What is Philosophical Counselling?
What is Philosophical Counselling? Because the approach is a uncommon, this page is focused on providing a definition. I will begin by defining counselling, and then philosophy, and then Philosophical Counselling. It is worth noting that these are my definitions, reflecting my training, experience, and views, and that other professionals in each of these three fields may see things differently.
It might help if I start with a brief description of how I came to practice Philosophical Counselling. In the 1990s I was a highschool drop-out working in a factory. One day I wandered into a bookshop and walked out with a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I had discovered philosophy and, as I went deeper, encountered a practice and tradition that was literally life-changing. Here was a profound source of wisdom for dealing with the dark sides of life and for cultivating the good. So I made my into The University of Melbourne where I studied and eventually taught philosophy. I did well academically, but in time I became frustrated due to the difference between philosophy as I had encountered it, versus academic philosophy. I was drawn to philosophy as something which was deeply, personally helpful, with respect to suffering and meaning, and I wanted to share such philosophy with others. I witnessed this same desire in my students, who were often quite disappointed when they encountered the academic version of philosophy. I wanted to develop a way of doing philosophy, one-on-one with people, to help their with their lives.
During that time I happened to attend some very beneficial counselling. It helped me in ways that philosophy had not. Yet, philosophy helped me with life in ways that counselling did not. I was struck by an idea. I would study counselling and combine the two. This would create a framework to help people as a philosopher, but as a form of help it would draw on the best of not only philosophy, but also counselling, offering people the riches of both disciplines in one practice. This plan unfolded across two decades. I became a masters-qualified counsellor, and spent years working in mainstream counselling organisations focused on issues such as relationships, career, grief, suicide, and so forth, gaining much experience and competence. All the while I maintained my identity and passion as a philosopher, and brought philosophy into those contexts, learning how to combine the two disciplines. Today I am on the other side of that long project, and work purely in private practice offering Philosophical Counselling.
Philosophical Counselling is broad in its scope. Naturally, it helps with the same issues one takes to mainstream counselling, but goes beyond that, and indeed beyond the limits of mainstream therapy. For the point is not only improvement in your functioning, success, or satisfaction, but broader and deeper growth in you as a human being, which is to say: growth at the level of consciousness--intellect, will, intuition, imagination--with all the effects of that on your life as a whole.
Counselling
I define counselling in terms of three elements:
1) A set of conversational skills in listening, questioning and reflecting, aimed at eliciting clarity and motivation, which is to say, choice and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest, which creates a space in which you can look more lucidly at life and yourself, which enables you to grow and to move forward.
3) Therapeutic knowledge which is drawn from multiple sources, including research, and the collective experience of therapists across more than a century.
Counselling is a whole discipline in itself. It is different to psychotherapy, though well-trained counsellors like myself also study the psychotherapies. A psychotherapy differs in the sense that, while counselling draws broadly on different theories, each psychotherapy is an expression of one particular theory of human nature, with respect to its mental ills and their antidotes, which is applied as a therapy. Because there are many such competing theories, there are many psychotherapies. I draw from across these, from a variety of humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive behavioural therapies, for they all offer useful insights and practices. I refuse, however, to narrow myself to any particular therapy.
I should add that I have an especial depth of knowledge and experience in "a philosophical form of psychotherapy" known as Existential Therapy. The title Existential Therapy refers to a collection of different approaches such as those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl. In 2012 I began a private practice in Existential Therapy, as part of the long plan of becoming a broadly competent Philosophical Counsellor, and the URL of this website shows that history. All of these therapies are integrated into my counselling, and that in turn is integrated with philosophy, to form Philosophical Counselling.
Philosophy
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? It has two aspects. First, wisdom is a more true and good vision of things. Second, wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as a view of things that is as good and true as possible....
We need a view of life and our concerns which is adequately true and good. We need to see well in order to steer ourselves well: to avoid or diminish the bad stuff in life--both out there and in our head. And to experience and increase the good stuff. Wisdom is a lens and a roadmap for this.
