is not invited to make associations or interpretations at this stage (if you are working in a group) is that this person might already have a specific idea about what the experience means. And a philosophical group investigation is quite difficult if there is already a fixed interpretation ‘on the table.’ Since dialogues as such depend on and come alive with many different views, so this dialogue too, albeit based mainly on associative thinking, should be kept as open as possible. In this respect, the facilitator of the exercise has to take care that group participants do not communicate associations and interpretations in ways that are commanding (“The cloud means that you have to . . . now!”), righteous (“It is obvious that the cloud means that . . .”), or prophesying ( “This cloud says that you will meet the man or woman of your dreams soon”). What the respective cloud means – and there can be several meanings and interpretations – is for the person herself to decide. He or she has to decide, in a strictly self-responsible way, which of the interpretations seem to “resonate” with him or her and, hence, appear valuable. The rest of the group merely helps to extend the spectrum of associations and interpretations.

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What if you or a group participant sensed nothing in the cloud (or had no cloud at all)? Remember, you can make associations to “nothingness,” or “emptiness,” etc., too; you can always make associations and interpretations – even if nothing was sensed. d. Reflections Now, you (or the person with the current cloud story) are invited to relate all the associations and interpretations that you gathered in step b. Associations and c. Interpretations to yourself, and your everyday life. What could they mean in relation to you? Could there be a connection between the cloud and your everyday life at all? Is there something you have become aware of? Are you getting any particular insights? Maybe it is a certain trait of your character that becomes important to you now – perhaps you want to transform, or develop? Or maybe there is a certain situation that you find yourself in again and again – and that you can see from a new perspective now? Whatever it is that you are becoming aware of, write it down:

Now ask yourself, “How can I put these insights into practice? What is the next step of action?”

If you work in a group – and after everyone had the chance to share his or her experience – remember all the associations and interpretations that you made about the clouds of other participants. Ask yourself what they could have to do with you too – is there something that you become aware of now?

Remarks: Two case study examples. In the first example, a man first sensed nothing in the cloud. He was disappointed, turned away and wanted to leave the temple. But on the way out, he suddenly sensed a second

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cloud. From that second cloud, he could hear some kind of sacred and holy music playing – almost as if “angels were singing.” From the other participants he then received associations like “giving up hope to soon” and “losing trust.” His interpretations were then formulated as follows: (1) “This experience with the cloud could be interpreted to be about giving up hope too soon,” and (2) “This experience with the cloud could be interpreted to be about maintaining trust.” In d. Reflections, he said that he felt that he often gave up hope too soon, but that the insight for him from this exercise was to try to maintain trust, even if a given situation did not look very promising. In other words, this example is about changing one’s attitude. In the second example, a woman sensed a golden key in the cloud. Since “a golden key can mean everything and nothing,” as she put it, she was thankful if the group would help her with some associations and interpretations. Among the associations were “a device to unlock something;” “a valuable material formed into an everyday object;” “a door opener, to inner secrets.” These associations were then formed into the following interpretations: (1) “This experience with the cloud could be interpreted as a symbol of unlocking something,” (2) “This experience with the cloud could be about learning to see the valuable and precious in everyday life,” and (3) “This experience with the cloud could be interpreted to be about uncovering inner secrets.” In d. Reflections, the woman said that the first and the last interpretation didn’t really tell her much – they didn’t really resonate with her. The second interpretation, however, made a lot of sense. She said that she experiences herself as a rather ungrateful person at the moment; always “striving for more,” never taking a break and appreciating life as it is. Changing her view in this respect “definitely seems to be key – it opens up a perspective towards thankfulness as well as humbleness, which I feel I don’t experience, and actually miss, in my life at the moment,” she said. In other words, this example is about changing perspective.

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3 Linking Up with Phronesis Preliminary remarks on this last step . . . In this last part of the exercise, participants are invited to philosophize about phronesis, based on their experiences and insights from the guided imagery. Non-philosophers may not be familiar with the term, however; hence a few preliminary remarks before the last step of this exercise. As you have seen, the setting of the ‘inner landscape’ in this guided imagery is related to the Apollo temple of the Delphic Oracle. The inscription, “Know thyself,” at the entrance, and the hole in the ground from which the smoke came out are well-known features. In a metaphorical sense, the visit to the temple in the imagery is – to a certain degree – like a visit to the Delphic Oracle. Here, we can approach the possibilities for self-knowledge in an experiential and person-centered manner. The unique nature of self-knowledge (as compared to episteme or techné) must, of course, be taken into account. And remember, if we try to generalize self-knowledge – to make it objective – we would miss the point. In other words, self-knowledge is individual, and it fundamentally differs from person to person; a self-insight relevant for me does not necessarily have to be relevant for anyone else. That is why it is difficult, if not impossible, to develop a general concept of it without losing its essence. It is difficult even to philosophize about it, i.e., to treat and investigate it as a universal aspect of the human condition. However, as Gallagher has pointed out (1992, 198), self-knowledge is a prerequisite to developing phronesis – and phronesis, unlike self-knowledge, appears to be a concept that can indeed be investigated in a more general sense. In fact, several philosophers throughout history have investigated it; Socrates (Meno, 96d) and Aristotle (NE, 1142a), but also Heidegger (1997, 39) and Gadamer (1997, 107) are well known for their reflections on the subject. What cannot be dealt with as self-knowledge seems to be examinable as phronesis, its general “dimension.” Phronesis means responding to any given situation in a good and virtuous way, and with regard to the aim of living well overall. However, since the term is rather unknown to non-philosophers, and since a key feature of philosophical practice is to philosophize with non-philosophers, a more comprehensible translation seems to be required. Practical wisdom does not appear to be a proper solution, since the term wisdom in general is often hard to relate to. Also prudence, a common translation for phronesis, seems to be less than ideal, since prudence is increasingly associated with cautiousness – and that is not what was originally meant by phronesis. Moral knowledge – a translation favored by Gallagher

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(1992, 197) – seems rather inappropriate too, in the context of philosophical practice, since moral knowledge can easily be mixed up with knowledge about morals. And that, of course, would be something quite different. A more proper suggestion is given by Thomas McEvilley in his book, The Shape of Ancient Thought. Here, he proposes mindfulness as the best translation of phronesis (McEvilley 2002, 609). If one takes a closer look at mindfulness, it seems to incorporate a self-reflective as well as a caring dimension (caring for oneself, others, as well as the situation). Mindfulness seems to be an ethical attitude that is not only open-minded and action-oriented, but that can also incorporate several of the virtues. For this reason, phronesis will be translated and operationalized as “mindfulness” in what follows next. Performing the last step of the exercise . . . Since mindfulness, on the one hand, depends on self-knowledge and, on the other hand, it cannot be taught, you (or the participants of your group) are now invited to investigate the question, “What is mindfulness (about)?” Base your response on the experiences and self-insights of the previous imagery. The idea now is to have an open dialogue guided by the following questions. Each of these questions should be investigated one at a time, since they build on one another. 1. Is there anything that you can learn from your experiences of and insights gleaned from this guided imagery with regard to mindfulness (or ‘being mindful’)? Is there anything that seems to help you further develop your mindfulness? Describe:

2. Based on these descriptions, can you say anything about what mindfulness is or what it is about?

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Remarks: In the two examples presented above, possible answers could be: “Mindfulness is about appreciating and valuing the little things in life,” or “Mindfulness is about being aware that giving up hope is but an option that we choose – or do not choose – and that the decision is really always ours.” Other ideas might include: “Mindfulness is about thinking twice” or “Mindfulness is about developing a humble and grateful attitude towards (everyday) life.” Note that this step is not about making general definitions of mindfulness. This step is only about investigating whether, and how, the insights of the imagery can be linked up to mindfulness. 3. Now, try to make general formulations about mindfulness based on the outcome from step 2. You can start your formulations with, In a more general sense, mindfulness is about . . .

Remarks: Examples of more general formulations in regard to our earlier examples could be: “Mindfulness is about being humble towards life” or “Mindfulness is about acting prudently.” Since the formulations of the previous step serve as a starting point for the investigation here, useful questions for the examination process could be, for instance: “Are there similarities between the formulations of this step, and the previous step?” or “Do some of the formulations of the previous step have something in common?” or “How can you put the formulations of the previous step in more general terms?” Learning practical wisdom: final notes on the exercise . . . At the end of this philosophical investigation, you (or the participants in your group) might arrive at an understanding of mindfulness that is somehow deeper or broader than before. This deeper understanding, however, is not the outcome of teaching or lecturing. There was – on purpose – no lecturing whatsoever in the course of this exercise. Rather, this deeper understanding can be seen as the result of an investigative movement that started with the concrete experiences of the guided imagery, and ended with more general formulations about mindfulness. (To a certain extent, this is similar to the movement of the reflection in socalled Socratic dialogues inspired by Leonard Nelson. There, you start with concrete, personal experiences, and end with general definitions of the topic under investigation [Weiss 2015, 215]). And since we are dealing with practical wisdom, personal insights are equally important for

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developing and practicing mindfulness. Personal insights can offer clues as to how you in particular can cultivate phronesis, and what seems to be important in this learning process at the moment. As Aristotle wrote, however, gaining phronesis requires experience – and “experience is the fruit of years” (NE, 1142a 6-7). In this sense, your experiences and insights from this exercise should be seen as one ‘drop’ in the process of learning phronesis. As the proverb goes, “constant dropping wears away the stone.”

3 Concluding Remarks In the beginning of this chapter, it was pointed out that phronesis cannot be taught – it can only be learned, and only through self-knowledge (Gallagher 1992, 198). Self-knowledge, in turn, is fundamentally different from other forms of knowledge, as it cannot be generalized. One of the oldest and most fundamental questions in the history of philosophy, for example, is, “Who am I?” That this question is centrally concerned with self-knowledge is obvious. But trying to find a general answer to it would simply miss the point, since the question can only be answered by the person asking it. A guided imagery on the topic of self-knowledge was then presented; taking the unique nature of the topic into account. The intention behind this imagery exercise was not to treat, or investigate, self-knowledge as a general concept. Rather, the methodological format was designed to open up the possibility of having individual (self-)insights. For this reason, the Apollo temple of the Delphi Oracle – the temple where Socrates learned the maxim “Know thyself” – was chosen. Hence, we approach the topic of self-knowledge in a more experiential manner. What followed were suggestions as to how the experiences from the imagery could be reflected on, and whether they could indeed offer any self-knowledge. Intending to support participants in self-insight and self-knowledge while refraining from investigating self-knowledge in general, however, appears to be problematic from a philosophical point of view. If one understands the activity of philosophizing as “investigating general aspects of the human condition,” then – strictly speaking – philosophizing did not take place in the exercise. In other words, even if participants could gain self-knowledge by means of this imagery, they would lack a common reference point – a general aspect of the human condition – to relate to, and to investigate together. They would have their individual insights, but as such, they are not generalizable; as an insight for me is not necessarily an insight for you. The question is, then, whether this imagery exercise has

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anything to do with philosophizing, or philosophical practice, at all. If one understands the activity of philosophizing as a movement starting with the specific (experiences of the imagery) and reaching towards the general (definitions of the term under investigation), as with Nelson’s Socratic dialogues, for example, then perhaps it is indeed philosophical practice (Weiss 2015, 215). Yet in this case, the exercise was not in philosophizing – with good reason: philosophizing would have violated the specific essence of self-knowledge. Now, one might well conclude that gaining self-knowledge is not a philosophical issue. That, however, would be to “reckon without one’s host,” so to speak, since gaining self-knowledge is a prerequisite for developing and learning phronesis. And phronesis, without doubt, can be understood and investigated as a general aspect of the human condition. Further on in this chapter, we focused on how to link up the experiences and the possible self-insights from the guided imagery with a philosophical investigation about phronesis. In this respect, it was pointed out that a new, easily accessible translation of “phronesis” might be required – the reason being that the imagery is intended for philosophical practice, and that philosophical practice is – among much else – about philosophizing together with people who have not studied philosophy (Weiss 2015, 6). Mindfulness was chosen as a suitable translation for these purposes. The philosophical dialogue was now oriented towards the question, “What can you learn from a guided imagery about mindfulness (or being and becoming mindful)?” and “What is mindfulness about, based on your experiences and possible self-insights here today?” In this way, we intended to investigate phronesis philosophically, in an accessible way. The philosophical investigation was designed to make phronesis examinable theoretically, albeit with a practice-oriented focus (as practical wisdom is at the core.) Valuable insights from the imagery could come to the fore, and they helped pave the way to develop our understanding of phronesis in terms of mindfulness. The learning process differs from person to person; it is based on experience, and people have different experiences in guided imageries. Phronesis and its cultivation are central to these exercises. Having pointed that out, one may well conclude that the philosophical practice presented here can be understood as a kind of “education.” The question now is, Is this really the case? If yes, would that lead the way to a new paradigm in philosophical practice – is perhaps philosophical practice, in general, an educational practice concerned with the learning of phronesis? It is always problematic to relate philosophical practice to certain goals, or purposes. And “learning phronesis” could perhaps be interpreted

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as such a goal or purpose. But the outcomes of philosophical dialogues and investigations are essentially neither predictable nor plannable, nor should they be (Hansen 2015, 217f). Aiming towards certain goals would require methods – it would require know-how, and know-how is related to techné rather than phronesis. Philosophizing, however, is not about applying methods in order to reach certain goals, as Detlef Staude has pointed out in a chapter aptly called “Living Free of Purposes and StressProvoking Goals” (Staude 2015, 42). Here Staude, inspired by Aristotle, differentiates between two kinds of activities: poiesis, an activity whose goal is beyond itself (like building a house), and praxis, an activity whose goal is within itself (to go for a walk, to dwell, to philosophize). Praxis and poiesis are two completely different concepts. With the words of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, action and making are different kinds of thing, since making aims at an end distinct from the act of making, whereas in doing, the end cannot be other than the act itself. (Nicomachean Ethics, 1140b 1-5)

If we assume that philosophical practice is about learning phronesis, then it seems to be an activity whose goal is beyond itself, poiesis rather than praxis. However, this assumption is fallacious. Philosophical dialogue as such, as well as the activity of philosophizing in general, is about being “phronetic,” that is, mindful – mindful in the sense of being (self)reflective, investigative, critical, open-minded, wondering – but also in the sense of being concentrated, focused, concerned with what is expressed, etc. In a more metaphorical sense, to be ‘mindful’ in philosophizing can mean to be “full of minds,” as well as to “fully mind” the dialogue, the process of investigation, the topic and, of course, the community of inquiry (Lipman 2003, 84): the dialogue participants and whatever they contribute. Now, if phronesis is translated as mindfulness, then philosophizing can be understood as an activity of learning phronesis; learning phronesis is learning-by-doing. And “doing” (as opposed to “making”) is praxis – philosophical practice. It seems legitimate to suggest that philosophical practice is an educational practice. As an educational approach, however, it is still radically different from the conventional education system of our times; it is not about teaching, knowledge-sharing, or the acquiring of know-how. Rather, philosophical practice resembles a form of self-learning that is concerned with phronesis. Will this phronesis-related approach be a worthwhile future perspective for the philosophical practice movement? Time will tell. To the extent that it demonstrates the relevance and uniqueness of philosophical practice (as

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compared to psychotherapy, coaching, or traditional education), as well as its relation to Eudaimonia – human flourishing – it is, surely, a road of great potential.

References Day, Jennifer. 1994. Creative Visualization with Children: A Practical Guide. Boston, MA: Element Books. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1997. “The Problem of Historical Consciousness.” In Interpretive Social Sciences: A Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gallagher, Shaun. 1992. Hermeneutics and Education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hansen, Finn Thorbjørn. 2015. “The Call and Practices of Wonder. How to Evoke a Socratic Community of Wonder in Professional Settings.” In The Socratic Handbook: Dialogue Methods for Philosophical Practice, edited by Michael Noah Weiss. Vienna: LIT Publishing. Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Plato’s Sophist. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Irmscher, Johannes, and Renate Johne. 1990. Lexikon der Antike. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut. Lahav, Ran. 2015. “Contemplative Philosophy and Philosophical Practice.” In The Socratic Handbook: Dialogue Methods for Philosophical Practice, edited by Michael Noah Weiss. Vienna: LIT Publishing. Leuner, Hanscarl. 1969. “Guided Affective Imagery (GAI). A Method of Intensive Psychotherapy.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 23 (1): 4–22. Lipman, Matthew. 2003. Thinking in Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McEvilley, Thomas. 2002. The Shape of Ancient Thought. New York, NY: Allworth Press. Morris, Tony, Michael Spittle, and Anthony P. Watt. 2005. Imagery in Sport: The Mental Approach to Sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Murray, Steve. 2004. Cancer Guided Imagery Program: For Radiation, Chemotherapy, Surgery and Recovery. Las Vegas, NV: Body & Mind Productions. Palatinus, Martina. 2016. Im Kontakt mit der inneren Stimme – Evaluierung der Wirksamkeit der Stufe 1 des Trilogos-Lehrganges. Vienna: University of Vienna.

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Robinson, Daniel N. 1989. Aristotle's Psychology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Roethlisberger, Linda Vera. 2006. Die Trilogos-PsyQ-Methode. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishing. —. 2012. Im Kontakt mit der inneren Stimme. PsyQ®Training für Persönlichkeits- und Bewusstseinsbildung, Stufe 1. Berlin: Pro Business. —. 2013a. Im Kontakt mit der inneren Stimme. PsyQ®Training für Persönlichkeits- und Bewusstseinsbildung, Stufe 2. Berlin: Pro Business. —. 2013b. Im Kontakt mit der inneren Stimme. PsyQ®Training für Persönlichkeits- und Bewusstseinsbildung, Stufe 3. Berlin: Pro Business. Staude, Detlef. 2015. “The Path of Consideration: Philosophical Practice in Dialogic Life Accompaniment.” In The Socratic Handbook: Dialogue Methods for Philosophical Practice, edited by Michael Noah Weiss. Vienna: LIT Publishing. Teichmann, Jenny, and Katherine C. Evans. 1999. Philosophy – A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Blackwell. Weiss, Michael Noah, ed. 2015. The Socratic Handbook: Dialogue Methods for Philosophical Practice. Vienna: LIT Publishing. Weiss, Michael Noah, Linda Vera Roethlisberger, Christin Weiss, and Karin Bliemel. 2011. IQ + EQ + SQ = PsyQ – The Integrally Emerging Intelligence. München: Grin Publishing.

CHAPTER NINE APHORISMS AS STIMULATION IN PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE DETLEF STAUDE

In a special setting, as here described, the author uses certain aphorisms for stimulating and focusing a philosophical dialogue. These autographic aphorisms date back to different phases of his life; thus, they are examples of a personal development and engagement in philosophical reasoning. Due to the nature of aphorisms, most of this remains implicit and is only expressed in the form of brief insights rooted in existential significance. Participants have experienced this use of aphorisms as highly encouraging, because they were inspired to see their own corresponding life situations in a philosophical light. The aphorisms helped them to speak about themselves, to see the general contexts of situations they’ve been in and discuss them. In this chapter I describe the kind of the aphorisms applied, their use and the experiences people have had with them. I reflect on the impact of aphorisms in the given setting and the anthropological position of philosophical aphorisms. And, I give reasons for the use of aphorisms in philosophical practice.

Distance and Proximity Some years ago, I used to conduct philosophical leisure weeks. For the last evening we were together, in a comfortable hotel in Sils Maria, I searched for a special event, related to the main theme of the week but enabling the communication of emotions and experiences, something between socializing and philosophizing. Searching for such a form of philosophical dialogue, I decided to try out some aphorisms I had written quite a few years earlier and which were linked to the theme of the week. It may be important to note that I didn’t write new aphorisms for that session but just used a selection of aphorisms I had written in the eighties and the nineties.

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It is very common for people to write diaries, poems, or aphorisms in some phases of their life. Usually after a while they fall victim to some dusty corner where nobody reads them anymore. Some of them might be treasures, even for a philosophical dialogue; many are just more or less serious attempts. Thus, I should add that I had previously culled a sample from all my material, so I could choose the aphorisms I actually used out of this former selection. This double choice should, I hoped, guarantee some substance to reflect on. The first time I used aphorisms in this setting was in 2010 when the theme of the week was “The Phases of Life and the Challenges of Change.” The second time was 2012, with the theme “Suffering, Realization and Enjoyment.” So the aphorisms mirrored, on the one hand, a different time of my life but, on the other, they fit quite well into the themes of the weeks, as they incorporated – in a poetical form – some very general and touching insights about those themes. Is it an appropriate way to philosophize with people if such quite personal texts, written by the chairperson of a session himself, are chosen? One should keep in mind that I did not write the aphorisms in the same year that the session occurred, nor even in the same decade, nor even in the same century. This distance in time allowed me to speak about them relatively independently of the person I had become. Also, they were written in a way that focuses on the general situation behind an existential experience. This allowed me to distance myself from them as well. So it was in some sense as if I had used poems or aphorisms of other authors. Nevertheless, this setting also allowed something special to happen: everyone could identify with the questions, ideas, and experiences discussed and therefore a special proximity to the subject could arise. The sense that philosophizing has to do with one’s own life became very evident. All participants had copies of the aphorisms in their hands. I would read one aphorism and then we would speak about it. The time to speak about all of them was always scarce because they triggered many subsequent questions and reflections. The effect of reading the poems of others would have been different. No guessing on the author’s intention was possible, since he was present. The aphorisms and short poems inspired thoughts about the existential situations mentioned in the texts. They also inspired the participants to share experiences related to the questions and situations figuring in the aphorisms. Furthermore, the highly focused form of an aphorism or a little poem resulted in higher levels of concentration.

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For me, the use of aphorisms and little poems was an unexpected “success”: people enjoyed the session very much; the dialogue was of a good philosophical quality, on the one hand, and true to everyone’s life, on the other, with the result that all participants actively participated. My apprehension that the material would be too personal was unfounded, because this personal proximity simply made everyone feel permitted to share their own thoughts, experiences, ideas, questions, and concepts. Ways of life, nearly always the focus of philosophical practice, was in the center of the discussion in a very intensive way. But it remained a common reflection and didn’t become mere group chat.

