What is Philosophical Counselling?
Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling. It helps people to deal with their challenges and to make life better through the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. By working on your problems in this way you become more wise, strong, capable, and good, and that in turn increases your general happiness and flourishing. In what follows I describe my approach. I will start with counselling, and then philosophy, and then their combination as Philosophical Counselling. Different professionals will differ in how they define all of these practices, so what follows are my definitions.
Counselling, Psychotherapy
When I set out to become a philosophical counsellor, I decided to study counselling. I saw that counselling would provide me with a framework, and give me a set of advanced skills for the kind of conversations I wanted to offer. Counselling can be boiled down to two main ingrediants:
1) A way of being which offers a therapeutic relationship that is empathetic and non-judgemental, which treats people as unconditionally valuable, and which is predicated on the healing, improving, and liberating value of exploring and speaking truth.
2) A sophisticated set of conversational skills aimed at eliciting insight, clarity, motivation, change, and personal growth.
This essence of counselling can be paired with many areas of concerns and knowledge, to form personal growth counselling, or couples counselling, or mental health counselling, or pastoral counselling, and so on, including in my case Philosophical Counselling. This is what I mean whenever I say that Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling.
My studies were in counselling, which included psychotherapy. Although it was not my intention to go so deep, I developed a passion for psychotherapy, and so I developed a whole second career alongside philosophy. I studied therapy to masters level, and for fifteen years worked for counselling organisations in areas 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. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions. I was registered with the national counselling association at their most senior level. I did all this work part-time, while continuing in my philosophical work. Always the goal was eventually to work pure in Philosophical Counsellling, but I could see that this therapeutic detour would greatly enrich my capacities as a philosophical counsellor.
Importantly, I studied Counselling and Psychotherapy, and not Psychology or Psychiatry. Therapy as we know it is a 20th century invention, and expresses the ideological paradigms of its time. There are two very different paradigms of therapy. The first involves the phenomenological approaches, which elicit insight, motivation, change, and personal growth. The second are the clinical approaches which assess, diagnose, and treat patients according to a medicalised or psychiatric schema. Both kinds of help work with the psychological dimensions of people, but in these very different ways. The clinical model is the "dominant discourse" in our technocratic culture, and so people sometimes assume that all therapists are clinical, but it should only be assumed of psychologists and psychiatrists and the like, and not of counsellors and psychotherapists. I was trained in the phenomenological paradigm, the personal growth orientation, and not in the clinical paradigm.
But what of counselling versus psychotherapy? Professionals disagree about how to define and distinguish them. I just defined counselling as I understand and practice it. Arguably, we can say that counselling is atheoretical. I define a psychotherapy, by contrast, as the therapeutic application of a certain theory. I studied various psychotherapies, for example psychodynamic therapy with its rich understanding of the emotional defenses. Above all, I studied the various existential therapies. Some existential therapies amount to a psychological therapy with philosophical themes, while others are Philosophical Counselling but of a kind that draws on existential, hermeneutic, and phenomenological philosophy. In 2012 I started a private practice which focused at first on the existential therapies, for that provided me with an established literature and practice to develop a philosophical way of working. In time, I increased the degree to which my approach drew on classical philosophy, and that is now at the heart of my Philosophical Counselling.
Twenty years of study and then professional work as a mainstream counsellor and psychotherapist have greatly enriched my Philosophical Counselling in many ways. I bring decades of psychological therapeutic knowledge and skill to my work, and often use or recommend psychological practices or techniques. Of course, in many professions, intensive experience across decades transforms all the skill and experience into a rich, deep, nuanced kind of "professional intuition," a capacity to read the person, object or situation with a clarity and sophistication which can only come from decades of such focus and work. I noticed this effect after about a decade of practice, and I bring this deeper professional intuition, this rich and nuanced capacity to read a person's experience, way of being, and psychological patterns, into my Philosophical Counselling.