What is wisdom made of? It is the sum of the various "intellectual virtues." That is to say, the good qualities of mind, such as courage, justice, humility, curiosity, strength, compassion, reason, and any other quality that makes our minds better. The notion of wisdom, virtue, and character has gone out of fashion in the last fifty years, but consider for example how the possession of each of those qualities just mentioned improves your relationships, and how their absence in you makes things worse.
Wisdom as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues....
This leads us to the second aspect of wisdom: as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues. There are two main kinds of virtue: the intellectual virtues and the character virtues. The intellectual virtues are "good qualities of mind" for which I just gave some examples. When these qualities flow on to shape our emotions and actions, as they naturally do, then we have the character virtues. Hence, through the habit of looking and thinking courageously, you start to habitually feel courage, and to act courageously. Virtues are qualities that we can choose to cultivate, and that can change everything. This is the fundamental insight of the great philosophers and sages from across the ages, both East and West, both religious and rationalist. For example, the oldest recorded words of the Buddha state: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs claim that: "As you think, so shall you be."
We can define a virtue as:
1) Any good personal quality
2) Which we cultivate
3) And which makes us better people
4) And which therefore makes our lives better.
The virtues change us, and that changes our lives. This goes deeper than psychological work, for it changes the entire paradigm through which we see and act, and does so in a way which accords with reality. We come to see differently, in a way which we have chosen and which is our achievement, and that makes us naturally more resilient, courageous, and good. This leads to a way of living that is more meaningful, such that we find life more meaningful. It also makes us more capable of happiness, and more likely to flourish. Academic philosophers refer to this paradigm as Virtue Ethics. It is the heart of ancient or classical philosophy, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists.
Philosophy as a treasury of wisdom....
As with counselling, we can add a third element to our definition of philosophy. Philosophy is "the great conversation," the collected wisdom of the ages. It is the collection of the writing of some of humanity's finest hearts and minds, regarding the struggles and possibilities of being human. I bring this wisdom into my conversations with clients, drawing on the specific insights of philosophers and sages, and recommending reading tailored to you and your concerns.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Based on the definitions above, it can be defined as:
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight and motivation, especially at a psychological and practical level.
2) Counselling's empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest therapeutic relationship.
3) The knowledge which a counsellor possesses through formal training and through ongoing therapeutic experience.
4) The pursuit of wisdom, with all that follows as per above.
5) The cultivation of virtue, with all that follows as per above.
6) An awareness and perhaps exploration of the writing of the sages and philosophers from across the ages.
I wrote above that philosophy helped me with life in ways that counselling did not, and that counselling helped in ways that philosophy did not. We want to do something about our suffering, and we want to make life good. In this respect, sometimes we need to do therapeutic psychological work on ourselves. Because such therapeutic work can be so important and powerful, I chose to spend years becoming a qualified and experienced counsellor. At the same time, therapeutic work has significant limitations. Therapy focuses on our psychology, just as personal training focuses on our strength and fitness. Our psychology, like our muscles, are a part of us, but they are not us, we are not reducible to them. We are much more than our psychology. We are more than psychological machines. We are centres of consciousness.
Philosophy: the shaping of consciousness....
It is challenging to describe consciousness, to describe what we are, for we cannot step outside of consciousness to do so. We cannot genuinely objectify or reduce consciousness, even though same people claim to. Laying aside the question of the strange motivations which drive people to desire the reduction of life to something mechanical and meaningless, even when that requires complex irrational arguments--which invites therapeutic questions--it is also often true that such people are "bewitched by language." They assume that because the word "consciousness" can be an object in a sentence, an it or thing, therefore consciousness is in reality an object, it, or thing. However, any attempt to think about consciousness is itself always an act of consciousness. This is the crux of the matter. We can never get outside or objectify consciousness. Not now, and not in future, no matter how clever our science becomes. We are in consciousness. We are consciousness. We dwell in its mystery.
