REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING OF PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
Introduction
Reflection 1: Normalization of inner transformation?
Reflection 2: Is Philosophical Practice in the business of distress-relief?
Reflection 3: Cutting our umblical cord from academic philosophy
Reflection 4: Philo-sophia is much more than critical thinking
Reflection 5: Philo-sophia is a way of life
Reflection 6: Beyond Theory
Reflection 7: Contemplative Philo-sophia
Reflection 8: Where is Philo-sophia in my everyday life?
Reflection 9: To live in philosophical openness
Reflection 10: Engaging our inner depth
Reflection 11: Small and grand philosophical practice
Reflection 12: Maintaining the philosophical attitude throughout the day
Reflection 13: On bubbles
Reflection 14: We need a new language for philosophical practice
Reflection 15: Philosophical ideas don't have to be theories
Reflection 16: The power of living ideas
Reflection 17: Beyond the walls of the philosophical prison
Reflection 18: To contemplate beyond the games
Reflection 19: The polyphonic dialogue
Reflection 20: How open-ended ideas open me
Reflection 21: Developing philosophical sensitivity
Introduction
These texts are a series of reflections which I posted on my previous website, in 2005-2006, on the meaning of philosophical practice, its present state, and its future prospects. They explore a variety of considerations and insights on the possibility of making philosophy relevant to everyday life, and prepare the ground for the more systematic discussions that appear in other series on this website.
Reflection 1
NORMALIZATION OR INNER TRANSFORMATION?
Many philosophical counselors nowadays assume that their goal is to help satisfy clients’ unsatisfied needs; or, more accurately, what clients perceive to be their needs: to help Sarah deal with her low self-confidence, to help John achieve a satisfying relationships with his wife, to help Mary overcome her loneliness, or to help Paul make a career choice that would make him satisfied.
Such goals are very common in psychotherapy, but when applied to philosophy they are, to my mind, curious. If the goal of philosophical practice is to satisfy needs, then philosophy is becoming part of the pragmatic, consumerist spirit of contemporary market economy. The philosopher is turned into a supplier of goods that are tailored to fit the client’s needs, just like the entertainer who aims at satisfying people’s need for fun, just like the drug manufacturer who sells painkilling pills to make people feel better, just like the plastic surgeon who modifies people’s noses to satisfy their need to feel admired, just like the furniture-maker who sells furniture to satisfy people’s need for convenience.
The result is that philosophy, which was to be a critic of society, now becomes just another player within society. Instead of radically examining societal values and ways of life, instead of putting into question the spirit of the market economy and of consumerism, it now plays by the rules of supply-and-demand: Philosophical practitioners now find themselves trying to sell their philosophical goods to those willing to pay, which means that they adjust themselves to the demands of the market, to the needs and goals declared by clients. They are no longer a Socrates or a Rousseau or a Nietzsche who shake people out of their smug self-satisfaction and short-sightedness, who cry out to society what society does not want to hear, but rather are domesticated professionals who seek to satisfy (and also use the opportunity to earn money).
Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make people feel better. But this is no longer philosophy, in the original sense of philo-sophia. Philo-sophia is a critic of people’s perceived needs, not a satisfier of needs. Its aim is to arouse intellectual and existential discontent, not to offer satisfaction. It seeks to evoke perplexity and awe, not to produce solutions and complacency; to encourage appreciation of the infinite complexity and richness of life, not to simplify life into solutions and bottom lines. True philo-sophia seeks to question all that is ‘normal,’ not to lead people to normality.
I find it ironic that we, philosophical practitioners, often mention the names of Socrates and Plato as our heroes. Socrates was certainly not a satisfier of needs, but a provocateur. To his ‘counselees’ he offered agitation, wonder, confusion, creative dissatisfaction. Similarly, Plato sought to pull people out of their narrow cave, out of their world of shadows—which is to say, out of their ‘normal’ conceptions and perceived needs. His aim was not to solve problems within the person’s world of shadows—how to deal with the boss, how to feel better about oneself, how to find a satisfying career—but to arouse in them a forgotten yearning to go beyond the world of shadows, beyond their superficial concerns. This is the Platonic Eros, the yearning to transcend the shadows that we take for granted towards broader and more enlightened horizons.
In this Socratic and Platonic sense, the philosopher is an agitator, a revolutionary. And for a very good reason: The search for wisdom requires questioning the obvious, forsaking our previous convictions, sacrificing our self-content and security, turning our back to our perceived needs and values, and venturing into an uncharted terrain. In contrast, a philosophical counselor who aims at developing solutions and satisfaction of needs is a normalizer. He or she in effect encourages the counselee to return happily to normal life, namely to the cave.