What is the difference between the philosophical and the psychological? These realities are distinct, but the boundaries are not sharp, for this is not logic, it is life, in which categorical differences merge from one into another, like colours which clearly differ in their centre but blur at their boundaries. Philosophy regards consciousness, and more specifically reason and will. It concerns also the active, intentional effort of our other powers of consciousness such as memory, imagination, and so on. If philosophy regards the higher levels of our consciousness, psychology refers to the sub-conscious dimensions of us. Our psychology is a dynamic energy, in the form of structures and patterns, which aims above all at the functioning of the organism. To do philosophy is to make an effort at the level of our higher consciousness, our intellect and will. To do psychological work is to identify, analyse, and shape on the sub-conscious energies or patterns within us, what Carl Rogers called the functioning of the organism. It is important to understand and work on our sub-conscious psychology, just as it is important to work on our bodily health, but life is much more than that. Indeed, when most people intuit that there is a point to life, they sense that it has to do with becoming more fully consciousness, more fully lucid, more true, more good, more able to perceive and appreciate what is truly good and beautiful in life.
There is a necessity and complementarity in the relation between philosophy and psychology. Consider an example: a person sub-consciously defends themselves from their fears by using cynicism as a psychological defense, and as a result of that cynical view of life they begin to despair, to feel that life has no meaning. The antidote to that despair requires work at both the psychological and philosophical level. We need to see what is happening psychologically: how the cynicism is merely a psychological defense, for example rationalisation. (Psychotherapists have discerned roughly thirty such defenses.) We will need, of course, to understand also the fears which arouse that defense. Having understood what is happening at that sub-conscious level, the positive change needed is a matter of conscious choice and effort, and so it is the work of philosophy. We respond to the fear, and to our defensive urges, with greater wisdom and virtue. In the light of what we have seen, in terms of psychological patterns, and problems regarding wisdom and virtue, we need to consider what a positively wise and virtuous way of being looks like in response to these problems, and we cultivate all that. Again, pscyhological and philosophical work are distinct: to work on your psychology is to work on a part of you--your sub-conscious psychological forces--while to do philosophical work is to enact yourself. You are not simply working on yourself, rather you are enacting your reason and will, your wisdom and virtue. You are becoming more fully your true or best self, all that which is wonderful and latent in you as a conscious human being. To do philosophy is to look, to strive, to become. Let us now turn to such philosophy.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted in the classical tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, which continues through Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Scholasticism, and up to our times among certain philosophers. 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, and so a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision of things as a whole.
2) Wisdom is the ability to understand a situation, and to make good practical judgements and decisions.
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a vision of life as a whole which is adequately true and good. Most people are dissatisfied with fantasy and self-hypnosis--they want a picture of life that is as true as possible. But what if we find two pictures which are both rationally compelling? Imagine that one throws acid on life's meaning, or encourages callousness, while the other is rich in meaning. We also need goodness, and so an understanding of life that is as good as possible. Such a vision of life gives us strength, makes us better, gives life meaning, and makes it generally better.
With respect to the second definition, we need the wisdom to steer ourselves well at a practical, daily level: to navigate people and situations, to make good decisions, to lessen the bad and increase the good. We need to know what to do and how to do it. Aristotle called this phronesis or practical wisdom. Of course, this practical wisdom, and the above "contemplative" wisdom, are related. For example, how we steer ourselves in practical situations will reflect our vision of life, of what is true and of what matters.
What is wisdom made of? In modernity we assume it is knowledge--a set of true beliefs--or a technical capacity, but that is not right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather, it is the exercise of various personal qualities. Wisdom is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. In classical philosophy we have a name for such good qualities: virtues. This is why I said that wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues. The ancient Greek word for a virtue is arete, which means a human excellence. The virtues are our best qualities as human beings. Our best qualities at the level of reason and free will, of conscious choice. These include not only moral virtues, but all the qualities we need to make life good.