While we cannot objectify or reduce our consciousness in order to work on it, yet we can choose how we are as consciousness. How we act or enact what we are. For consciousness is a mode of being, and in the classical metaphysical sense being action. To be is to act. A stone is a certain kind of action, as is a bird, as is a conscious human being. In concrete terms, as the act of consciousness, we can direct our attention well or badly. We can let ourselves fall asleep, or blind ourselves, or we can choose to wake up, to look, to be alive to reality. We can exercise our will, and well or badly. We can listen to, and hone, our intuition. We can explore with imagination. In this respect, the traditional arts and humanities are far more important than science and technology, when it comes to living well and meaningfully. In particular, there is a discipline which is focused, not on one of the human arts, but rather on the direction and quality of our consciousness itself. It is a discipline which works on who and what we are at our existential core. This is the work of philosophy. Or rather, classical philosophy, the philosophy I have described here. The philosophy we find in both the East and West, outside of modernity or modern philosophy. This deeper form of philosophy is the discipline of direction and effort with respect to how we see and how we will. When we choose to see and will in good ways, we call this wisdom and virtue.
Because most people are familiar with the ways counselling can help, I am saying less about it, and focusing on how philosophy shapes life. I will discuss this below with respect to the theme of wisdom, and then the theme of virtue.
Wisdom
I defined wisdom as a view of things that is as true and good as possible. Why is this important? Well, firstly, most of us care about truth and goodness for their own sake. To put it one way, we want to be people who are true, and who are good. This includes being a true and good partner, parent, friend, and so on. Secondly, most of us care about these values, and certain others (justice, beauty...), because they are vital ingrediants in a genuinely meaningful life. The life of satisfaction, or of better functioning, or of material success, or approval from others, is desirable...but not in itself meaningful. To live truthfully, to be a source of goodness, to love or create the beautiful, these things are meaningful. Third, wisdom is a map of reality, which guides us to avoid the bad stuff in life, and to encounter the good stuff, and to cultivate more of the good. This matters to most of us in many ways. For example, bad things will come, and sometimes they will be terrible. Wisdom is a more comprehensive map of life, which enables us therefore to comprehend the bad when it comes. Such comprehension enables us to respond productively, in contrast to reacting with overwhelm and making things worse or becoming people we do not want to be. This is especially important given that people have different kinds of resilience, and different weak points: wisdom includes understanding yours doing whatever work will help.
With respect to the dark and sometimes terrible side of life, and especially with respect to our own particular vulnerabilities, we all walk around with a secret terror of these things. Some people are somewhat conscious of this terror and so suffer anxiety, depression, and the like regarding it, while others cannot tolerate it and so instinctively repress it in favour of arrogance and delusion. Either way, this same wisdom which helps us when the bad things happen, also helps us regarding those same things even if they never happen. It helps us with the ongoing terror of them, and so with our problematic defense mechanisms against them. A part of cultivating wisdom is the practice which the Stoic philosophers called premeditatio malorum (reflection on future evils). This is similar to what therapists call catastrophising, except that it is a productive version. In catastrophising you imagine the worst, and imagine yourself trapped in that, helpless and pathetic. With respect to premeditatio malorum, you also imagine the worst--your deeper fears--but you work through the scenario by acting out your best capacities and possibilities. Catastrophising involves fantasising that you will be helpless, while premeditatio malorum involve imagination your real capacities and possibilities for living with dignity and meaning, your ability to handle suffering even if it is terrible, and for creating new meaning. I worked for five years as a counsellor for people who came whom to find their partner or child hanging. Some of them became unable to work, and some even became homeless for a time. Deep suffering is a part of life. But we have much more within us than we realise. In real situations we have choices, especially with regard to the spirit in which we respond, and we can practice this in lucid imagination, with respect to the fears that haunt us, to strengthen ourselves here and now, and to live more meaningfully right now.
Premeditatio malorum is just one practice, an example, which captures something about how we cultivate wisdom which enables us not only to live well with objective suffering, but also with the stuff that invades our minds even when outward life seems fine. There is another related benefit to these aspects of wisdom. Wisdom enables you to live with much greater confidence in this unpredictable world. This is not hubris, rather it is like the martial artist who is naturally more physically confident as they walk about in the world, even if they hope never to use their skills on the street.