I suggest that in the past twenty years, we philosophical practitioners have gone too far in the direction of normalization. We believed, perhaps too naively, that we could be real philosophers—and at the same time satisfiers of needs.
I think that we have been mistaken. We now seem to be at a crucial fork in the road: One way leads to the practitioner as a normalized and normalizing philosopher. Here, philosophy is a profession with its professional training and organizations and paying counselees, not to mention financial benefits. It may be doing important work in relieving anguish and pain, but it cannot delude itself that it walks the paths of wisdom.
The other direction is the path of the true seeker, of the Platonic Eros. Here philosophers are seekers of wisdom, subversive questioners seeking to shake anything in their life—and in the lives of others—which seems normal, obvious, taken for granted. The goal here is nothing less than inner transformation, or in Plato’s allegory—stepping out of the cave.
I respect those who choose the first path, if they are motivated by a true desire to help those who suffer. But as for me, my spirit is thirsty for more than this domesticated kind of philosophy. My yearning is to grapple along the way of wisdom, of dis-normalization, and of companionship of true seekers.
Reflection 2
IS PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE IN THE BUSINESS OF DISTRESS-RELIEF?
The philosopher’s goal, according to Plato, is not just to get out of the cave and bask in the sun, but to return to the cave and help fellow human beings. And we, as philosophical practitioners, have taken it upon ourselves to help others.
But to help how?
Certainly not every kind of help is philosophy’s task. It is not our role to cure sickness like medical doctors, or to entertain people like comedians, or to teach them how to make smart investments like business consultants. Our manner of helping is in the ways of wisdom.
But what does it mean to help in wisdom? What do we hope to achieve through our counseling? It seems to me that the common answers nowadays are deeply problematic, and that they should be re-examined and fundamentally modified.
If we ask philosophical counselors around the world: When do you feel that your counseling has been successful? I believe that a common answer (though by no means the only answer) would be something like: When I helped the counselee understand her predicament and make significant steps towards resolving it.
This answer seems to imply that the main task of practical philosophy is to help resolve personal problems (predicaments, issues, difficulties). Indeed, most counselees come to see us with a personal problem that distresses them, and it is presumably our task to help them advance towards a satisfactory resolution. The task of the philosophical practitioner, so it appears, is distress-relief.
I find this prevalent approach disturbing. To be sure, it is nice to feel that our counselees emerge out of our practice satisfied, but is problem-resolution or distress-relief all we, as philosophers, can aspire to? Philo-sophia aims at growing in wisdom, and wisdom is about how to live life, not about problem-solving and pain-killers. In Plato’s terminology, philosophy’s goal is not to solve problems inside the person’s current world of shadows, but to lead us out of the world of shadows towards a broader, deeper, more enlightened understanding.
Contemporary culture is extremely eager to relieve distress as soon as possible and replace it with satisfaction. People’s eagerness to remove any discomfort and to feel content is enormous. But this is not necessarily the way of philo-sophia as a search of wisdom. Wisdom often requires sacrifice, fumbling in the dark, confusion and agitation. For the sake of philo-sophia we must often allow ourselves to feel anguish and disquiet, and to turn our backs to our cozy comforts and security.
This implies that philosophical counselors who aim primarily at solving personal problems, or at distress-relief, are not really engaged in philo-sophia. Clearly, the mere fact that such a counseling utilizes methods or ideas from the philosophical literature does not make it philosophical. Compare this with the relationship between art and art-therapy: If a counselor uses painting as a way of making a counselee feel better, then this is a session of art-therapy, not of art. After all, what guides her activity and choices is how to overcome the counselee’s predicament, not artistic considerations and goals. Similarly, a writing activity that is guided by therapeutic goals is bibliotherapy, not literature, and the counselor is acting in it as a therapist, not as a novelist.
Likewise, if philosophy is used as a tool for an ulterior goal, it is no longer a search for wisdom but for distress-relief. If I use Kant’s writings to teach German grammar, then I am certainly not doing philosophy. If, in order to soothe a traumatized counselee, I read with him Bergson’s texts, and together we savor the lyrical imagery and poetic metaphors, we are not thereby philosophizing either. And if I use philosophical ideas or conversations as a substitute for aspirin or Valium, in what way is this a form of philosophizing? Making use of philosophy is very different from doing philosophy, or philosophizing.