Poetry Therapy in Philosophical Practice? When asking myself about the theoretical or even methodological background and reasons why the use of aphorisms and little poems in such a setting of philosophical practice stimulates dialogue in a fruitful way, I looked more closely at poetry/bibliotherapy. As an institutionalized movement since about 30 years ago, mainly in the U.S., poetry/bibliotherapy strives towards healing and happiness (Rolfs 2015, 49-78). Could this theoretical background therefore be of some help? My understanding of philosophical practice contrasts strongly with that of practitioners of poetry/bibliotherapy insofar as I don’t see philosophical practice as therapy, even if it may have therapeutic effects. If one wants to open up a space for free dialogue and reflection, guided not by the intention to heal a patient, but to enrich all participants and perhaps allow for new orientations in life, then this difference in intention between the two practices will also lead to different results even if, superficially, they look quite similar. As Rolfs writes, the happiness that poetry therapy strives for is characterized by selfawareness, a sense of personal agency and potentiality, and an experience of openness and spaciousness within the self. The overall purpose of poetry therapy sessions is to provide clients with an emotional experience in response to carefully chosen poems that elicit self-observation and insight, and to provide a safe non-judgmental environment in which to share the experiences. The following four main goals, as formulated by Sister Arleen Hynes, one of the great poetry pioneers – to improve the capacity to respond, to increase selfunderstanding, to increase awareness of interpersonal relations, and to improve reality orientation – all serve one comprehensive purpose – to improve the participants’ self-esteem and morale. (Rolfs 2015, 50-51)

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That sounds very similar to the intentions of philosophical practice. But there are differences: happiness can’t be the main goal of philosophy or philosophical practice. For me, philosophical practice is a mind-opening dialogue directed towards freedom.1 The use of poems or aphorisms in philosophical practice also does not aim to provide emotional experiences; they shall mainly induce reflection. People did not talk about their experiences with the poems or aphorisms, but reflected on the existential situations and questions of life mentioned in the texts. Only from time to time might they share one of their own experiences related to it. So the main focus was not the poems or aphorisms, nor the participants’ emotional experiences with them, but the related existential situations with their associated implications and questions. In bringing up these reflections, the aphorisms were worthwhile. Nevertheless, the aphorisms themselves were not just tools to reach this aim: as they were written by me and I was partner in the dialogue, they were also part of my selfnarration. Poetry therapy tries to support creativity and empathic communication. This and some other information from Rolfs’ detailed essay shows that the main focus of poetry therapy is psychotherapeutic and that it is not a method “in between” psychotherapy and philosophical practice. Psychotherapy sees the main problems of human beings as being very closely linked to emotions and drives, the so-called psyche, whereas philosophical practitioners see the main problems of human beings linked to their ability to think and understand in order to lead a good life. Therefore, aphorisms and poems can be used by poetry therapists because of their emotional impact, and by others because of the stimulation they provide to reflect on life.2 All in all, we see that poems, aphorisms, and literature as such might even have therapeutic effects. If we look at the field of poetry therapy for theoretic explanations, we will find more or less psychotherapeutic concepts, presuppositions, and aims. Hence the well-established poetry therapy helps us to realize that the impact of literature on a group dialogue can be quite intense and help foster “self-awareness, a sense of personal agency and potentiality, and an experience of openness and spaciousness within the self,” but we don’t find a philosophically sufficient answer to why and how this can happen.

1

I explain very precisely why this is my goal and not others in Staude (2015). I realize that this differentiation between philosophical practice and psychotherapy is a very rough one; it shall not have the character of a definition, but merely illustrates the difference in direction and attitude.

2

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Texts as Spiritual Exercises in Philosophical Practice? We have an interpretation of the impact of at least some philosophical texts by a more or less “classical” author of philosophical practice: Pierre Hadot (1995). From his intensive work on the ancient Greek philosophers, he came to the conclusion that their texts were often meant to be spiritual exercises. So the reading and discussion of philosophical thought in the form of sayings and aphorisms should animate meditation on them. Even natural research, Hadot shows, was regarded as an exercise for gaining a balanced mind. But what should be gained by these exercises? The aim was philosophia, the search for wisdom, and this was understood as a way of life connected with the aims “peace of mind” (ataraxia) and “inner freedom” (autarkeia). I do not discuss Hadot’s well-proved thesis here. I just ask whether it is appropriate in contemporary philosophical practice to see texts like those of the ancient Greeks as challenges for spiritual exercises, as exercises for our minds and souls. If I look at many of the philosophical texts that I discuss in my groups, I can easily deny this. Philosophical practice today uses a much greater range of texts than ones which can serve for this sort of exercise. Nevertheless, if I look at the aphorisms and poems I used in the philosophical leisure weeks on “The Phases of Life and the Challenges of Change” and “Suffering, Realization and Enjoyment,” I have to admit that they fit it perfectly well. The focus of the themes were existential situations in life, and so was the focus of the aphorisms and little poems. Their short and well-structured form was a good precondition for a concentrated meditation as well. So they might be quite similar to stoic or epicurean sayings, narrations, or elucidations. Obviously, to see my aphorisms in the setting described as exercises for reflection, and therefore as exercises for dialogue,3 is adequate. But what this perspective does not provide are answers to why and how my aphorisms and other texts like them have this impact.

3

“Only he who is capable of a genuine encounter with the other is capable of an authentic encounter with himself, and the converse is equally true . . . . From this perspective, every spiritual exercise is a dialogue, insofar as it is an exercise of authentic presence, to oneself and to others” (Hadot 1995, 91).

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Texts as Fragments of Conceptual Personae Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari introduced the fruitful proposition that not only questions, ideas, and concepts are vital for thinking but conceptual personae also play an important role. In the process of thinking, they act as a focus or even as a source.4 Deleuze and Guattari take the example of Plato’s Socrates or Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, who became not only important conceptual personae for their authors, but even for the self-understanding of Western culture. Such conceptual personae enable the representation and symbolization of a complex conceptual network. Even if the named conceptual personae have historical backgrounds, they are mainly narrations, products of authors who put them into consistent perspectives, attitudes, and coherent conceptual constellations (Gerner 2015, 278). That allows the readers to put themselves in their shoes and think alike. Thus conceptual personae of all different kinds play an important role in our self-understanding. The self, as far as we can understand it today through philosophy, psychology, and neurophysiology, has many different levels. Thomas Fuchs names as the highest form of self the extended, reflexive, or personal self, which has, a) the capacity of taking on the perspective of the other (Perspektivenübernahme), b) the capacity of introspective or reflexive self-consciousness, c) a capacity of verbalization of its own experience, d) the creation of coherent narrative identities, and e) a self-concept by means of obtaining conceptual and autobiographic self-knowledge (Fuchs 2012, 887-901). According to Fuchs, the creation of coherent narrative identities and conceptual self-knowledge is an inevitable task of the personal self. And according to Deleuze and Guattari, conceptual personae help us with this. Now we can better understand the impact the aphorisms and poems had in my philosophical practice setting. As a philosopher, one always attracts people by one’s very personal way of philosophizing; by one’s own way of life. But that is not merely a psychological effect; one becomes, somehow, at least a seed of a conceptual personae for the participants, especially for those who have known the philosopher for a long time. An aphorism, showing a concentrated life experience and concepts of how to live, fosters this and allows an intensive examination of the conceptual network, attitude, and existential situation mirrored by the text. In the sessions, the texts were written by the philosopher himself and mirrored his way of life and existential situations. He was both bodily 4

“A conceptual persona . . . thinks in us” (Deleuze and Guattari 1992, 69).

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present but also “just a narration.” Therefore, the texts could foster a fruitful dialogue between an imagined conceptual persona (the young philosopher in the previous century), the participants, and me (here and now). Working with texts, even just reading them alone, always entails the possibility of entering into a dialogue with them. This dialogue is easier to enter if one can find personae in the text that can figure as dialogue partners. Usually we are told quite a lot about personal circumstances, habits, and other details of fictional characters, whereas conceptual personae just remain sketched, and what is communicated about them has a relation to the conceptual network they symbolize. Speaking about texts in a group lets this inner dialogue with the text become explicit and enriched by the perspectives of the others. If the author of the text is part of this group, the dialogue easily tends to become a dialogue with the author. That was not the case in the sessions where I used these aphorisms. Aphorisms and little poems in which typical life situations can easily be recognized remain somehow on a general level and are therefore more than biographic fragments. This general level is necessary to foster the extended, reflexive, and personal self. Therefore, being a moderator of such a group reflection I am much more present as a conceptual person than as the ordinary Detlef Staude here and now. This allows for a dialogue on a conceptual, philosophical basis which doesn’t turn into mere chat. So, one can say: in this situation I play the role of a moderator in a dialogue; the function I have is that of a conceptual persona, which allows some sort of personal development to become perspicuous. The philosopher in this setting becomes a model for a possible way of life and is present bodily and in the texts. Therefore, ways of dealing with the challenges of life, on the one hand, but also the awareness of our constitution as human beings, on the other, are at the center of such a philosophical practical dialogue. The philosopher – with his shadow, the conceptual person – encourages the participants to reflect on paradigmatic situations in their lives by thinking in his shoes as conceptual personae. The participants catch sight of how the existential challenges of life can be seen as exercises for living, if one allows reflection to aerate them. A good method to foster such reflection in a group is the use of aphorisms in the way described.

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References Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, translated by Michael Chase. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. (1990) 1992. What is Philosophy? New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Fuchs, Thomas. 2012. “Selbst und Schizophrenie.” DZPhil 60 (6): 887901. Gerner, Alexander. 2015. “Conceptual Personae of the ‘Attentional self.’” In Philosophical Perspectives on the Self, edited by João Fonseca and Jorge Gonçalves. Bern: Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers. Hynes, Arleen, and Mary Hynes-Berry. (1986) 1994. Biblio/Poetry Therapy, The Interactive Process: A Handbook. St Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 24. Rolfs, Alma Maria. 2015. “Healing Words: Poetry, Presence, and the Capacity for Happiness.” Journal of Humanities Therapy 6 (2): 49-78. Staude, Detlef. 2015. “Philosophical Practice as Mind-opening Dialog.” Journal of Humanities Therapy 6 (2): 25-39.

PART V NEW AUDIENCES, NOVEL APPROACHES

CHAPTER TEN THE WISDOM IN TRAGEDY: BUILDING A FLOURISHING LIFE IN THE FACE OF HARDSHIP JEANETTE BRESSON LADEGAARD KNOX

. . . once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. (Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore [2005])

A couple of millennia ago, Seneca wrote, “No one keeps death in view” (2004, 33).1 Death – then as well as now – is not something we are taught to expect, much like other calamities that bring suffering and grief in life. We grow up learning to pack our schoolbags and be on time, to analyze texts and calculate percentages. While we learn to be efficient and productive – all useful and necessary tools to function in a society – we also seem to grow up largely untutored in how to address hardship in life. Gradually the taxing, deep voice of the unpleasant and the uncontrollable numbs another decisive voice: the voice that holds all the fundamental questions about what it means to lead a good human life in full awareness of the tragic sense of life, all the questions that lay outside of the functional, manageable, and fixable. We learn to pursue delusion and deception as a defense against the disheartening human condition of vulnerability and mortality. Few of us learn how to address the existential and moral challenges of loss through, for example, life-threatening disease or physical and mental impairments. 1

Fellow Stoic Epictetus says something similar in his renowned Handbook: “Day by day you must keep before your eyes death and exile and everything else that seems frightening, but most especially death; and then you’ll never harbor any mean thought, nor will you desire anything beyond due measure” (Epictetus 2014, 292).

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In the past decade, I have studied and implemented the practice of philosophy to display the human resources within philosophy for the field of medicine and health care as well as unpack the tacit wisdom of tragic experiences such as a cancer diagnosis and having your life turned inside out. Though it is questionable whether a pure version of ancient Eudaimonia2 is relevant for contemporary life (Dentsoras 2015), my work with cancer survivors has led me to revisit Aristotle and Roman Stoicism,3 as what I observed through my encounters revealed a weighty resemblance to defining parts of Aristotelian and Stoic ethics. To both Aristotle and the Roman Stoics, the highest good is a flourishing life (Eudaimonia) and achieving such a life entails “living well and acting [doing] well” (Aristotle 1984, 1095a, 19) by exercising reason and choosing actions that promote the cultivation of virtues. Hence, virtues cannot be acquired abstractly but require action. Unknowingly, the participants in my various projects emulated philosophical ideas of learning how to live a flourishing life by befriending hardship. By seeing the inner transformations of the people in my projects through the lens of major themes in Aristotle and Roman Stoicism, their particular philosophical dimensions can be unearthed. Meanwhile, the limitations of a purely psychological understanding of how survivors process their situation can surface more explicitly. Following a true Socratic tradition, the concerns and salient doctrines of these giants from 2,500 years ago seem remarkably modern: their philosophical thoughts and practices engage in questions such as how to lead a fulfilling life, how to become a better person, and how to be resilient in the face of hardship, though they diverge in their responses as

2 “Eudaimonia” is often translated with the word “happiness” but this translation has been rejected by notable scholars such as Cooper and Nussbaum as being misleading. “Happiness” is often conceived of as momentary subjective states of mind while the ancients viewed Eudaimonia as encompassing the totality of one’s life. Both Cooper and Nussbaum suggest “flourishing” to be a more accurate translation (see Cooper 1986; Nussbaum 1994). Though “eudaimonia” is not a proper English word, I will use it interchangeably with “flourishing” throughout the chapter. 3 Stoicism has Greek and Roman representations. The original Stoicism arose in the Hellenistic world in the third century BC and counted among its adherents Greek philosophers such as the founder Zeno of Citium. It is common to divide Stoicism into three phases: early, middle and late. The Roman Stoics belong to late Stoicism. This chapter draws on the Roman current of Stoicism: Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), Epictetus (55 AD-135 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (121 AD-180 AD).

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to how to achieve it. 4 Without knowing it, the cancer survivors I have worked with shared these three concerns. A storm such as cancer can swallow up any person and spit them out as a broken human being. It can push the afflicted person to his or her limit and mercilessly uncover underpinning and even false assumptions about life. As a transformative experience (Paul 2016), illness can leave a person’s life in a state of homelessness or unhomelikeness (Svenaeus 2000; Heidegger 1962), with a new home to be built on the ruins of one’s former self. The sense of homelessness caused by the collapse of old, familiar narratives exposes the philosophical role of illness (Carel 2014; 2016; Lindseth 2012; Knox 2014; 2015a). As my examples will demonstrate, the challenging situation can consume not only the ill person but his or her entire family. Standing on an ever-growing mountain of medical knowledge and an arsenal of biotechnology, we must ask: how conscious are we in our way of living, in our choices, in our values and beliefs? We know how to function, but do we know how to live or die well? How do we get better at living life, at being who we are or aspire to become? How do we live in the shadow of our mortality? How do we live good human lives? Where do we learn how to learn from experience? These questions have followed me in my theoretical and empirical research. My work within medicine and health care has prompted me to wonder specifically about two questions: What have my participants learned from the existential and moral upheaval of cancer, and: How have they built a good life in the face of hardship? In short: What kind of transformation have they gone through? Time and time again, I have heard stories of struggles with bitterness, anger, injustice, misfortune, and loss and wondered how a person heals on a human level once the illness has been overcome. But in the midst of my participants’ turbulent experiences of existential confusion, I have also witnessed a long and winding voyage that shows their persistence in building a flourishing life. Through the tragedy of illness, practical wisdom can grow, and a sense of homeliness take root. It is not a novel thought to point out the usefulness of the Stoic practical philosophy or the appeal of Aristotelian-inspired ideas of rich, flourishing lives for the modern world (Hadot 1995; Foucault 2005; 4

It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the philosophical differences between Aristotle’s and the Roman Stoics’ understanding of the somewhat complex relationship between virtue and Eudaimonia. It suffices here to state that whereas Aristotle views virtue as a necessary but insufficient part of the flourishing life, the Stoics believe that virtue is necessary and sufficient for Eudaimonia (Cooper 2013; Dentsoras 2015).

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Nussbaum 1994; Sherman 2005). What is, however, still rather uncharted territory is the attempt to link these ancient ideas with philosophically based practices in the field of health care, and to use a philosophical perspective to interpret what cancer survivors painfully and at a high cost have extracted from their life situation. This chapter is devoted to drawing a sketch of the home they built along their voyage. It is based on my empirical research using Aristotelian and Stoic ethics to offer a philosophical understanding of cancer survivors’ way home.

The Tempestuous Experience of Cancer: A Vigilant and Virtuous Voyage The cancer experience is a terrifying time of turbulence, change, and uncertainty; and one that is far from over when treatment ends (Koch et al. 2013; Mitchell et al. 2013). The transformative experience invites profound reflection on one’s life – past, present and future. In that sense, it is allengulfing. The storm of which Japanese writer Murakami speaks is amply depicted by the stories of Julia and Laurie.5 Julia and Laurie volunteered to participate in my Socratic Dialogue Groups (SDG) as part of a research project that was designed to study whether and how philosophy, or the act of philosophizing, could be beneficial for cancer patients and survivors in their re-orientation in life post cancer.6 At 36 and fully engaged in finishing her medical residency, Julia, a mother of two sons aged 3 and 5, was diagnosed with breast cancer. As with most devastating news, it came unexpectedly. Though her professional background assured her of the generally good prognosis of breast cancer, she could not help think that cancer, after all, was an illness for older people, at least older than 36, and, in her existential naiveté, that death was for the elderly, not a married young woman with a family. This was one of many paradoxes that her mind would foster in the following years as she went through surgery, chemotherapy, and reconstructive surgery, then relapsed and went back into another round of treatment. While having to readjust both her professional and life goals and plagued 5

All names have been changed to respect the confidentiality and the privacy of my research participants. 6 Between 2012 and 2115, I carried out an empirical-philosophical study involving 17 cancer survivors who were divided into 3 Socratic dialogue groups. Each group met for 2 hours once a week for 6 weeks to reflect on a philosophical question of importance to them. The research project built on a similar pilot project that I was responsible for in 2008-2010 consisting of 33 cancer survivors in 6 different SDGs.

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by the threat of losing her life, Julia also underwent the horror of seeing her family slowly coming apart. A chaotic state at home unfolded as her young children reacted violently to the cancer news. They would bang their head on the kitchen table while screaming that they wanted to die by jumping off the balcony. Her husband refused to face the likelihood of Julia dying and rapidly fell into a depression. In the midst of the overall devastation, he had an affair. While she endured treatment and rehabilitation, she felt caught in anger and resentment, in confusion and torment. She contemplated divorce though she felt immensely attached to her husband, and she thought endlessly about the dilemma between withholding information from her children about the seriousness of her condition and being honest with them. Having survived a second round of cancer, she was told that her cancer is chronic, which sparked more questions about how to avoid succumbing to bitterness, how to avoid being paralyzed by living on the threshold of death but, instead, to be an engaging agent who insists harder on her values, staying true to her sense of self and obtaining an inner composure in the midst of chaos. In 2003, Laurie was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer. The diagnosis “brought chaos into my life that still lingers on 10 years in,” she explains. As an experienced oncology nurse, she understood her illness maybe even more than Julia understood hers. Single at the time of her diagnosis, she still entertained a desire to have children despite her 41 years of age at the time and was keen on finding a man with whom to create a family. Some months after her cancer was discovered, Laurie became involved in a relationship. Undergoing rounds of chemotherapy and radiation followed by the painful revelation that her cancer was a chronic condition, she eventually had to abandon her hope for children. Letting go of this hope caused much grief in her life that still affects her. Post treatment, she found it increasingly difficult to find a job. Looking over her global life situation, she decided after three years to leave her partner; she did not feel she had much to offer him. Today, five years since the break-up, she is in a new relationship but also in a dilemma, as she realizes that her past relationship is not a shut-and-done chapter in her life and that she still harbors feelings for her ex. She still struggles to get back into the work force. She started a training program to become specialized in radiation therapy but late effects of her illness prevented her from finishing it. In turn, she goes on to take a MPH (Master of Public Health), thinking that the degree would advance her chances of finding work. Her situation in the past decade has left her virtually in financial ruins and perplexed about her identity. Her dormant illness continues to stir up questions about who she is and how to live her life, or, as she puts it:

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I was a nurse who got cancer but I had to become Laurie who was a nurse who got cancer. I had to turn it around and not relate to myself professionally. Find out where I was in all of this? And ‘what is a good life’ is a question I have pondered a lot because I have had to redefine some of my expectations and ideas about my life in order to be in it. I had to readjust them to my circumstances.7

The unpredictable voyage of the survivor’s experience – such as that of Julia and Laurie – incarnates an overall ethical agenda associated with the ancient teachings of Stoicism. The voyage has many ups and downs that, at one moment, can throw the travelers into states of anger, anxiety, despair, and grief, and, the next, into courage, temperance, acceptance, and contemplation. While Julia had embarked on her tempestuous voyage 3 years prior to joining her SDG, Laurie had been on hers for over 10 years. Yet both expressed an inner awakening that was challenging, rewarding, and confounding all at once; an awakening that led them and my other participants to embodied realizations about the possible constituents of a flourishing life and a virtuous disposition akin to the one encouraged through Stoic ethics. However, my research also showed that my participants were not orthodox Stoics but, at times, bore a stronger resemblance to Aristotle in his approach to emotion and Eudaimonia. Thus, I came to identify specific Stoic and Aristotelian tenets in the construction of their new, inner home without thereby classifying them fully as Stoics or Aristotelians. The headings below attempt to capture key features of the heralds of ancient ethics, and their similarities and dissimilarities to my participants.

The Refocusing of Attention Having lived through a life-threatening disease and endured a treatment that more often than not leaves body and soul with lasting side effects of various kinds and degrees, survivors are in a free fall (Hewitt et al. 2006; Foster et al. 2009) when they return to an everyday life. When disease dislodges the self from its common perception of life, from its habits, routines, and goals, questions inevitably emerge about the moral good, and the focus in life shifts. The Stoics viewed this transition as one of 7 While participating in her SDG, she was offered a job in a municipality working as a health coordinator for cancer programs for survivors. Three months after starting her new job, Laurie’s cancer resurfaced and she had to leave her job. She has since recovered and is still faced with disquieting concerns about how best to relate to herself.

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perspective where the individual turns his or her focus of attention to internal as opposed to external matters. In particular, illness invites reflection on internal goods as it exposes finitude, fragility, values, and identity. The Roman Stoic response to calamities is not one of despair, anger, or apathy but one of moral character building (Cooper 2013; Curnow 2006; Brennan 2005; Long 2002) that, not least, incites the virtue of courage. Courage is a concept that many survivors return to again and again as crucial for their process of changing and maintaining the focus of attention on what they believe to be key to a rich, honest, and true life. It is exemplified in my research by an action such as Christine’s, when she sat down to write a concerned and candid letter to a female friend whose husband had confided his worries to Christine about the state of his marriage and his suspicion of his wife’s possible adultery; or when Simone announced her decision to leave a marriage of many years, stating that the tragedy of her breast cancer had helped her see her values more clearly and had given her the courage to align herself with those values though it had taken several years of turmoil and groping.8 To the Roman Stoics, external goods did not hold any intrinsic moral value. Money or social status was neither good nor bad, but rather just neutral, yet externals could be viewed as virtuous or vicious (Cooper 2013) depending on one’s attitude towards them. People, the Stoics advised, should not look for Eudaimonia in the external world, as external goods were not necessary for the cultivation of virtues (Seneca 2015; Epictetus 2014). We can trace a Stoic transformation of perspective in Mary. Prior to her renal and pancreatic cancer, which was an inch away from taking her life, Mary had prioritized wealth and social status. She held a high-ranking job in a big commercial firm, had a large house in a desirable neighborhood and enjoyed the many perks that came with this lifestyle. Externals ultimately functioned badly in Mary’s life, since they did not prepare her for the inner devastation that followed her disease; they had given her unreliable and meaningless values that could not guide her in her moment of adversity and despondency. Epictetus declares in his celebrated 8 Both Christine and Simone participate in my current research project. A grant from the Danish Cancer Society has allowed me to study the existential and moral upheaval of the cancer experience for long-term survivors and how they relate to life many years after their treatments ended. It consists of in-depth interviews with 14 survivors and will end December 2018. All interviews have been completed. The Danish Cancer Society also funded my previous research within cancer rehabilitation. See footnote 6.