Something I did not address above is how some of the misfortune of life can radically undermine your sense of self, your sense of worth. Hence, you need the kind of wisdom which maintains your sense of value and worth even when the storms of life strip you of the social accoutrements which (more deeply than you probably realise) have until now provided you with your sense of worth. You need a philosophy, a wisdom, which involves sources of personal value which is deeper or higher than those values which are prey to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We can note here that the point of cultivating wisdom is not only protective, but ultimately positive. We need to be nourished and strengthened by the most true and good sense of life's meaning that we can cultivate. For some people that vision is, or may be turn out to be, religious. For others it is not formally religious, but it is spiritual in some metaphysical sense. For others it is secular, whether agnostic or atheistic. My role is not to convert you to one of these positions; I will respect your commitments, only challenging them when you want that. For the heart of what I am doing applies regardless of your orientation (unless of course you are a dogmatically absolute adherent of nihilism). As a philosopher in the tradition of Plato (Platonism) my skill lies in the perception of the implicit forms of value and meaning which run through life, which are in front of our eyes but which we fail to perceive. I work with making implicit meaning and value explicit. For often we need to make it explicit in order to be nourished and guided by it. We are concious beings, and we need to make meaning conscious. The cultivation of wisdom is the cultivation of your ability to see, to be nourished by, and to be transformed by, the very real kaleidoscope of meaning and value that constitutes life.
Virtue
They say that virtue is its own reward. This is because wisdom and virtue inherently lead to certain things. These benefits include:
How you perceive and think matters greatly. Everything else flows from there. Philosophical Counselling is about improving yourself at this level, so as to make contact with that which is true and good, and to participate in it, and to bring it into being, in all the concreteness and particularity of your life. Whether you are gripped by fear (anxiety), depression (despair), grief, anger, are having difficulty navigating life's challenges or making life work, or are doing fine but want to grow and improve, and to experience a more enriched life, Philosophical Counselling is designed to help.
What is Philosophical Counselling? Because the approach is a uncommon, this page is focused on providing a definition. I will begin by defining counselling, and then philosophy, and then Philosophical Counselling. It is worth noting that these are my definitions, reflecting my training, experience, and views, and that other professionals in each of these three fields may see things differently.
It might help if I start with a brief description of how I came to practice Philosophical Counselling. In the 1990s I was a highschool drop-out working in a factory. One day I wandered into a bookshop and walked out with a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I had discovered philosophy and, as I went deeper, encountered a practice and tradition that was literally life-changing. Here was a profound source of wisdom for dealing with the dark sides of life and for cultivating the good. So I made my into The University of Melbourne where I studied and eventually taught philosophy. I did well academically, but in time I became frustrated due to the difference between philosophy as I had encountered it, versus academic philosophy. I was drawn to philosophy as something which was deeply, personally helpful, with respect to suffering and meaning, and I wanted to share such philosophy with others. I witnessed this same desire in my students, who were often quite disappointed when they encountered the academic version of philosophy. I wanted to develop a way of doing philosophy, one-on-one with people, to help their with their lives.
During that time I happened to attend some very beneficial counselling. It helped me in ways that philosophy had not. Yet, philosophy helped me with life in ways that counselling did not. I was struck by an idea. I would study counselling and combine the two. This would create a framework to help people as a philosopher, but as a form of help it would draw on the best of not only philosophy, but also counselling, offering people the riches of both disciplines in one practice. This plan unfolded across two decades. I became a masters-qualified counsellor, and spent years working in mainstream counselling organisations focused on issues such as relationships, career, grief, suicide, and so forth, gaining much experience and competence. All the while I maintained my identity and passion as a philosopher, and brought philosophy into those contexts, learning how to combine the two disciplines. Today I am on the other side of that long project, and work purely in private practice offering Philosophical Counselling.
Philosophical Counselling is broad in its scope. Naturally, it helps with the same issues one takes to mainstream counselling, but goes beyond that, and indeed beyond the limits of mainstream therapy. For the point is not only improvement in your functioning, success, or satisfaction, but broader and deeper growth in you as a human being, which is to say: growth at the level of consciousness--intellect, will, intuition, imagination--with all the effects of that on your life as a whole.
Counselling
I define counselling in terms of three elements:
1) A set of conversational skills in listening, questioning and reflecting, aimed at eliciting clarity and motivation, which is to say, choice and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest, which creates a space in which you can look more lucidly at life and yourself, which enables you to grow and to move forward.
