I have given you a brief over-view on the home page. This page offers a more detailed discussion.
About Me
First, some context: how did I come to philosophy, and then psychotherapy? The answer helps clarify what it is that I offer to you. I discovered philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I went from working in a factory to studying and then teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere. I was drawn to philosophy because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, and to make life better. By philosophy I mean classical philosophy above all: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, as well as the Stoics and so forth. Such philosophy is not passive abstraction or speculative chatter, rather it is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. It transforms your whole life, including your head, heart, and hands. This might sound strange to anybody who knows only the modern, university version of philosophy, but like Buddhism classical Western philosophy is a transformative practice. That is the whole point, it is what Socrates did, and what Plato and Aristotle refined. We cultivate wisdom and virtue because they are good in themselves, and because they lead to a life of strength, meaning, goodness, happiness, meaning, and flourishing.
While I enjoyed teaching philosophy at university, it was not the place for such philosophy. What I wanted to do as a philosopher was speak with people one-on-one, bringing its insights and practices to their problems and goals in life. I was not sure how this would happen; perhaps we would meet at a cafe, or I would hire an office. At some point I came across the Philosophical Counselling movement, and knew I had found my path.
In what follows, I will describe my study and experience in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. I will then discuss classical philosophy--which is the core of my philosophical counselling--and how it is so vital for a good and happy life.
Counselling and Psychotherapy
There is no formal pathway in Australia for becoming a philosophical counsellor, so I had to make my own way. I began the journey by studying Counselling and Psychotherapy, and eventually completed a masters degree in that field. I seemed to have a knack for the craft, and by the end of my training I had been offered numerous academic and counselling roles by my educators. My intention after that study was to step straight into philosophical counselling, however I developed an unexpected passion for mainstream therapy as well, so I went on a journey for fifteen years that included working as a mainstream counsellor in a variety of organisations, focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling, and management coaching for interpersonal skills. In that context I developed skills across the many major approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the Humanistic, the Psychodynamic, and the Cognitive-Behavioural. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association at their most senior level. I did all this work three days a week, while continuing to teach philosophy until 2014. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, which I conducted alongside that organisational work. Its focus was on Existential Therapy, which is a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy. I spent the 2010s engaged in that private practice (alongside all that work in those organisations), taking a deep, decade's long dive into Existential Therapy.
There are many schools of Existential Therapy. I spent much time exploring the work of people like Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom, who both influenced me greatly. However, their approaches integrate a few philosophical insights into mainstream therapy, and what most gripped me was "the British school" led by people like Emmy van Deurzen and Ernesto Spinelli. Van Deurzen defined Existential Therapy as "a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy" and indeed she has developed a psychologically very powerful, and yet irreducibly philosophical, form of therapy. A lesser known but similar achievement was made by Betty Cannon in America, and she is also a great influence of mine.
Van Deurzen presents a challenge to the passivity which is such a problem in therapy, and by extentions in the wider culture. (As Philip Reiff and Christopher Lasch point out, we live in "a therapeutic culture" and that has greatly benfitted us, and greatly harmed us). Van Deurzen is clear about the beauty and goodness that can be found in life, and yet she is equally lucid about how tough life can be, indeed how terrible at times. She has developed a compassionate and insightful path to becoming more wise and tough. I see traces in her pragmatic philosphical therapy of not only existentialism, with its call to face life and tragedy with courage and passion, but also of the wider philosophical tradition: of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of Socrates, and so on.
I use the title "philosophical counselling" to cover all my work, but people who seek existential therapy will find a sophisticated form of it in my philosophical counselling. The depth of my existential therapy is a consequence of decades of practice, but also it is a reflection of the fact that I am a philosopher first, and psychotherapist second: these are not some interesting ideas possessed superficially, which I have tacked onto mainstream therapy, rather I have dug deeply into philosophy, into the fundamental ideas and worldviews that make this approach so distinct and powerful.