There are different levels of virtue, and wisdom is the exercise of what Aristotle called the intellectual virtues. That is, to be wise is to perceive and think with virtues such as courage, justice, curiosity, compassion, firmness, charity, rationality, and so on. It is to become a more courageous and reasonable thinker. Philosophy is the work of identifying and analysing these virtues, both in themselves, and as they are present or absent in you. Importantly, philosophy is the work of cultivating these virtues.
The benefits of wisdom and virtue
The intellectual virtues (virtues at the level of the mind) can be distinguished from the character virtues (virtues at the level of feeling, desire, and action). Both levels share many of the same virtues, for example courage, yet courage differs at the level of the head, versus courage of the heart, versus courage of the hands. There are also important differences between people's aptitudes. Some people are more present in their head, some more in their heart, and some more in their hands. People also have differing virtues and vices from one another. (The Stoics would say that this is why we are a community, just as the hands, eyes, and feet are all very different but form a community.) It is good to work on increasing and widening the virtues within yourself. Generally this presents itself as a need. For example, you may have the courage to look squarely at your own deeper fears, but not the courage to push back on others, while the next person has the opposite problem. Or you might be highly rational, but deficient in empathy, or vice versa. These imbalances, these deficiences in our mind and character, cause many of the problems in our life, of the kind that people typically bring to mainstream counselling. They also diminish who we are, in terms of character. Life can improve greatly if we work on shaping ourselves to become more wise and virtuous, starting with the obvious deficiences.
To develop your wisdom and virtue is to become a person who is naturally stronger, happier, more ethical, and who finds daily life, and life as a whole, more meaningful. It is likewise to become less despondent, less fearful, less angry, less bored, less insecure, and so on. Such philosophical work is more powerful than anything else we can do to improve our lives. Importantly, it lies in your power to do this work on your wisdom and virtue, and the training equipment needed to strengthen and hone that is simply your life. The virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
In summary, we can define any virtue as:
1) A good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
Classical philosophy developed a rich paradigm for understanding and cultivating wisdom and virtue. This is why we call it "a guide to life." During the 20th century we slowly abandoned this focus on wisdom and virtue, in favour of a technocratic view of ourselves, reduced to the lens of behavioural psychology and psychiatry. That trend had some benefits, but also many significant costs. The greatest change and most good happens through your effort of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. We need to rediscover this ancient classical path, which is our truest source of strength, ability, and goodness, no matter what our challenges. This is what I am doing as a philosophical counsellor. Of course, you do not need me to do this work. For this work is fundamentally something you do within yourself, it is not something another does to you as when a doctor or clinical psychologist does diagnoses and treats to you. Yet, a philosopher who is an experienced, mature, skillful guide on this path, is likely to be invaluable. This is especially the case if they practice their philosophy with the relational and conversational skills of counselling is defined above, which as I said elicit insight, motivation, change, and growth.
In summary, some of the specific benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Wisdom, as I have described above: a more true and good vision of things, which provides meaning, and which steers us well in life to avoid the bad and increase the good.
Inner strength, resilience, the ability to cope. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate, such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, compassion, and so forth, and we gain it through the further consequences of such cultivation which include an increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose. We can see here that there is a unity to the virtues, each increasing the other.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to stand up, to show up, and to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life, no matter what else happens.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we experience a genuine, robust sense of meaning.
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, and so its greater likelihood, while their lack (or opposites) can render us incapable of happiness.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life, regarding the things we care about. For some people that is a life of stability. 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 more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
A further point about the first aspect of wisdom: forms of contemplation
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. For example, an area to which I have given much time is the modern Platonists, such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the Australians Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. Furthermore, Existential Therapy is, for me, Philosophical Counselling as the practice of existentialism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, the practice of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and others associated with him. Again, another strong influence on me is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I name these examples because they are highly influential on me, and because here we are are dealing here with a more contemplative side to philosophy. A side that brings a richness to our capacity to gain wisdom at the level of the big picture, but through an analysis of the depths of what is before us: in the reality, people, struggles, and self, that we encounter.