3) Therapeutic knowledge which is drawn from multiple sources, including research, and the collective experience of therapists across more than a century.
Counselling is a whole discipline in itself. It is different to psychotherapy, though well-trained counsellors like myself also study the psychotherapies. A psychotherapy differs in the sense that, while counselling draws broadly on different theories, each psychotherapy is an expression of one particular theory of human nature, with respect to its mental ills and their antidotes, which is applied as a therapy. Because there are many such competing theories, there are many psychotherapies. I draw from across these, from a variety of humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive behavioural therapies, for they all offer useful insights and practices. I refuse, however, to narrow myself to any particular therapy.
I should add that I have an especial depth of knowledge and experience in "a philosophical form of psychotherapy" known as Existential Therapy. The title Existential Therapy refers to a collection of different approaches such as those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl. In 2012 I began a private practice in Existential Therapy, as part of the long plan of becoming a broadly competent Philosophical Counsellor, and the URL of this website shows that history. All of these therapies are integrated into my counselling, and that in turn is integrated with philosophy, to form Philosophical Counselling.
Philosophy
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? It has two aspects. First, wisdom is a more true and good vision of things. Second, wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as a view of things that is as good and true as possible....
We need a view of life and our concerns which is adequately true and good. We need to see well in order to steer ourselves well: to avoid or diminish the bad stuff in life--both out there and in our head. And to experience and increase the good stuff. Wisdom is a lens and a roadmap for this.
What is wisdom made of? It is the sum of the various "intellectual virtues." That is to say, the good qualities of mind, such as courage, justice, humility, curiosity, strength, compassion, reason, and any other quality that makes our minds better. The notion of wisdom, virtue, and character has gone out of fashion in the last fifty years, but consider for example how the possession of each of those qualities just mentioned improves your relationships, and how their absence in you makes things worse.
Wisdom as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues....
This leads us to the second aspect of wisdom: as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues. There are two main kinds of virtue: the intellectual virtues and the character virtues. The intellectual virtues are "good qualities of mind" for which I just gave some examples. When these qualities flow on to shape our emotions and actions, as they naturally do, then we have the character virtues. Hence, through the habit of looking and thinking courageously, you start to habitually feel courage, and to act courageously. Virtues are qualities that we can choose to cultivate, and that can change everything. This is the fundamental insight of the great philosophers and sages from across the ages, both East and West, both religious and rationalist. For example, the oldest recorded words of the Buddha state: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs claim that: "As you think, so shall you be."
We can define a virtue as:
1) Any good personal quality
2) Which we cultivate
3) And which makes us better people
4) And which therefore makes our lives better.
The virtues change us, and that changes our lives. This goes deeper than psychological work, for it changes the entire paradigm through which we see and act, and does so in a way which accords with reality. We come to see differently, in a way which we have chosen and which is our achievement, and that makes us naturally more resilient, courageous, and good. This leads to a way of living that is more meaningful, such that we find life more meaningful. It also makes us more capable of happiness, and more likely to flourish. Academic philosophers refer to this paradigm as Virtue Ethics. It is the heart of ancient or classical philosophy, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists.
Philosophy as a treasury of wisdom....
As with counselling, we can add a third element to our definition of philosophy. Philosophy is "the great conversation," the collected wisdom of the ages. It is the collection of the writing of some of humanity's finest hearts and minds, regarding the struggles and possibilities of being human. I bring this wisdom into my conversations with clients, drawing on the specific insights of philosophers and sages, and recommending reading tailored to you and your concerns.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Based on the definitions above, it can be defined as:
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight and motivation, especially at a psychological and practical level.
2) Counselling's empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest therapeutic relationship.
3) The knowledge which a counsellor possesses through formal training and through ongoing therapeutic experience.
4) The pursuit of wisdom, with all that follows as per above.
5) The cultivation of virtue, with all that follows as per above.
6) An awareness and perhaps exploration of the writing of the sages and philosophers from across the ages.