As an aside before moving on, I would like to address an ongoing issue which I have learned to be very explicit about. We live in a technocratic culture, which favours a medical understanding of all of life's challenges, and pretends they can be assessed and "treated" according to that paradigm. Grief, for example, is now treated as a pscyhological disorder that needs medication. That is madness. But it means that people often assume that a counsellor is such a professional. There are indeed forces within the counselling peak bodies which are pushing to make counselling and psychotherapy into clinical professions, for the sake of money and prestige, but that is a corrupt motivation that will have ruinous consequences for deeper therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy are very different to Psychology and Psychiatry. To make that clear, I often make a distinction between personal growth therapies versus clinical therapies. The personal growth therapies focuses on what is individual and unique, and help people develop insight clarity, direction, and motivation; and mental, emotional, and behavioural well-being, growth, and flourishing. By contrast, the clinical therapies, represented by disciplines such as Psychiatry, Psychology, clinical Social Work and the like, view life through a medical lens. They represent a technocratic view of life. Thus, they focus on assessments, diagnoses, related treatments (such as CBT), oversight of patient risk and well-being, co-ordination with government and medical systems, formal reports, and so on. I am trained in the personal growth field--Counselling and Psychotherapy. I am not a Psychologist. I worked alongside many psychologists for a decade in mainstream organisations, and became familiar with their concepts and practices, but I do not provide clinical services, and have no interest in doing so. The clinical field is important, but it is very different to what I am trained in. My training and focus in therapy is the same as in philosophy: the unique, individual person's efforts of head and heart.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted above all in the ancient or classical Western philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others such as the Stoics and Neoplatonists. The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. To do philosophy is to love wisdom, and by extension virtue. It is to contemplate them, to pursue them, to enact them, to cultivate them. Philosophy is a way of life: approaching all things through the lens of wisdom and virtue, through the attempt to be more wise virtuous, through a concern for, and pursuit of, whatever is true and good in every moment. This way of living makes life much more meaningful. We discover much we had not seen or known. It leads to much greater happiness and flourishing, too.
But what is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision.
2) Wisdom is practical the ability to understand yourself, others, and situations, and to make good decisions
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a picture of life that is as true as possible. This is how we navigate life. It also informs our experience of life. We all carry delusions or blindspots in this respect, and these impact our lives. We walk headlong into things we would rather avoid, or we fail to see possibilities. In this sense, we need wisdom with respect to the big picture--what life is about, what human beings are like--and with respect to daily, practical life and the direction of our lives. Wisdom about life enables us to see the good, avoid the bad, to live with depth, and to enjoy what is on offer.
Importantly, as the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch pointed out, we are creatures who make pictures of ourselves, and then come to resemble the picture. Our perception, our emotions, our actions, our whole way of being, comes to reflect our possession or lack of wisdom. Wisdom transforms us, as does its lack. Philosophy is reflection on life that aims to get a more true and good vision of things, it is conversation that aims at wisdom.
But what is wisdom made of? I said above that it is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues. I define a virtue as:
1) Any good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
When I say "any good personal quality" I am point to the fact that virtue includes what we think of as moral qualities, but also much more: it is any quality that makes life good. Self-respect, for example, is a virtue, because it makes life better, makes life good. Healthy boundaries are expressions of virtue, as much as compassion. Implicit here is a communal notion, of course: this is not selfish individualism, and what is good takes account of others. Furthermore, when a classical philosopher like myself uses the work good, we are using it in a wide sense. The virtuous life is a life of passion, of meaning, of enjoyment, as well as the capacity to weather suffering and to be a decent human being. We should add that "it takes all sorts to make all sorts." Different people have differing strengths and virtues, such that while some are universal (justice, for example--fairness, decency) certain others matter greatly for your good life, but not for the good life of others.
Aristotle divides the virtues into the intellectual virtues--the virtues of the head--and character virtues, which means virtues at the level of the heart and hands, or feeling and action. Wisdom is the exercise of the intellectual virtues: all those good qualities of mind which a person might cultivate. Think for example of reason / rationality / logic, but also of mental forms of courage, creativity, compassion, fortitude, focus, fairness, and so on. It is these qualities of the mind which enable us to see life clearly at the big picture level, and to become wise about practical, daily life. It is the lack of these qualities that makes a person a fool, or worse.
The character virtues--virtues of the heart and hands--involve many of the same qualities, but at the level of emotion and action: courage, compassion, fortitude, temperance, justice, and so on.