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Handbook that “the condition and character of a layman is this: that he never expects that benefit or harm will come to him from himself, but only from externals” (Epictetus 2014, 48.1). The result is that a person becomes enslaved to externals like power or position. When illness arrived, Mary was stripped naked on a human level and forced to reflect on her direction in life, the values she founded her life on, and their sustainability. She gradually learned what Epictetus also declares in the continuation of the quotation from above that “the condition and character of a philosopher is this: that he expects all benefit and harm to come to him from himself” (Epictetus 2014, 48.1). Rather than building her life up from the outside, Mary thus began laying an inner foundation. In this way, Epictetus encourages people to become inner construction workers. Major changes occurred in Mary’s life as her focus moved from exterior matters to her fundamental (inner) attitude towards life. Unable to work full time due to late effects of her previous illness, she lives now divorced in a modest apartment and works part-time for an organization that helps feed the homeless. Her exterior life has come to reflect her essence more accurately, she explains. Other participants can tell similar stories about how they have become more focused on their moral purpose in life and how they project this purpose by deliberate acts of will. Epictetus epitomizes the belief of the Roman Stoics when he says that only virtue is good and vice is bad; everything else is indifferent (Epictetus 2014, 2.19.13; Brennan 2005). Externals belong to the realm of indifferents and humans, according to the Stoics, should not be concerned with them because they are outside of the mind’s sure control (Long 2002). Though there is undoubtedly a shift of attention from externals such as wealth, health, social status, and ambition, to interior issues, such as Eudaimonia, wisdom, and balance, the Stoic doctrine of indifference to externals,9 or to all things which are not in direct control of a person’s will, is not validated in my research. Though the Stoics hardly encouraged humans to become immune to worldly influence, impervious to outside events or indifferent to all but their own vices and virtues, or, as Epictetus put it, be “unmoved like a statue” (Epictetus 2014, 3.2.4.), because they did advise people to be moved appropriately and give externals due attention, they clearly did not believe that external goods were constitutive ingredients of a virtuous character and a flourishing life (Long 2002; 9 It is not the place here to dwell on the nuances in the Stoic understanding of “indifference.” It suffices to say that virtue does not call for an absolute indifference, as Stoics can get involved with externals as long as they do not determine or contaminate our sense of Eudaimonia and virtuous ways (see Cooper 2013, 166-84).

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Brennan 2005). In the lives of my participants, the importance of externals in the form of materialistic things had radically changed but they had not lost all value. They had, in fact, adopted a more Aristotelian attitude towards externals.10 Mary, for one, learned in her transformation process how to re-relate to external matters more appropriate to their true status in her life. She will not allow them to govern her in her major choices and direction in life. She acts on what truly matters to her which, in turn, illustrates how she understands what it entails to live well as a human being. Though the value of materialistic things has changed, living well could include externals, such as friendships, family relations, and a professional life, as it did in Mary’s case. As with the Roman Stoics, the survivors in my projects become advocates of serenity, authenticity, and integrity in human relationships. Obstructions to living well are abolished or, at least, diminished by adopting an attitude that hinders enslaving oneself to material objects and the more trivial exterior matters, whereby they solidify their lives from within and relate to the outer world with interiority. Slowly, awareness emerges of how values and virtues shape human flourishing. This awareness, or self-awareness, is, however, not static and gained “once and for all.” It is a life testimony that has to be sworn in every time hardship makes its appearance.

The Attitude of Acceptance Closely linked to the refocusing of attention from exterior to interior matters is the Stoic acceptance of one’s reality. This acceptance may be among the human being’s most grueling and consuming challenges, however bizarre it may seem. Who is not living in their own reality? The reality that is alluded to is not the plain fact of a person’s existence. Rather, it is the conditions and circumstances that define their existence. These circumstances can be vague and blurry, making them difficult to detect, for example when harboring certain convictions or notions about oneself, others, or the world in general that, in fact, are misleading or fraudulent.

10

Aristotle is not as hostile towards external goods, for example health and friendship, as the Stoics. Friendship, he says, is necessary for the good life (see Nicomachean Ethics, books 8 and 9, where he describes three kinds of friendship of which only the third mutually builds character and goodness). In contrast to the Stoics, external goods such as the two mentioned are, thus, required to lead a good life.

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Epictetus has the following advice in the Handbook: “Don’t seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but wish that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you’ll have a calm and happy life” (Epictetus 2014, 8). In other words, prepare yourself for the unexpected and detach yourself from unwavering preferences. Hardship has taught Christine to confront difficult situations as they appear: “You really have to have the courage to be naked and say, okay, this is the way it is. It helps.” Epictetus’ advice should be understood in connection with living in accordance with nature, the natural order of things that is neither good nor bad but just is (Epictetus 2014). To accept conditions and circumstances that cannot be changed and the vicissitudes of the world is to exercise good reason. To put up a fight against these facts is to exercise wrong reason. Fighting the reality of a cancer diagnosis makes little sense; however, regardless of it being sensible or not, people are not prevented from curling up in denial and deceiving themselves into believing that they are not seriously ill. Survivors in my projects strove towards an acceptance of the conditions of their reality. They fought with a more or less conscious goal of finding a mindset, an assemblage of beliefs and values that would allow them to lead a fulfilling life in spite of what the external world threw in their path: the unlikely event of Julia finishing her residency along with the devastating state of her marriage; the straining financial situation of Laurie or the impossibility of her having children. Without speaking of it as such, they are searching for a philosophical attitude that can serve as a guide on open seas. This attitude expresses an acceptance of their present realities from which they can extract a genuine sense of integrity and some peace of mind “in order to be in it [life],” as we heard Laurie explain earlier. Christine was 48 years old when she got diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery, chemo, and radiation, she was put on an anti-hormone treatment plan that will last 10 years. After years of struggling with fatigue, stress, memory impairment and sexual difficulty, she has gradually come to terms with the hard fact of having been seriously ill and the effects it had on her life and self-perception. She does not dwell on cancer but focuses her attention on what life offers in terms of opportunities, as well as keeping her eyes open to what she is capable of in her present state. She refuses to remain in the role of cancer survivor, which means that the disease that marked her life is not information she divulges when meeting new people, as “I need to be identified with something else than cancer.” She later elaborates on how she, by accepting her cancer as a past reality, uses it as a silent motivator “to get the best out

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of life” for the present and the future. In the many years that followed her cancer, she has explored her innermost thoughts and feelings in order to build her life from within to solidify the virtues that serve as the foundation for living a life filled with purpose, yet within the limitations set by that very life. Another aspect related to the issue of acceptance is that of control. Unlike indifferents, virtue and vice are the only categories that are in the mind’s power. The clarification of what exactly is within and outside of our control becomes crucial when diagnosed with cancer and it was a recurring theme I observed from the beginning of my work. It is an issue that is closely linked to the issue of attitude, as you need to “own up to the fact that you have lost control [realizing that you are sick and finite]; . . . and accept what is. There are no guarantees in life, no security in human circumstances. Acknowledge deep down that life, essentially, is one big risk,” as explicated by Judith in an interview I conducted in connection with a research project on the meaning of being in life as long-term survivors (see footnote 8). Sometimes this theme would be implicit and covert, yet most times it would be explicit and overt. The topic of what is in and out of human control also enjoyed Stoic attention. The first sentence in Epictetus’ Handbook reads, “Some things are within our power, while others are not” (Epictetus 2014, 1.1).11 Born into slavery and suffering permanent physical disability as a consequence of his master’s torture, Epictetus was familiar with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” in life (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet). Wisely, the former slave Epictetus states that “it isn’t the things themselves that disturb people, but the judgments that they form about them” (Epictetus 2014, 5). His philosophy is a perpetual exercise in how to “remember to look inside yourself and see what capacity you have to enable you to deal with it” (Epictetus 2014, 10) when faced with life’s vicissitudes and hardship. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius joins the former slave Epictetus in pondering what was in and out of his control when he states that “by accepting the situation as it is and being content to transfer your efforts to what is possible, another opportunity for action will appear in the place of what was hindered” (Marcus 1916, books 8 and 32). Also for my participants, accepting a situation not of our own doing cleared the way for new, meaningful pathways of action: Judith decided to pursue her dream of being an independent consultant, Jack volunteered his time speaking to 11

Epictetus elaborates further on the same page: “Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and in a word, whatever is not of our own doing” (Epictetus 2014, 1.1).

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people who were newly diagnosed with cancer, and Christine embarked on a training program to become a life coach. In one SDG I facilitated, the participants were examining the philosophical question, “What is vitality of life?” and admitted to having found themselves unable to mobilize this vitality automatically by themselves as an action willed by the intellect, though they desired to do so, particularly in times of hardship. The concept, however, seemed conditioned by factors outside of their control. Since illness causes losses of control in many areas of existence (e.g., loss of hair or body functions, maybe even job and family, or a sense of not being in control of one’s life), they reflected on it for a while. This theme of control had clearly been on the minds of the participants and, I may add, is documented both explicitly and implicitly in research (e.g., Carlson 2016; Przezdziecki et al. 2013; Adler et al. 2008; Taskila et al. 2007). They discussed ‘control’ in contrast to surrender, or letting go. We concluded that an element of surrender was characteristic of all six stories of the participants in the group. Martha’s story exemplified this characteristic. She described how she had resisted hearing (read “taking in”) her cancer diagnosis; she rejected and denied its existence. She was unwilling to let go of her false perception. In her mind, she was healthy and her life could continue as usual. She aptly explained to her group how she clung to her past life by saying “no, no, no” until surrendering by finally adding “yes.” At that very moment, “no, no, no . . . yes,” she embraced the fact that life was working in a different manner than she expected, and she yielded to the unknown. She accepted reality in the raw form as it was presented to her, which dissolved her false belief. To her, this was a turning point, albeit a point she could only vocalize later, as the full realization was still blurry and in the making. Martha’s story about how she surrendered her control by changing her attitude towards her changed reality also poignantly illustrates the emergence of a sense of being that is different from her former sense. She adopted, like Judith, Laurie, and Christine, a different attitude altogether; she came into the inner attitude of acceptance, which provided a better and more reliable guide for moral action than, for example, anger, frustration, or denial.

Embodying Life by Embracing the Moment “I need substance and honesty in ‘the here and now;’ that need intensified after my cancer,” explains Mary in my interview with her. Embracing the moment reflects the increased appreciation for life that my participants all refer to. This reflects, in turn, an overall gratitude for life that has

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increased their sense of being in the ‘here and now’ and highlighted how selective they have become in terms of time (who, how, and what they want to spend their time on). This awareness of the moment and greater life appreciation has been documented in literature on the positive changes experienced by cancer patients and survivors, referred to as ‘posttraumatic growth’ (e.g., Tedeschi et al. 2004; Ruini et al. 2013; Jayawickreme et al. 2014). These studies report how people through their struggle have gained a sense of empowerment, a greater engagement in life and more intimate social and personal relationships, resulting in a stronger focus on the riches of the present moment (e.g., Tedeschi et al. 1996). Looking at ‘being in the moment’ through Stoic eyes, we can add to these studies by showing how the particular importance of presence for the moral becoming of a person is accentuated and made more distinct. Stoic thought makes it possible to articulate how the emotional element of tragedy is an intricate part of their contemplation on Eudaimonia and the decisions that are needed to fortify a practical, embodied philosophy of life. Stoic thought helps us to move beyond looking at the survivors’ inner transformation as a positive psychological change or a qualitative change of functionality as depicted in the growing body of literature on posttraumatic growth, changing the focus instead to the wisdom drawn when rational perspective and moral action align. Judith explains how her cancer experience made her reflect on what kind of person she aspired to be and the many philosophical questions that arose in her: [they] concern what it means to be a human being and having a meaningful life and how to act in that life right now. It is not about the psyche. It is about thoughts and attitude and very distinctly choosing the things that make me happy. Time has changed for me from being something in abundance to being a value.

Not only has time become an existential issue; Judith also exposes the ethical foundation of Eudaimonia and how a flourishing life cannot be reduced to psychology. Cancer installs a “before” and an “after” in the lives it touches. Among the many changes that Christine’s cancer brought, one concerned her sense of time. After her cancer diagnosis, time assumed a significance that she had not previously appreciated. The significance of time, or temporality, resulted in actions in the moment making decisions that would lift her spirit or bring joy: “I have to do this or that now because maybe I won’t be able to next year,” she explains. Living with an unknown future, she echoes Seneca’s advice to Lucilius to learn how to feel joy in the moment (Seneca 2015, Letter 23) when, for example, her husband and she talk

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about how they would like to travel, and a week later she has booked tickets to Bali. Embracing her own mortality has led Christine to making conscious choices in regard to her circle of friends, surrounding herself with mutually nourishing relationships with those she calls “good people” so as to, in the words of Seneca, “associate with people who will make you a better human being. And welcome those you can improve. The process is mutual, for men learn while they teach” (Seneca 2015, Letters 7 and 8). It has also made her accept the limitations put on her by her former illness, such as forgetfulness and fatigue. She does not fill each moment or situation with a multitude of tasks and occupations. She strips down the activities of the moment to suit her energy level, finding the right balance whereby her sense of presence intensifies, she says. Emptying the moment to the bare (yet meaningful) minimum is a daily exercise in being without analyzing, measuring, or judging the benefits and results of the moment. The moment stands intrinsically true as a beacon of being. Hannah savors the mere fact of the present where ‘real life’ occurs. Paradoxically, it is the cancer experience with its many worries that has taught her to relax her mind about the future. She has found solace in the fact that much within her situation exists outside of her control. Relaxing her mind seems to open her up to the unexpected. She recounts a story about a trip with a friend of hers. They had agreed to drive from Copenhagen to the city where her friend’s parents live, and then on to her own parents in a neighboring town. However, at one point they come across an alluring road sign to a town they haven’t visited before. They change route. To their surprise, they find that the town has a lovely museum where they stumble on some retired locals who offer them coffee and cookies. These small, unexpected meetings are treasured by Hannah as they happen. Most of my participants share Hannah’s thoughts in regard to focusing on “being exactly where you are” (Judith) at that particular time under those particular circumstances with those particular people or things. For example, simple joys of life like, as explained by Hannah, enjoying a good cup of coffee or watching a leaf in the breeze, or more heartfelt joys, like having a profound moment with a friend who confides in you or showing affection for your spouse by offering an unsolicited massage, shape the moral fiber and virtuous direction of the person. Embracing the moment reflects the stark realization that life is short (Seneca 2004, 1).12 A statement such as “life is short” may be dismissed as

12

Seneca is quoting the dictum of Hippocrates, who said that “life is short, art is long.”

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mere common sense or a trivial fact known to all, yet we tend to live, in the words of Seneca, as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply – though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. (Seneca 2004, 5)

Seneca teaches us that our existential awareness and moral compass benefit from drawing our attention to facts, such as ‘my life will end,’ that may elude us, due to their familiarity or obvious character (Seneca 2015, Letter 94). By focusing our attention on these facts, our realizations are sharpened and made more conscious. It is not that the facts were not known before tragedy commanded personal attention; the continuous contemplation of things we already know just becomes more pressing. To Seneca, this implies – and my research concurs – the need to regularly exchange good advice about the obvious as “it wakes us up, and concentrates our memory and keeps it from losing its grip. We otherwise miss a lot that’s right in front of our eyes. Advice is, in fact, a sort of exhortation” (Seneca 2015, Letter 94, 25). Realizations can retain their valuable guidance in a person’s life through conversation and contemplation on what matters most. I realized the profound truth of this through my work with Socratic dialogue with rehabilitating cancer patients. The newfound insights are not a given or realized once and for all. They can disappear into the whirlpool of everyday life. Both Hannah and Simone express a fear of losing the awareness of the moment or the crisp character of being present. Particularly, they fear losing the gratitude they feel in those moments that define what they perceive as the good life.

The Bigger Picture In Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, we hear: How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable stretch of time is assigned to every man! In just a moment, it is swallowed up in eternity. And how small a piece of the universal substance! How tiny a part of the universal soul! And on what a small clod of the whole earth you crawl! (Marcus Aurelius 1916, book 12, 32)

Marcus Aurelius believes that adopting a broad perspective regardless of the situation that life puts before you will provide a genuine sense of

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direction. It is by viewing one’s situation within the context of eternity that this distance can become a guide in finding one’s way forward and not succumbing to the negativity inherent in tragedy of any sort. To the Roman emperor, as to the other Stoics, the ‘bigger picture’ involves the metaphysics of a unified, providential universe governed by cosmic reason, 13 but, within the world of survivorship, the ‘bigger picture’ becomes the ability to transcend one’s context. To step outside of the narrow frame of one’s psychological state. To take a coolly distanced, yet fully engaged view of Life, in general. Ruminating on the process since her breast cancer diagnosis 8 years ago, Judith sums up the impact of adopting a broad perspective on herself and life by stating that “my ego has become wiser by learning what it means to be a human being – not just me, but a human being.” In other words, Judith has come to value her particular life differently by being able to appreciate it as a participation in the universal human condition. “The bigger picture” is a view that adds a philosophical dimension to the act of living that, simultaneously, builds inner depth and stamina that prepares the person for future moral trials and tribulations. While the tragedy initially decenters the self, the attitude of acceptance and the perspective of the bigger picture seem to unravel a commitment to the cultivation of character. For many of the survivors this meant posing questions in a manner that did not uniquely proceed from “what do I want from life?” but from “what is life asking of me?” or “how can I put this event into a greater narrative?” After many years without finding a suitable partner, Hannah found her man in her late thirties, having gone through breast cancer. While preparing their wedding, coincidentally at the same time as one of her colleagues at work, Hannah realized that their main concerns were quite different. Without any value judgment, Hannah explains how she could not get nervous about the dress, tablecloth, or cake in the same animated manner as her colleague, who was fully enmeshed in all details of the wedding day, wanting to make sure that she got ‘the perfect day.’ By contrast, Hannah viewed the preparation and the wedding in a broader perspective; she was open to what the day would bring. She explains in her interview how she was indifferent as to where she got married and cared little for the eventualities of breaking a nail, of it raining, of the music being a disaster or her cake not being ready when it was to be picked up, which actually happened. Hannah’s reaction was calm and poised. It is not 13

Some scholars believe that Stoic moral philosophy is inseparable from Stoic metaphysics and theology (e.g., Cooper 2013); others do not (Annas 1993). This paper will not venture into Stoic metaphysics and theology, as its focus is the moral philosophy of the Roman Stoics and, thus, it adopts Annas’ view.

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that she did not care about how her wedding would turn out; she just did not give overwhelming significance to whether all details were perfected in action. Her bigger picture boiled down to this: she found a man with whom she was determined to share her life. Hannah continued to see singular situations in a life-span perspective when she found out that she was pregnant. Her focus was not on whether the child was a boy or girl, nor did she have a check-list for things to be ticked off in preparation for the baby. She found that this staging and project-building was familiar to her in her life before cancer, where she could, in her own words, “imagine being wrapped up in stuff like buying a blue bow if it is a boy and pink if it is a girl and giving it to my mother, or something . . . but I relate differently to situations now. It has something to do with my values.” The bigger picture for Hannah was found in the fact that she got pregnant. Though the pregnancy was highly desired by Hannah, it was, however, not a condition that needed to be met in order for her to live a flourishing life. She no longer built her vision for a good life on hypothetical conditions: if only I get the perfect wedding, I will be happy; if only I get a child, I will be happy, etc. Her reasoning hinged on finding the intrinsic value in the situations she directly inhabited.

Emotion and Eudaimonia Despite the strong resemblance between the Roman Stoics and my participants, Stoic ethics does fall short in how to address the emotional aspect of hardship. Their emphasis on taming emotions with the help of reason leads the Stoics to neglect the real and persistent effects of external life on our inner emotional life. Though Aristotelian ethics is close to Stoic ethics, Aristotle exposes subtleties within the role of emotions in a flourishing life that escape the Stoics. Current literature within health care often misrepresents Stoic thought by reducing it to the repression of emotions. Though taming emotions can be mistaken for repressing emotions, the Stoics, in fact, call for rational examination of emotions toward the good, moral life. Wagstaff et al. define Stoicism in an article on gender and poverty as the “denial, suppression, and control of emotion” (Wagstaff et al. 1995, 181). A similar common definition is akin to the idiom of having a ‘stiff upper lip’ where people are less expressive of emotion and discomfort (Yong et al. 2001). This reductive understanding of Stoic thought is later referenced by others (e.g., Spiers 2006; Murray et al. 2008; Witte et al. 2012). It seems that Stoicism has been equated with silent endurance of pain; the mere absence of complaining and emotional control. This rids it of its distinctive

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moral tenet – there is, I think, little understanding of the moral philosophy behind Stoicism in these studies. Instead, snippets taken from Stoic thought are placed in a psychological framework that misses the overall idea of Stoicism: being concerned with the art of living, and navigating life by making sound, rational judgments and promoting the human good. Though the intentions behind the applications of Stoic thought are wellmeaning and the research results certainly cannot be generally disqualified, forcing psychometric properties, pain attitude questionnaires and operational scales onto Stoic ethics comes with a high risk of turning it into something mechanical and instrumentalized. It simplifies the convoluted nature of human existence and the life-long commitment to becoming the person one aspires to be. Unlike the common perception displayed in health care literature, the Stoics did not promote the mere suppression of emotions but rather encouraged understanding of how beliefs fostered emotions and how changing these beliefs could redirect or adjust emotions in order to improve life. This redirection or adjustment was made possible through the human being’s rationality. In fact, reason was the ultimate guide in Eudaimonia,14 a notion shared by Aristotle. However, it is undeniable that the Stoics had a cumbersome relationship to emotions, or “the passions” as they called them (Cooper 2013; Brennan 2005), particularly the negative ones (Seneca 2015). Emotions caused by a life-changing event expose the terrifying situation of a person’s limited control of conditions and circumstances. Cancer also brings waves of negative feelings. In his writings on grief and anger (Seneca 2015, Letter 63; Seneca 2012), Seneca acknowledges these emotions but is dismissive of the enduring, existential effects that they have on us. He and other Stoics believed in releasing any attachment to anything belonging to the external world. This led him to assign to reason the task of mitigating emotions in relation to things outside of our power. But is it wise to advise people not to venture into experiences filled with mixed feelings and great risk of misery – that may indeed also expand self-knowledge? Martha and her husband sat outside the doctor’s office waiting to hear the results of her tests. Several people had already exited the office with distinct signs of relief and peace on their faces. Neither of them could find the right words – as if language had abandoned them. Every time the door opened, jolts went through Martha’s body and her eyes flicked around nervously. The doctor’s office was narrow and painted white. The doctor 14

In addition, the Stoics did not understand their philosophy as expressing personality traits and constructs that to a greater or lesser degree can be used as psychological coping strategies but, rather, as expressing the choosing of moral attitudes that would enhance a virtuous character.