I wrote above that philosophy helped me with life in ways that counselling did not, and that counselling helped in ways that philosophy did not. We want to do something about our suffering, and we want to make life good. In this respect, sometimes we need to do therapeutic psychological work on ourselves. Because such therapeutic work can be so important and powerful, I chose to spend years becoming a qualified and experienced counsellor. At the same time, therapeutic work has significant limitations. Therapy focuses on our psychology, just as personal training focuses on our strength and fitness. Our psychology, like our muscles, are a part of us, but they are not us, we are not reducible to them. We are much more than our psychology. We are more than psychological machines. We are centres of consciousness.
Philosophy: the shaping of consciousness....
It is challenging to describe consciousness, to describe what we are, for we cannot step outside of consciousness to do so. We cannot genuinely objectify or reduce consciousness, even though same people claim to. Laying aside the question of the strange motivations which drive people to desire the reduction of life to something mechanical and meaningless, even when that requires complex irrational arguments--which invites therapeutic questions--it is also often true that such people are "bewitched by language." They assume that because the word "consciousness" can be an object in a sentence, an it or thing, therefore consciousness is in reality an object, it, or thing. However, any attempt to think about consciousness is itself always an act of consciousness. This is the crux of the matter. We can never get outside or objectify consciousness. Not now, and not in future, no matter how clever our science becomes. We are in consciousness. We are consciousness. We dwell in its mystery.
While we cannot objectify or reduce our consciousness in order to work on it, yet we can choose how we are as consciousness. How we act or enact what we are. For consciousness is a mode of being, and in the classical metaphysical sense being action. To be is to act. A stone is a certain kind of action, as is a bird, as is a conscious human being. In concrete terms, as the act of consciousness, we can direct our attention well or badly. We can let ourselves fall asleep, or blind ourselves, or we can choose to wake up, to look, to be alive to reality. We can exercise our will, and well or badly. We can listen to, and hone, our intuition. We can explore with imagination. In this respect, the traditional arts and humanities are far more important than science and technology, when it comes to living well and meaningfully. In particular, there is a discipline which is focused, not on one of the human arts, but rather on the direction and quality of our consciousness itself. It is a discipline which works on who and what we are at our existential core. This is the work of philosophy. Or rather, classical philosophy, the philosophy I have described here. The philosophy we find in both the East and West, outside of modernity or modern philosophy. This deeper form of philosophy is the discipline of direction and effort with respect to how we see and how we will. When we choose to see and will in good ways, we call this wisdom and virtue.
Because most people are familiar with the ways counselling can help, I am saying less about it, and focusing on how philosophy shapes life. I will discuss this below with respect to the theme of wisdom, and then the theme of virtue.
Wisdom
I defined wisdom as a view of things that is as true and good as possible. Why is this important? Well, firstly, most of us care about truth and goodness for their own sake. To put it one way, we want to be people who are true, and who are good. This includes being a true and good partner, parent, friend, and so on. Secondly, most of us care about these values, and certain others (justice, beauty...), because they are vital ingrediants in a genuinely meaningful life. The life of satisfaction, or of better functioning, or of material success, or approval from others, is desirable...but not in itself meaningful. To live truthfully, to be a source of goodness, to love or create the beautiful, these things are meaningful. Third, wisdom is a map of reality, which guides us to avoid the bad stuff in life, and to encounter the good stuff, and to cultivate more of the good. This matters to most of us in many ways. For example, bad things will come, and sometimes they will be terrible. Wisdom is a more comprehensive map of life, which enables us therefore to comprehend the bad when it comes. Such comprehension enables us to respond productively, in contrast to reacting with overwhelm and making things worse or becoming people we do not want to be. This is especially important given that people have different kinds of resilience, and different weak points: wisdom includes understanding yours doing whatever work will help.