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 philosophers like Christopher Cordner, 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 in what people say. 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. Or we are like a fish who does not see the water in which it swims, and despairs at the lack of its perceived presence. 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 begins with a higher vision. Such a vision must be good, but also true. This is the work of truth: we discern meaning and reality here in our concrete lives. That becomes the groundwork of a higher vision. I often have clients 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 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 tragic and 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 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.
Philosophy as a library, and a cultural inheritance
I would like to end by adding that philosophy also constitutes a written resource. It is a library of ideas. To quote Mortimer J. Adler, it is "the great conversation." I often recommend clients read Plato or the Stoics or secondary literature on a range of philosophical topics. I do that with respect to the client's specific challenges, and with a view to the broader work and benefits of this wisdom-tradition. Philosophical Counselling is in a sense a form of tutoring: I am teaching you to be a philosopher. I do not mean an academic, rather I mean what it says on the label: a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. They live in a certain way, in the love of wisdom, in its pursuit, in the cultivation of virtue. This is a meaningful life to live. Philosophy is a literary framework, almost a rational spirituality, around which you can build a practice of reading and reflection, which flows into your effort and action of daily life. People who cannot find their way to reading can see me anyway, for the core of philosophy is conversation. However, this further element is also on offer.
I recommend that people read, for the above reasons. I also often recommend activities which appear relevant for the individual and their improvement, whether that be spending time in nature, or attending social gatherings, or creating a personal retreat at certain intervals. Beyond this, there is another reason for recommending philosophical reading, and wider forms of reading and cultural engagement. Philosophy is a cultural practice. We find a version of philosophy in all great traditional civilisations. For example, one of my closest friends has dedicated her working life to activities grounded in Hindu philosophy and spirituality. In my case, as I say, I am embedded in, and in love with, the tradition which is native to me, which flows from ancient Greece, through Rome, into Western Europe. I love its traditional philosophy, but also its tradition of great and beautiful literature, art, music, and spirituality. This wider dimension is has pressed itself on me as important, especially because many people lack of a rich inner life, and while that is not a problem for all people, for many it is an absolute lack, a void in their life. Often this void is their normal state, so while they suffer from this lack, they do not recognise the problem. A lack of a rich inner life can include the absence of an inner culture, a word which in Middle English denotes a cultivated piece of land. A good garden in which to live. A mind that is a good place to be inside. I encourage people to engage with the wider riches of the Western inheritance. In a sense that is compatible even with a secular commitement, we can say that these riches have a spiritual value. They enrich and strengthen, they console and give meaning, they warn and enlighten, they orient and reveal. Consider the heroic and tragic poetry of Homer's Iliad, or the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, or the ethical vision of the New Testament, or the rational spirituality of Roman Stoicism, or the mystical beauty of Plotinus' Neoplatonism, or the sacred architecture of the middle ages--which is mirrored in the cathedral-like philosophical achievements of Thomas Aquinas--or the sublime sculpture of the Renaissance, or the tragic self-awareness of Shakespeare, or the transcendent beauty of Bach, or the glowing world of Romantic poetry, or the psychological richness of the nineteenth century novel, or the over-view of the twentieth century historian. Life looks and feels very different when you feed yourself on a diet of such an inheritance. I am a student of Plato, who spoke of truth, and of goodness, but equally of beauty, as food for the soul.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, is philosophical guidance within the framework of counselling. Based on what I have said above, we can list some of the ingrediants of this approach. I am listing these in the order I discussed them above, though of course 4, 5, and 6 are the most important ingrediants.
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight, motivation, growth, and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and truth-seeking.
3) A rich background of psychological know-how, from my years as a psychotherapist.
4) The philosophical pursuit of wisdom: a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue: a transformation of your way of being.
6) The work of making the implicit explicit, with respect to meaning and value.
7) A rich cultural inheritance that is on offer to clients in terms of recommendations.
