Philosophical Practice – Quo Vadis?
by Ran Lahav
(Based on a lecture given in the 2014 ICPP, Belgrade)
Philosophical practice is a movement, born in the 1980s, of philosophers who believe that philosophy can be made relevant to the life of the person in the street. They believe that philosophy can help make life fuller and more meaningful, and it should therefore interest the general public, not just professional philosophers. However, when we look at the present state of the movement, we note that its success among the general public is (still?) quite limited.
To understand the situation of the field, as well as its future potentials, it is important to reflect on its history. I believe that the way we are doing philosophical practice now is largely a product of historical choices we made in the past, and that these were not necessarily the only or the best choices possible.
A historical overview of the philosophical practice movement
The German philosophical practitioner Gerd Achenbach is commonly regarded as the founder of the philosophical practice movement. I suggest that we regard 1982 as the birth-date of our movement—not 1981, when Achenbach first opened his Philosophische Praxis, but rather a year later, when he founded an association devoted to this endeavor. After all, philosophical practice in itself was not something new. Numerous philosophers throughout history had been using philosophical reflection to address life-issues, and Achenbach was certainly not the first. But he was the first to make this activity a separate field by founding a professional association devoted to it.
A year or two later, still in the early 1980s, a second group of philosophical practitioners started to form in Holland, composed of philosophy students from the University of Amsterdam. Its three founders were Ad Hoogendijk, Ida Jongsma, and Dries Boele (the first two have left the field, and only the third still practices philosophical practice). The Dutch group quickly grew to several dozen practitioners, and a few years later, in 1988, it formally became an association.
For more than a decade after its birth, philosophical practice remained more or less limited to these two small groups in Germany and in Holland. Not much happened outside these two groups in the first 12 or 13 years, and very few people were aware of the new field. These years can be regarded as the first period in the history of the movement.
And then, in the mid-1990s, philosophical practice started appearing in additional countries. The second period of the movement began. A major reason for this new development was the First International Conference on Philosophical Counseling. Since I was personally involved in this event, let me say a few words about it.
When I entered the field, in 1992, and started experimenting with philosophical counseling, I visited the Dutch and the German groups. I soon understood that we were still in the process of being born, still exploring who we were. A major topic of discussion among practitioners was how philosophical practice or counseling (the difference between these two notions was not yet established) was different from psychotherapy. I realized that in order to grow we needed to start an international dialogue, and I envisioned an international conference that would bring together philosophers from different countries and different backgrounds. Several universities which I approached were not willing to host a conference on such an unknown field. Eventually, one of the contributors to an anthology which I was composing at the time,[1] Lou Marinoff, suggested trying the institution where he was teaching, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. That summer I took a driving trip north to Alaska, and on my way I stopped in Vancouver and met Lou. Together we managed to convince his boss, the head of the Center for Applied Ethics, and a year later, in 1994, we launched the First International Conference. Other international conferences followed, usually every two years.
As a result of the First International Conference, and possibly of other factors too, the idea of philosophical practice started spreading to new countries. In the next decade several associations were formed, at first in the USA, then in several Western European countries and in Latin America. What marked this second period of philosophical practice was de-centralization. The movement was no longer centered on Germany and Holland. New groups developed their own ideas on how to practice philosophy quite independently of one another. English was starting to be our international language.
Nevertheless, philosophical practice remained largely unknown to the general public and limited to small groups of practitioners. The next development, the third period of our history, was characterized by the popularization of philosophical practice. It started towards the year 2000, when several popular books, notably Lou Marinoff’s best-seller Plato, Not Prozac,[2] helped to acquaint more people in more countries with the idea of philosophical practice. Likewise, practitioners such as Oscar Brenifier helped to spread the idea by means of popular presentations which he gave in a number of countries. Whatever one thinks about popular books and popular presentations, it has to be admitted that they helped draw more attention to the existence of philosophical practice.
In parallel with these developments, several practitioners in the Spanish-speaking world, where English is not commonly understood, worked to disseminate the idea. The Spanish philosophical practitioner José Barrientos should be especially noted for his efforts to start new philosophical groups and programs across Latin America. Interestingly, no central authority figure appeared on the scene—like Freud in psychology—to dictate what philosophical practice is all about. As a result, different groups developed their own specific ways of working and thinking.