When I say that wisdom is not only a virtue--or rather, a collection of virtues as I just pointed out--but also "the beginning of the virtues," I am using an ancient phrase which points out that wisdom at the level of the head can, and should, shape the heart and the hands. It flows on, and shapes our whole being. Sometimes you cannot control how you feel right now, but in many cases you can control how you will feel across the medium and long-term, at least to an important degree, through cultivating wisdom and the character virtues.
Philosophy, and so Philosophical Counselling, is the work of understanding the presence and absence of wisdom and the virtues in you. You take stock of your life, in terms of the qualities you need as a person in order to live well. Philosophy then guides you in the kinds of reflection and action that cultivate that wisdom and virtue, for the sake of that improved life. When I speak of cultivating wisdom and virtue, I often point out that it leads to certain outcomes. Aristotle referred to that outcome as eudaimonia, or a good state of life. Importantly, by consequence we do not mean something seperate which follows from wisdom and virtue, but the various states of being that are a manifestation of it. That is, to cultivate wisdom and virtue, to create a life of eudaimonia, is to cultivate a life of greater strength and courage, meaning and goodness, happiness and flourishing. I will say a little about that below.
The benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue
The benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Strength, or resilience--the ability to cope well with difficulties and hard times. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, perspective, and so forth. We gain it also through our increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose, which is aroused by this way of living.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to stand up and to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life. We all want to experience goodness, in its myriad forms. Most of us want to be a source of goodness for others, which amounts to many different things, but in essence we want to be kind, fair, more emotionally intelligent, and so forth.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we perceive and feel a deeper, more genuine, and more robust sense of meaning. Life becomes more interesting, and we experience more hope and purpose.
Happiness: happiness is partly a matter of chance--things can go right or wrong no matter what you do--but it is also a consequence of your capacity for it and your effort. It is obvious to any clear-sighted and experienced person that different ways of being naturally lead to different outcomes in life, to different states of happiness or misery. The virtues constitute that capacity for genuine happiness. Their lack (or opposites) render us less capable of happiness. A kind, and confident, and grateful, and courageous, and so on person will typically be a happier person.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life regarding the things we care about, including the outward things. For some people that is a life of material stability or even comfort. For others it is a life of creativity. Or adventure. Or mission. Like happiness, flourishing is partly a matter of chance, but also it is made far, far more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered much less likely through their absence. In this sense, an ancient Greek philosopher was right when he said that character is fate.
We modern people have placed all our eggs in one basket; we look to therapy to become happy. Or to material well-being and success. However, when it comes to improving your life, to creating a good life for yourself, this philosophical work is more powerful than anything else you can do. The classical philosophers saw this clearly, and spent centuries working out ways to pursue this growth. Their wisdom has been handed down. Unlike so many things in life, it is always in your power to do this philosophical work of personal transformation. The combination of psychotherapy's psychological help, with philosophy's wider and deeper concern with wisdom and virtue, is an especially potent way of creating a better way of being and state of life for ourselves.
Further dimensions of philosophy
While I am rooted in classical philosophy, Western philosophy is a 2500 year old tradition and there is richness to be found throughout that history. There is also much to found among philosophers from other traditions, for example I spent years exploring Buddhist philosophy and practice. Modern Platonists such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the existentialists and phenomenologists, as well as thinkers in the wake of Ludwig Wittgenstein, have all had a great influence on me.
Such philosophy articulates the depths of the implicit in our experience. I am speaking of the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see. Which implicity moves us and which, when made explicit, can do more than that: can enlighten and nourish us. Can give us clarity, and give life greater meaning. In describing his psychoanalytic method, Freud wrote that "He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." My philosophical education taught me a similar method. Thanks to my philosophical mentors like Christopher Cordner, who introduced me to the afore-mentioned other philosophers, I learned to pay careful attention to the difference between what people say and what they show. We could also frame that as a discernment of the implicit. We are often blind to the ethical richness in our lives. We are like a person starving to death because we do not recognise the food growing around us. Much of the despair and nihilism which infects people can be overcome through the work of changing ourselves in terms of wisdom and virtue--living in a higher way--but that also begins with properly discerning meaning and value that is already present in our concrete lives. That becomes the ground and substance for better things or a better experience. I often have clients who say, "I don't know how you do this!" Well, this is how I do it. We are blind. There is more in front of our eyes, if only we would learn to look. Philosophy is guidance and training in such looking. It makes the implicit explicit. It gives voice, it speaks reality, it notices the present but unnoticed, it speaks the greater fullness.