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.
Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling. It helps people to deal with their challenges and to make life better through the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. By working on your problems in this way you become more wise, strong, capable, and good, and that in turn increases your general happiness and flourishing. In what follows I describe my approach. I will start with counselling, and then philosophy, and then their combination as Philosophical Counselling. Different professionals will differ in how they define all of these practices, so what follows are my definitions.
Counselling, Psychotherapy
When I set out to become a philosophical counsellor, I decided to study counselling. I saw that counselling would provide me with a framework, and give me a set of advanced skills for the kind of conversations I wanted to offer. Counselling can be boiled down to two main ingrediants:
1) A way of being which offers a therapeutic relationship that is empathetic and non-judgemental, which treats people as unconditionally valuable, and which is predicated on the healing, improving, and liberating value of exploring and speaking truth.
2) A sophisticated set of conversational skills aimed at eliciting insight, clarity, motivation, change, and personal growth.
This essence of counselling can be paired with many areas of concerns and knowledge, to form personal growth counselling, or couples counselling, or mental health counselling, or pastoral counselling, and so on, including in my case Philosophical Counselling. This is what I mean whenever I say that Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling.
My studies were in counselling, which included psychotherapy. Although it was not my intention to go so deep, I developed a passion for psychotherapy, and so I developed a whole second career alongside philosophy. I studied therapy to masters level, and for fifteen years worked for counselling organisations in areas 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. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions. I was registered with the national counselling association at their most senior level. I did all this work part-time, while continuing in my philosophical work. Always the goal was eventually to work pure in Philosophical Counsellling, but I could see that this therapeutic detour would greatly enrich my capacities as a philosophical counsellor.
Importantly, I studied Counselling and Psychotherapy, and not Psychology or Psychiatry. Therapy as we know it is a 20th century invention, and expresses the ideological paradigms of its time. There are two very different paradigms of therapy. The first involves the phenomenological approaches, which elicit insight, motivation, change, and personal growth. The second are the clinical approaches which assess, diagnose, and treat patients according to a medicalised or psychiatric schema. Both kinds of help work with the psychological dimensions of people, but in these very different ways. The clinical model is the "dominant discourse" in our technocratic culture, and so people sometimes assume that all therapists are clinical, but it should only be assumed of psychologists and psychiatrists and the like, and not of counsellors and psychotherapists. I was trained in the phenomenological paradigm, the personal growth orientation, and not in the clinical paradigm.
But what of counselling versus psychotherapy? Professionals disagree about how to define and distinguish them. I just defined counselling as I understand and practice it. Arguably, we can say that counselling is atheoretical. I define a psychotherapy, by contrast, as the therapeutic application of a certain theory. I studied various psychotherapies, for example psychodynamic therapy with its rich understanding of the emotional defenses. Above all, I studied the various existential therapies. Some existential therapies amount to a psychological therapy with philosophical themes, while others are Philosophical Counselling but of a kind that draws on existential, hermeneutic, and phenomenological philosophy. In 2012 I started a private practice which focused at first on the existential therapies, for that provided me with an established literature and practice to develop a philosophical way of working. In time, I increased the degree to which my approach drew on classical philosophy, and that is now at the heart of my Philosophical Counselling.
Twenty years of study and then professional work as a mainstream counsellor and psychotherapist have greatly enriched my Philosophical Counselling in many ways. I bring decades of psychological therapeutic knowledge and skill to my work, and often use or recommend psychological practices or techniques. Of course, in many professions, intensive experience across decades transforms all the skill and experience into a rich, deep, nuanced kind of "professional intuition," a capacity to read the person, object or situation with a clarity and sophistication which can only come from decades of such focus and work. I noticed this effect after about a decade of practice, and I bring this deeper professional intuition, this rich and nuanced capacity to read a person's experience, way of being, and psychological patterns, into my Philosophical Counselling.