Today we have individual philosophical practitioners, as well as groups and associations in many countries, primarily in Western Europe, Northern America and Latin America. Some activity can also be seen in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and elsewhere. And yet, despite these developments, today, more than three decades after our movement began, our numbers are still very small, our clientele is even smaller, and there is not much public awareness of our existence. In this respect we are unfortunately different from other movements which emerged in the past century and have gained a prominent place in the world: Humanistic Psychology, Rational Emotive Therapy, Coaching, Alcoholics Anonymous, Theosophy, Krishnamurti groups, Transcendental Meditation, and many others. All these are new developments just like us, but unlike us they have succeeded to enter public awareness. We have not had this success. We still have only a few hundred practitioners around the world with very little public following.
One might respond that popularity is not the same as quality. By analogy, Hollywood trash films are much more popular than quality films by great directors such as Ingmar Bergman or Andrei Tarkovsky. This is certainly true, but at the same time we cannot ignore the statistical facts, especially given our intention to make philosophy relevant to the general public. We must ask ourselves: Are we really giving people something which they feel to be meaningful and worth pursuing? Are we making a significant contribution to people’s lives?
To respond to these questions, let us examine how we have come to do philosophical practice the way we are doing it today. To a large extent, as I said, what we are doing now is a result of the road we have taken in the past 30 years. Is it possible that we need to search for new roads and new orientations?
Early aspirations
Looking at the 1980s, it is interesting to note that the early German and Dutch pioneers had high aspirations. They believed that philosophical practice could offer something new to the world, a unique message, a novel way of relating to life. As Achenbach wrote in 1984, philosophy’s role is to question everything that is seen as respectable, normal, and healthy in life.[3]
We may describe the aspirations of these pioneers as “revolutionary” or “transformational.” They envisioned the philosophical practitioner as a Socratic provocateur, or as an ancient Stoic who seeks to fundamentally change people’s inner life, or as an ancient Epicurean who leaves the normal hassles of life to live in accordance with different values and preferences.
Curiously, in sharp contrast with these high aspirations, those early practitioners chose to practice their philosophy not in street-corners, not in devoted communities, not in gatherings at the homes of fellow revolutionaries, but in a professional office, where they saw clients for an hour or so, just like a “normal” therapist, just like a medical doctor, or a financial advisor. They wanted to turn philosophical practice into a respectable, profitable, normal profession. Achenbach, as well as the Dutch pioneers, took money from clients, and by doing so they placed philosophical practice in a very specific domain: not in the domain of street movements or in the domain of social visionaries or of companionships of seekers, but rather in the domain of professional service-providers, in other words in the job market.
Now, these two central aspirations that motivated the early practitioners—the transformational aspiration to bring to the world a new vision, and the professional aspiration of becoming a respectable profession—are quite different from each other. By their very nature, they pull towards different conceptions of what philosophical practice might mean. While the first is essentially a revolutionary vision, the second is a normalizer. While the first is a vision of seekers who want to deepen their own lives and the lives of their companions, the second is a supplier of services given by a professional to a client for a fee.
To some extent, these two motivations are still with us today, in 2015, three decades later. But it seems clear that throughout the years the professional motivation has become more dominant, and the transformational vision has become quite rare among us. My impression is that the majority of practitioners nowadays want to supply professional services to clients, whether individuals or groups, and hopefully support themselves financially. We have become less and less visionaries and more and more professionals.
Is it possible that this professional orientation is the reason for our limited popularity? Is it possible that we need to revitalize the visionary fire—the same fire that inspired the great philosophers of the past, such as Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, and many others? Certainly we cannot accept this situation for granted.
Early formats
So much for the topic of aspirations. But let me point out that the aspirations of the early pioneers were closely related to the format which they used in their philosophical activity.
To see this, let us put ourselves in the 1980s, in the shoes of the early pioneers. If we are philosophers wishing to find ways of making philosophy relevant to everyday life, then we have a variety of formats to choose from. For example, as philosophical practitioners we can go to the markets and the streets and, like Socrates, engage people in informal conversations; Or we might start a self-reflection group of philosophical seekers who help each other reflect on themselves, possibly with the help of philosophical texts; Or structured workshops of intense philosophical exercises like Yoga classes; Or confessional support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, where people share what has happened to them during the week. We might open an Ashram or a Greek academy where people interact and study without a fixed structure. We might establish a loosely organized network of philosophical companions who keep in touch throughout the week. And, of course, we might also open a counseling office for clients who would come for an hour of counseling, and then pay us.
