Reflection 9
TO LIVE IN PHILOSOPHICAL OPENNESS
Being a philosophical practitioner implies that I strive to maintain a philosophical attitude in my everyday life. Before starting to counsel somebody else, I must be a philosopher myself. Counseling clients, conducting philosophical cafés, leading Socratic dialogues—these are derivative matters. My first challenge is to practice philo-sophia in my daily life, and it is this that makes me a philosophical practitioner. What does it matter that I counsel dozens of clients if I myself don’t live philosophically?
But what does it mean to live philosophically?
Surprisingly, there has been very little exploration of this question among philosophical practitioners. From the beginning of philosophical practice, we have been discussing, experimenting, writing articles, and arguing primarily on how to apply philo-sophia to the problems of other people—our clients. But we have almost forgotten to explore ways of applying philo-sophia to our own lives. How many papers, in our conferences and professional journals, are devoted to the issue of how to live philosophically our own everyday moments? Very few. Is this because we have already figured out the answer? Or is it possible that we have been too busy in imitating the paradigm of psychotherapy, too eager to turn philo-sophia into a profession?
I believe that if philosophical practice is to grow to its full potential, instead of remaining a minor form of therapy as it tends to be nowadays, then it is crucial that we start engaging in a serious and intensive exploration of how to live philosophically. Such an exploration should include experimenting concretely with our own lives: exploring forms of philosophical awareness and self-awareness, developing philosophical kinds of contemplation or text-meditation, going for solitary and group retreats, writing and exchanging philosophical diaries, counseling each other, and establishing philosophical companionships.
Needless to say, I am not claiming to have an authoritative answer to the issue. My own experiences and ongoing explorations represent little more than the personal path of a single person—a single ‘voice’ in the rich ‘choir’ of human experience. It seems to me that a more comprehensive vision of the philosophical life can emerge only out of a collaborative work of a broader network of practitioners.
“Alright,” someone might say, “forget about a general theory of the philosophical life, but what is your personal vision of it?”
Indeed, recently one of my readers asked: “In your previous reflections you have talked a lot about what practicing philo-sophia is not, but can you tell us once and for all what it is?”
It would have been simple if I had a clear-cut answer. But as I suggested in previous reflections, philo-sophia is essentially an open inquiry that transcends all guidelines, assumptions, finished theories. Therefore, if I am to engage in philo-sophia, I cannot possibly follow a pre-given definition. Nevertheless, this openness itself can serve as the beginning of an answer.
The idea that philosophical practice involves an open inquiry that is not bound by any assumption and is not satisfied with any final solution is not new. I have heard it expressed already in the early days of philosophical practice. But what exactly does this philosophical ‘openness’ mean?
Let’s say we are asking ourselves the question: “What is love?”—perhaps in the context of self-examination or of philosophical counseling. Aren’t we allowed to reach an opinion on the matter? Aren’t we permitted to conclude that, for example, Erich Fromm is right in his theory of love? Because if not, if our philosophical inquiry cannot give us a definite answer, if it will always leave us with nothing final in our hands, then why bother philosophizing at all?
This last question makes an interesting assumption: that having an answer is better than not having an answer. Not having an answer is seen as an absence, a lack, empty hands.
And indeed, in academic philosophy we tend to think in a dichotomous way: Either I have found a solution to the issue or I haven’t found one yet, either I have an answer or I don’t. In short, either ‘something’ or ‘nothing.’
This something-or-nothing way of thinking is probably inspired by the logic of physical objects, or of technology: Either there is a coin in my pocket or there isn’t, either I know how to fix the television or I don’t—there is no third possibility. When we apply this scheme to philosophy, the result is that if I don’t have a solution to an issue, then I have nothing.
However, it seems to me that this logic of something-or-nothing is misguided. Because when I delve philosophically into an issue (the nature of love, for example) in a personal way, even though I may not acquire a solution or theory, nevertheless the philosophical process may do something important to me: It may transform my appreciation of love and its many meanings, my awareness of the reality of love, my way of being in relation to it. The process may develop in me new sensitivities and greater acquaintance with new facets of human reality, and teach me to relate to them in new ways. Whether or not I succeed to squeeze all this into a theoretical formula seems irrelevant.
This implies that the process of philosophical practice, if it is self-reflective and personal, is not aimed at ending up with ‘somethings’—conclusions, solutions, theories about the world. Because the important thing in the philosophical process is not so much what the philosophizing says about the issue, but what the issue does to me, and how it opens my life to new horizons. To put it bluntly, the primary aim of philosophizing in philosophical practice is not to speak about reality, but to let a richer scope of human reality ‘speak’ in my life. The value of my philosophizing is determined not by how accurately my theories ‘capture’ the topic in question, but by the extent to which the philosophical process allows richer horizons of human reality express themselves in my awareness, in my behavior, in my thoughts and feelings, in my way of being.
All this may seem difficult to accept, because in mainstream philosophy we are always taught to focus on a given topic—to think about something—and to push aside as irrelevant the thinker himself and his personal life. But I suggest that if philo-sophia is to make a difference to our lives, then it is precisely the philosophizing person who is most important.
Thus, the process of philosophical practice requires that I open myself to be transformed. To live philosophically open does not mean, as it may be tempting to think, to be a post-modern relativist who believes that every idea is just as good as any other. It means, rather, allowing a richer scope and greater depth of human reality ‘speak’ in me, express its manifold meanings in my way of being.
Such openness entails that I resist the temptation to cling to any given theory as the final word, because I know that as I grow and develop, new facets of human reality might also express themselves in me. To cling to a theory as ‘my opinion’ means that I prefer the theory—the having of ‘something’—over my openness, and that I’d rather ‘possess’ reality than let it transform me. In order to resist this temptation, I open within myself an inner space of attentiveness, of wonder, of awe, and thus make myself available for new meanings, or ‘voices of reality,’ to arise from previously unknown depths and facets. To cultivate such openness is, I believe, a central role of philosophical practice.
Normally we tend to live our daily lives by engaging only very limited aspects of our being, closing ourselves in the prison of automatic actions and reactions, fixed opinions, or in short patterns of thought, emotion and behavior. In this sense, our lives express a narrow scope of understanding reality. Philosophical practice, as I see it, requires that we relate to everyday moments, as trivial as they might be, with philosophical openness, so that every moment can ‘speak’ new meanings in us, and so that our lives can give expression to broader ways of understanding. To live philosophically means living with such openness.
And thus I arrive at what seems to me the basic vision of philosophical practice: To philosophize is to learn to engage more of ourselves in giving voice to a richer scope of human reality.