What is the difference between the philosophical and the psychological? These realities are distinct, but the boundaries are not sharp, for this is not logic, it is life, in which categorical differences merge from one into another, like colours which clearly differ in their centre but blur at their boundaries. Philosophy regards consciousness, and more specifically reason and will. It concerns also the active, intentional effort of our other powers of consciousness such as memory, imagination, and so on. If philosophy regards the higher levels of our consciousness, psychology refers to the sub-conscious dimensions of us. Our psychology is a dynamic energy, in the form of structures and patterns, which aims above all at the functioning of the organism. To do philosophy is to make an effort at the level of our higher consciousness, our intellect and will. To do psychological work is to identify, analyse, and shape on the sub-conscious energies or patterns within us, what Carl Rogers called the functioning of the organism. It is important to understand and work on our sub-conscious psychology, just as it is important to work on our bodily health, but life is much more than that. Indeed, when most people intuit that there is a point to life, they sense that it has to do with becoming more fully consciousness, more fully lucid, more true, more good, more able to perceive and appreciate what is truly good and beautiful in life.
There is a necessity and complementarity in the relation between philosophy and psychology. Consider an example: a person sub-consciously defends themselves from their fears by using cynicism as a psychological defense, and as a result of that cynical view of life they begin to despair, to feel that life has no meaning. The antidote to that despair requires work at both the psychological and philosophical level. We need to see what is happening psychologically: how the cynicism is merely a psychological defense, for example rationalisation. (Psychotherapists have discerned roughly thirty such defenses.) We will need, of course, to understand also the fears which arouse that defense. Having understood what is happening at that sub-conscious level, the positive change needed is a matter of conscious choice and effort, and so it is the work of philosophy. We respond to the fear, and to our defensive urges, with greater wisdom and virtue. In the light of what we have seen, in terms of psychological patterns, and problems regarding wisdom and virtue, we need to consider what a positively wise and virtuous way of being looks like in response to these problems, and we cultivate all that. Again, pscyhological and philosophical work are distinct: to work on your psychology is to work on a part of you--your sub-conscious psychological forces--while to do philosophical work is to enact yourself. You are not simply working on yourself, rather you are enacting your reason and will, your wisdom and virtue. You are becoming more fully your true or best self, all that which is wonderful and latent in you as a conscious human being. To do philosophy is to look, to strive, to become. Let us now turn to such philosophy.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted in the classical tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, which continues through Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Scholasticism, and up to our times among certain philosophers. 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, and so a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision of things as a whole.
2) Wisdom is the ability to understand a situation, and to make good practical judgements and decisions.
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a vision of life as a whole which is adequately true and good. Most people are dissatisfied with fantasy and self-hypnosis--they want a picture of life that is as true as possible. But what if we find two pictures which are both rationally compelling? Imagine that one throws acid on life's meaning, or encourages callousness, while the other is rich in meaning. We also need goodness, and so an understanding of life that is as good as possible. Such a vision of life gives us strength, makes us better, gives life meaning, and makes it generally better.
With respect to the second definition, we need the wisdom to steer ourselves well at a practical, daily level: to navigate people and situations, to make good decisions, to lessen the bad and increase the good. We need to know what to do and how to do it. Aristotle called this phronesis or practical wisdom. Of course, this practical wisdom, and the above "contemplative" wisdom, are related. For example, how we steer ourselves in practical situations will reflect our vision of life, of what is true and of what matters.
What is wisdom made of? In modernity we assume it is knowledge--a set of true beliefs--or a technical capacity, but that is not right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather, it is the exercise of various personal qualities. Wisdom is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. In classical philosophy we have a name for such good qualities: virtues. This is why I said that wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues. The ancient Greek word for a virtue is arete, which means a human excellence. The virtues are our best qualities as human beings. Our best qualities at the level of reason and free will, of conscious choice. These include not only moral virtues, but all the qualities we need to make life good.