I suggest, therefore, that we draw a distinction between two very different endeavors: philosophical therapy, which is a type of therapy that uses philosophy for its distress-relief and problem-solving purposes; and philosophical practice which is truly engaged in philo-sophia, and thus is not in the business of helping people feel better. I see no reason to lump these two together. They are fundamentally different endeavors that require different skills and capacities, and that appeal to different people. Both are valuable in their own way, but I am deeply disturbed by the monopoly that philosophical therapy has received in the philosophical practice world.
Where did we, philosophical practitioners, get the idea that we should focus on problem-resolution, or distress-relief? Part of the answer, I suspect, is the influence of certain popular types of psychotherapy—you go to see a therapist when you have a problem and want relief, don’t you? Unfortunately, we have bought too much into this therapeutic model. Regrettably, we have decided to address ourselves mainly to potential clients who want relief for their personal problems.
I should mention that some of us believed that distress-relief need not be incongruent with philo-sophia. We thought that we could treat the counselee’s personal problem as a stepping stone to wisdom-seeking. I myself have tried this path for several years, but I am now disillusioned. If a counselee is primarily concerned about her relationship with her husband, or her career choice, or her lack of self-confidence—indeed, this is the reason she has come to see me—then the prospects of philosophizing with her for the sake of wisdom, out of a true philosophical yearning, seem slim.
Be that as it may, in effect, we who sought the combined path have found ourselves, too, addressing mainly clients seeking distress-relief. Those who came to see us were mostly (though not only) people seeking to deal with specific problems. As a result, philosophical counselors have largely ignored other groups of people, particularly seekers, those seeking growth and wisdom, and potential seekers who can be awakened to the philosophical yearning. And there is no shortage of such people. Witness those many people who join all kinds of meditation and yoga courses, self-growth workshops, New Age groups, intentional communities, or simply adult education classes. We could have tried to appeal to this population, but for some reason we haven’t.
It seems to me curious that from the very beginning of the practical philosophy movement, we have chosen to wear the mantle of distress-resolution. This was not the only choice we could have made. There were other directions we could have taken, but somehow, despite a few exceptions, on the whole we did not take them.
However, it is not too late to retract our steps and change our path towards true philo-sophia. Let us not buy into our culture’s frantic thirst for feeling good, and into its hysterical fear of discomfort. Let us not join the multi-billion-dollar comfort-industry that is so widespread in our society. Let us not succumb to the vogue of fun and satisfaction and good feelings. As human beings, we should of course empathize with those who suffer and help them, but as philosophers we should remember that difficulties are part of life, that they are sometimes essential steps on the road to self-development, and that they can offer us unique opportunities to grow. Let us make this part of our philosophical, revolutionary, educational mission: to serve as witnesses to the understanding that life is not just about feeling good and getting rid of discomfort and problems, because the horizons of life are much broader.
This does not mean that we should romanticize about suffering. It is certainly important to fight suffering in many ways, whether medical, psychological, political, educational, as well as through philosophical therapy. But philo-sophia is simply not in the business of doing that. Indeed, Socrates’ wisdom did not save him from his death, on the contrary. The response of philosophical practice to suffering should not be to try removing discomfort, but rather realizing that even when I suffer, there still is something significant going on in my life: Even in the midst of pain I can continue to grow in wisdom. The struggle with pain has meaningful sides, because as appalling as it may be, it can also serve as a potential source for a richer understanding of life.
Paraphrasing the famous verse from Psalm 23 (or 24), and replacing ‘God’ by ‘wisdom,’ we can say: “Though I walk in the shadow of darkness I will not fear, for wisdom is with me.” Wisdom comforts me not because it can take me out of the valley of darkness, but because even in the valley of darkness—and perhaps especially there—it is with me, and I can walk and grow in its ways.
Reflection 3
CUTTING OUR UMBILICAL CORD FROM ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY
If philosophical practice is a search for wisdom, then how do we conduct this kind of search? What kind of discourse do we need to use for this purpose?
I doubt that we can find the answer by looking at academic philosophy (although I myself have been involved in it more than twenty years). It is hard to see any special affinity between wisdom and what philosophy professors normally do. For the most part, they are engaged in discussing theoretical issues (e.g., how does the mind relate to the body?) or in constructing theories (e.g., about knowledge or language), or in analyzing other philosophers’ solutions and theories. This undoubtedly requires a capacity for critical and abstract thinking, but whatever wisdom exactly is, abstract thinking is certainly not all there is to it. A person may be a smart problem-solver—like a mathematics-whiz teenager—but this in itself does not seem to make him a wise woman. Or, he may be a first-rate theoretician in, say, philosophy of science, but in everyday life be a narrow-minded, short-sighted, unreflective, self-deluded person. And if so, can academic philosophy be relevant to the search for wisdom?