In short, there is a wide range of possible formats for philosophical practice, some very structured and some less, some targeting an individual while others involving an intimate group or a community, some with a fixed group of participants while others open to newcomers, some that deal with the life of the philosophical practitioners themselves while other with the life of a non-philosopher client.
Nevertheless, out of this great wealth of potential formats, both Achenbach and the Dutch pioneers chose to focus primarily on one specific format: on the format of one-on-one counseling sessions with an individual counselee, or what came to be called “philosophical counseling.”
It was a curious choice to give philosophy the format of philosophical counseling. This format was obviously borrowed from psychotherapy, from which philosophical practitioners claimed to be very different. It mimicked the standard “talking cure” of the psychologist, which in the 1980s was already quite popular in the Western world, and was practiced in many different ways—neo-Freudian approaches, cognitive therapy, existential counseling, Gestalt, humanistic, and many, many others, some more egalitarian and some more authoritarian, some more method-based and some more open-ended and free, some logic-based and some emotion-centered. Against this rich background, philosophical counseling seemed like one out of many approaches.
The choice to follow psychotherapy and use the counseling format remained with us since those early days. Today, many practitioners around the world aspire to become philosophical counselors. This is surprising given that very few philosophical counselors nowadays have a significant number of clients. They may be giving public performances, or workshops for the business world, or they may work under the title of psychologist if they have such a title, but as philosophical counselors to individuals they have very little work.
Aside from our limited success to attract counselees, this format has an additional limitation: It makes philosophical practice suitable primarily for a very specific target-audience. The format of counseling appeals to those individuals who face a personal problem and feel a need to find somebody to help them in private. These are the people who usually appear in the office of a philosophical counselor.
It is important to note that the pioneers of philosophical practice could have chosen to aim at a different target-audience. For example, they could have chosen formats that appeal to people who seek wisdom and self-development, and there are many, many of them in the world. Such people don’t suffer from any specific personal problem, and yet they feel that something is missing in their lives. Some of them try to fill the void by taking adult education classes, or taking up a new hobby, or joining New Age sects, or martial arts groups, or Yoga workshops. Yet, many of them are too rational for New Age ideas; they want something less abstract and more personal than university lectures; they are not satisfied with breathing exercises because they seek understanding, self-reflection, wisdom. These are people who would flourish in the context of a philosophical search. But they would not be interested in counseling sessions with a helping professional.
The bottom line here is this: By choosing to concentrate on the format of counseling, the early philosophical practitioners chose a specific kind of target-audience, namely needy people who request help. They therefore put themselves in competition with psychotherapists, and at the same time they ignored an important potential audience, that of people seeking self-development and wisdom. This choice colored the entire history of philosophical practice to this very day.
Aside from counseling, a second format was added to the repertoire of the movement starting already in the early 1980s: Socratic Dialogue, the Philosophical Café, or in short discussion-groups. This kind of activity was mostly inspired by the Socratic Dialogue movement which had been founded by the German philosopher Leonard Nelson in the 1920s, and by the philosophical Café which the French philosopher Marc Sautet started in Paris in 1992. Both of these activities, by the way, were born outside the philosophical practice movement. Somehow, however, the movement adopted them.
Philosophical cafés, Socratic Dialogue workshops, and similar discussion activities are successful on a small scale in a number of countries, but from our perspective they are limited in an important respect: they remain on an intellectual, abstract, impersonal level. They involve very little personal self-reflection and self-work. As such, they do not fully respond to the aspiration of philosophical practice to touch everyday life and make an impact on how people actually live. An intellectual discussion on theories of justice or of love, for example, is not likely to help participants live more fully or wisely any more than a university course or a good book.
This is, then, the present-day situation: Our field is dominated by the formats of one-on-one philosophical counseling and of philosophical discussion groups. These two formats are connected to the professional orientation of philosophical practice as a service-provider profession, since they are both built around the idea of a professional directing or counseling clients who are not philosophers.