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leaned over his desk in his white coat while occasionally consulting Martha’s medical files. The nurse stood silently beside him, sometimes nodding, as Martha’s diagnosis was delivered, treatment plan and prognosis explained. Martha’s husband sat in the chair next to her in a frozen position. Her scared facial expression remained unchanged as Martha heard that her life was in danger of quickly being consumed by cancer. Shortly thereafter, the nurse and doctor exited the room to attend to other patients, leaving behind what seemed to be an inner war zone. In a state of chaos, disbelief, and shock, Martha eventually got up from her chair and crawled into a fetal position on the examination table behind them. Her husband did not notice. He still sat as if frozen in his chair. And no words had come to them yet. Engulfed by emotions at the time of her diagnosis, Martha now wondered with her SDG how these emotions were suffused with intelligence and thought. Emotions, they argued along with the Stoics, are colored by the beliefs we have, or how we think about them. As this chapter has demonstrated, my participants follow the Stoic attitude towards life. In a number of ways, however, the participants and the Stoics differ irreconcilably. One major difference concerns the abolishment of distress on the part of Stoicism. The participants in my research projects have no desire to erase the hardship and suffering they face, or to achieve detachment from the external world. In other words, my participants are not as radical as the Roman Stoics in this regard. The Stoics’ strictly rationalized version of emotions, pain, and suffering, are thus not shared by my participants – to them something truly tragic would be losing their sense of tragedy. This is not to be understood as saying that they encourage it or wanted to have cancer. It is, rather, to be understood as an acknowledgment of personal vulnerabilities, imperfections, and sorrows. It is to practice a language with which to characterize the whirlwind of traumatic events and hardship and the lessons they carry with them. Life is not orderly. It is a mess riddled with uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos. From cradle to grave, life takes us through one arduous experience after another. It challenges us in the way we think about ourselves and how we interact with the world. These are challenges that can break us either on the spot, or years later, when the impact sets in with a devastating blow. My participants’ experiences with illness galvanized their selfawareness, yet the voyage to a clearer and more vibrant understanding of their position in life was lined with taxing questions and processes and filled with passions. It is therefore necessary to reach for another ancient source of wisdom that can be contrasted with that of the Stoics. The ancient Greeks, with

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Aristotle’s notion of Eudaimonia, insist on the inter-connectedness of positive and negative emotions. When you love, you will also be anxious, or when you hope, you will also feel uncertainty. The feelings co-exist. Many negative emotions are even appropriate and necessary to inform a person of his or her overall state: fear is appropriate when you are diagnosed with cancer and grief is appropriate when you lose a loved one. For Aristotle, in contrast to the Stoics, emotions cannot and should not be mitigated to the extent of exclusively focusing on inner life. Aristotle wants to help us engage in the external world by finding balanced emotional responses to the experiences of real events that cannot be dismissed. In his Nicomachean Ethics, we learn that Eudaimonia involves achieving moral virtues through choosing the right actions between excess and deficiency, “having the mean as its aim” (Aristotle 1984, 1106b, 2829), as that mean “aims at what is moderate in feelings and actions” (Aristotle 1984, 1109b, 23; Aristotle’s emphasis). Aristotle encourages us to embrace our shortcomings just as much as our strengths, our imperfections and weaknesses just as much as our excellence – despite the pain and suffering that the associated emotions may occasion – in order to understand the predicaments of human existence and to find the right balance. As he beautifully puts it, We may have the feelings of fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and any pleasure or pain in general either more or less than we should, and in both cases this is not a good thing; but to have these feelings at the right times and for the right things and towards the right men and for the right purpose and in the right manner, this is the mean and the best, and it is precisely this which belongs to virtue. (Aristotle 1984, 1106b, 19-24)

It is a standing challenge to face hardship and the array of emotions that follow. Nevertheless, it is this very challenge that Aristotle asks us to embrace. Martha told the story about the day she received her diagnosis when she participated in one of my SDGs. Martha’s SDG had chosen the question, “What is vitality of life?” She decided on telling this particular story because she sensed an inexplicable vitality of life (livskraft in Danish) inhabiting her after spending a while on the examination table; a sense of finding her way through the despairing situation of having a lifethreatening form of bowel cancer growing inside her. Though somewhat surprised at herself for choosing this story to illustrate vitality of life, she was intrigued and wanted to examine more carefully the reasons behind her choice and the emotions at stake. But her story is also a testament to an urge to create meaning, a meaning that is woven into the grander narrative

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of her life. Aristotle believes that the telos of all actions is the flourishing, good life (Eudaimonia), not as a subjective, psychological state of blissful, passing, atomic moments of satisfaction and pleasure, but as allencompassing and enduring. Eudaimonia cannot be gained or lost momentarily. Rather, hard-won and part of an ongoing process, it provides one with overarching life-goals that clarify what really matters and give one direction. My participants insisted on striving for a life of serenity and authenticity, and they were willing to lose friendships, dissolve marriages, or change a career path to stay true to their character. “I have no time for bullshit,” as one participant bluntly phrased it.15 The actions necessitated by their understanding of Eudaimonia are directed at how to be in the world. Eudaimonia, as expressed by Martha and the other participants, becomes a perpetual and edifying process of moral striving and spiritual refinement that, in the end, expresses a life of intrinsic worth.

Philosophical Practice as a Companion to Moral Becoming Historians will tell how Native Americans hunting buffalo on the prairie wasted none of the meat, blood, bone, hair or skin of the animal. They would eat the meat, use the blood for paint, make tools or weapons out of the bones, turn the hair into robes, and make clothes and tents out of the skin. Every piece of the buffalo was honored and written into their sense and place in the universe. Nothing was wasted. Imagine if all human experiences, including the many tragedies and ordeals encountered in a lifetime, would not go to waste by reducing, repressing, or denying them their mark on our journey by numbing the existential disruptions with the complacent slumber of a “carefree” existence, daily trivialities and indolence, or Valium and Xanax, or with even more widely used recreational drugs such as alcohol and opiates? In view of the many unwanted changes, the countless uncertainties and disappointments that life holds in store for us, unearthing the wisdom buried deep in hardship becomes a defining component in our journey if tragedy is not to break us. My participants’ stories are testimonies to living in Murakami’s storm, 15 Aristotle may be too extreme when he says that only the person who consistently acts virtuously is virtuous. Julia Annas has recently suggested a more flexible notion where a person can act more or less virtuously depending on the context (see Annas 2011). Annas’ version of Aristotelian virtue may correspond better with the observations I have made over the years.

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where the transition from patient to person conveys how living is bound up with continual moral reasoning and discernment that involve the very character of the agent. Similar to other disruptive and disturbing events in life, disease and suffering engender moral deliberation and the exploration of different ways in which one can foster what is conceived to be good as well as experimentation with living in the light of the moral good. In striving to establish the right attitude towards hardship (which is bound to be individual) and a greater perspective on life, the cancer survivors in my projects are continuously in the process of building a resilient inner home; a foundation for strength of character. Mary explains, You really, really need to rest within yourself, for you are alone – you only have yourself. You must find robustness within yourself, and the worse it gets around you, the calmer you must become. You have to feel who you are, or what you are made of.

They realized more distinctly how their embodied sense of being mortal and the vulnerability that came with it was the very birthplace of vitality, serenity, and good judgment, though these positive feelings or benefits also had a trajectory of negativity. They were, as mentioned, mixed with negative feelings of loss, disappointment, worries, anger, and anxiety, but tempered by resilience, humor, courage, and patience. Adopting the right attitude under the right circumstances for the right purpose is not something one does overnight. It is a long, tempestuous process that may take a decade or longer. During the course of this chapter, I have described some of the lessons learned and virtues developed by – and indeed almost forced upon – cancer survivors in my projects. Reaching their current level of selfknowledge has, as noted, been far from simple and straightforward. On the whole, my participants have been alone in their often perplexing voyage to moral becoming. What emerges is a health care imperative: we need to consider how to best assist cancer patients and survivors in building resilience – that greenhouse of human resourcefulness, so necessary for creating a fulfilling life and a good sense of self post illness. Hearing about how they arduously grappled in the dark for many years trying to find their way home led me to suggest services (Knox 2015a; 2015b) that specifically address the philosophical dimension of illness so as to better equip people in their human healing and act of living. To Aristotle and the Roman Stoics, “no life is truly happy unless it is accompanied by reflection,” as “every virtue of character requires the intellectual virtues of practical wisdom” (Nussbaum 2008, 591). This practical wisdom is not purely practical, but also hinges on moral

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deliberation. In other words, they argue for an element of self-examination and thinking in leading a flourishing life of meaningful activity. Reflection exists in various forms and degrees. All my participants have called their lives into question and wrestled extensively with choices and changes, visions and values. Many forms of therapies have attempted to address the human questioning of patients. Among them we find ‘rational emotive behavior therapy,’ ‘cognitive therapy,’ and ‘positive psychology.’ However philosophically inspired, these services have become philosophically diluted. Instead, it is worthwhile to propose philosophical practices that engage in the reflective act of philosophizing and that offer a more deliberate and conscious approach to their moral homecoming and, thus, to the “comprehensive alignment of meaning, values and ways of being” (Carel 2014, 26). A philosophy of life could offer itself as “the steersman of one’s whole life” (Cooper 2013, 7) in terms of attitude towards and inquiry into the human condition of vulnerability and mortality, character formation, and living well. My own research has demonstrated one suggestion of such a service: Socratic dialogue offers itself as a navigator in the philosophical examination of vital questions that both drive and bewilder many cancer survivors and as a distinct philosophical way of addressing the tragedy that illness brought with it. A philosophical attitude can be learned and made more defined and conscious, for example by participating in a Socratic dialogue group. A Socratic dialogue inspires a perspective that not only sees the particularity of the individual’s experience, but steps outside of the experience to inquire about the universal character of the experience. In lieu of a spontaneous and untrained form of reflection in the living realm of moral action, Socratic dialogue groups propose a deliberate, consistent, and structural reflection that will systematically investigate, support, and enhance the spontaneous reflection. In this way, it is the fundamental aspects of virtues, vices, and Eudaimonia that are examined, while, at the same time, philosophical inquiry becomes a natural part of one’s ethos. Defending himself in front of his judges, Socrates offers a description of the human calling in Apology: practice philosophy for “it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day” (Plato 2002, 38b).16 What Socrates suggests is to view philosophy as a life-companion that will continually examine existence’s intricate ways and, in doing so, encourage excellence of virtues and the pursuit of wisdom. Viewing philosophy as a 16

The famous line “for the unexamined life is not worth living for men” follows further on in the sentence.

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life-companion also indicates that its value for cancer survivors cannot be understood as a time-constraint therapy proposing solutions to psychological problems but, rather, as a life-long moral becoming. How to live and why we live as we do are omnipresent questions among cancer survivors. The cultivation of a distinctly philosophical approach to these questions suggests a non-instrumental understanding of the re-orientation in life post cancer. By its virtuous activity, this approach shows how, and why, the pursuit of these issues holds intrinsic value – all things considered.17

References Adler, Nancy, and Anne Page, eds. 2008. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Annas, Julia. 1993. The Morality of Happiness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. —. 2011. Intelligent Virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Aristotle. 1984. Nicomachean Ethics. Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press. Brennan, Tad. 2005. The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties and Fate. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Carel, Havi. 2014. “The Philosophical Role of Illness.” Metaphilosophy 45 (1): 20-40. —. 2016. The Phenomenology of Illness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Carlson, Linda. 2016. “Mindfulness-based Interventions for Coping with Cancer.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1373: 5-12. Cooper, John M. 1986. Reason and Human Good in Aristotle. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. —. 2013. Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Curnow, Trevor. 2006. Ancient Philosophy and Everyday Life. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Dentsoras, Dimitrios. 2015. “Ancient Philosophical Reflections on Two Conceptions of Happiness.” In Practicing Philosophy, edited by Aleksandar Fatiü and Lydia Amir. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Epictetus. 2014. Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 17

My heartfelt thanks to Anna Strelis Söderquist for her many helpful comments.

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Foster, C., D. Wright, H. Hill, J. Hopkinson, and L. Roffe. 2009. “Psychosocial Implications of Living 5 Years or More Following a Cancer Diagnosis: A Systematic Review of the Research Evidence.” European Journal of Cancer Care 18 (3): 223–47. Foucault, Michel. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Self. New York, NY: Picador. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, translated by Michael Chase. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, edited by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Hewitt, Maria, Sheldon Greenfield, and Ellen Stovall, eds. 2006. From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Jayawickreme, Eranda et al. 2014. “Post-traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Evidence, Controversies and Future Directions.” European Journal of Personality 28: 312-31. Knox, Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard. 2014. “Philosophy as an Art of Living: Situating the Method of Socratic Dialogue within a Framework of ‘Care of the Self.’” HASER International Journal on Philosophical Practice 5: 33–54. —. 2015a. “Sculpting Reflection and Being in the Presence of Mystery Perspectives on the Act of Philosophizing in Practice with People Recovering from Cancer.” HASER International Journal on Philosophical Practice 6: 53–79. —. 2015b. “‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ Socratic Dialogue in a Dramatic Setting.” In The Socratic Handbook: Methods and Manuals for Philosophical Practice and Applied Ethics, edited by Michael Noah Weiss. Münster: LIT Verlag. Koch, Lena et al. 2013. “Fear of Recurrence and Disease Progression in Long-Term (•5ௗyears) Cancer Survivors: A Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies.” Psycho-Oncology 22 (1): 1-11. Lindseth, Anders. 2012. “Being Ill as an Inevitable Life Topic: Possibilities of Philosophical Practice in Health Care and Psychotherapy.” Philosophical Practice 7 (3): 1081–96. Long, Anthony Arthur. 2002. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Marcus Aurelius. 1916. Meditations. The Loeb Classical Library 58. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Mitchell, Alex et al. 2013. “Depression and Anxiety in Long-Term Cancer Survivors Compared with Spouses and Health Controls: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Lancet Oncology 14: 721-32. Murakami, Haruki. 2005. Kafka on the Shore. London: The Harvill Press. Murray, Greg et al. 2008. “Big Boys Don’t Cry: An Investigation of Stoicism and Its Mental Health Outcomes.” Personality and Individual Differences 44: 1369-81. Nehamas, Alexander. 2000. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nussbaum, Martha. 1994. The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —. 2008. “How Is the Happy Warrior? Philosophy Poses Questions to Psychology.” Journal of Legal Studies 37 (2): 81-113. Paul, Laurie. 2016. Transformative Experience. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Plato. 2002. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Przezdziecki, Astrid et al. 2013. “My Changed Body: Breast Cancer, Body Image, Distress and Self-Compassion.” Psycho-Oncology 22: 1872-79. Ruini, Chiara et al. 2013. “The Role of Gratitude in Breast Cancer: Its Relationships with Post-Traumatic Growth, Psychological Well-Being and Distress.” Journal of Happiness Studies 14: 263-74. Seneca. 2004. On the Shortness of Life. London: Penguin Books. —. 2012. Anger, Mercy, Revenge. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. —. 2015. Letters on Ethics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Sherman, Nancy. 2005. Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Spiers, Judith. 2006. “Expressing and Responding to Pain and Stoicism in Home-Care Nurse-Patient Interactions.” Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences 20: 293-301. Svenaeus, Fredrik. 2000. “Das Unheimliche – Towards a Phenomenology of Illness.” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 3: 3-16. Taskila, Taina, and Marja-Liisa Lindbohm. 2007. “Factors Affecting Cancer Survivors’ Employment and Work Ability.” Acta Oncologica 46 (4): 446-51. Tedeschi, Richard, and Lawrence G. Calhoun. 1996. “The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the Positive Legacy of Trauma.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 9 (3): 455-71. —. 2004. “Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence.” Psychological Inquiry 5 (1): 1-18.

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Wagstaff, Graham et al. 1995. “Stoicism: Its Relation to Gender, Attitudes Toward Poverty, and Reactions to Emotive Material.” Journal of Social Psychology 135: 181-84. Witte, Tracy et al. 2012. “Stoicism and Sensation Seeking: Male Vulnerabilities for the Acquired Capability for Suicide.” Journal of Research in Personality 46: 383-92. Yong, Hua-Hie et al. 2001. “Development of a Pain Attitudes Questionnaire to Assess Stoicism and Cautiousness for Possible Age Differences.” Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Services 56B (5): 279-84.

CHAPTER ELEVEN FRIENDSHIP WITH THE COMPANY: BUILDING CORPORATE LEADERSHIP THROUGH HUMANISTIC CONSULTANCY ALEKSANDAR FATIû

Humanistic consultancy is a model of philosophical corporate work that focuses on the use of well-tried methods of philosophical practice to address a broad array of corporate issues, and especially the issues faced by the human resources departments of large companies. The crux of humanistic consultancy, which is developed within the Serbian Association for Philosophical Practice (www.etika.edu.rs), is capacity development in three key relationships that are important in the process of solving corporate problems: (i) the relationship between the company’s social vision and management style; (ii) the relationship between the community of the company and the society at large (the traditional meaning of “social responsibility” or “corporate citizenship”); (iii) the relationship between different conceptualizations of corporate problems and different solutions to those problems. The reason we call this type of consultancy “humanistic” rather than “philosophical” is twofold: first, the methods used derive mainly from the humanistic philosophical and social science body of knowledge, both historical and contemporary, and second, the methods do not involve the explicit use of philosophical theories, doctrines or concepts; they rather focus on the practicalities of a company’s situation, goals, and needs. Humanistic corporate consultancy is anything but merely idealistic: it is a powerful set of methods to address and change the identity and strategic management principles of a firm, with the goal of both enhancing

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the quality of life in the workplace within the community and enhancing the company’s imprint on the society in which it operates. The ultimate business consequences of the achievement of these two goals are typically a significant increase in corporate profits, alongside a rise in the satisfaction of doing business with the company – as an employee, client, or supplier.

Conceptualizing the Company as a Community: Social Mechanisms at Work in a Corporate Environment The current view of companies tends to focus on their character as formal organizations. Modern organizational theory defines organizations as decision-making structures, where the differences between various organizations boil down to the different types of decisions that those structures make. Hence, from an organizational theory point of view, the differences between a company providing information technology services, such as Google or Facebook, one which sells combat aircraft, and one which trades in cytostatic drugs might be considerably less significant than might seem at first sight. Organizational theory categorizes organizations, including companies, in terms of the type of decisions they make, and most corporations, whatever their business might be, tend to make the same or similar types of decisions (business decisions) as opposed to other organizations (such as public institutions or political parties) which make different types of decisions (e.g., decisions relating to social welfare, security, elections, campaigning, etc.). For all of the above reasons, organizational theory is of limited value to companies in dealing with their practical problems, because it is methodologically incapable of perceiving different companies, in different industries, as possessing sufficiently clear identities which clearly differentiate them from other companies. The humanistic consultancy method sees companies primarily as living, social organisms whose collective identities are strongly analogous to those of individual persons. A company’s success, in this light, is subject to many of the same factors that determine a person’s economic and social success. These factors include skills and the ability to produce and effectively offer a good or a service on the market; however, success equally depends on one’s resilience, persistence, and character, as well as one’s ability to intelligently and effectively liaise with and influence other people. Just as there is a “personality of success” in individuals (perhaps somewhat different in different societies and/or cultures), there is a character of success, or a set of skills required for success among

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companies. It is surprising how little companies think about the facets of other, more successful companies in related lines of business, including their attention to employee communication skills and their relentless pursuit of an ever-evolving social persona or identity. A successful company, according to the humanistic perspective, is a small, successful society; its success arises from the same structural factors as the success of a propulsive, cohesive, advanced society. These factors include a high degree of internal solidarity (identification between individuals and the community or company), a sense of shared identity and fundamental values within the company, and being firmly embedded in the society in which you do business. In other words: companies are, more or less, micro-social worlds; the more they are able to mirror the positive social phenomena that make societies successful within their corporate structures, relationships, and working atmosphere, the more successful they will be in the medium-to-long term. To understand one’s own company as a community requires courage. From a social perspective, most ordinary companies operate on the basis of fear of failure. Traditional management methods focus on control, and risk-analysis embodies an attitude that is founded on fear of falling through. This makes it very challenging to give up thinking in terms of excel sheets and short-term balances, and to start conceptualizing the company and its mission almost entirely in social terms: What can it do for society? What can it gain from society in the way of loyalty and a sense of belonging? The transition from “the excel sheet” to what Robert Solomon calls a quest for corporate and social “greatness” comes down to what humanistic consultancy, as well as traditional applied psychology, calls “reframing” (Solomon 1999). In individuals, the reframing (i.e., re-contextualization) of a problem often leads to a fundamentally changed approach to solving it, and often far more favorable outcomes. In companies the reframing relates to vision, mission, and strategy. The leaders of this approach are the global telecommunications and internet-based companies, which pursue strategic management based almost entirely on the social identity and social impact of the company. Their profits – while seemingly neglected in their explicit models of strategic management – have become enormous since these information technology giants pursued only what Solomon calls “social greatness” rather than profits alone. Pursuing social greatness, however, is by no means easy – primarily because it requires a clear understanding of what the company wishes to achieve other than generating profit and making its owners or stock holders wealthy. Companies tend to find it difficult to articulate this vision

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without professional help, just as most individuals find it difficult to develop a ‘personal vision’ without professional guidance – at least if they aim for a vision that is both realistic and emotionally fulfilling at the same time. The purpose of humanistic corporate counseling is the provision of corporate guidance which starts with the development of a vision. The vision should be both achievable and character-enhancing in ways that are likely to promote the company’s social success and profit at the same time. The social perspective does not see profit as the primary goal; rather, it sees profit as a natural reward for the company’s social success. Profit thus generated tends to be far greater than profit generated by strategies primarily motivated by profit alone. The conceptual switch to social vision as including but not primarily focusing on profit in the short term requires the debunking of certain corporate myths which tend to be accepted as common knowledge. One of those myths is that business is “cold” and rational, removed from private concerns and private life. This is one of the most pervasive and simultaneously one of the most damaging corporate myths preventing companies from achieving their maximum potential, both as communities and as businesses. In truth, the most successful businesses rely on people seeing the business as important to them personally. This includes employees and society at large, as well as customers and clients. Equally, in truth, the most successful businesses inspire emotions in people, both within the company and outside it; these emotions are the most powerful drivers behind the company’s relationship with its market and its staff. Thus there is little that is “cold” and rational in the strategies of visionary companies. The fact that this logic of social vision is inherent to the logic of business success is empirically demonstrated by a simple fact: visionary companies tend to be the richest and at the same time most the most influential companies, overall.