This is a crucial question for us, philosophical practitioners, because we have inherited from academic philosophy much of its conception of how to philosophize. And if academic philosophizing is not a good example for the quest for wisdom, then haven’t we been wrong in adopting its ideas and methods? Shouldn’t we turn our back on our philosophical heritage and search for other, new, better forms of philosophical discourse?
And indeed, I have the impression that much (though by no means all) of what philosophical practitioners do nowadays is based on ideas and methods borrowed from mainstream academic philosophy. To be sure, we practitioners are not into constructing general theories, but we do rely on the same basic kinds of discourse.
Thus for example, in philo-cafes we define an issue and discuss how to solve it—perhaps in a more friendly and relaxed manner, but basically like discussions in university classes. In standard philosophical counseling we often seek to clarify the counselee’s ethical or existential issue and discuss ways of solving it, very much like academics might attempt to solve the so-called ‘mind-body problem’ or ‘the problem of evil.’ We help expose the counselee’s hidden assumptions and discuss whether they are warranted, precisely as we expose and discuss Descartes’ or Kant’s assumptions in a philosophy course. We help counselees analyze and spell out their conception of love or authenticity, just as we do with Locke’s conception of tolerance or Hume’s conception of causality. And we use critical thinking tools to examine the coherence of a given view, or what follows from what, or the exact meaning of a given concept, etc.—very much like the way we examine standard philosophical theories.
In short, to a large extent we have adopted the traditional philosophical discourse, particularly its use of analytic critical thinking tools, as well as its search for solutions, bottom lines, conclusions. There is of course nothing wrong with this, especially if it helps people deal with their personal problems. But the question is whether this discourse can count as a form of philo-sophia, of a search for wisdom.
Plato’s cave allegory suggests that the role of philo-sophia is not to analyze and theorize and solve issues in our current understandings—the world of shadows. Nor is it to capture and enclose the endless richness of life in just another limited cave—neat solutions and theories. It is, rather, to call individuals to transcend their current ways of understanding towards broader, richer visions of life. The allegory also emphasizes that the process of philosophizing cannot be limited to one single faculty of our mind—abstract reasoning, which is what is used almost exclusively in academic theorizing and issue-solving. Rather, the process must involve the person as a whole, so that it could facilitate a real personal transformation.
This implies, I believe, that if we want philosophical practice to be truly transformative, if we want it to be more than a mere issue-solving device, if we want it to touch the individual’s life and inspire it towards growth in wisdom, then we must reexamine the forms of discourse which we have inherited from our historical predecessor, academic philosophy, and inquire whether they are suitable for philo-sophia. It seems to me that on the whole, we philosophical practitioners have not done so radically enough, and that we are still prisoners of our historical heritage. We have not been sufficiently bold to shake ourselves free from the familiar issue-solving and theory-building sort of philosophizing.
This does not mean that we should reject everything that is academic. Certainly there are wonderful treasures in the history of mainstream philosophy. But I believe that the decision to adopt or reject any particular idea or method should be done in the broader context of a careful and radical reexamination of forms of philosophical discourse that could serve the spirit philo-sophia. To be sure, it is an enormous challenge to part from a tradition that has been dominant for more than two millennia. It is much easier to rely on already-existing kinds of discourse, and simply apply them to our practice. However, by becoming philosophical practitioners we have decided, in effect, not to rest satisfied with already-existing ideas, and to venture beyond established boundaries in search of ways leading out of our philosophical cave.
Reflection 4
PHILO-SOPHIA IS MUCH MORE THAN CRITICAL THINKING
One idea that philosophical practice has inherited from academic philosophy, often enthusiastically, is critical thinking. Indeed, I have often heard it said that critical thinking is central to philosophical practice.
It is hardly surprising that critical thinking is popular nowadays, given society’s pragmatic and technological spirit (presumably, anything can be fixed with the proper device) and its thirst for clear and straightforward answers. There are numerous texts and university courses on critical thinking, as well as applications to specific fields, such as business ethics and medical ethics. The issue is, however, whether this form of discourse has anything to do with philo-sophia as a search for wisdom. Do we, philosophical practitioners, really need this philosophical inheritance, or do we have something more important to do than fixing arguments and testing for consistency?