The fork on the road
It is my view that the field of philosophical practice is not likely to grow and develop if it continues in the present direction—the direction of philosophical professionals giving philosophical services to needy individuals and to discussion groups. Of course, there is nothing wrong with these activities—they may be interesting and enriching. Philosophical counseling can be helpful to the individual no less than psychotherapy, and philosophical cafés may be enriching no less than many other intellectual activities. However, the uniqueness of their contribution to the world is limited. I believe that we are now facing an important fork in our path: either we persist in our current direction and remain small and insignificant, or we change our orientation.
What I am saying here might sound pessimistic, but in fact it is not. I think that we philosophical practitioners can do important things for individuals and society. I am impressed with many of my colleagues for their depth and creativity and commitment, and with the fact that many young philosophical practitioners join us every year. This shows me that the vision that philosophy can do important things is alive—but it is alive not in our counseling offices, not so much in our philosophical cafés, but rather among us, among philosophical practitioners. And in order to keep it alive and to help it grow, we must rethink about our orientation.
How exactly we need to change our ways—this must be determined by an ongoing dialogue in our community as a whole. Nevertheless, I would like to briefly express some of my ideas about our future path.
First, I believe that we should develop formats of philosophical activity that are much more conducive to the spirit of philosophy. I am thinking specifically about small groups of companions who would reflect in a personal way on basic life-issues and cultivate the deeper aspects of their lives. They would do so in the spirit of togetherness, possibly with the help of philosophical texts on specific topics. These meetings would be either directed by a philosopher, or conducted in an egalitarian way between equal philosophical companions.
This kind of small-group activity would focus not on resolving personal problems and everyday concerns, but on elevating ourselves above the automatic life in which we are often blindly immersed. It would not aim at making people more satisfied and functional, but at developing wisdom, spirituality, inner depth, or whatever is deemed valuable and precious in life (which is, needless to say, an open issue to explore philosophically, not something to decide in advance by the force of a doctrine).
This is, of course, one example out of several possible formats that can grow on the soil of philosophy. We must, I think, start exploring them.
Second, on a more general level, I believe that we philosophical practitioners should stop regarding ourselves as professional service-providers who have tempting products to sell. That orientation has obviously failed, and for good reasons. You are a true philosopher because philosophical reflection is your way of life, not because you supply clients with satisfying goods. Philosophy by its very nature is philo-sophia—a search based on love for understanding, for depth, wisdom. We may, if we wish, continue to take money for our time and effort, but as something additional to our main passion, not as the center of our activity—just as serious musicians or painters are first of all artists, and only peripherally service providers selling their services to students.
Stopping to think of our philosophy as products to sell would by no means diminish our appeal among the general public. On the contrary, we would start appealing to people because of our yearning and our passion for understanding and depth. I believe that if we start regarding ourselves as seekers walking in the ways of philosophical reflection, then we would inspire many people to walk with us in our ways.
The word “seekers” is important here. Seekers are those who are motivated by the Platonic Eros, in other words by the yearning for understanding, meaning, truth. They are always still on the road, still searching for ways to develop in wisdom and understanding, both as philosophers and as human beings. In this respect they are very different from professionals who have already completed their training and have arrived at the finish line. Unlike the professional banker or professional psychologist or driver who have already mastered their trade and acquired the necessary expertise and are now certified, a seeker is always on the way.
Furthermore, being a professional is a matter of possessing specific skills, regardless of your personality and passions, and regardless of what you do after work. You become a lawyer or an accountant because you have mastered certain skills and knowledge, regardless of your artistic tastes, your temperament, or your relationship to your spouse and to your fellow human beings. Being a seeker, in contrast, involves your entire being, your entire way of living. It is a question of who you are and how you face life, not just of what you do at your office from nine to five.
One might object that the professional and the seeker are still very similar, because they both help people who lack knowledge and experience: the experienced seeker helps the novice just as the professional helps the client. But it is important to note that they do so in very different ways. The experienced seeker relates to a novice not as a consumer, not as a recipient of goods sold on the basis of supply and demand, but as a fellow traveler—one who is less experienced but still walks the same road. After all, even a very experienced seeker is still a seeker—still searching, reflecting, walking along the way. Picturesquely speaking, while seekers stand shoulder to shoulder facing a common end, a professional service-provider faces a client from across a desk.