The Emotional Side of “Corporate Belonging” One of the aspects of corporate teamwork and team play is a sense of belonging which makes both possible. While traditionally, many companies expect their staff to be good team players and to show solidarity to the firm, little attention has been paid to the psychological, and especially emotional, prerequisites for such solidarity. By drawing parallels between desirable attitudes in private interpersonal relationships and desirable attitudes in corporate life (solidarity, loyalty, etc.), companies have a concept of corporate virtue that operates in the same way as virtue in society. Virtue in society, however, incorporates genuine

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relationships between members of the society. These relationships are marked not only by rational judgments and reasoning, but also by emotions (Slote 2010; Fatiü 2016, 173-200). This means that for the ordinary concept of virtue to be invoked in the case of companies, the whole apparatus of emotional dispositions typically conditioning such virtues in ordinary life must also be invoked in the context of corporate relationships (Fatiü 2013). To be a loyal friend, an individual must first feel friendship for the other; likewise, to be friends with the company, individuals must first feel friendship for it and the company should act as a friend towards them. The key shift in the relationship between companies and employees in moral terms occurs when the company embodies (as they often do) values which pertain primarily to intimate, private human relationships: loyalty, shared identity, solidarity, team-play, etc. This is particularly the case with team play, which is fraught with controversies in the corporate context. Members of a sports team (the kind of team referred to in corporate vocabulary) develop a sense of comradeship, even personal friendship; they share interests which do not, most of the time, have existential ramifications for them (that is to say that if they fail, they do not lose their means of subsistence). They enjoy the sport and compete for the thrill of it, and not for profit, or a living. They may, at any time, exit the team without any formal consequences. All of these aspects are fundamentally different in a working, corporate relationship between the company and its employees. First, employees are unequal with the company; essentially, they do what the company management tells them to and, subject to certain caveats, they are sanctioned for not doing what they are told with various levels of ‘estrangement’ from the company, including being let go completely. Thus their ‘teamwork’ is nothing like teamwork in sports: it is a coordinated work effort which is directed by the company; it does not necessarily have anything to do with enjoyment or free choice, apart from the fact that ultimately, every employee is free to resign if the discomfort of working in the company is too great for them. Thus, it seems to me, the only way to address the moral problem of invoking team play, solidarity, and loyalty with the company is to understand the company’s moral obligations and general moral relationship with its employees in the same terms applicable to the private relationships to which these values primarily pertain. In order to expect friendship with its employees, the company has a moral obligation to act as a friend to them, and that obligation goes considerably beyond their mutual contractual commitments. The value of a company’s friendship with its employees should by no means be underestimated. I was recently a witness to a situation in which a

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mid-level management member in a successful factory was suddenly struck down by serious illness and hospitalized in a national capital, some 200 kilometers from the factory, in dire need of blood donations. The national blood bank was depleted, so his survival depended on voluntary donations of blood from friends and family. To make things more difficult, his colleagues and friends could only donate blood at the place of his hospitalization, which meant that they needed to miss a day’s work and bear the cost of travel. The reaction of the factory owner went beyond merely allowing absences; instead, he formally announced the need for blood donations by all employees, granted everyone a day off work, and organized transportation for all donors. For some, this happened repeatedly. In such a situation, the difference between a company that sees its employees as friends and one that does not can be a difference between life and death. In failing social systems,1 corporations may soon be called forward to provide public services and take care of the vulnerable members of society instead of the state. In this type of situation, the way a corporation feels about its society and the vulnerable members thereof would determine how the corporation would act. The experimental setting for judging such a prospect is the company’s capacity to be friends with its employees. Belonging is a two-way relationship: few people are able to feel that they truly belong to a company that does not appear to care about the quality of their lives, and the personal well-being of all employees. It is this juncture point in corporate relationships that opens up a whole new set of theoretical and practical questions about the welfare-related roles of companies and their ability to contribute to the personal happiness of their employees in ways radically beyond the traditional terms of employment and codes of corporate ethics.

Humanistic Consultancy as Corporate Leadership Enhancement It is fairly obvious that the spirit of a company and its capacity to be friends with its employees depends in large part on its leaders. Their capacity for leadership determines both the company’s ability to foster innovative corporate relationships, and its ability to mobilize employees’ attitudes, which go beyond their work ethic. However, developing 1

As of this writing, in 2016, we witness the crumbling of international institutions which until a short while ago seemed rock-solid, such as the European Union – let alone national social security and welfare systems.

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leadership abilities is not easy. In fact, the role of leadership in large corporations has become even more critical over recent years. Many exceptionally successful companies that have made all the right business decisions in the traditional sense have failed because they haven’t adapted to changing circumstances in time. Examples such as Chrysler, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch or, most recently, Nokia, show how excellent traditional managers and CEOs can utterly fail to lead their companies into the oncoming social and economic change because they neglect their own leadership development as a continuous process. While the issue of the most effective or most pertinent style of leadership for different types of organizations is contentious, 2 it is generally accepted that interpersonal or ‘soft’ skills in leaders are crucial factors for their organizational success (Passmore 2016). However, concepts of leadership greatly vary between different cultures, and even between different companies. This difference impacts the actual capacity of the company to achieve leadership success with its employees. The most important characteristic of leadership is that it is not limited to the ability of individuals to advance the organizational cause; rather, as Passmore puts it: leadership is a culture that arises primarily from collective actions by both formal and informal leaders acting in collaboration. Thus, the first and crucial prerequisite for successful organizational leadership is consensus between key bearers of influence – whether formal or informal. Leadership as authority is directly opposed to this type of networked organizational power, which becomes mobilized in the form of collective leadership. The latter perspective allows many different people to be leaders, to various extents and perhaps in various ways, while the former, authoritative leadership essentially distinguishes between the leader(s) and the followers (Darr 2016). Why is this aspect of leadership philosophically relevant and, vice versa, why is philosophy relevant to it? Primarily because we need a consensus on values and interpersonal styles in order to facilitate collective leadership: honesty, sincerity, and genuine care for colleagues, etc. While all companies tend to profess a high regard for such socially accepted values within their organizational walls, in reality the situation can be very different. During the writing of this chapter, I met with an HR training specialist of a large international food and beverage producer for an interview to address preliminary issues for the training program that I was to deliver in 2

Some recent empirical research actually questions the role of empathetic and collaborative attitudes in leaders and emphasizes personal resilience, determination, and strictness instead (Bolton et al. 2011, 1-2; Bolden et al.).

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the coming months. While discussing the potential of various applied philosophical techniques to successfully manage organizational conflict, the HR specialist suddenly exclaimed, “But we don’t have any conflicts in our firm!” I paused, wondering what had made her make such a statement in the midst of a discussion about the management of structural conflicts. After all, such discussions are necessarily involved in leading an organization. Then she made another startling statement: “We also have a high level of emotional intelligence in the firm. We are really very close and care about each other, so we don’t have problems like that.” I looked around, through the glass walls of her office, into the other glass walled offices, and asked whether she thought the emotional intelligence and respect for one another was due to the total control over all their employees throughout the work hours. She was stunned; our meeting ended quickly. As I walked out of the firm, I saw surveillance cameras all around the offices. The employees not only lacked personal privacy during work hours, they were also being constantly recorded, even when they were not dealing with clients directly – in fact, the cameras were positioned in such a way that they could also pick up the content on the employees’ screens. Total control of this type is usually accompanied with very warm and positive statements about the company’s problem-less situation, or its idyllic relationship with its employees. In fact, this lack of sincerity betrays both a lack of genuine concern about its employees and a lack of leadership, even by its formal leaders. Such organizations are in dire need of philosophical consultancy. First, on the level of values. Their key values tend to be opaque and insufficiently articulate even to the top management, and the only way to move them in the direction of greater emotional intelligence and a more serious type of corporate ethics is to work on the conceptualization of values with the management team. Alas, as with most difficult cases in any kind of intervention, those most deprived of skills, and thus most in need of philosophical assistance, tend to be least aware of it. Humanistic corporate consultancy is methodologically similar to individual counseling. It addresses the blind spots in organizations and clarifies both norms and self-perceptions on the one hand, and the flow of reasoning, on the other. The two are intimately connected: wrong substantive assumptions (e.g., wrong values, such as in the example of insincerity about management style) often go hand-in-hand with flawed reasoning. Just as total control, which masks a lack of leadership rather than open acknowledgment and resolution of conflicts, tends to be falsely represented as an absence of problems and a loving harmony between the

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firm and its employees (lack of sincerity and proper recognition of the problem). It also tends to be associated with incorrect reasoning: the problem (and, clearly, there is a problem) will be best addressed if it is denied with a smile. Humanistic consultancy must work very gently, yet quite decisively, to unmask these mechanisms of solution evasion. Depending on the firm’s capacity and willingness to self-analyze, a humanistic consultant will also explore the motives and causal factors that have led to the adoption of a crypto-authoritarian culture in the firm. The process is very much the same as the analytic process in individual counseling: the therapist goes as far into the causal analysis of the apparent problems in her client as the client will allow her. Thus it depends on the company how far humanistic consultancy can dig into the flesh of the problem, and how extensively the consultant is able to intervene to the benefit of the company. There is an inherent transactional nature in this principle: people and organizations tend to act in a way that they believe is most profitable for them: some organizations will only go so far in helping themselves to become better organizations, simply because they had decided, a long time ago, how good they really want to be. This is a somewhat mysterious fact: one would think that individuals and organizations alike would want to be as good and as socially successful as possible; yet experience in psychotherapy as well as corporate consultancy has shown that this is usually not the case: people and organizations decide how much better they want to be and are rarely willing to push these limits dramatically beyond their initial, self-imposed ‘frontiers.’ A dimension of collaborative leadership is that it occurs on and between all levels of an organization regardless of the organizational chart. People with certain incentives, capacities, and sensibilities collaborate with each other and exhibit leadership qualities which may be quite prodigious, and may not correspond to their position in the organizational chart. Such “unleashed” leadership is threatening to authoritative leaders with control-oriented management styles, who may feel pressured while their organizations, generally, prosper with the internal flourishing of leadership not channeled by company hierarchy. This “creative chaos” is the life blood of rapidly advancing firms: it is a large part of a humanistic consultant’s job to help the formal leaders deal with the fact that somebody else may exhibit and, indeed, be capable of more leadership than they are, and to understand this not as a threat to themselves, but as a resource for the company. One of the prerequisites for the very possibility of such broadmindedness by formal leaders is an empathic, caring culture within the company, a friendship between the company and all employees. This will

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instill the confidence in each individual that they will not become estranged, demoted, or fired if they are challenged by someone who, organizationally, is not really “supposed to” play a leadership role. Corporate leaders’ sense of insecurity that results from uncertain relationships with the company, or the CEO personally – i.e. a lack of genuine corporate friendship – is most likely the main reason why most companies do not have an explicit and elaborate leadership strategy or leadership plan. Such a plan requires not only training in leadership, but also a liberal and broad conception of what it actually is: a view of leadership as a form of corporate social capital which ought to be maximized regardless of the level of the organization at which it occurs. Like most emancipatory views involving issues of power and control, this one too is frightening and intimidating for most companies: the ability to accept such a view usually requires a consultant’s assistance.

Friendship within the Company and Leadership outside of It There are limits to this broad and tolerant view of leadership, and it is at these limits that leadership involves controlling power. The kind of power that leaders have at their disposal, however, is the same as social power: it is influence rather than actual exercise of restrictive control. According to Sharma and Jain (2013), “Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.” Influence is a soft type of power because it actually excludes the use of any attributes of coercion: once a leader uses force to impose his will, he loses influence in the social sense. Employees might fear her and obey her, but they are likely to seek employment elsewhere and their respect for the leader will usually diminish. Thus influence arises from a leader’s attributes and attitude towards employees; in short, it arises from the leader’s perceived virtues. The question which determines the level of leadership a company can exhibit in society is the same one that determines the level of influence a leader can exert within the company – it is a question of identity in terms of the virtues and values regarded as definitive of the management’s and company’s self images. Struggles over identity are notoriously long fought and often undecided, both on a personal and on a collective and organizational front. The process of change within as well as outside a company is constant, and the company’s identity must be as dynamic as the identity of any individual.

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Many companies have failed because they neglected the need to constantly re-examine their identities. The context of constant change seemingly invalidates the very idea of a stable identity: institutions and organizations tend to be conservative and to change their self-perceptions as little as possible over time; otherwise they experience a sense of organizational insecurity. This conservatism is so instinctually strong that, even though it has proven destructive to many companies lead by shrewd and intelligent CEOs, it remains a source of security for firms across the world. While they seek clarification and completion of what they sense is missing in their corporate identity, they wish to make the result of such conceptual quests as long-lasting as possible. Their HR experts are aware that the need for security and constancy is a trap, but the mere exertion of individual and organizational effort to ‘take risks’ and avoid the lull of the well-known discourse and habits is insufficient: a conceptual shift of identity is required. This is a philosophical question par excellence. Rather than thinking of identity in the static terms of ‘who I am’ or ‘who we are as an organization,’ it is perhaps more useful to perceive selfidentity in relational terms: what kind of a firm are we, and how do we relate to others, or to society at large? This is a functional identity, as opposed to strong ontological identity; it generates a self-perception from the pragmatics of everyday relationships, and it is self-evaluated in terms of virtue. To ask what kind of company we are (or what kind of a person I am) is closely connected to, if not identical with, asking what I desire to be like, or what I consider best for me – indeed, how I perceive virtue. It is ultimately the conception of virtue that defines our relational and functional identities: the level of care for our understanding of virtue will to a large extent determine our actions (Fatiü 2016). The way in which questions are formulated often suggests potential answers. Thus, the formulation of corporate identity should follow the major concerns in the relationship between the corporate sector and society. If leadership is a prime value for corporations nowadays, as it seems to be, it should be conceptualized both as an internal and an external relationship: companies ought to take a stance towards the prospect that they might become leaders in society. They have the power and influence in many communities to play that role, however many have no interest in being social leaders because they see the role as overburdened with external responsibilities. Most companies remain hostages to the traditionalist view that business is their primary job, while any social role is a nice and desirable aesthetic adornment. A reconceptualization of corporate identity should focus on the idea that social influence is a fundamental dimension of business: in fact, many highly successful global companies – such as

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the IT giants Google and Facebook – have shown that a social mission and profile are the most profitable and at the same time the most socially relevant and responsible types of business. Fundamentally, the same is the case with the food and beverage industry, the energy sector, or the entertainment industry. In fact, I am at a loss to think of a single industry where this principle does not apply. The recognition of this new and revolutionary perspective for companies is the very core of corporate leadership. Company leaders make an impression with their social vision and not necessarily with their business skills, in the traditional sense. These skills are increasingly irrelevant in the changing society that poses escalating and often competing demands on the corporate sector, to which companies appear insufficiently prepared to respond. In this regard, corporate leadership is becoming increasingly aligned with social leadership both on formal and on informal levels: corporate leaders must work and liaise with people of social influence from various walks of life, seeing themselves primarily as social actors and bearers, even representatives, of legitimate and important social interests. The primary mission and measure of corporate success today is the capacity of the company to influence society in ways that will enhance it economically, culturally, and morally. Profit and transactional efficiency are no longer the primary focus; they are, rather, the expected and logical effect of social engagement. The humanistic corporate consultant’s role is therapeutic here. She uses her personality and skill set to facilitate corporate change and the development of leadership where none would be possible otherwise; indeed, most personal growth and corporate development alike are very difficult without external guidance. Companies are facing demands to transform on a fundamental level, in order to follow the tectonic societal changes of the world today. Such radical demands are virtually impossible to meet without expert help, because they involve dramatic changes in self-identity and core values. The situation is similar to personal crises of identity and change of personal core values. Such dramatic normative shifts in a personality typically require counseling, or other forms of therapeutic coaching assistance for the person to navigate them successfully. Likewise, companies that continue to see themselves as primarily economic or business actors in society have a great deal of trouble adopting a radically changed self-concept – suddenly they are primarily social actors, with demands placed on corporate leadership that are very similar to those placed on social leadership. To adopt this change of view of the self and the world, companies need help. Humanistic consultants are able to offer them just that.

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Friendship, lastly, has a structure of its own, which may be another source of insecurity. Friendship is a relationship that does not primarily rest on procedures and technologies providing a sense of security and predictability that can be institutionally sanctioned. Rather, friendship is mediated by personality: just as the effect on a client in psychotherapy is achieved primarily through the chemistry and interaction between therapist and client, the vision of corporate friendship both within and outside the company depends on the personality of the CEO and the leading management staff, their view of leadership, and their capacity to embrace change whilst supporting one another through it. Humanistic consultancy in corporations thus unfolds along essentially the same lines as humanistic therapy: it helps develop personality traits, skills, and attitudes that make the “personality” of the corporation more apt and adept, more likable, and ultimately more influential. At the same time, humanistic consultancy enables the company and the people behind it to enjoy and take pride in their changed identities as the fulfillment of the company’s “personal” mission.

References Bolden, Richard et al. 2011. A Review of Leadership Theory and Competency Frameworks. Exeter: University of Exeter. Bolton, Patrick, Markus K. Brunnermeier, and Laura Veldkamp. 2011. “Leadership, Coordination, and Corporate Culture.” At https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/leadership_0.pdf Accessed September 9, 2016. Darr, Kurt. 2016. “Introduction to Management and Leadership Concepts, Principles and Practices.” Brighton, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning LLC. At http://samples.jbpub.com/9780763742911/42910_CH02_007_024.pdf Accessed September 10, 2016. Fatiü, Aleksandar. 2013. “Corruption, Corporate Character-Formation and ‘Value-Strategy.’” Philosophy and Society XXIV (1): 60-80. —. 2016. Virtue as Identity: Emotions and the Moral Personality. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Passmore, William. 2016. Developing a Leadership Strategy: A Critical Ingredient for Organizational Success. Greensboro: Centre for Creative Leadership. Accessed September 9, 2016. Slote, Michael. 2010. Moral Sentimentalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Solomon, Robert. 1999. A Better Way to Think About Business. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER TWELVE SEARCHING FOR WISDOM THE DIALOGOS WAY GURO HANSEN HELSKOG

Dialogos – practical philosophy in education is a pedagogical approach that has wisdom as its ultimate educational purpose and ideal. It consists of a series of six books written with groups of youth and young adults in multicultural and multi-religious educational contexts in mind. In this essay, I explore how dialogical philosophizing in line with the Dialogos approach impact participants over time. In the first part of the essay, I discuss the Dialogos ideal of wisdom, and how it is envisioned as an emerging development in three phases: the humanistic-pedagogical phase, the ethical-philosophical phase, and the existential-spiritual phase. The phases involve three different modes of philosophizing: the abstract-analytical mode, the phenomenologicalhermeneutical mode, and, finally, the spiritual-contemplative mode. In the second part of the essay I shed light on and discuss how students’ search for wisdom is encouraged and how students might become wiser through a course on philosophical dialogue set up in accordance with the Dialogos approach. I conclude that students in my classes not only searched for wisdom. In the process, they also developed wisdom, both theoretical, personal, and relational wisdom, which is likely to influence also their future practical wisdom.

Background For more than two decades now, my concern has been to develop pedagogical approaches and teaching materials that can scaffold healthy

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growth and development of wisdom for individuals, couples, and groups.1 One fruit of these efforts is the Dialogos approach to practical philosophy in multicultural and multi-religious education, which is, as far as I know, the first of its kind. The approach is developed partly in collaboration with the philosopher Andreas Ribe.2 The Dialogos approach is best understood as born out of humanistic pedagogy, because I started developing Dialogos before I encountered the field of philosophical practice. Humanistic pedagogy is a tradition that draws on existentialist and humanistic philosophy and psychology. It sees psychology and pedagogy primarily as philosophical disciplines belonging to the humanities, as opposed to pedagogical traditions that see pedagogy and psychology as social sciences inspired by the natural sciences. This split within pedagogy as an academic field shows itself in the two concepts “pedagogy” and “educational science.” The concept of pedagogy, with its roots in the humanities, has been under pressure by the latter concept during the last century. Key notions in a humanistic pedagogical stance are holism, selfactualization, creativity, self-knowledge, genuine dialogue, love, ethics, morality, solidarity, and global understanding. Humanistic pedagogy is based on a view of the individual as rooted in language, history, and culture, and for some, in a wider, cosmic, divine, or universal whole. The relationships and interactions between the individual and other human beings are essential to this tradition. The humanistic view also holds that human beings are a mixture of good and evil (see, for instance, Nissen et al. 1991). The humanistic pedagogical stance, which can include religious perspectives, is a stance that runs through the Dialogos approach from the first exercise in the first book, through the last exercise in the third book. The vision underlying it is a world in which coming generations can engage in authentic and genuine communication and dialogue, and thus experience the emergence of unity in diversity, enabling them to live together in peace. Wisdom is chosen as an ideal because the concept seems to embrace this vision, and because it seems to be an ideal 1

I have a background as a pedagogue with many years of experience in secondary and upper secondary education, in adult psychoeducation in the psychiatric hospital Modum Bad, and in teacher education. 2 The series was published as Helskog (2006a; 2006b) and Helskog and Ribe (2007a; 2007b; 2008; 2009). Andreas Ribe co-authored the 2007 publications with me, and some of the exercises here were included in the 2008 and 2009 publications. All the new material in these publications were authored or collected by me.

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considered worth striving for in most traditions across the world and across history. It is beyond the scope of this primarily empirical essay to discuss the different conceptions of wisdom in depth, but I will mention that Hadot (1995) shows how ancient schools of philosophy developed their practices around an idea of spiritual progress towards a vision of wisdom, whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, or Sceptic. Wisdom is also considered an ideal belonging to the realm of the highest good in most spiritual traditions. For instance, Fischer (2015) suggests that there are striking similarities among the conceptions of wisdom in the most influential literature in the world, including the wisdom of Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, and Buddha. Moreover, there seems to be a relatively common agreement on how to define wisdom today, according to Jeste et al. (2010). Their survey showed a striking consensus among experts on the characteristics of wisdom, which again were remarkably similar to lay definitions of wisdom.3 The experts agree that a wise person has a high degree of self-insight, a rich knowledge of life, and that he or she embodies social cognition, empathy, altruism and a sense of value relativism. The wise person recognizes the limits of his or her knowledge, has a desire for learning and exercises a high degree of self-reflection. He or she is to a high degree able to learn from experience, is open to new experiences, and is able to regulate emotions, tolerate ambivalence and differences amongst others, and accept uncertainty in life. Moreover, the wise person is other-centered, has developed maturity through experience, and has a sense of a higher power. The fact that wisdom seems to be an ideal worth striving for across traditions was important because I hoped to develop Dialogos as a pedagogical approach and curriculum for philosophizing that would be relevant in multi-cultural and multi-religious contexts. Wisdom could thus serve as a regulative ideal that could bridge divides, whether religious, cultural, or other. Moreover, I was hoping that the Dialogos curriculum and approach would supplement and challenge the mainly instrumentalist, rationalistic, constructivist, and pragmatic paradigm of education that dominate contemporary culture.

3

The research referred to is problematic, but it is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss it further.

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Dia-logos: Through Reason, Words, and Speech The name “Dialogos,” dia meaning “through,” and logos meaning “word,” “reason,” “speech,” or “wisdom,” already indicates the overarching vision and purpose of the approach: To enhance wisdom by inviting students to search for wisdom through collaborative dialogical examination using reason, words, and speech. The search for wisdom is encouraged through a variety of texts, images, and exercises, involving argumentation and reasoning, finding criteria and taking different perspectives, interpreting and striving for (mutual) understanding. “Thinking tools” are applied to diverse issues and experiences, such as existential, emotional, and ethical issues, encouraging students to examine themselves, each other, and the relations and contexts they are all embedded in, such as language, history, nature, society, and the universe. Moreover, exercises involve interpretations of wisdom perspectives from different traditions, religious and philosophical. Central to the approach is that material such as texts and images are intended not only to be interpreted and analyzed, but also to be related to one’s personal life, for the sake of collective and personal growth and development. In other words, students should not only be invited to analyze and criticize, but also to resonate personally with the material, whether images or texts. Dialogos connects wisdom to love, based in the etymology of the word “philosophy”: A philosopher is a friend of wisdom, or a person who loves insight and prudence. The source of wisdom is . . . love – for oneself, for other people, for the world and – for the religious person – for God. It is impossible to be a friend and lover of wisdom without being a friend and lover of human beings. (Helskog and Ribe 2008, 7; my translation)

Thus, if dialogues set up in accordance with the Dialogos approach enhance wisdom, they also enhance authentic communication, friendship, and love between participants. This includes virtues such as respect, openmindedness, and acceptance. Throughout the three books for students, we follow two fictitious teenagers, Morten and Mina, who are constantly in dialogue. They are wondering, doubting, and finding themselves pondering existential questions, experiences, and ultimate situations. In the introduction to the chapter called “Wisdom”4 I presented a notion of wisdom that connects ancient Greek philosophy and the lives of the reader/participant today. In 4

Helskog and Ribe (2008, 194-95; my translation).