Broadly speaking, the central theme in the idea of critical thinking is the attempt to examine ideas and test them for inadequacies of reasoning. More accurately, critical thinking examines ideas (concepts, theories, statements, assumptions, arguments, etc.) using reason, in order to determine what is warranted and what is unwarranted, what is valid and what is invalid, what is sound, clear, coherent and what is incoherent, confused, fallacious.
This kind of discourse may help purge our thoughts from inaccuracies, or make rational career choices, or make better investments in the stock-market. But as Plato’s cave allegory suggests, the quest for wisdom means much more than polishing our current ideas, which is to say—refining the shadows in our cave. It means, rather, moving beyond the narrow boundaries of our current worldview towards a greater vision of life and reality.
There are different ways of understanding what this going-out-of-the-cave might exactly mean. But it clearly implies some kind of inner transformation. It means, at the very least, learning to relate to life from a perspective that is broader than my particular circumstances and personal experiences; coming to appreciate—not just in thought but in my way of being—life’s multifaceted richness which extends far beyond popular opinions and simplistic distinctions; taking part in a greater reality than the limited world governed by my specific preferences and needs. This means self-transcending, and developing a broader foundation for a greater attitude to life.
But if philo-sophia is about inner transformation, then how can the methods of critical thinking be of more than peripheral help? Critical thinking seems to be more about smartness than wisdom, and smartness is not the sort of thing that in itself can transform us in a profound way. Furthermore, the role of critical thinking is to examine and critique already-existing ideas, not to construct new visions and give life to them. In this sense it is analogous to the way art-criticism relates to art: It trots behind vision-makers and scribbles its commentaries. If philo-sophia is about venturing into new dimensions, then it ought to focus on (metaphorically speaking) art rather than art-criticism, that is to say, on inspiring life rather than critiquing life. Admittedly, critical thinking might sometimes be of some help in removing old walls and obstacles, but it cannot bear the brunt of the philosophical work.
Think of times when your worldview has been transformed. I do not mean dramatic Platonic enlightenments, but normal broadening experiences of the sort we all undergo throughout our lifetime: cases in which some new vision opened your world to new ways of understanding—perhaps a social critique of Western society that made you realize how one-sided your views had been and that spurred you to explore new perspectives on society; or a spiritual text that inspired you to look beyond your fixed and acquired opinions; or the writings of Emerson or Bergson which opened your heart to the poetics of reality. Now, what was it about these visions that changed your worldview, that opened you to new depths, that injected into you new intellectual energies to transcend your previous world? Was it the logical validity of an argument? Or the theory’s absence of logical contradiction? Or the precise formulation of the assumptions? Or the clarity of the statements?
I imagine that the answer is clearly no. A theory may be perfect from the perspective of critical thinking and yet be boring, uninspiring, hackneyed, or even narrow-minded. Indeed, I have never met a single person who had been opened to a new vision by the sheer logical validity of an argument. When I recall visions that helped transform my own worldview, I realize that the secret of their success was that they made me ‘see’ reality in a new, deeper way. And they did so not by impressing me with their logical virtues, but by allowing me to make sense of my world, and connect to deeper aspects of life beyond the limitations of my previous horizons. Of course, I sometimes used critical thinking to polish a new thought, to improve a point here or there, to tighten some loose connection, but this was always secondary thinking, usually retroactive, and not the inspiring power itself.
This casts grave doubts on the idea that critical thinking can do much to promote a significant inner transformation. But there is a more fundamental reason why we should be wary of giving too much weight to critical thinking in philosophical practice. Critical thinking, as a discourse that examines already-existing ideas and critiques their logical virtues, seems much too small for philo-sophia.
More specifically, I find it strange that we philosophers, who take pride in dealing with the most fundamental issues of life, feel tempted to settle for so little: critical thinking. Our contemporary culture is dominated by ideas gone awry, by mass-produced slogans and superficial conceptions of life centering on blind consumerism, worship of power and money and comfort, social injustice, narcissist self-satisfaction, triviality, quick solutions and easy gratification. In the midst of this ideational abyss, how can we, as philosophers, satisfy ourselves with logical critiques? When the individual’s mind is brainwashed by mass-communication and manipulated by commercial and political powers, it is not the time to devote our energies to counseling conversations about the counselees’ hairstyle, so to speak, or the matching colors in their living room.
It seems to me that philosophical practice should be nothing less than a witness to the possibility of living life in a different way. This is not to say that we should try selling to the public a new ideology. There are more than enough New Age ideologies and self-proclaimed messiahs and self-help books. Philo-sophia does not have a product to sell, a solution, a canonical body of knowledge. Our philosophical way is not the way of doctrines and gurus, but that of free searching. We seek depth not in the sense of deep solutions but in the sense of the depth of wonder, of awe, even of confusion. Because, contrary to the popular conception that is so prevalent in our society, when one fumbles in the dark one is closer to Life, to wisdom, to reality than when one shuts oneself in finished solutions.