Alongside its capacity for articulating the implicit forms of goodness and meaning in life, my philosophy also makes a place for an understanding the darker sides of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also hard, tragic, and at times cruel. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." For to be human is to be vulnerable, blind, and limited. It is to suffer, and sometimes even to be degraded or corrupted. To do philosophy as I do it, is to pay attention to this too, and to understand and respond to it in meaningful ways. Such responses are manifold in their possibilities, but here is one example. Simone Weil wrote that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Elsewhere she speaks of such attention as "a just and loving gaze." We need to pay attention for the reasons I spoke of above--to see and be nourished by the good stuff, and to navigate life well--but we can also emphasise the value of attention as an ethical and healing agent not only in good times but also in bad. People matter. You and I matter. When we suffer, as we all do, then we need to see, and to be seen, and to find words, and to make meaning, and to take heart--whether or not we are able to change anything. To do philosophy in the context of suffering is to move from aloneness to a recognition and felt sense of our common humanity. It is to shine the light of consciousness as intelligence, but also as compassion. It is to seek, and hopefully find, a transcendent point of view that can sustain us. Philosophical Counselling addresses the full spectrum of life, seeking inspiration to live better, challenging us to step onto our hero's journey, while also working at depth with our vulnerability, grief, and suffering.
Summary: Philosophical Counselling
In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness. Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, makes this great tradition available to people today, in a sophisticated form which draws on psychotherapy as well. It is for people who want more than mere satisfaction or functioning or materialist success. Philosophical Counselling is for people who want to see life with far greater richness and depth, and to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings, and to deal with their problems and to make life better in that way. I am above all a philosopher, for that is what we most need--when it is properly understood as a transformative pursuit of wisdom and virtue. I am also a psychotherapist with decades of experience. What I offer is simply conversation, but of a kind that pays close and deep attention to you, and guides you toward the insights and practices, the wisdom and virtue, that leads to a life of eudaimonia.
About Me
First, some context: how did I come to philosophy, and then psychotherapy? The answer helps clarify what it is that I offer to you. I discovered philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I went from working in a factory to studying and then teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere. I was drawn to philosophy because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, and to make life better. By philosophy I mean classical philosophy above all: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, as well as the Stoics and so forth. Such philosophy is not passive abstraction or speculative chatter, rather it is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. It transforms your whole life, including your head, heart, and hands. This might sound strange to anybody who knows only the modern, university version of philosophy, but like Buddhism classical Western philosophy is a transformative practice. That is the whole point, it is what Socrates did, and what Plato and Aristotle refined. We cultivate wisdom and virtue because they are good in themselves, and because they lead to a life of strength, meaning, goodness, happiness, meaning, and flourishing.
While I enjoyed teaching philosophy at university, it was not the place for such philosophy. What I wanted to do as a philosopher was speak with people one-on-one, bringing its insights and practices to their problems and goals in life. I was not sure how this would happen; perhaps we would meet at a cafe, or I would hire an office. At some point I came across the Philosophical Counselling movement, and knew I had found my path.
In what follows, I will describe my study and experience in mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. I will then discuss classical philosophy--which is the core of my philosophical counselling--and how it is so vital for a good and happy life.
Counselling and Psychotherapy
There is no formal pathway in Australia for becoming a philosophical counsellor, so I had to make my own way. I began the journey by studying Counselling and Psychotherapy, and eventually completed a masters degree in that field. I seemed to have a knack for the craft, and by the end of my training I had been offered numerous academic and counselling roles by my educators. My intention after that study was to step straight into philosophical counselling, however I developed an unexpected passion for mainstream therapy as well, so I went on a journey for fifteen years that included working as a mainstream counsellor in a variety of organisations, focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling, and management coaching for interpersonal skills. In that context I developed skills across the many major approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the Humanistic, the Psychodynamic, and the Cognitive-Behavioural. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association at their most senior level. I did all this work three days a week, while continuing to teach philosophy until 2014. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, which I conducted alongside that organisational work. Its focus was on Existential Therapy, which is a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy. I spent the 2010s engaged in that private practice (alongside all that work in those organisations), taking a deep, decade's long dive into Existential Therapy.