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the last exercise of the book, Exercise 85 Peace, Morten and Mina have fallen silent. For the first time in the book, they neither speak nor think. They are still, just being in alignment, unity, and wholeness with themselves, each other, and the universe. The inner peace that is envisioned here is seen as a possible stable point from and towards which Morten and Mina can navigate in the midst of the chaos and conflicts of everyday life. They have reached this state of mind and level of wisdom through their previous dialogical and transformative examination of themselves in all their complex relationships to others, to the world, and to the possible transcendent Other. Whether the transcendent Other exists or not is left open for the students themselves to contemplate and consider. Thus, my intention was to offer an undogmatic path towards wisdom, making it possible for participants to learn how to search for wisdom, and through this, to become wiser. This is of course highly problematic, and sometimes I feel embarrassed to admit that this has been my intention and ambition. Who am I to claim that I am able to lead anyone in their search for wisdom? Is it ethically justifiable to encourage young people to question their opinions, beliefs, and conduct? There are no simple answers to these questions, but what people repeatedly have reported after participating in Dialogos philosophical dialogues over some time is that the dialogues have impacted them positively in life-transforming ways, as will also be shown and discussed in the empirical part of this chapter. It is important to notice that I do not believe that wisdom can be taught through deductive copy didactics, nor by authoritarian or instrumental methods. A teacher or facilitator can never force anyone to search for wisdom, nor can she do the search for participants, regardless of how experienced and theoretically well-versed they are. At the end of the day, it is up to the participants themselves to search for wisdom, even though the role of the facilitator is pivotal in philosophical dialogues. How can the facilitator encourage the search of wisdom?

Three Phases – Different Modes of Philosophizing I have elsewhere categorized the Dialogos development process in three phases (Helskog 2015; 2017). These are the humanistic-pedagogical phase, the ethical-philosophical phase, and the existential-spiritual phase, providing a didactic structure for the Dialogos curriculum and thus for a dialogue series set up in accordance with the Dialogos approach. The different phases are inspired by different approaches to philosophical practice, encouraging different modes of philosophizing, which come to

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the foreground at different points in a Dialogos dialogue series. The modes of philosophizing can be labelled abstract-analytical modes, phenomenological-hermeneutical modes, and spiritual-contemplative modes. By “abstract-analytical modes of philosophizing,” I mean facilitating in a way that makes students analyze, conceptualize, and problematize in a more or less abstract way, both their own thinking and the thinking of others. Through this, they learn how to pay close attention to what is said or written, and they learn to reflect upon their own thoughts as well as the thoughts of others. Advocates of this mode of philosophizing are for instance Matthew Lipman, Oscar Brenifier, and Leonard Nelson, in their different ways. By “phenomenological-hermeneutical modes of philosophizing,” I mean a mode of philosophizing that relates to the outer world with an attitude of openness and willingness to let the Other (whether fellow students, a concept, a text, a movie, or an image) speak to us, with the risk of being existentially changed or transformed by the Other. Advocates of this mode of philosophizing are, for instance, Lou Marinoff, Ran Lahav, Anders Lindseth, and Finn Thorbjørn Hansen. The latter has in his work taken the Nelson/Heckman Socratic dialogue tradition in a more existentialist and phenomenological/hermeneutical direction (Hansen 2002; 2008). By the “spiritual-contemplative mode of philosophizing,” I mean a mode of philosophizing in which we have moved dia-logos (through reason, words and speech) to a state of being beyond or underneath logos: to pure Being. Dialogue in this phase involves being together on a deeper level, in which ideas are allowed to float in a freer way. Advocates of the spiritual-contemplative mode of philosophizing are, for instance, Ran Lahav (2016) and, in his later works, Finn Thorbjørn Hansen (2008).

The Humanistic-Pedagogical Phase Based on more than a decade of experience, the humanistic-pedagogical phase has proven important to the degree of “success” of a dialogue series or a course on philosophical dialogue set up in accordance with the Dialogos approach. One of the “success factors” is the intentional work to create a good, safe, and friendly atmosphere characterized by dialogical democracy in the group, in which all participants feel free to come forward with their perspectives, arguments, or examples when appropriate. The humanistic-pedagogical phase is aimed at contributing to the development of such an undogmatic, reflective, and inclusive openness in the group of participants, based on an introduction to the simple, foundational principles of free philosophical reflection. Students are gradually guided

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into a democratic dialogical and philosophical culture, developed through the pedagogical structure of the concrete dialogue series they take part in, which again forms the basis for searching wisdom. Practically, and as a base and starting point for a Dialogos dialogue series, the emphasis should be on facilitating students’ learning of attitudes and skills essential to dialogical philosophizing. Attitudes include respect, tolerance, and openness to each other, interest in each other’s points of views, a will to strive for mutual understanding, to wonder about issues that were earlier considered self-evident, and a will to explore philosophical issues, whether based in text, a piece of art, an exercise, or an ethical problem. Skills include reading or observing carefully, listening carefully both to what others say and to what one is saying, formulating questions, statements, and reasons, formulating personal examples, finding and formulating criteria, taking different perspectives and positions, comparing, and analyzing. This implies that abstract-analytical modes of philosophizing might have a dominant role in this phase of a Dialogos dialogue series, even though phenomenological-hermeneutical modes also play a role. The facilitator is responsible for framing this process, and it requires that he or she is sensitive, flexible, and reflexive at all points during a dialogue and in the course of a dialogue series.

The Ethical-Philosophical Phase While the humanistic-pedagogical phase is oriented toward teaching skills and nourishing the attitudes and virtues necessary for the establishment of an open, philosophical, and dialogical culture in the group, the second phase of a Dialogos dialogue series is focused more on the content and subject matter of the dialogue. The reason is that when students are able to participate freely in different forms of dialogue, they are also free to let the content of the dialogues come more to the fore. They (ideally) no longer feel a need to hide or cover up their beliefs, but are free to put these to the test in dialogue with other perspectives and worldviews. They no longer treat content as “truth,” but interpret it from different perspectives, by applying different criteria. They are cautious both when listening and speaking, and they reflect upon consequences of different choices in the dialogues, both ethically (for instance, “What will this choice imply for others, and myself?”) and philosophically (“Which path are we embarking on with this choice?”) Thus, while the humanistic-pedagogical phase is focused more on form and procedures than on content (even though content plays an important

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part already in this phase), content comes more to the fore in the ethicalphilosophical phase. Issues involving experiences, feelings, personal relations, ethical problems, moral action, and existential questions are now explored in a way that gives personal narratives and experiences a more explicit role. Through the first phase, students are trained in basic argumentation and reasoning, and they are at least beginning to understand explicitly how interpretation and understanding are based in criteria, forming different perspectives. Moreover, they have learned how to question and problematize both their own perspectives and the perspectives of others. Because, ideally, there is now a democratic dialogical and philosophical culture among the participants, the forms, methods, and procedures practiced in the humanistic-pedagogical phase have ideally become “embodied” in the participants. Participants are therefore likely to perform in a way that makes the humanistic virtues more implicitly part of the dialogue, while the content comes more explicitly to the fore. This gives room for more phenomenological-hermeneutical modes of philosophizing. In their engagement with texts, images, and with each other, students are now becoming increasingly able to take different perspectives. Ideas are developed, put forward and critiqued. In an increasingly unrestrained way, misunderstandings and disagreements are sorted out, resolved, or accepted. Participants are likely to show a will to understand perspectives other than their own, and their ways of relating to each other are transformed. They become increasingly united as a group, and simultaneously individualized as persons. In the existential-philosophical phase, students are invited to turn inwards, in addition to outwards, but still in a way that is rather indirect, structured, and focused, for instance by formulating one personal story to be analyzed. Now the facilitator can, to an increasing extent, leave more of the exploratory work to the students themselves, as they have internalized the dialogical and philosophical virtues. If the humanistic-pedagogical phase was “successful,” the students have now become capable both of philosophizing and of reflecting upon their philosophizing. The facilitator should in this phase pay careful attention to the interactions between the students, and strive to facilitate the dialogue in a way that makes them gradually internalize not only the dialogical, but also the ethical standards by which he or she herself works. He or she is modelling a way of being in the world, a way of relating to others, and a way of bringing about development and change. This can be invisible to observers, but makes all the difference in how a dialogue series develops. Thus, during the humanistic-pedagogical and the ethical-philosophical phases, the students will become increasingly independent of the

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interventions of the facilitator. And the more they have embodied the virtues involved in philosophizing together, such as constantly asking each other questions, formulating arguments and counter-arguments, interpreting, analyzing, and reasoning, viewing content-matter from different perspectives and continuously striving to understand each other, the more students will be open to different forms of philosophizing. By now, participants might have become open to go deeper into existential and spiritual issues. Then the time might be right to take them one step further, into the existential-spiritual phase of a Dialogos dialogue series. However, there are reasons to be careful.

The Existential-Spiritual Phase In the existential-spiritual phase, the group is now moving beyond or underneath rationality towards the greater Logos that embraces pure Being. Dialogue in this phase involves being together on a deeper level, in which ideas are allowed to float in a freer way. This might happen even if the facilitator sticks to “traditional” forms of philosophizing, such as analyzing personal examples in a rather conceptual and rational way. Thus, in the spiritual-contemplative phase there is a turning inwards, which again is a turn towards greater dimensions of existence that also creates a sense of deep connection to the others in a group, leading towards relational spirituality5 or even friendship.6 By the practice of spiritual-contemplative modes of philosophizing I mean forms of philosophizing in which students interact with each other and with texts in a more profound way, speaking from their inner depth, giving voice to what comes to them without analyzing, judging, or problematizing. Instead, the students are invited to resonate with the material and with each other, cultivating the deepest layers of their existence. An advocate of contemplative philosophizing is Ran Lahav, who in his little Handbook of Philosophical-Contemplative Companionships (Lahav 2016) discusses concepts such as “profound,” “the inner dimension,” “inner attitude,” “giving voice,” “togetherness,” and “resonating.” In my experience, though, there is normally no need to apply a form of philosophizing that resembles religious or contemplative practices. Most of the time, especially in the context of public education, and if facilitators are inexperienced, I would recommend not doing so. My experience and 5

See Helskog and Stokke (2014) for an empirical concretization of the concept. See Helskog (2014a) for a discussion of the development of friendship in a concrete philosophical dialogue project (The Gandhi Project). 6

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research shows that students might enter such a stance by themselves, in due time, when they themselves are ready. Moreover, if spiritualcontemplative modes of philosophizing are introduced too early in a series of philosophical dialogues, students are likely to find it strange. They might even feel alienated or invaded, pushed into something that is just too unfamiliar, unless they have a background as spiritual practitioners, whether religious or otherwise, for instance through the practice of yoga or meditation. Therefore, if one wants to introduce this form of philosophizing, it can be beneficial to keep a frame and structure that builds on earlier phases. Using this, students who are not ready to “let go” and “take the leap” into a more contemplative mode are allowed to stay on more “solid” analytical or hermeneutic ground by holding on to the frames introduced earlier. This is especially important in public education, which must be regulated by different norms than private philosophical practice. In public education, students do not necessarily participate in dialogues voluntarily, at least not at undergraduate levels. Therefore, it is important that the facilitator is aware of the ethical responsibility involved in his or her work, and is sensitive to participant responses. If some want to stay in a more analytical or hermeneutical mode, they should not be forced to go further. Thus, in the existential-spiritual phase, abstract-analytical and phenomenological-hermeneutical modes of philosophizing still have their place. The content material will anyhow invite them to enter landscapes of ideas that call for profound and personal reflection. If students are ready, they might have a “glimpse into eternity” and experience a “dive into divinity” without necessarily applying the forms of contemplative philosophizing as suggested by Lahav.

Searching for Wisdom the Dialogos Way In the processes involved in philosophizing through the three phases of a Dialogos dialogue series, participants are encouraged, metaphorically speaking, to search for wisdom and thus transcend their existing horizons of understanding in different directions. By turning towards others, towards different forms of content material, and towards the world, and by examining their own perspectives and worldview, involving inclinations, experiences, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs, they have the potential to uplift their souls by transcending their existing horizons of understanding and being in the world. From a holistic perspective, the process of transcending towards wisdom can be characterized as a process in four main directions, vertically and horizontally (again, metaphorically speaking):

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1. As a search for understanding of life in context, for anchorage and existential meaning (“downwards”). 2. As a search for universal, cosmic or divine wisdom (“upwards”). 3. As a search for deep self-understanding, understanding of others, and understanding of one`s relations to other people (“horizontally right”). 4. As a search for theoretical understanding and for flexible mastery of concrete situations (“horizontally left”). The cross section is the balance point between the directions, where inner peace and what we can call integrative wisdom is to be found. The process directions can be illustrated by the following model:7

Model 1. Searching for wisdom the Dialogos way

To sum up and prepare the ground for the next part of the essay, we can say that the philosophical process involving the three more or less overlapping phases in a dialogue series or course set up in line with the Dialogos approach can be synthesized as follows: 7

The model is also to be published in Helskog (forthcoming).

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1. The humanistic-pedagogical phase, in which the focus is upon the teaching of skills and attitudes necessary for the establishment of a culture of dialogical democracy. 2. The ethical-philosophical phase, in which philosophical content and genuine dialogical relationships between participants are brought to the fore, and in which students gradually move towards a culture of relational spirituality. 3. The existential-spiritual phase, in which students or participants are invited to go deeper, and more explicitly explore existential and spiritual issues, leading towards a sense of communicative unity, belonging to a universal whole, and finding inner peace. Overall, this search for wisdom in different directions is likely to lead to personal transformation. Thus, students are likely not only to learn how to search for wisdom. In the process, they are also likely to develop their depth of wisdom. In the next part of the essay, I will reflect upon an example of how a course curriculum in line with the Dialogos approach can be set up and facilitated. The examples are drawn from a module on philosophical dialogue taught within an international teacher education course on intercultural understanding and religion at University College South East Norway. The course was set up as an action research project. Having done a previous small study based on the same module given the year before (Helskog 2016), I adjusted the schedule for this year’s course in order to improve aspects of it, in line with action research methodology. The three phases outlined and discussed above formed the basic pedagogical model upon which I organized the course. The questions to be explored in this part of the essay are the following: 1. How might the Dialogos approach to practical philosophy encourage students to search for wisdom? 2. How might philosophizing in line with the Dialogos approach make students wiser?

The Action Research Project: Comments on Design and Methods The nature of action research is controversial. Some consider it to be no methodology, but an orientation towards inquiry, while most action researchers label it as a methodology which has the dual aims of action and research. Action implies bringing about learning or change in the

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context within which it is conducted, and research implies increasing understanding on the part of the researcher, the participants, and a wider community. Action research is often regarded as cyclic or spiral, either explicitly or implicitly. At the very least, intention or planning precedes action, and critique, reflection, or review follows (Coghlan and Brannick 2001). In the Teacher Education project described here, I followed the development of ten regular students in the ITEPS-program8 through a 10 ECTS module on philosophical dialogue within the 30 ECTS course “Intercultural Understanding and Religion” through a cyclic action research procedure as described above. Before the students arrived in Norway, I had reported the action research project to NSD, 9 who had given the permission to carry out the project. On the first day of the course on Philosophical Dialogue, the ten students were invited to take part in the action research project. They were informed that the study would only require regular participation in the course, apart from granting me the permission as teacher and researcher to use their written assignments and reflection notes as part of the data material. They were told this would have multiple functions: it was done in order for all of us to learn from it, in order to improve our dialogical philosophizing and facilitation practice, and for research purposes. All of the students gave their written consent, and none of them withdrew from the research part of the course. The empirical material consisted of students’ meta-reflection notes during the course, giving me the opportunity to see how the different exercises were experienced from their perspective, which, after all, is what is important in any educational process. I am also able thereby to take the focus away from my intentions, and make the learning and wisdom process of the students the center of attention. For dissemination purposes, I have anonymized the students by giving all a name beginning with an “E,” and by mixing the genders, meaning that some of the female students are given male names and vice versa.

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International Teacher Education for Primary School, a teacher education program offered by the University of Stenden in the Netherlands and University College of Southeast Norway collaboratively. 9 Norsk samfunnsvitenskapelig datatjeneste/Norwegian Centre for Research Data.

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Searching for Wisdom the Dialogos Way in Practice In the ITEPS-course the year before, I had started out with a dialogue based on a short animation movie drawing on one of Aesop’s fables, “True Friends” (see Helskog 2016). I facilitated the exercise in line with Matthew Lipman’s “Philosophy for Children” methodology”, 10 also drawing on inspiration from Oscar Brenifier’s approach.11 This had worked only fairly well, in the sense that students were not as inspired as I would like them to be after a first encounter with dialogical philosophizing. Thus, this year I decided to start out more openly, and base the dialogue on personal examples inspired by Socratic dialogue in the Nelson/Heckman tradition.12 I also decided I wanted to make the students agree upon a question in the session, instead of me deciding upon a question in advance, as I had done the year before. Thus, we started out quite openly, after having introduced the students to Adorno’s article “Education After Auschwitz,” from 1957, and Aloni’s article “Empowering Dialogues in Humanistic Education,” from 2013. This change of strategy corresponds to the cyclical procedure of action research. It involves intention, planning, action, and evaluation of action, before a new round in the action research process is carried out with the hope of bettering something, in this case improving the start of a course on philosophical dialogue, in order to make it slightly better than the year before. In the following, I will reflect upon four different sessions that together exemplify what a Dialogos dialogue process might look like. Moreover, these dialogue sessions illustrate the development of the students’ drive to search for wisdom in the course, as well as the three phases discussed above.

“A Great Introduction to Philosophy and How Dialogues Take Place” Because this was a teacher education course, and because most of the students wanted to become teachers, I figured that the question, “What characterizes a good teacher?” was relevant both to their situation and to the purpose of the course, and started out the dialogical part of the session by writing the question on the board. This was not meant as a philosophical question, but as a question that would enable students to think through and come up with a list of characteristics, based on their 10

See for instance Lipman (2003). See for instance Brenifier (n.d). 12 See for instance Nelson (1922) and Heckman (1981). 11

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justified or unjustified opinions. I listed all the suggestions on the board. Now the students were asked, individually, to decide which characteristic they thought was the most important one, and to support their choice with some reason. Gradually, after a process of philosophizing by suggesting characteristics, listening to and evaluating each other’s arguments, exploring further, changing and re-changing their minds, the students finally reached consensus upon one characteristic, namely respect. A good teacher respected his or her students, without exception. I found the choice of concept good for a reason which I did not tell the students: it was good because the concept was likely to “come to life” through the dialogue, and thus create an atmosphere of respect between participants in the group. This would, hopefully, inspire the students better than the dialogue on “True Friends” the year before. Having chosen a concept, I now facilitated a round of formulating a question. I introduced them to the distinction between philosophical questions, empirical questions, and psychological questions. Moreover, I pointed to the distinction between questions asking for content definition of a concept (“What is X?” In this case, “What is respect?”) and questions asking for a description of a way of acting or being (“What does it imply to X?” In this case “What does it imply to respect a student?”). The first kind of question is the traditional Socratic question, as we often encounter it in the dialogues of Plato, where Socrates ended up asking for the definition of an idea, while the second is a more Aristotelian question, asking for virtues involved in action or being. Students argued back and forth, and came to agree upon the formulation “What is respect?” They were figuring that they would anyhow have to answer this question in order to be able to answer the question “What does it imply to respect a student?” This is a very common belief among people who are unfamiliar with the Socratic approach: in order to answer a question, one must first define the main concepts involved. On the contrary, one of the main purposes of a Socratic dialogue is to develop a definition, meaning that reaching a definition would be something that might be the end-point of a dialogue, and not something we can start out with. I did not tell them this directly. Rather, I wanted them to discover it in the course of the dialogue, so for now, I let them maintain this belief. In line with the Socratic dialogue approach, the students were asked to find a personal example. The example could be of two sorts: a) one time in their life when they experienced someone respecting them, or b) one time in their life when they themselves respected others. In order to save some time, and in order to give the students a chance to have a more personal

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and authentic encounter with some of their fellow students, I divided the group in two, letting the students share their examples in groups of five, while asking them to decide upon one example that they found interesting to explore further. The other students were instructed to listen to the person telling their story without commenting. When everyone had shared their stories, they were asked to evaluate the stories, choosing the one by which they were the most touched. When the groups had chosen their example stories, they gathered again, and the chosen examples were shared with the full group, after which the students were asked to choose the example they thought would give them the best understanding of what “respect” might be. Eric’s example was chosen. I ensured the students that, even though we would not work explicitly with more than one example, we would work implicitly with all of them. Eric was now asked to write the main content on the board. The example was as follows: Eric’s parents had put a lot of effort and money into helping him find a study program that suited him. Without them knowing it, he had quit the program. He felt bad about it, and knew he had to tell them. He felt sure they would be really disappointed and angry with him, but when he told them, they respected his choice. Eric was relieved by their generosity.