I believe, therefore, that our role is to serve as witnesses—in our conversations with counselees, in our companionship among ourselves, as well as in our private lives, witnesses to the possibility of being free seekers of wisdom.
One might object that this mission is too grand to be realistic. A bunch of philosophers would never make much of an impact upon Western culture. But even if this is true, so what? As it is sometimes said, the flower’s role is to flower, regardless of how many people come to smell it. It is not for us to adjust ourselves to current vogues for the sake of popularity. It is for us to live and interact as philosophically as we can, and if only a handful of people take notice, so be it.
Reflection 5
PHILO-SOPHIA IS A WAY OF LIFE
In the previous Reflection I suggested that philo-sophia can be seen as a witness to the possibility of living life differently. Life need not sink into the triviality and pettiness and conformism into which it often sinks; it need not succumb to the temptations of self-centeredness and consumerism; it need not be swayed by the brute economical forces that seek to control us; it need not buy into mass-produced vogues and movie images. Philo-sophia implies that despite these rampant psychological and societal powers, it is possible to rise above them and be a fuller human being.
For me this means that philo-sophia is not a profession, as unfortunately it is often viewed, but a way of life. A profession engages a certain portion of my time—9 to 5 at my office, for example. It also involves limited aspects of my being, mainly my relevant talents, and brackets off the rest of my personality and life as irrelevant. If, for example, I am a banker, then my marriage problems are supposed to stay outside the scope of my job, and it would be regarded as most improper if I nevertheless bring them in. A profession also means that my time and effort are convertible to certain benefits: to a salary, health benefits, privileges, status, power. Furthermore, a profession commonly involves a distinction between those who are qualified and those who are not. Often, after a training period the person is granted a certificate or diploma, and is now regarded as an expert, a professional. The electrician, pilot, teacher, and philosophy professor, if certified, presumably have sufficient expertise to take responsibility over tasks in their field. Consequently, they relate to each other as colleagues: They may exchange learned views in conferences, but each of them is an autonomous worker.
It seems to me that philo-sophia is fundamentally different. Being a seeker of wisdom is not something I do in my office from nine to five, after which I retire to my private affairs. It is not limited to exercising some specific talents that are distinct from the rest of my personality and life. Nor does it make sense to talk about expertise or professionalism in wisdom, or about a diploma that certifies that the person is now an expert in its ways. One may be an expert in the history of philosophy, or in writing philosophical articles, or in teaching, but who among us is more than a beginner in philo-sophia? Who is already beyond her ‘training period’ so that she can claim to have reached proficiency in wisdom, which entitles her for financial benefits?
In short, philo-sophia is not a profession. It involves everything I do and am, from the way I tackle ethical dilemmas and political choices to the way I react to my personal misfortunes, or treat my spouse, or behave in a neighbors’ dispute, or comport myself at a social dinner. No moment is too small for it. Philo-sophia is not a task within life, but a way of living life.
To see this, try to bring to mind somebody you think is a wise man or woman, whether an actual acquaintance, a literary character, or even a mere imagination. What is it about such a person that makes him or her wise?
Clearly, the person need not possess much knowledge, as a scholar does. A simple fisherman may be a wise man, even if he knows very little about science, world literature, history and the like. Nor need the person be smart in the sense of quick problem solving or logical thinking. Indeed, a person who possesses much knowledge and cognitive skills might still be self-absorbed, unreflective, petty, self-centered, narrow-minded, bigoted. We would obviously not regard her as a wise person.
This suggests again that wisdom is not a matter of possessing some cognitive faculty of mind, but of the person’s way of being. Pettiness and self-absorption and bigotry are obstacles to wisdom (though not to being smart or knowledgeable) because wisdom is a matter of one’s attitude to one’s self and world. If I am imprisoned in my self-centered and limited world, I am far from wisdom because greater wisdom means that my world is broader than the world in which I am the center, that my perspective is wider than that of my personal concerns and experiences. It means that I take part in a bigger world, a world greater than myself. Wisdom involves openness to the endless horizons of human reality.