This is, then, how I propose we should see ourselves. This would mean that our target-audience would change. We would no longer try to appeal to people who have a problem with their boss or a misunderstanding with their children, but to people who are inspired to seek wisdom, depth and understanding. We would appeal not to people who want an interesting intellectual discussion once a week, but to those who want to cultivate a meaningful dimension in their lives.
This is not to say that we should stop giving philosophical cafés and philosophical counseling. It means, rather, that these activities would no longer be at the center of what we do. And when we do choose to practice these activities—and other activities as well—we will practice them as part of a larger context, as seekers whose task is to color life—our own life and the life of others—with philosophical reflection. We would initiate philosophical activities not as professional service providers, but as fellow participants in the search for wisdom who call others to join them. We would inspire others not because of some entertaining philosophical discussion we can offer, but because we ourselves will be a testimony to the philosophical search. And this testimony, this commitment, will express itself in our own way of life.
Agora and the philosophical companionships project
Whether we accept my particular vision or some alternative visions, it is clear to me that we need a deep change in the way we think about ourselves and our field. Once again, just like 20 years ago, I feel that the philosophical practice movement needs a shake-up and re-evaluation. And just like in the early 1990s, I believe that the only way for us to move forward is through an intense international dialogue that would examine the path we are walking. For this purpose, I launched last year an ambitious project, together with my colleague Carmen Zavala from Peru, and with the help of other colleagues from several countries.[4]
The purpose of the project is to create a pluralistic space on the Internet where the many voices of philosophical practice would interact in reflecting on fundamental issues and experimenting with them. In the first stage of this PhiloPractice Agora project, as we call it, we have been posting dozens of videotaped interviews with active philosophical practitioners from around the world, as well as brief texts—“reflections”—by those who wish to express themselves in writing. These interviews and reflections address a variety of fundamental issues. The hope is that all those practitioners whose voice will be heard would feel part of this international dialogue, and would be willing to engage in discussions and experimentation.
For me it is fascinating to see this plurality of voices within the philosophical practice world, many of which are very different from mine. The fact that we are a pluralistic symphony is a testimony to our creativity.
However, a pluralistic space is not enough. We also need to explore new philosophical formats and philosophical activities. For this purpose, the Agora team has recently created a new format of philosophical activity, and is now experimenting with it: the philosophical companionship.[5]
A philosophical companionship is a small group of participants who meet regularly, either online or face-to-face, and contemplate together. It is based on the idea that philosophical understandings have the power to inspire us, change our attitude to life and deepen us.
Three elements are central to the philosophical companionship: First, it is philosophical in the sense that it deals with basic life-issues in a creative, critical, and dialogical way. Second, it is a companionship in the sense that participants contemplate in togetherness, resonating to each other and developing their understandings together, just as musicians resonate to each other and improvise together a musical piece. This is opposed to the war-model of argumentation, in which each side tries to win the argument. Third, it is contemplative in the sense that participants go beyond their usual way of thinking, and give voice to deep and hidden aspects of their being. This is different from conversations in which people follow their usual thinking patterns, and cling to their opinions, using only intellectual thinking.
It is my belief that this and similar formats can help us and our movement grow. They can appeal to the many people who feel that something is missing in their lives and who seek meaning and depth, and who want to walk in the paths of wisdom, in other words of philo-sophia.
Will this be the beginning of the fourth period of the philosophical practice movement, a period of new formats and new visions? I hope so. It is time for us to step beyond childhood and become a mature movement that uses its own formats and its own goals, instead of borrowing them from other fields, a movement that can make its own unique and meaningful contribution to many people who would respond to it if given the opportunity.
[1] . Lahav, Ran and Tillmanns, Maria (eds.) (1995), Essays on Philosophical Counseling, Lanham: University Press of America, pp. 61-74.
[2] . Marinoff, Lou, Plato not Prozac, HarperCollins, NY, 1999.
[3] . Achenbach, Gerd (1995), “Philosophy, Philosophical Practice, and Psychotherapy” in Lahav, Ran and Tillmanns, Maria (eds.) Essays on Philosophical Counseling, Lanham: University Press of America, pp. 61-74.
[4] . See www.philopractice.org
[5] . www.philopractice.org/companionship