I first encouraged the students to explore the example more thoroughly by asking Eric questions about details in the story, to better understand it and to try to see the incident from Eric’s perspective, in accordance with the principles of Socratic dialogue in the Nelson/Heckman tradition. How did he experience the situation? What happened, really? What did he feel before and after telling his parents? How did he perceive his parents? Afterwards, they were encouraged to look more critically at Eric’s assumptions, exploring them together with him in an open, acknowledging way, before looking at how this example was a particular incident of the general concept of respect. Together with the others, Eric discovered aspects of the story that he had not considered before, and his fellow students discovered dimensions that they initially had not seen. We then moved on to explore the concept of respect on a more abstract and general level. Towards the end of the dialogue, I sent the students back to their groups of five, encouraging them to try to answer the question, “What is respect?” in one sentence. The two sentences were then written on the board, analyzed, compared, and problematized. Finally, we discussed our dialogue from a meta-perspective by relating it to the theoretical perspectives of Adorno and Aloni introduced in the

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beginning of the session. Thus, from the initial theoretical lecture and the question, “What characterizes a good teacher?” we had moved from brainstorming through reasoned choice of concept, formulating a question, storytelling, analyzing, conceptualizing, problematizing, trying to answer the question in one sentence, and finally to problematizing the answer. Altogether, the session lasted for four hours. The session had been a process with some elements in common with Socratic dialogue in the Nelson/Heckman tradition and some elements in common with the practice of Brenifier. Whereas the first tradition emphasizes that one should stay close to the example in order to philosophize concretely, the latter emphasizes that philosophy is about abstract, critical thinking through conceptualization, abstraction, generalization, and problematizing. In this dialogue, we started by working on theoretical perspectives from texts, which adds a third cluster of elements, introducing also a theoretical context against which the philosophical dialogue could be mirrored and compared. Thus, a perspective from the outside was brought into the meta-reflection. The process required that everyone engage in an honest and open examination of both his or her own thoughts and the thoughts of the others. When there is such honesty and openness towards one’s own and other participants’ feelings and thinking about a shared topic, the strive for consensus might emerge; more easily if the dialogue is facilitated wisely. In a concrete dialogue, striving for consensus does not necessarily include consensus itself and, if it is reached, the answer should be problematized, as in this dialogue. However, even though consensus may not be reached, the process of striving for it can create mutual understanding and give direction to the dialogue, and thus create a sense of togetherness and collaboration in the group. Thus, the process includes wonder and the sense of gradually discovering and creating knowledge together, accompanied with doubt, embraced by ongoing communication and dialogue. In addition, theoretical perspectives were used partly to serve as a mirror, partly to serve as a point from which to criticize and problematize what we had done. Now, how did the students experience this first dialogue in the course? Reading their meta-reflection notes, all the students agreed that it had been a good dialogue. Some focused on the dialogue only, while others related the dialogue to issues in their lives outside of the dialogue context. This is Eric’s note: . . . I believe that the dialogue was organized really well. We used different forms of sharing and creating new ideas with the shared information.

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While Eric sticks to the context of this concrete dialogue, Emily’s note suggests that she is generalizing to philosophy and dialogues as such: . . . it was a great introduction to philosophy and how dialogues take place. It was interesting to see how our viewpoints had changed or evolved by the conclusion of our dialogue, and to learn from our peers’ ideas, beliefs and definitions.

Esther has the following comment, in which she also relates the content of the dialogue to her experience of respect evolving in the group, as I had anticipated: I felt comfortable in sharing my own opinions and ideas with the group. This was due to the teacher’s open attitude. It also helped me to get a better understanding of myself and the others as we spoke about our opinions in an unforced manner. I now realize how respect is always present in our everyday situations. We showed a lot of respect to each other during the discussion.

Erica takes a different perspective, relating the dialogue to her life situation in general. She also focuses on getting to know the others: I gained an understanding of my own family matters by having a family based story at the root of the dialogue about respect. Also, it helped to get to know the others in the sense that I could see who are talkers, who is to the point and who isn’t, who takes initiative etc. This is nice as this is the first class with this group. Also, people were quite personal in the way they related to each other, which helps to get to know each other.

All of the students emphasize the atmosphere of authentic communication in the dialogue. Eric’s note suggests that he thinks he has gained understanding through the dialogue, suggesting that the (emerging or already explicit) philosophical drive towards wisdom for him is doubt. Erica’s note suggests that for her, the urge to come to terms with family problems could be a driving force in her search for wisdom.

“I Had to Think in a Different Way” I had started out by introducing the students to a form of dialogue that is a characteristic of the Dialogos approach, namely working from concrete content (text, concept/question, and/or personal examples) towards abstract

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form (a general answer and/or filling the initial concept with content), then relating back to the initial content. I had also managed to bring forth a good foundation characterized by a friendly atmosphere – an important base for our philosophizing. Now I wanted to create a contrast by letting students experience a different way of philosophizing, inspired by the rather strict form of Brenifier. Some central concepts in his method are analysis, synthesis, argumentation, problematizing, and conceptualizing. These concepts are also central to philosophizing in the Lipman, Nelson, and Heckman traditions, but in Brenifier’s approach contextual matters and content are seen as uninteresting. Brenifier understands analyzing to be breaking down a term or proposition, to determine its content, whether it is originally explicit or implicit, in order to clarify its scope. Synthesis is to reduce a discourse or a proposition to more concise or common terms that make the content and the intention of what was said more explicit, or simply to summarize what one wants to say. Arguing implies proving or justifying a thesis with further proposals to support the initial assertion, while to criticize or problematize is “thinking of me from the other” by means of suspicion, negation, interrogation and comparison. Conceptualizing is unification or the resolution of the dilemma, implying to unify a plurality, identifying the keyword of a proposition or of a thesis. (Brenifier n.d., 28-31)

We began the session by watching a short video, which Brenifier has put on his website,13 showing a workshop with kids in primary school, before discussing this loosely: what is Oscar doing as a facilitator? What is he saying when facilitating? What is he saying about himself when he says what he says, and does what he does? What are the implications and consequences of the ideas he puts forward through his method? In the discussion, one of the students, Edward, repeatedly started using long sentences and telling personal examples that were not that relevant to today’s work, and I decided that now was the time to introduce the group to the ways of Brenifier, to the extent possible for a person with my background and personality. Therefore, based on the loose discussion, I gradually crystallized the content of our dialogue so far into a question: “Is confrontation good?” I then asked the students whether or not they agreed this question represented a synthesis of our discussion so far. They agreed that, yes, the question did represent a synthesis. “OK,” I said, “what I now want you to do, is to write down an answer to this question with a ‘yes’ or 13 Elementary School Workshop, accessed June 29, 2016 from http://www.pratiques-philosophiques.fr/videos/videos-enfants-ado/?lang=en

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a ‘no,’ providing an argument for your choice, ‘Yes, confrontation is good, because . . .’ Or ‘No, confrontation is not good, because . . .’” While the students read their answers and arguments out loud, they were simultaneously asked to pay attention to the arguments of the others, and write down the argument with which they disagreed the most. When facilitating this dialogue, I attempted to take a rather confrontational role: what is the argument of the other? Did you get it right, or did you not get it right? Does its author agree with your interpretation and understanding of his or her words? Is there a problem here? What should be clarified? How is the thought brought forward by X to be distinguished from the thought brought forward by Y? What are the implications and consequences of the ideas put forward? Some changed their minds during this sequence, while others elaborated and deepened their initial answers. Edward seemed rather shocked and confused about this turn. He obviously expected a new Socratic dialogue, but was confronted with a much harsher form of dialogue. This is his comment when asked to reflect upon the difference between the Brenifier-inspired dialogue on confrontation and the Socratic dialogue on respect, and to list three things that he had learned from the session. I have cited Edward`s meta reflection note without editing his wording,14 because I think his formulations reveal his confusion and emerging self-insight: Next to the dialogue being shorter due to time limits, we didn’t get to go as much in depth (but again, this has to do with the time limit. I contributed to that, I must say, as I started sharing my own experience and view------------------I believe this has to do with the fact I felt---------------again. I am going off track, talking about myself when I have to focus on the differences. It is something I am working on! So, what I believe the dialogue today could have turned into a SD [i.e., Socratic Dialogue, -GHH], were we able to have more time and to record important elements of the dialogue on the board. Guro was still the facilitator of this session. I feel I need some more time to process today’s session to be able to see the differences more clearly (due to how I made myself feel during the session – hard on myself) ĺ clear, short description of what you need/want to say: Clarify. 3 things I’ve learned 14

The ITEPS-course is in English, so the students wrote their meta-reflection notes in English as well.

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1. Became more aware of own behavior and thinking patterns, goals and things to work on 2. Clarifying words to say something as concrete as possible 3. Gained more knowledge on different processes of philosophical dialogue and approaches on how to work with philosophy in the classroom.

Edward’s answer indicates confusion. It seems like he sees me as a facilitator in a different light, pointing to the fact that I was “still the facilitator.” Could it mean that he did not quite recognize my ways, having seen me facilitate a Socratic dialogue more in the Nelson/Heckman tradition as well? He was expecting that if we had had enough time, the dialogue would have developed into a Socratic dialogue, in which personal stories and examples would have a place. He was right: I could have facilitated the dialogue in such a direction, but this was not my intention, and maybe I was unclear about this. My intention was to let the students, to the extent possible, experience the methods of Brenifier. Edward’s note shows that this had, to some degree, been successful: It does indicate that there is quite a difference between a Socratic dialogue inspired by the Nelson/Heckman tradition, and an exercise inspired by the practice of Brenifier. How about the experience of other students? Esther seemed less confused, stating that in her opinion, the Brenifierinspired dialogue was clearer when it came to the topic discussed. She summarizes in this way: Today, we have participated in a philosophical dialogue that differs from Socratic dialogue. We followed more the form of Brenifier. We discussed whether confrontation was good. Differences are that in this form of dialogue we had to be very clear in our answers – “yes or no, because . . .” Also, we weren’t allowed to give detailed descriptions or explanations. There was more focus on what others said, in my opinion. We were asked if we understood and could sum up what the others had said. We also had to do this in the Socratic dialogue on Thursday, but I felt that now we focused more on the topic, and everything was clearer.

Emily focused on comparing the atmosphere of the Socratic dialogue with that of the Brenifier-inspired dialogue. She was not as comfortable with what she saw as losing some of her freedom in the latter dialogue, but she recognized that this fact forced her to think in a different way than usual: The atmosphere of today’s conversation felt different. It was as if we all felt the need to defend our own statements rather than being open-minded and really listening to our peers. This conversation seemed a bit more like a discussion rather than a dialogue, and the ending of this dialogue didn’t

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“. . . People Can Be Extremely Open-Minded – But Only to a Certain Extent” The next sessions consisted in reading, presenting and contemplating some of Plato’s dialogues; in exercises from Dialogos on wisdom perspectives in Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity; in comparing Kant’s ethics of duty to Nietzsche’s ethics of desire; as well as in dialogues based on questions formulated by students themselves. One of these questions was, “Do all things in the universe have a place in a plan?” I will not go deeply into this dialogue, but only cite some of the students’ reflections after the session, because they are quite revealing of how the thinking of the students developed during the few weeks we had together. The students were asked why they had chosen this question, and how they had experienced the dialogue. Edward states: The reason why I chose the statement “Do all things in the universe have a place in a plan” is because I wanted to know more about the views of my classmates, as I believed that this topic specifically could really bring that to light, and it did. I think it helped us get to know each other. Which I really liked.

Edward was now more interested in the (world)views of his fellow students in order to get to know them better, whereas in the Brenifieroriented dialogue he had been confused because he was not allowed to speak his mind freely. It seems that he had moved from ego-centeredness towards other-centeredness. Emily, on the other hand, reflected upon the fact that none of the students seemed to have changed their views during the dialogue, concluding that it is possible to be open-minded, but only to a certain extent. There are issues on which we will not easily change our minds. At the same time, she expressed how she was moved by the dialogues: What I noticed primarily during the dialogue was that this topic (place and plan) is very personal, even touchy. Whereas in the previous dialogues we were all very open to changing our own views, during this dialogue, everyone ended up not having changed their argument or views. I think this means that people can be extremely open-minded – but only to a certain extent.

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What I noticed about myself is that I am a lot more spiritual and feel more related to religion than I had first thought. The articles and dialogues might have triggered something in me, which made me realize this.

Emily is here comparing the attitudes of her fellow students in this dialogue to their attitudes in former dialogues, noticing that there are certain convictions that are not easily changed. Moreover, she is indicating that even though the question and methods this time were rather abstract (students did not give personal examples to this question: it was explored abstractly), the dialogue had become very personal, because students came forward with their views and arguments, which were explored. She also indicates that she has discovered new things about herself, noticing that she is more spiritual than she had been aware of. Eric’s note expresses a similar movement as that of Emily’s, though in a more secular direction. While he had been in doubt before the dialogue, he established a better-grounded point of view during the dialogue. He claims: I have always been in doubt about predestination, but during the discussion, I noticed that first of all I lean more towards that there is no plan. I found this because I disagreed more with the arguments that were for a plan than I did with the ones that said there is no plan. So seeing what I disagreed more with, I found what my point of view really was. Furthermore, putting the question in perspective, I noticed the irrelevance of some of the possible answers. How did I gain knowledge about others? Because the arguments people brought forward in this discussion on a topic with no possible concluding answers, 15 I really learned a lot about peoples’ points of view in life.

The quotes above indicate that these students are now searching for wisdom in slightly different directions: Edward seems to be searching for wisdom through understanding the perspectives of the others. Emily seems to be examining herself and the perspectives of the others from the perspective of change or lack thereof, also reflecting upon herself as a possible spiritual being. Eric uses the arguments for and against a plan to become clearer about his own position, which is a rather rational way to come to terms with life issues. It seems that they all had developed more self-insight through ongoing self-reflection during the dialogue course, 15

As I understand the student, he is referring to the question, “Do all things in the universe have a place in a plan?” which is not easily answered in a conclusive way. We can only find arguments more or less reasonable, more or less probable, that rely on more or less justified beliefs.

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making them more able to learn from experience. Moreover, it seems that their ability to recognize and tolerate differences among each other had increased.

“It Made Me Realize that From the Core, Me, and the Universe, Are So Pure” One of the late dialogues in the course, and the last type of dialogue I will explore here, was a philosophical contemplation inspired by the writings and the companionships of Ran Lahav,16 in which concepts such as “sense of the profound,” “cultivating our inner depth,” “self-transformation,” and “beauty” are central. We contemplate because we treasure profound ideas and profound understandings in togetherness. We cherish the profound, just as in music, we cherish the beautiful, and in cooking, we cherish the tasty. Profoundness is, so to speak, the “beauty” or “tastefulness” of philosophical contemplation. (Lahav 2016, 17)

In this mode of spiritual-contemplative philosophizing, personal problem solving, analysis of personal examples and critical problematizing are uninteresting. Rather, it encourages companions to leave everyday-life behind, and transcend into a spiritual realm not bound to any specific tradition, religious, philosophical, or other. Anyhow, Lahav speaks of philosophical contemplation as a form of prayer, claiming that one prays not in order to improve one’s future abilities, but because the prayer itself is meaningful. It is a way of turning oneself towards ultimate reality, towards the depth of existence, towards the inner dimension. In the long run, Lahav claims, it can awaken our inner depth and cultivate it (Lahav 2016, 18-19). There are three main principles that form a philosophical companionship as described by Lahav. First, a philosophical companionship is a philosophical group in which participants attempt to think and interact from their inner being, from their inner depth, as opposed to their opinions, detached thinking, emotional reactions, etc. Second, the companions are in togetherness with each other, in other words they resonate with each other, like musicians singing together, as opposed to thinking or speaking about each other’s ideas. Third, companions are also in togetherness with a shared philosophical text, in other words they resonate with it, instead of thinking and speaking about it. 16

See Lahav’s book on philosophical companionships (2016).

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The method formulated by Lahav is, to some extent, parallel to the main method by which the Dialogos books were created, in which I went through a process of transcendence and deep personal transformation.17 By engaging personally with texts from philosophical and spiritual traditions and beyond, I was drawing out the essences from different voices, processing them and using the processed material when composing the symphony of ideas and exercises created for Dialogos. This is also the main method by which Dialogos might offer a way to search for wisdom for participants in philosophical dialogues. Anyhow, before the ITEPS module on philosophical dialogue, I had never gone as far as Lahav had to spiritual contemplation when working with groups, even though texts and exercises in Dialogos provide the opportunity to do so. Thus, I had seldom left the humanistic pedagogical and the ethical-philosophical phases in the way I have facilitated dialogues and set up dialogue series, even though some of the students had taken the leap into the existential-spiritual phase through what we had done. Having been part of a philosophical companionship group led by Ran Lahav18 for half a year, I now decided to try out an exercise inspired by his latest approach, thus embarking on the spiritual-contemplative mode of philosophizing as well. Because the module on philosophical dialogue was part of a course on intercultural understanding and religion, and because I wanted to vary the approaches and give students ideas about different ways of using materials, I decided to use a spiritual text for this session. The choice fell on a short video in which Tao Te Ching19 is introduced and parts of it read. While seeing the video, the students were instructed to write down main concepts, after which I asked students to suggest a main concept that could capture some of the essence of the movie. The students’ concepts were written on the board, followed by a process of collaboratively deciding on one concept. The concept chosen was, “Returning to the source.” The students were now asked to close their eyes. I led them in a meditation in which they were asked to envision walking towards the source. When “reaching” the source, I asked them to look around. What did they see? What did it feel like to be here at the source? The meditation lasted for 17

See Helskog (2015). Philosophical practitioners Ran Lahav from the U.S., Carmen Zavala from Peru, Eckhart Ruschman from Austria, Silvia Peronaci from Italy, Christina Hirschlein from Germany/Austria, Sergey Borisov from Russia, Tiago Pita from Portugal/Spain, and I from Norway, met online for one hour of philosophical companionships every Monday evening from early February to early July 2016. 19 I used a YouTube video in which Jacob Needleman is reading Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. 18

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approximately five minutes, before “coming back” and “out” of the meditative state. When coming out of the meditation, students were asked to take a couple of minutes to write down key words from their visions, before sharing them with the others in the group if they wanted to. It is important that no one feels forced to share such personal material. This should be done voluntarily. Following this round, the students were asked to synthesize their ideas and express their visions in one to three sentences. As they read their sentences, I wrote them down in a document on my computer, which was connected to a projector, showing the sentences on the screen. Gradually, a poem took form in front of the students, and they were asked to read the poem aloud together, as a choir of voices. Finally, the poem was slightly reorganized by the students in order to make it flow as well as possible. Then the “student choir” read it, one last time, after which they all expressed astonishment: Had they really created this piece of work together? Here is their poem: Returning to the source Go back to the beginning Now step out and see Hear what nature sounds like Watch how nature breathes In you I rest I place my life within your hands alone Be still my soul The “you” that you think might be inside may constantly live in everything else Carried away deep inside and at the same time far away Feeling calm I know you will be there When darkness and the unknown are embraced in harmony I shall coexist There is security and brightness that embraces and breathes through me

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The answer of everything is in the center of us, about what we want to be Now I am still, for I stopped looking for that which I already had The answer of everything is deep in myself Whole I am part Part I am whole

Several of the students made comments about feeling drained afterwards. One wrote in her notebook that “it was a good experience to also realize how big the toll on our body is when you use your brain in these kinds of sessions. I felt mentally drained and slept for two hours when I got home.” Emily tells how she got emotional: Today’s dialogue was specifically exhausting for me. The journey to the core made me emotional as it made me realize that from the core, me, and the universe, are so pure, but through hardship and unfortunate events, this purity is taken away bit by bit. It made me aware of all my hardships. This melancholic feeling didn’t last for long, though, as we moved on to making a poem together. Although the content was quite heavy, the process of creating the poem was a lot of fun and everyone seemed enthusiastic about it. The atmosphere was very comfortable and although the session was mentally very tiring, I felt very content. The poem was very satisfying, because it was an end product of what we had had conversations about. This really gave me the feeling of a conclusion for the dialogue, because we did not agree on one specific experience . . . but we created a poem together from our separate parts.

What Emily writes here shows how the bodily sensations following such an exercise is completely different from the bodily sensations following an abstract-analytical mode of philosophizing resembling for instance the practice of Brenifier or Lipman. It is also different from Socratic dialogue in the Nelson-Heckman tradition, although it has similarities with the sensations that might follow philosophizing in line with the “erotic” Socratic approach of Finn Thorbjørn Hansen. He talks about communities of wonder and presence, and about moments in which the human being is brought to silence, experiencing the world and other human beings in a different light. In these moments of silence and intense concentration, the human being experiences and learns in a different way than usual, leading to a fundamental change of the horizon he or she thinks and lives within,

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and further to a deeper understanding. Such moments emerge through a special form of silence and slowness, reticence and listening, with which modern people are unfamiliar: Instead, we reflect, construct, problematize and produce, hoping that we will be better able to handle, control and master our lives and surroundings. (Hansen 2008, 15-16)

This also indicates that different forms of philosophizing do different things to us, and educate us in different ways, cultivating different dimensions of us. In education, these different modes might complement and supplement each other instead of compete with each other. The fact that students felt mentally drained and exhausted afterwards is a sign that the ethical toll on the teacher and facilitator is great. It is problematic to cause students to be this exhausted after a session, and it is important that the teacher is sensitive, attentive, and able to follow up on his or her students after such a session. When inviting students to take part in exercises like this, students should have the option not to participate or share their written creations. In this course, it seemed that an exercise like this was enriching for the students. Thus, it contributed in a good way to the totality of the course, letting the students take the step all the way into the existential-spiritual phase not only on the content level, as I had usually done, but also through the form of the dialogue.

Dialogos as an Inner Journey out of Plato’s Cave Towards the end of the course, I explicitly presented the Dialogos approach as a spiritual curriculum unbound to any particular tradition. The students had now worked with a number of dialogues by Plato, which included studying his allegory of the cave. I now explained how the Dialogos approach could be interpreted as an attempt to scaffold an inner journey out of Plato’s cave. I explained to the students how I had tried to build up the ITEPS course in line with the Dialogos approach. My intention had been to move from the humanistic-pedagogical phase in which I had focused on teaching them dialogical and philosophical skills and attitudes, through the ethical-philosophical phase in which content matter came more to the forefront, to the existential-spiritual phase in which they had been introduced to more contemplative modes of philosophizing. For the last session of the module I had invited the students to a whole day of dialogical philosophizing at my farmhouse in rural Norway. After the final dialogue and before leaving my house that day, the students were

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asked to fill out a questionnaire in which they were asked to describe what they had learned by participating in the module. Moreover, students were asked to conceptualize their development in a very condensed way. This revealed that all students had gone through a profound personal transformation during the course, although different in breadth and depth for different students. This is how the students interpreted their development during the course: Table 1. Main characteristic/concept that describes your development From – – – – – – – – – – – towards – – – – – – – – – – – Table 1. Students’ development, according to them:

Student

From

To

Eric

Interested

Knowledgeable

Elinor

Accepting other views

Understanding other views

Eckhart

Nothing on the ground

Flower that almost bloomed

Evan

The accordance

The analysis

Eva

Closed

Evelina Emily

Exhausted, insecure Closed opinions and shallow thinking

Open Energized, embraced, and curious

Erica

Debating communicator

Esther

Open

Edward

Insecure, troubled

Open-mindedness Dialogical communicator and listener Accepting Trust in myself, relaxed – troubles dissolved

In their answers, students use different concepts to describe the main outcome of their development, indicating different emphases or orientations. Most answers can be categorized as personal and relational wisdom. By this, I mean that students indicate that they had developed attitudes and insights that characterize a person who has developed selfinsight and knowledge of life. These include self-reflection, social

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cognition, empathy, altruism, and a sense of value relativism. They also indicate that they have become more capable to tolerate ambivalence and differences amongst each other, and that they have become more otheroriented. The students are conceptualizing their level of development at the end of the course slightly differently, expressing slightly different foci and/or levels of development. For instance, Eckhart, who comes from a non-European country, expresses that philosophical dialogue was a “new and hard thing for me because I haven’t talked about philosophy or taken philosophical lessons in my school life.” During the course, he seemed to have become more flexible and reflective in his way of thinking and being: “After 3 months now, I think I’ve become a person who tries to look into myself and get a new perspective of myself and [the] world.” A key phrase here could be view from different perspectives, while the key word in Emily’s account could be general open-mindedness: Looking back on the first session compared to my view on philosophy after the course, I will characterize my development as a growth in openmindedness. This refers to both my views on topics, as well as my way of thinking.