There are many schools of Existential Therapy. I spent much time exploring the work of people like Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom, who both influenced me greatly. However, their approaches integrate a few philosophical insights into mainstream therapy, and what most gripped me was "the British school" led by people like Emmy van Deurzen and Ernesto Spinelli. Van Deurzen defined Existential Therapy as "a philosophical approach to counselling and psychotherapy" and indeed she has developed a psychologically very powerful, and yet irreducibly philosophical, form of therapy. A lesser known but similar achievement was made by Betty Cannon in America, and she is also a great influence of mine.
Van Deurzen presents a challenge to the passivity which is such a problem in therapy, and by extentions in the wider culture. (As Philip Reiff and Christopher Lasch point out, we live in "a therapeutic culture" and that has greatly benfitted us, and greatly harmed us). Van Deurzen is clear about the beauty and goodness that can be found in life, and yet she is equally lucid about how tough life can be, indeed how terrible at times. She has developed a compassionate and insightful path to becoming more wise and tough. I see traces in her pragmatic philosphical therapy of not only existentialism, with its call to face life and tragedy with courage and passion, but also of the wider philosophical tradition: of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of Socrates, and so on.
I use the title "philosophical counselling" to cover all my work, but people who seek existential therapy will find a sophisticated form of it in my philosophical counselling. The depth of my existential therapy is a consequence of decades of practice, but also it is a reflection of the fact that I am a philosopher first, and psychotherapist second: these are not some interesting ideas possessed superficially, which I have tacked onto mainstream therapy, rather I have dug deeply into philosophy, into the fundamental ideas and worldviews that make this approach so distinct and powerful.
As an aside before moving on, I would like to address an ongoing issue which I have learned to be very explicit about. We live in a technocratic culture, which favours a medical understanding of all of life's challenges, and pretends they can be assessed and "treated" according to that paradigm. Grief, for example, is now treated as a pscyhological disorder that needs medication. That is madness. But it means that people often assume that a counsellor is such a professional. There are indeed forces within the counselling peak bodies which are pushing to make counselling and psychotherapy into clinical professions, for the sake of money and prestige, but that is a corrupt motivation that will have ruinous consequences for deeper therapy. Counselling and Psychotherapy are very different to Psychology and Psychiatry. To make that clear, I often make a distinction between personal growth therapies versus clinical therapies. The personal growth therapies focuses on what is individual and unique, and help people develop insight clarity, direction, and motivation; and mental, emotional, and behavioural well-being, growth, and flourishing. By contrast, the clinical therapies, represented by disciplines such as Psychiatry, Psychology, clinical Social Work and the like, view life through a medical lens. They represent a technocratic view of life. Thus, they focus on assessments, diagnoses, related treatments (such as CBT), oversight of patient risk and well-being, co-ordination with government and medical systems, formal reports, and so on. I am trained in the personal growth field--Counselling and Psychotherapy. I am not a Psychologist. I worked alongside many psychologists for a decade in mainstream organisations, and became familiar with their concepts and practices, but I do not provide clinical services, and have no interest in doing so. The clinical field is important, but it is very different to what I am trained in. My training and focus in therapy is the same as in philosophy: the unique, individual person's efforts of head and heart.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted above all in the ancient or classical Western philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others such as the Stoics and Neoplatonists. The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. To do philosophy is to love wisdom, and by extension virtue. It is to contemplate them, to pursue them, to enact them, to cultivate them. Philosophy is a way of life: approaching all things through the lens of wisdom and virtue, through the attempt to be more wise virtuous, through a concern for, and pursuit of, whatever is true and good in every moment. This way of living makes life much more meaningful. We discover much we had not seen or known. It leads to much greater happiness and flourishing, too.
But what is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision.
2) Wisdom is practical the ability to understand yourself, others, and situations, and to make good decisions
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a picture of life that is as true as possible. This is how we navigate life. It also informs our experience of life. We all carry delusions or blindspots in this respect, and these impact our lives. We walk headlong into things we would rather avoid, or we fail to see possibilities. In this sense, we need wisdom with respect to the big picture--what life is about, what human beings are like--and with respect to daily, practical life and the direction of our lives. Wisdom about life enables us to see the good, avoid the bad, to live with depth, and to enjoy what is on offer.