I therefore find it regrettable that already from the beginning of the practical philosophy movement, we practitioners have been attempting to turn the new endeavor into a profession—with training courses and certification, clients, calling cards, offices with a shingle and professional conferences. We wanted to make the new endeavor respectable, to elevate it to higher levels, but instead we belittled it. By imitating the world of professionalism, by adopting the standards of the job-market, we are in danger of turning philo-sophia from a way of being into a nine-to-five job, and from a personal journey into a mere profession.
Those of us who are motivated by the Platonic Eros—the yearning for connecting with the real through wisdom, should, I believe, work to retrace our steps from the path of professionalism and find new paths. Let us not place ourselves in the position of experts who sell pieces of wisdom for fifty or eighty dollars an hour. Our mission is first of all to engage in our own personal search in the ways of wisdom. Before we start counseling clients, let us remember our own philosophical journey—not because we are self-centered, but because our capacity to give to others and inspire them depends on our following our own yearning. If my yearning is no longer alive in me, I may be a good philosophical technician, but not a guide and companion in the philosophical ways of life. I can be a philosophical counselor only if I too am on the way, searching and learning and trying new avenues, and often fumbling in the dark.
Reflection 6
BEYOND THEORY
The quest for wisdom implies, as suggested by Plato’s cave allegory, going beyond the conceptions we possess, beyond ready-made definitions and formulas. Naturally, we cannot say much about what it means to get out of our current cave any more than a tadpole can say what it means to leave its puddle and live like a frog on land.
It follows that when talking about philo-sophia I should qualify myself: Nothing I say here is meant to be a final answer, an ultimate statement or theory. What I offer here is always a sentence in the ongoing dialogue between fellow seekers, a musical phrase in an ever-developing symphony.
However, this qualification suggests an important insight about the meaning of philo-sophia as a search for wisdom. It implies that contrary to what is sometimes thought, being wise is not the same as possessing correct beliefs about the world. To have a belief is to have reached a definitive theory, a bottom line, a solution: this is the way things are, that’s the truth. As such it is contrary to wisdom, which can never be enclosed in a final formula. Indeed, we can easily imagine a person who believes in any number of theories, as deep and true as they might be, and yet is not wise, but is rather an ideologue, a closed-minded collector of opinions. Philo-sophia is not concerned with accumulating fixed theories and opinions. Inasmuch as it seeks wisdom, it requires a fundamental openness, never being satisfied with any given theory but always going beyond the realm of theories, which is to say—an openness to the infinite horizons of human reality.
This may sound surprising, given a commonly accepted view, namely, that the main road to understanding is theorizing. Presumably, if we want to understand what justice is, or what love is, or indeed what wisdom is, we should seek to describe the conditions or principles that capture what it is. We should, in other words, formulate a theory that specifies the sort of phenomenon that is justice, or love, or wisdom. Thus, as long as we do not possess a theory, we do not really understand. And if wisdom involves an understanding of human reality, then how can it possibly fail to consist of belief in theories?
This question demonstrates, it seems to me, how far the academic state of mind is from that of the philosopher. Because it assumes that to understand means to capture the object in question in descriptions, to encapsulate it within the confines of a theory, and thus to acquire an accurate representation of it. The academic philosopher is therefore expected to take a step back from her everyday life, to put aside her personal feelings and problems and hopes and fears, to focus her thoughts on the object in a neutral and objective way, and to attempt to fit it into a theoretical framework.
This, it appears to me, is fundamentally different from the sort of understanding that we seek in philo-sophia. As I have already suggested earlier, philo-sophia is a way of life that involves my entire being, not just my thoughts or reasoning. Wisdom means taking part in a reality that is greater than my self-enclosed world, broader than my limited personal perspective. It is not a form of possessing but of participating: As a philosopher I seek to take part in a greater and richer reality, not to squeeze reality into my theories.
Moreover, as opposed to the attitude of the theoretician who steps out of everyday life to assume the position of a detached and neutral observer, as a philosopher I seek wisdom in the midst of my personal everyday life. Wisdom is best manifested precisely in mundane moments, not in some abstract, detached realm of thought. It can come into play when I stand in line in the bank, when I argue with a friend, when I sit quietly in nature, when I am sad or happy or anxious. To be sure, it may also come into play when I write theoretical journal-articles in my office—after all, this too is part of my life—but not only there, not even primarily so.
This, by the way, does not make philo-sophia a form of ‘applied philosophy.’ On the contrary, applied philosophy assumes the primacy of abstract thought: Presumably, we first discuss issues in the abstract, and then apply the results to concrete situations. But wisdom is not something that needs to be translated from abstract reasoning to concrete life, because it is born in concrete life and that is where it lives and thrives.