With respect to the dark and sometimes terrible side of life, and especially with respect to our own particular vulnerabilities, we all walk around with a secret terror of these things. Some people are somewhat conscious of this terror and so suffer anxiety, depression, and the like regarding it, while others cannot tolerate it and so instinctively repress it in favour of arrogance and delusion. Either way, this same wisdom which helps us when the bad things happen, also helps us regarding those same things even if they never happen. It helps us with the ongoing terror of them, and so with our problematic defense mechanisms against them. A part of cultivating wisdom is the practice which the Stoic philosophers called premeditatio malorum (reflection on future evils). This is similar to what therapists call catastrophising, except that it is a productive version. In catastrophising you imagine the worst, and imagine yourself trapped in that, helpless and pathetic. With respect to premeditatio malorum, you also imagine the worst--your deeper fears--but you work through the scenario by acting out your best capacities and possibilities. Catastrophising involves fantasising that you will be helpless, while premeditatio malorum involve imagination your real capacities and possibilities for living with dignity and meaning, your ability to handle suffering even if it is terrible, and for creating new meaning. I worked for five years as a counsellor for people who came whom to find their partner or child hanging. Some of them became unable to work, and some even became homeless for a time. Deep suffering is a part of life. But we have much more within us than we realise. In real situations we have choices, especially with regard to the spirit in which we respond, and we can practice this in lucid imagination, with respect to the fears that haunt us, to strengthen ourselves here and now, and to live more meaningfully right now.
Premeditatio malorum is just one practice, an example, which captures something about how we cultivate wisdom which enables us not only to live well with objective suffering, but also with the stuff that invades our minds even when outward life seems fine. There is another related benefit to these aspects of wisdom. Wisdom enables you to live with much greater confidence in this unpredictable world. This is not hubris, rather it is like the martial artist who is naturally more physically confident as they walk about in the world, even if they hope never to use their skills on the street.
Something I did not address above is how some of the misfortune of life can radically undermine your sense of self, your sense of worth. Hence, you need the kind of wisdom which maintains your sense of value and worth even when the storms of life strip you of the social accoutrements which (more deeply than you probably realise) have until now provided you with your sense of worth. You need a philosophy, a wisdom, which involves sources of personal value which is deeper or higher than those values which are prey to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We can note here that the point of cultivating wisdom is not only protective, but ultimately positive. We need to be nourished and strengthened by the most true and good sense of life's meaning that we can cultivate. For some people that vision is, or may be turn out to be, religious. For others it is not formally religious, but it is spiritual in some metaphysical sense. For others it is secular, whether agnostic or atheistic. My role is not to convert you to one of these positions; I will respect your commitments, only challenging them when you want that. For the heart of what I am doing applies regardless of your orientation (unless of course you are a dogmatically absolute adherent of nihilism). As a philosopher in the tradition of Plato (Platonism) my skill lies in the perception of the implicit forms of value and meaning which run through life, which are in front of our eyes but which we fail to perceive. I work with making implicit meaning and value explicit. For often we need to make it explicit in order to be nourished and guided by it. We are concious beings, and we need to make meaning conscious. The cultivation of wisdom is the cultivation of your ability to see, to be nourished by, and to be transformed by, the very real kaleidoscope of meaning and value that constitutes life.
Virtue
They say that virtue is its own reward. This is because wisdom and virtue inherently lead to certain things. These benefits include:
- Wisdom: a more true and good vision of things, which can guide us at both a big picture and practical level.
- Inward or emotional strength: the ability to cope which follows from both 1) the cultivation of courage, practical wisdom, and other virtues, and 2) from an increase in wisdom, meaning, value, purpose.
- Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to put our best foot forward.
- Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life, no matter what else happens;
- Meaning: life is far more meaningful than we tend to realise, but to experience this we need to cultivate our wisdom and virtue, and our ability to see what there is in reality.
- Happiness, which is partly a matter of chance, but also a consequence of our capacity for it. The virtues constitute that capacity for genuine happiness (consider how humility or courage or wisdom makes us much more capable of it, while their opposite robs us of it).
- Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life, especially in terms of such things as relationships, work, and money. Flouirshing is, again, partly a matter of chance, but again it is are made far more likely through the virtues, and far less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that character is fate.
How you perceive and think matters greatly. Everything else flows from there. Philosophical Counselling is about improving yourself at this level, so as to make contact with that which is true and good, and to participate in it, and to bring it into being, in all the concreteness and particularity of your life. Whether you are gripped by fear (anxiety), depression (despair), grief, anger, are having difficulty navigating life's challenges or making life work, or are doing fine but want to grow and improve, and to experience a more enriched life, Philosophical Counselling is designed to help.