There are different levels of virtue, and wisdom is the exercise of what Aristotle called the intellectual virtues. That is, to be wise is to perceive and think with virtues such as courage, justice, curiosity, compassion, firmness, charity, rationality, and so on. It is to become a more courageous and reasonable thinker. Philosophy is the work of identifying and analysing these virtues, both in themselves, and as they are present or absent in you. Importantly, philosophy is the work of cultivating these virtues.
The benefits of wisdom and virtue
The intellectual virtues (virtues at the level of the mind) can be distinguished from the character virtues (virtues at the level of feeling, desire, and action). Both levels share many of the same virtues, for example courage, yet courage differs at the level of the head, versus courage of the heart, versus courage of the hands. There are also important differences between people's aptitudes. Some people are more present in their head, some more in their heart, and some more in their hands. People also have differing virtues and vices from one another. (The Stoics would say that this is why we are a community, just as the hands, eyes, and feet are all very different but form a community.) It is good to work on increasing and widening the virtues within yourself. Generally this presents itself as a need. For example, you may have the courage to look squarely at your own deeper fears, but not the courage to push back on others, while the next person has the opposite problem. Or you might be highly rational, but deficient in empathy, or vice versa. These imbalances, these deficiences in our mind and character, cause many of the problems in our life, of the kind that people typically bring to mainstream counselling. They also diminish who we are, in terms of character. Life can improve greatly if we work on shaping ourselves to become more wise and virtuous, starting with the obvious deficiences.
To develop your wisdom and virtue is to become a person who is naturally stronger, happier, more ethical, and who finds daily life, and life as a whole, more meaningful. It is likewise to become less despondent, less fearful, less angry, less bored, less insecure, and so on. Such philosophical work is more powerful than anything else we can do to improve our lives. Importantly, it lies in your power to do this work on your wisdom and virtue, and the training equipment needed to strengthen and hone that is simply your life. The virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
In summary, we can define any virtue as:
1) A good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
Classical philosophy developed a rich paradigm for understanding and cultivating wisdom and virtue. This is why we call it "a guide to life." During the 20th century we slowly abandoned this focus on wisdom and virtue, in favour of a technocratic view of ourselves, reduced to the lens of behavioural psychology and psychiatry. That trend had some benefits, but also many significant costs. The greatest change and most good happens through your effort of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. We need to rediscover this ancient classical path, which is our truest source of strength, ability, and goodness, no matter what our challenges. This is what I am doing as a philosophical counsellor. Of course, you do not need me to do this work. For this work is fundamentally something you do within yourself, it is not something another does to you as when a doctor or clinical psychologist does diagnoses and treats to you. Yet, a philosopher who is an experienced, mature, skillful guide on this path, is likely to be invaluable. This is especially the case if they practice their philosophy with the relational and conversational skills of counselling is defined above, which as I said elicit insight, motivation, change, and growth.
In summary, some of the specific benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Wisdom, as I have described above: a more true and good vision of things, which provides meaning, and which steers us well in life to avoid the bad and increase the good.
Inner strength, resilience, the ability to cope. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate, such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, compassion, and so forth, and we gain it through the further consequences of such cultivation which include an increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose. We can see here that there is a unity to the virtues, each increasing the other.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to stand up, to show up, and to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life, no matter what else happens.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we experience a genuine, robust sense of meaning.
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, and so its greater likelihood, while their lack (or opposites) can render us incapable of happiness.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life, regarding the things we care about. For some people that is a life of stability. 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 more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
A further point about the first aspect of wisdom: forms of contemplation
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. For example, an area to which I have given much time is the modern Platonists, such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the Australians Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. Furthermore, Existential Therapy is, for me, Philosophical Counselling as the practice of existentialism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, the practice of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and others associated with him. Again, another strong influence on me is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I name these examples because they are highly influential on me, and because here we are are dealing here with a more contemplative side to philosophy. A side that brings a richness to our capacity to gain wisdom at the level of the big picture, but through an analysis of the depths of what is before us: in the reality, people, struggles, and self, that we encounter.
