Reflection 11
SMALL AND GRAND PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
In the earlier days of philosophical practice, when I joined this new field in the early nineties, there was, it seems to me, a certain vision hovering in the air. It was usually somewhat vague and unarticulated, but it was in the atmosphere, and it inspired us. This was the vision that philosophical practice can make a fundamental difference to life, that it can make life deeper and greater. The idea was that philosophy can transform the basic coordinates of life—the individual’s basic needs, hopes, anxieties, attitudes—and raise them to a higher plane. Philosophy, it was felt, can create an inner revolution.
I call this a vision of Grand Philosophical Practice, because it gives a tremendous task to philosophy, and also because it seeks to bring life to great heights. I use the word ‘grand’ intentionally, because grand is almost grandiose, wonderfully grandiose.
However, as time went by, most of us philosophical practitioners found ourselves doing philosophy on a much smaller scale. For the most part we found ourselves counseling counselees for very mundane problems: how to deal with the boss, how to find a more satisfying job, what to do about one’s lack of self-confidence, or about the fights with the husband or the wife. This kind of philosophy no longer attempts to elevate life, because it accepts life for what it is and tries to deal with problems within life. It does not seek to transform the foundations of life, but to address specific needs or difficulties and to fix problems. Indeed, the philosophical counselor’s aim is that at the end of the counseling, after two or five or twenty meetings, the counselee would deal more efficiently with her problem, and get back to everyday life with greater satisfaction.
This kind of philosophy is therefore basically a normalizer, a problem-solver, and a satisfaction-provider. I call it ‘Small Philosophical Practice’ because it gives philosophy a limited task—to deal with specific elements within life, and also because its aspirations are small: It aims at little more than producing satisfaction.
In terms of Plato’s allegory of the cave, we could say that Small Philosophical Practice deals with problems within the cave in which we live, trying to improve the shadows and make them more comfortable. Grand Philosophical Practice, on the other hand, seeks to help us leave the cave altogether towards a greater reality. Its goal is, therefore, not to solve and satisfy, but rather to awaken forgotten dissatisfactions and yearnings, to help us transcend our everyday needs, to create wonder, awe, even confusion, and in this way to open for us new doors towards a greater life.
I should emphasize that I do not wish to reject Small Philosophical Practice, including problem-solving philosophical counseling. If philosophy can be used to make people happier, then that’s very nice. My worry is not about the existence of Small Philosophical Practice, but about the monopoly that it has gained in the philosophical practice world. For it seems to me that to a large extent we have forgotten the possibility of Grand Philosophical Practice, and that we now behave as if philosophical practice cannot but be small.
At this point someone might interrupt and ask: But what exactly is Grand Philosophical Practice? Can you define more clearly what you mean by it, and explain where the boundary passes between the Small and the Grand?
In response I should say that I do not wish to indulge myself in definitions. As I said, my aim is to re-awaken a vision, not to theorize. Nevertheless, in order to give more substance to that vision, let me mention here, instead of a definition, four themes which I think should be involved in any philosophical practice that wishes to be grand.
First, it seems to me that in Grand Philosophical Practice the main issue is how to understand and live life more deeply, more truly, with greater wisdom. In other words, its aim is to transform life’s basic coordinates and elevate it, not to solve problems within life.
This leads to the second theme: Philosophical practice is relevant to all aspects of life, and must infiltrate the person’s entire way of being. Grand philosophy is not limited to two one-hour-sessions a week, or to solving some specific problem. It does not go on a holiday once the problem has been solved. Grand Philosophical Practice is inseparable from life. It implies a philosophical way of living.
From this follows the third theme: If philosophical practice is a way of life, then it must deal primarily with the practitioner’s own life, not with the lives of clients. Because who among us, philosophical practitioners, has already attained wisdom, so that he can now allow himself to focus only on the lives of others? If I wish to be a philosophical practitioner then my own life is at issue, and I must attempt to live my own life philosophically. As a philosophical practitioner I am a seeker on an ongoing journey.
Here we can recall the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Neo-Platonists and other philosophers who sought to live philosophically. And it surprises me that we, in the philosophical practice movement, have never tried to follow their example. Instead, from the very beginning we have adopted the framework of psychotherapy: meeting clients for a pre-arranged session and talking with them about their personal problems. I confess that I don’t understand why we have gone in this direction, and why we have chosen to sell our philosophical services to clients instead of working on our own lives. Was it because we were too eager to join the job market?
All this means, fourthly, that Grand Philosophical Practice is not a profession. It is not an activity within life, it is not an expertise in which we master some basic know-how, and it does not focus on selling our services to whomever wishes to pay. Therefore, our relationship to other practitioners cannot be that of colleagues. When professionals—medical doctors, scientists, engineers—meet as colleagues, they talk about some objective, impersonal topic: about a case study, about some theory or a new discovery. But if philosophical practice is a way of life, then we practitioners are companions, not colleagues. The topic of our meetings should first and foremost be ourselves, our own life-journeys. As companions to a journey we can share with each other our personal experience, help one another in making sense of personal issues and difficulties, enrich each other’s journey, and thus weave together the personal and the philosophical.
To sum up, then, it seems to me that if philosophical practice is to be more than small, it should see itself as a way of life, as a personal journey in which the practitioner seeks to understand and live life philosophically, in the companionship of fellow philosophical seekers.
One might wonder what such a philosophical way of life would be like. How exactly do we practice this kind of philosophical practice?
However, I do not want to be more specific here. Any definitive answer would inevitably become a doctrine. Philo-sophia, by its very nature, is an open search which cannot be enclosed in a dogma. Indeed, my hope is that fellow philosophical practitioners would start exploring the philosophical life in different ways, each one according to one’s own personality, life-experiences, ideas and yearnings. Individual differences are necessary for the free philosophical spirit and for mutual enrichment.
Obviously, then, I cannot seriously try to determine once and for all what philosophical practice should be like. All I can do is describe my own personal way of searching—which is what I call ‘contemplative philosophy’: This is a form of philosophizing in which we, philosophers, attentively seek to open more of our inner being to more of reality. And this is, to a large extent, what I have been discussing throughout my reflections.