Elinor also seems to have become more open-minded. She expresses that she is “very happy that I had the time to listen to so many other views and thoughts that are in contrast with mine and took the time to ask for clarification and to understand where people are coming from and why they think like they do.” Key words here are listening, otherness, contrast, clarification, and understanding the other. Evelina goes more in the direction of self-observation, self-expression, and self-transcendence, writing in her questionnaire that I learned to look carefully at my own reactions, e.g. feeling tired after class; feeling energized by a topic or an idea. I learned to structure my own thoughts better, and how to express them to the others. Some of the methods made me feel comfortable and lead me out of my box.

Esther, on the other side, emphasizes the more healing aspects of participating in the course on philosophical dialogue. She emphasizes that during the course, “we shared a lot of personal ideas, feelings and situations,” which has helped her to become more accepting of who she is. She writes that she is now at peace with her past, and curious to find out what the future holds in store. In addition, she claims that participating in the dialogues made her look critically at her own behavior and thinking.

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Edward had a similar experience of participating in the course, claiming that during the module on philosophical dialogue, he has grown a lot as a person, and that there were things that I have been working on for years and that have now been solved without deliberately working on them.

Moreover, he claims that he has gained a lot of insight that he knows will benefit him for the rest of his life and is very applicable to his future teaching career. When Evelina claims that she was exhausted and insecure before the course, while she feels energized, embraced and curious now, this indicate a similar experience of growth in the direction of inner peace. Some of these students thus seem to have developed attitudes that stretch beyond the humanistic-pedagogical into the ethical-philosophical phase (e.g., Esther, who learned to accept herself, and Edward, who felt that his personal problems had been solved). Moreover, all of the students had profound experiences during the dialogue module that touched also the existential-spiritual dimension. For instance, when Erica claims that she has “seen what a great amount of respect that can be built among a group of people who barely knew one another to begin with,” she points to the dialogical culture that developed in the group during the course. At times, the atmosphere in the group was close to what Hansen describes when he talks about moments of silence, openness, and awareness. In these moments, the group was brought to silence and intense concentration, in which they seemed to mutually experience the world and their fellow group members in a different light, leading towards a fundamental change of the horizons they thought and lived within, leading them to deeper understanding and towards wisdom. Maybe this is what Erica refers to when she says she has developed from a “debating communicator” towards a “dialogical communicator and listener,” and that she has “learned the distinct difference between a debate and a dialogue, and how in a dialogue we have to let go of our urge to speak and instead listen.” While most of the students seem to emphasize characteristics that correspond to what I have categorized as personal and relational wisdom, two of the students indicate that the category “theoretical wisdom” is relevant to them. These two students use words indicating that they view their transformation as a rather rational form of transformation, moving from “interested” to “knowledgeable,” and from “the accordance”20 to “the 20 This is the word used by the student, who is not a native speaker of English. I interpret him this way: Before the course, he was immersed in reality. There was

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analysis.” For instance, Eric is not so concerned about his personal development. Rather, he is concerned with the more objective aspects of what he has learned, focusing in his written reflections on “the practical aspects; the benefits of philosophy on education, and the raw effect it can have on people.” Evan focuses on a similar outcome in the questionnaire, answering that he has learned “how to try to answer a question, considering the arguments of the others and trying to create a conclusion.” This has affected his way of being in the world: “Now I consider that my analysis of reality has improved. I am starting to see the things in a different way.” It seems like he has been going through a process of individuation, in which he is no longer merged into reality, but has become able to take a more distanced perspective, making it possible for him to analyze what he sees around him. By theoretical wisdom, I mean a move from opinionated views towards more well-defined and grounded views based on examination of previous knowledge and perspectives. These students seem to have developed attitudes focused on the humanisticpedagogical and ethical-philosophical phases of the Dialogos approach The third category, practical wisdom, is not directly relevant to this material, because practical wisdom – phronesis – is connected to action and practice. However, when students express that the course is likely to influence, for instance, their future careers as teachers, indicating that they believe to have gained skills, attitudes, and knowledge that are relevant for the practice of teaching, it is indirectly relevant. Practical wisdom could here be understood as personal, relational, and theoretical wisdom coming to life in action and practice. For instance, Evan writes that his perceptions of things have changed. Therefore, he believes that his analysis has also changed. In this way, he says, the direction of his future practice may change. Here, Evan shows how he has become open to new experiences and to the possibility of change. He does not predict anything, but he holds it open. His increased level of personal and relational wisdom has also changed his level of theoretical wisdom and vice versa, which together are believed to influence his level of practical wisdom as well. The extent to which this is actually so will only be brought to test and revealed in future, concrete situations. Also Eva’s and Erica’s accounts point to future practice. Eva writes, “I have been given a great example on which I will base my own lessons no separation between him and his context. There was unity between idea and reality in his mind. Through the course, he had become more separate from his surroundings. The distance that he had acquired had enabled him to become more analytical. The split between his ideas and the reality made it possible for him to analyze reality in a way that had been impossible for him before.

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once I start my career. I know I will be standing on the shoulders of giants. It has increased my understanding as well as my tolerance toward multiple perspectives.” Erica seems to be aware of her ethical responsibility, claiming that she takes with her from the course that “any philosophical approach implemented in class will be influenced by the background of the students,” making it important that she as a teacher knows them before working on particular topics with them. Erica is here showing that she is able to reflect upon ethical issues involved in philosophizing with students. All the students emphasize the dialogical atmosphere that had developed in the group already in the first dialogue. Some had attended the same classes for three years, but still did not know each other, they claimed. Some had mutual prejudices towards each other. After only a few dialogues, they had become close companions, even though they did not necessarily share the same worldviews or agree on important things in life. Still, they had gained a deep respect for each other, making it possible for them to engage in genuine dialogue and open communication in a way that let them keep and develop their individuality while being enriched and challenged by the others.

Concluding Remarks In this essay, I have explored how dialogical philosophizing in line with the Dialogos approach to practical philosophy impacts students over time. First, I briefly presented and discussed the Dialogos approach and its ideal of wisdom as an emerging development in three phases: the humanisticpedagogical phase, the ethical-philosophical phase, and the existentialspiritual phase. The phases were described as involving three different modes of philosophizing, here labelled the “abstract-analytical mode,” the “phenomenological-hermeneutical mode,” and the “spiritual-contemplative mode.” Second, I shed light on student experiences in a module on philosophical dialogue within an international teacher education course on intercultural understanding and religion at University College South East Norway. The module was set up in line with the Dialogos approach. The main question posed was the following: To what extent can the Dialogos approach to practical philosophy encourage students to search for wisdom? How might philosophizing in line with the Dialogos approach make students wiser? In the processes involved in philosophizing through the three phases of a Dialogos dialogue series, students were encouraged to search for wisdom and thus transcend their existing horizons of understanding in different

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directions: Outwards, by turning towards others, towards different forms of content material and towards the world. Inwards, by examining their own perspectives and worldviews, involving inclinations, experiences, feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Downwards, by examining their place in global history and in our contemporary cultural situation. Upwards, by examining ideas and ideals that have the potential of uplifting the soul through transcending their existing horizons of understanding and being in the world. The module lasted only about ten sessions of about 4-6 hours each, extended over a period of three months. It was thus not possible to work deeply and thoroughly in each phase and in each direction. In any case, the data shows how students in this short period transcended their previous ways of being in the world. Thus, students did not only learn how to search for wisdom. In the process, they also developed their wisdom, both theoretical, personal, and relational wisdom, which is likely to influence also their future practical wisdom. Thus, it seems justifiable to claim that students became a little bit wiser during the course. Nevertheless, we cannot make any conclusive inferences about the intensity of the students’ search of wisdom, or of the level or depth of wisdom reached. What we can say is that profound personal change had come about. There are also reasons to claim that the change had been for the better, based on the meta-reflection notes of the students, and on what they said directly during the module. A comment from one of the students might illustrate. When leaving my farmhouse in rural Norway after our last day of dialogue in the course, the student, who was from a non-Western country known for its deductive, authoritarian forms of teaching and the intense pressure it puts on students, hugged me several times, thanked me, and exclaimed, “You changed my life!”

References Brenifier, Oscar. n.d. “The Practice of Philosophy with Children.” Alcofribas Nasier. At http://www.pratiques-philosophiques.fr/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/The-practice-of-philosophy-with-childrenORIGINAL-1.pdf Accessed March 28, 2016. Hansen, Finn Thorbjørn. 2002. Det filosofiske liv: et dannelsesideal for eksistenspædagogikken. [The Philosophical Life: An Educational Ideal for the Pedagogy of Existence]. København: Gyldendal. —. 2008. At stå i det åbne. Dannelse gennem filosofisk undren og nærvær. København: Hans Reitzels forlag.

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Heckman, Gustav. 1981. “Six Pedagogical Measures and Socratic Facilitation.” Reprinted in Enquiring Minds – Socratic Dialogue in Education, edited by Rene Saran and Barbara Neisser. Chester: Trentham Books, 2004. Helskog, Guro Hansen. 2006a. Dialogos: filosofi for ungdomstrinnet: elevbok 8. trinn. [Dialogos: Philosophy for Secondary School. Students’ Book, 8th Grade]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. —. 2006b. Dialogos: filosofi for ungdomstrinnet: lærerveiledning 8. trinn. [Dialogos: Philosophy for Secondary School, Guide for Teachers, 8th Grade]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. —. 2014a. “Moving Out of Conflict into Reconciliation – Bildung Through Philosophical Dialogue in Intercultural and Interreligious Education.” Educational Action Research 22 (3): 40-362. —. 2014b. “The Healing Power of Dialogos Dialogues: Transformative Learning Through Dialogical Philosophizing.” Open Journal of Social Sciences 2 (11): 79-83. —. 2015a. “The Gandhi Project: Dialogos Philosophical Dialogues and The Ethics and Politics of Intercultural and Interreligious Friendship.” Educational Action Research 23 (2): 225-42. —. 2015b. “Re-Imagining Bildung zur Humanität: How I Developed the Dialogos Approach to Practical Philosophy Through Action Inquiry Research.” Educational Action Research 23 (3): 416-35. —. Forthcoming. “Envisioning the Dialogos Way Towards Wisdom.” In Understanding Others and Oneself: Essays on Philosophical Practice from the 14th International Conference on Philosophical Practice, Bern, Switzerland, 2016, edited by Detlef Staude and Echard Ruschman. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Helskog, Guro Hansen, and Andreas Ribe. 2007a. Dialogos: filosofi for ungdomstrinnet: elevbok 9. trinn. [Dialogos: Philosophy for Secondary School. Student’s Book, 9th Grade]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. —. 2007b. Dialogos: filosofi for ungdomstrinnet: lærerveiledning 9. trinn. [Dialogos: Philosophy for Secondary School, Guide for Teachers, 9th Grade]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. —. 2008. Dialogos: praktisk filosofi i skolen: elevbok. [Dialogos: practical philosophy in school]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. —. 2009. Dialogos: veiledning for lærere og samtaleledere. [Dialogos: Guide for Teachers and Dialogue Leaders]. Oslo: Fag og kultur. Helskog, Guro Hansen, and Christian Stokke. 2014. “Enhancing Relational Spirituality: Dialogos Dialogues in Intercultural and Interfaith Education.” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 2: 202-20.

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Jeste, Dilip V., Monika Ardelt, Dan Blazer, Helena Kraemer, George Vaillant, and Thomas Meeks. 2010. “Expert Consensus on Characteristics of Wisdom: A Delphi Method Study.” The Gerontologist. DOI: 10.1093/geront/gnq022 Lahav, Ran. 2016. Handbook of Philosophical-Contemplative Companionships: Principles, Procedures, Exercises. Foreword by Silvia Peronaci. Chieti: Edizioni Solfanelli. Laozi. Tao Te Ching. Hunab Ku Productions. Introduction to the Tao Te Ching by Jacob Needleman. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIIF60Rr720 Accessed July 16, 2016. Lipman, Matthew. 2003. Thinking in Education. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, Leonard. 1922. “The Socratic Method.” Reprinted in Enquiring Minds – Socratic Dialogue in Education, edited by Rene Saran and Barbara Neisser. Chester: Trentham Books, 2004. Stokke, Christian, and Guro Hansen Helskog. 2014. “Promoting Dialogical Democracy: Dialogos Dialogues in Intercultural and Interfaith Education.” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 24 (2): 17796.

CONTRIBUTORS

The contributors to this anthology are listed in alphabetical order: Lydia Amir is a French-Israeli associate professor of philosophy, currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Tufts University, USA, and Adjunct Researcher at the Institute of Advanced Humanistic Studies, Hubei University, in Wuhan, China. A regular academic, Amir is also a philosophical practitioner since 1992, certified (honorary) by the American Philosophical Practitioners Association and now President of the Israeli Association for the Practice of Philosophy. She has been Head of Humanistic Studies for many years at the College of Management in Israel, and resumes a tenured position from October 2017 at Beit Berl College. She has been regularly invited abroad for teaching as well as for lectures, workshops, and conferences. Apart from many articles and essays on ethics and the practice of philosophy in everyday life, she is the author of Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014; paperback, 2015) and Rethinking Philosophers’ Responsibility (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), and co-editor (with Aleksandar Fatiü) of Practicing Philosophy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). She is finalizing under contract various monographs: Taking Philosophy Seriously (for Cambridge Scholars Publishing), Laughter in the Good Life: Montaigne, Nietzsche, Santayana (for State University of New York Press), Redemptive Philosophies: Spinoza versus Nietzsche (for de Gruyter), and Philosophy, Humor, and the Human Condition: Taking Ridicule Seriously (for Palgrave-Macmillan). She is the editor of The Israeli Journal of Humor Research: An International Journal, and associate and board editor of various international journals in philosophical practice and humor research. She is the founding-president of the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor, as well as International Director for the International Society of Value Inquiry, and Audit member for Transparency International – Israel. She airs a weekly radio program on philosophy in everyday life, and can be reached at [email protected]

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Aleksandar Fatiü is a Research Professor at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. His main interests lie in the theory of values and applied ethics. He has worked extensively in the applications of value theory and ethics to various professional fields, including those of the public administration and the security and intelligence professions. He is the author of several books on the ethics of public policy, including Punishment and Restorative Crime-Handling: A Social Theory of Trust (Ashgate, 1995), Crime and Social Control in “Central”-Eastern Europe: A Guide to Theory and Practice (Ashgate, 1997), Reconciliation via the War Crimes Tribunal? (Ashgate, 2000), Freedom and Heteronomy: An Essay on the Liberal Society (Belgrade: Institute of International Politics and Economics, 2009), The ad hoc International War Crimes Tribunals: An Assessment (with Klaus Bachmann; Routledge, 2015), and Virtue as Identity: Emotions and the Moral Personality (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). He has edited (with Lydia Amir) the anthology Practicing Philosophy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). He is a Fellow and Certied Client Counselor with the American Association of Philosophical Practitioners and is a member of numerous professional associations. He can be reached at Aleksandar.Fatiü @gmail.com Vaughana Feary received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Arizona. She taught for many years at Southern University in New Orleans and then at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey. She is Program Director, and one of the founders, of Excalibur: A Center for Applied Ethics. She is a former President of the American Society for Philosophy Counseling and Psychotherapy and is Vice President and a founding Board member of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA). She is the author of numerous articles, including “Philosophical Practice from Feminist Perspectives” (in Practicing Philosophy, edited by Aleksandar Fatiü and Lydia Amir, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), and she does consulting work for corporations, hospitals, museums, and correctional facilities. Her current research interests are in Social Political and Legal Philosophy and their application to philosophical practice. She can be reached at VFeary@aol. com Guro Hansen Helskog is an associate professor in pedagogy at the Institute of Pedagogy, Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences, University College South-East Norway. She is the main author of Dialogos – an approach to the practice of philosophy in education (Fag og

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kultur, 2006; 2007; Fagbokforlaget, 2008; 2009) and Fortsatt Foreldre (Samlivssenteret, 2007; 2008), a book and pedagogical material for professionals and divorced parents. Helskog has worked systematically with philosophical dialogue in intercultural and interreligious education, in conflict reconciliation, and in teacher education. She has published several research papers about this work (2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015). She can be reached at [email protected] Jeanette Bresson Ladegaard Knox has a PhD in philosophy, with additional degrees in religious studies and theatre. She earned a diploma in Philosophical Practice and is a certified Socratic Facilitator from Oslo University and the Norwegian Society for Philosophical Practice. She taught for many years at DIS (also known as the American University in Denmark), at different Danish university colleges, and at St. Olaf College in the U.S. She is President of the Danish Society for Philosophical Practice, Vice-President of the Danish Society of Clinical Ethics, and member of the Clinical Ethics Committee for Pediatrics at the University Hospital in Copenhagen. Jeanette has authored numerous articles and chapters in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies and has published several books and translations, including Philosophical Practice: 5 Questions (Automatic Press, 2013), which she co-edited with Jan Kyrre Olsen Friis. She also writes fiction. Currently, she is an associate professor at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include medical and narrative ethics and the implementation of philosophically-based dialogical practices within health care, particularly within rehabilitation and palliation. For more information please contact [email protected] Roxana Kreimer studied philosophy at Buenos Aires University, earned a PhD in Social Sciences, and has been working in philosophical practice since 2002, when she published the first book on the subject originally written in Spanish, Artes del buen vivir (Paidós, 2005; Anarres, 2002; ediciones IDEA, 2005). She has published six more books: Historia del mérito (Anarres, 2000), Falacias del amor ¿Por qué Occidente anudó amor y sufrimiento? (Paidós, 2005; Anarres, 2003), La tiranía del automóvil: Los costos humanos del progreso tecnológico (Anarres, 2006), El sentido de la vida (Longseller, 2008), Desigualdad y violencia social: Análisis y propuestas según la evidencia científica (Anarres, 2010), and, most recently, La vuelta al mundo con filosofía. Reflexiones filosóficas en base a la evidencia científica (Ediciones B, 2016). She has hosted a Philosophical Café in Buenos Aires for the past 14 years, introduced

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philosophical practice to an Argentine university, and has been writing regularly in the media and in peer-reviewed journals. She can be reached at [email protected] Ran Lahav received his PhD in philosophy and MA in psychology in 1989, both from the University of Michigan. While teaching philosophy of psychology at Southern Methodist University, he began practicing philosophical counseling in 1992, and then started teaching the first university course in the world on philosophical counseling at Haifa University in Israel. He was instrumental in helping to expand the fledgling field, and in 1994 initiated the First International Conference of Philosophical Practice and co-organized it with Lou Marinoff. Over the past 20 years he has published articles and books on philosophical practice and has given numerous lectures and workshops around the world. In 2014 he launched, together with Carmen Zavala from Peru, Agora (https:// philopractice.org), a website for the international community of philosophical practitioners. He currently lives in rural Vermont, from which he conducts international online activities in philosophical practice. Among Ran Lahav’s books are Essays on Philosophical Counseling (an anthology compiled together with Maria Tillmanns, University Press of America, 1995), Comprendere la vita (Apogeo, 2004), Oltre la filosofia (Apogeo, 2009), as well as two novels and two Hebrew books on spirituality. His last two books, Stepping out of Plato’s Cave (Loyev Books, 2016) and Handbook of Philosophical Companionships (Loyev Books, 2016), bring together his work-experience into a unified conception of philosophical practice. He can be reached at [email protected] Giancarlo Marinelli is an Italian philosophical counselor. He is the founding president of Sucf and co-president of SICoF Scientific Committee. He collaborates with University Roma Tre as a professor and coordinator of the Master of Philosophical Practice. He runs Socratic Polyphony workshops and teaches the history of philosophy at Liceo Classico “G. C. Tacito” in Terni, where he also manages the School Counseling Service. He participated in several international conferences on philosophical practice and was in the Scientific Committee of the 8th International Conference. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Lou Marinoff – a Commonwealth Scholar originally from Canada – studied theoretical physics at Concordia and McGill universities, and earned a PhD in Philosophy of Science at University College London. Following postdoctoral research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a lectureship at the University of British Columbia, he joined The City College of New York in 1994, where he is currently Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies. He is founding president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) and editor of its journal, Philosophical Practice. Lou has authored several internationally bestselling books that apply philosophy to everyday life, including Plato Not Prozac, which was translated into twenty-seven languages. He has also contributed twenty book chapters to a variety of anthologies. Lou collaborates with think-tanks and leadership forums such as the Aspen Institute, Biovision (Lyon), Festival of Thinkers (Abu Dhabi), Horasis (Zurich), the Institute for Local Government (at the University of Arizona), Soka Gakkai International (Tokyo), Strategic Foresight Group (Mumbai), and the World Economic Forum (Davos). He can be reached at [email protected] Gerardo Primero studied psychology at the University of Buenos Aires, and is currently studying for a PhD in Epistemology and History of Science at the University of Tres de Febrero. He has worked in the fields of cognitive-behavioral therapy, empirical research about concept learning (Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine), and metatheoretical research about psychological theories (Institute of Studies about Science and Technology, National University of Quilmes). He has published numerous papers about these topics in peer-reviewed journals. He can be reached at [email protected] David Sumiacher D’Angelo earned a degree in philosophy from the National University of Rosario, Argentina (UNR), a Master in Pedagogy from the National and Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a PhD in Pedagogy from UNAM. He has been trained to work with institutions in the Institutional Systems Technician, also in the city of Rosario, Argentina. He is a Teacher Educator for the Mexican Federation of Philosophy for Children, he has taught at the National and Autonomous University of Mexico, he is coordinator and professor in the Master in Applied Philosophy program at the Vasco de Quiroga University, and he is a Professor at Salesian University. He is also a consultant and contributor to the Editorial Pearson, director, founder, and professor of CECAPFI (Educational Center for the Autonomous Creation in Philosophical Practice – www.cecapfi.com), and is active in the coordination of the

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Educators Group of Soka Gakkai International. He has given lectures, workshops, and courses and participated in conferences in America, Europe, Africa and Asia on issues related to education, philosophy, philosophical practices, and philosophy for children and the young. He has published extensively on these topics in books, magazines, and periodicals of Argentina, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, and Venezuela, among other places. His last book, Ethics, authored with Angélica Enriquez (Pearson, 2014), is being used by many teachers and philosophers in Mexico and Latin America. He can be reached at [email protected] Detlef Staude is a philosophical practitioner in Bern, Switzerland, since 1997 (www.philocom.ch) and is president of the Swiss Network for Practical Philosophizing (www.philopraxis.ch). He has published three books on philosophical practice and offers philosophical seminars, lectures, dialogue groups, consultations, and cafés. He was head organizer of the educational program for philosophical practice developed by the BV-PP in Germany and is still a lecturer there. In 2016 he was the main organizer of the 14th International Conference on Philosophical Practice, held in Bern, Switzerland. He can be reached at [email protected] Michael Noah Weiss has a PhD in philosophy and works as a philosophical practitioner in Norway, Austria, and Switzerland, mainly in the fields of education and ethics. He is the vice-chairman of the Norwegian Society for Philosophical Practice as well as vice-president of the Global Ethic’s Initiative, Austria. Among other publications on the subject, he is the editor of The Socratic Handbook – Dialogue Methods for Philosophical Practice (LIT Publishing, 2015). For further information, see www.michaelnoahweiss.net