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 philosophers like Christopher Cordner, 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 in what people say. 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. Or we are like a fish who does not see the water in which it swims, and despairs at the lack of its perceived presence. 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 begins with a higher vision. Such a vision must be good, but also true. This is the work of truth: we discern meaning and reality here in our concrete lives. That becomes the groundwork of a higher vision. I often have clients 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 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 tragic and 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 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.
Philosophy as a library, and a cultural inheritance
I would like to end by adding that philosophy also constitutes a written resource. It is a library of ideas. To quote Mortimer J. Adler, it is "the great conversation." I often recommend clients read Plato or the Stoics or secondary literature on a range of philosophical topics. I do that with respect to the client's specific challenges, and with a view to the broader work and benefits of this wisdom-tradition. Philosophical Counselling is in a sense a form of tutoring: I am teaching you to be a philosopher. I do not mean an academic, rather I mean what it says on the label: a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. They live in a certain way, in the love of wisdom, in its pursuit, in the cultivation of virtue. This is a meaningful life to live. Philosophy is a literary framework, almost a rational spirituality, around which you can build a practice of reading and reflection, which flows into your effort and action of daily life. People who cannot find their way to reading can see me anyway, for the core of philosophy is conversation. However, this further element is also on offer.
I recommend that people read, for the above reasons. I also often recommend activities which appear relevant for the individual and their improvement, whether that be spending time in nature, or attending social gatherings, or creating a personal retreat at certain intervals. Beyond this, there is another reason for recommending philosophical reading, and wider forms of reading and cultural engagement. Philosophy is a cultural practice. We find a version of philosophy in all great traditional civilisations. For example, one of my closest friends has dedicated her working life to activities grounded in Hindu philosophy and spirituality. In my case, as I say, I am embedded in, and in love with, the tradition which is native to me, which flows from ancient Greece, through Rome, into Western Europe. I love its traditional philosophy, but also its tradition of great and beautiful literature, art, music, and spirituality. This wider dimension is has pressed itself on me as important, especially because many people lack of a rich inner life, and while that is not a problem for all people, for many it is an absolute lack, a void in their life. Often this void is their normal state, so while they suffer from this lack, they do not recognise the problem. A lack of a rich inner life can include the absence of an inner culture, a word which in Middle English denotes a cultivated piece of land. A good garden in which to live. A mind that is a good place to be inside. I encourage people to engage with the wider riches of the Western inheritance. In a sense that is compatible even with a secular commitement, we can say that these riches have a spiritual value. They enrich and strengthen, they console and give meaning, they warn and enlighten, they orient and reveal. Consider the heroic and tragic poetry of Homer's Iliad, or the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, or the ethical vision of the New Testament, or the rational spirituality of Roman Stoicism, or the mystical beauty of Plotinus' Neoplatonism, or the sacred architecture of the middle ages--which is mirrored in the cathedral-like philosophical achievements of Thomas Aquinas--or the sublime sculpture of the Renaissance, or the tragic self-awareness of Shakespeare, or the transcendent beauty of Bach, or the glowing world of Romantic poetry, or the psychological richness of the nineteenth century novel, or the over-view of the twentieth century historian. Life looks and feels very different when you feed yourself on a diet of such an inheritance. I am a student of Plato, who spoke of truth, and of goodness, but equally of beauty, as food for the soul.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, is philosophical guidance within the framework of counselling. Based on what I have said above, we can list some of the ingrediants of this approach. I am listing these in the order I discussed them above, though of course 4, 5, and 6 are the most important ingrediants.
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight, motivation, growth, and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and truth-seeking.
3) A rich background of psychological know-how, from my years as a psychotherapist.
4) The philosophical pursuit of wisdom: a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue: a transformation of your way of being.
6) The work of making the implicit explicit, with respect to meaning and value.
7) A rich cultural inheritance that is on offer to clients in terms of recommendations.
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.