Importantly, as the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch pointed out, we are creatures who make pictures of ourselves, and then come to resemble the picture. Our perception, our emotions, our actions, our whole way of being, comes to reflect our possession or lack of wisdom. Wisdom transforms us, as does its lack. Philosophy is reflection on life that aims to get a more true and good vision of things, it is conversation that aims at wisdom.
But what is wisdom made of? I said above that it is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues. I define a virtue as:
1) Any good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
When I say "any good personal quality" I am point to the fact that virtue includes what we think of as moral qualities, but also much more: it is any quality that makes life good. Self-respect, for example, is a virtue, because it makes life better, makes life good. Healthy boundaries are expressions of virtue, as much as compassion. Implicit here is a communal notion, of course: this is not selfish individualism, and what is good takes account of others. Furthermore, when a classical philosopher like myself uses the work good, we are using it in a wide sense. The virtuous life is a life of passion, of meaning, of enjoyment, as well as the capacity to weather suffering and to be a decent human being. We should add that "it takes all sorts to make all sorts." Different people have differing strengths and virtues, such that while some are universal (justice, for example--fairness, decency) certain others matter greatly for your good life, but not for the good life of others.
Aristotle divides the virtues into the intellectual virtues--the virtues of the head--and character virtues, which means virtues at the level of the heart and hands, or feeling and action. Wisdom is the exercise of the intellectual virtues: all those good qualities of mind which a person might cultivate. Think for example of reason / rationality / logic, but also of mental forms of courage, creativity, compassion, fortitude, focus, fairness, and so on. It is these qualities of the mind which enable us to see life clearly at the big picture level, and to become wise about practical, daily life. It is the lack of these qualities that makes a person a fool, or worse.
The character virtues--virtues of the heart and hands--involve many of the same qualities, but at the level of emotion and action: courage, compassion, fortitude, temperance, justice, and so on.
When I say that wisdom is not only a virtue--or rather, a collection of virtues as I just pointed out--but also "the beginning of the virtues," I am using an ancient phrase which points out that wisdom at the level of the head can, and should, shape the heart and the hands. It flows on, and shapes our whole being. Sometimes you cannot control how you feel right now, but in many cases you can control how you will feel across the medium and long-term, at least to an important degree, through cultivating wisdom and the character virtues.
Philosophy, and so Philosophical Counselling, is the work of understanding the presence and absence of wisdom and the virtues in you. You take stock of your life, in terms of the qualities you need as a person in order to live well. Philosophy then guides you in the kinds of reflection and action that cultivate that wisdom and virtue, for the sake of that improved life. When I speak of cultivating wisdom and virtue, I often point out that it leads to certain outcomes. Aristotle referred to that outcome as eudaimonia, or a good state of life. Importantly, by consequence we do not mean something seperate which follows from wisdom and virtue, but the various states of being that are a manifestation of it. That is, to cultivate wisdom and virtue, to create a life of eudaimonia, is to cultivate a life of greater strength and courage, meaning and goodness, happiness and flourishing. I will say a little about that below.
The benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue
The benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Strength, or resilience--the ability to cope well with difficulties and hard times. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, perspective, and so forth. We gain it also through our increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose, which is aroused by this way of living.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to stand up and to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life. We all want to experience goodness, in its myriad forms. Most of us want to be a source of goodness for others, which amounts to many different things, but in essence we want to be kind, fair, more emotionally intelligent, and so forth.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we perceive and feel a deeper, more genuine, and more robust sense of meaning. Life becomes more interesting, and we experience more hope and purpose.
Happiness: happiness is partly a matter of chance--things can go right or wrong no matter what you do--but it is also a consequence of your capacity for it and your effort. It is obvious to any clear-sighted and experienced person that different ways of being naturally lead to different outcomes in life, to different states of happiness or misery. The virtues constitute that capacity for genuine happiness. Their lack (or opposites) render us less capable of happiness. A kind, and confident, and grateful, and courageous, and so on person will typically be a happier person.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life regarding the things we care about, including the outward things. For some people that is a life of material stability or even comfort. For others it is a life of creativity. Or adventure. Or mission. Like happiness, flourishing is partly a matter of chance, but also it is made far, far more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered much less likely through their absence. In this sense, an ancient Greek philosopher was right when he said that character is fate.
We modern people have placed all our eggs in one basket; we look to therapy to become happy. Or to material well-being and success. However, when it comes to improving your life, to creating a good life for yourself, this philosophical work is more powerful than anything else you can do. The classical philosophers saw this clearly, and spent centuries working out ways to pursue this growth. Their wisdom has been handed down. Unlike so many things in life, it is always in your power to do this philosophical work of personal transformation. The combination of psychotherapy's psychological help, with philosophy's wider and deeper concern with wisdom and virtue, is an especially potent way of creating a better way of being and state of life for ourselves.
Further dimensions of philosophy
While I am rooted in classical philosophy, Western philosophy is a 2500 year old tradition and there is richness to be found throughout that history. There is also much to found among philosophers from other traditions, for example I spent years exploring Buddhist philosophy and practice. Modern Platonists such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the existentialists and phenomenologists, as well as thinkers in the wake of Ludwig Wittgenstein, have all had a great influence on me.
Such philosophy articulates the depths of the implicit in our experience. I am speaking of the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see. Which implicity moves us and which, when made explicit, can do more than that: can enlighten and nourish us. Can give us clarity, and give life greater meaning. In describing his psychoanalytic method, Freud wrote that "He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." My philosophical education taught me a similar method. Thanks to my philosophical mentors like Christopher Cordner, who introduced me to the afore-mentioned other philosophers, I learned to pay careful attention to the difference between what people say and what they show. We could also frame that as a discernment of the implicit. We are often blind to the ethical richness in our lives. We are like a person starving to death because we do not recognise the food growing around us. Much of the despair and nihilism which infects people can be overcome through the work of changing ourselves in terms of wisdom and virtue--living in a higher way--but that also begins with properly discerning meaning and value that is already present in our concrete lives. That becomes the ground and substance for better things or a better experience. I often have clients who say, "I don't know how you do this!" Well, this is how I do it. We are blind. There is more in front of our eyes, if only we would learn to look. Philosophy is guidance and training in such looking. It makes the implicit explicit. It gives voice, it speaks reality, it notices the present but unnoticed, it speaks the greater fullness.
Alongside its capacity for articulating the implicit forms of goodness and meaning in life, my philosophy also makes a place for an understanding the darker sides of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also hard, tragic, and at times cruel. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." For to be human is to be vulnerable, blind, and limited. It is to suffer, and sometimes even to be degraded or corrupted. To do philosophy as I do it, is to pay attention to this too, and to understand and respond to it in meaningful ways. Such responses are manifold in their possibilities, but here is one example. Simone Weil wrote that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Elsewhere she speaks of such attention as "a just and loving gaze." We need to pay attention for the reasons I spoke of above--to see and be nourished by the good stuff, and to navigate life well--but we can also emphasise the value of attention as an ethical and healing agent not only in good times but also in bad. People matter. You and I matter. When we suffer, as we all do, then we need to see, and to be seen, and to find words, and to make meaning, and to take heart--whether or not we are able to change anything. To do philosophy in the context of suffering is to move from aloneness to a recognition and felt sense of our common humanity. It is to shine the light of consciousness as intelligence, but also as compassion. It is to seek, and hopefully find, a transcendent point of view that can sustain us. Philosophical Counselling addresses the full spectrum of life, seeking inspiration to live better, challenging us to step onto our hero's journey, while also working at depth with our vulnerability, grief, and suffering.
Summary: Philosophical Counselling
In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness. Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, makes this great tradition available to people today, in a sophisticated form which draws on psychotherapy as well. It is for people who want more than mere satisfaction or functioning or materialist success. Philosophical Counselling is for people who want to see life with far greater richness and depth, and to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings, and to deal with their problems and to make life better in that way. I am above all a philosopher, for that is what we most need--when it is properly understood as a transformative pursuit of wisdom and virtue. I am also a psychotherapist with decades of experience. What I offer is simply conversation, but of a kind that pays close and deep attention to you, and guides you toward the insights and practices, the wisdom and virtue, that leads to a life of eudaimonia.