Unfortunately, much of philosophical practice has inherited from academic philosophy the theoretical bias, the monopoly of abstract thinking. Somehow we have forgotten the lessons of Socrates whose wisdom contained no theory, and of Plato who fell silent when leaving the cave and approaching the ‘sun.’ This seems to me a regrettable trend.
I am not suggesting banishing theories from philo-sophia. Anyone who has been inspired by a philosophical text knows that an encounter with theoretical ideas can be very powerful in exposing and shattering the hidden assumptions in which we are imprisoned, in motivating us to go beyond our preconceptions, in opening us to new horizons. But this happens to us precisely when we treat the theory not as a candidate for truth, as a description of the way things really are, but rather as a window that opens to beyond itself, as a pointer that spurs us to go further, beyond the theory.
My point is, then, that philo-sophia requires a form of understanding that is radically different from the intellectual stance of academic thinking. We cannot seek wisdom merely by theorizing, by analyzing concepts, by talking about human predicaments and problems. Philo-Sophia is not about human reality, but in human reality. As a philosopher I do not seek to acquire mere thoughts, but to go beyond the realm of my thoughts to concrete life.
Indeed, it seems to me quite naïve to picture the consciously thinking self, so to speak, as an autonomous and self-sufficient knower who can by itself understand all there is to understand about life. Whether you look at it from a philosophical, psychological, neurological, or spiritual perspective, it is clear that my conscious thoughts are only a small and specialized island in a much vaster ocean of understanding that carries me through life. Conscious rational thinking may be suitable for doing scientific research, or for developing theories and technological solutions, or for solving specific practical problems, but to appreciate the entire scope of understandings that underlie human life, for that it is far from sufficient, just as a calculating machine that superbly solves mathematical problems cannot be expected to philosophize about the meaning of life.
Philo-sophia, then, insofar as it aims at wisdom, should not satisfy itself with the theoretical or pragmatic smartness of the conscious thinking self. As philosophers we seek to submit ourselves to a much broader, deeper, more powerful field of understanding. The search for wisdom is a matter of knowing how to surrender our smart self to something greater. It is, in other words, to tone down our clever thoughts that are so eager to impose their theories on the entire world, and let a greater understanding speak through us.
Reflection 7
CONTEMPLATIVE PHILO-SOPHIA
In western philosophy we are very good at understanding through words, but not through silent reflection and contemplation. Mainstream philosophical thought is quick with brilliant arguments and counterarguments, definitions, conceptual analyses and theories. Indeed, its strategy is to focus on a given subject matter, circumscribe its elements and its boundaries with descriptions, and capture it with theoretical statements.
In order to do so, the academic philosopher is expected to step back out of her everyday life, push aside her personal emotions and experiences and worries in order to ‘purify’ her reasoning capacity from irrelevancies, and likewise isolate the object of investigation from its context in order to ‘purify’ it from the ‘irrelevant’ background noises of life. In this sense, it is not really the entire person who is doing the philosophizing, but only a very specific portion of the person: the consciously reasoning self. We may say that mainstream Western philosophy tends to employ a very specific, even specialized form of understanding—what might be called a reasoning-about mode of understanding.
Unfortunately, it seems to me, philosophical practice has by and large adopted this mode of academic thinking. To be sure, philosophical practitioners discuss not only what the person thinks but also what the person feels and experiences, but in the process those emotions and experiences too become objects of reasoning-about. For example, in philosophical counseling the counselee’s anxiety usually becomes the object of reasoning just like a topic for academic discussions. The fact that the anxiety belongs to a particular person does not change the fact that the conversation seeks to reason about it and apply descriptive statements to capture its meaning. Nor does the fact that the conversation is emotionally charged, or personally significant, change the fact that the dominant form of understanding is reasoning-about. After all, a scientific inquiry, too, may be emotionally charged (imagine a scientist who is developing a vaccine against the bacteria that killed his child), but surely this does not make it any less scientific.
This reasoning-about mode of understanding is good for analyzing, formulating, describing, because it brings a selected object into focus and represents it descriptively in clear and distinct outlines. It has proved itself in the sciences, for science seeks to formulate the principles that govern specific definable phenomena. But it would be naïve to take it for granted that it exhausts the entire range of potential forms of human understandings. When we wish to explore the broader scope of human reality—which is also the context that gives birth to our theorizing activity—we cannot presuppose that it can all be squeezed into the reasoning-about mode. There is no reason to assume that we can treat the horizons which define us, and in which we take part, as if they were just another object for our reasoning self.
I suggest that if we, philosophical practitioners, wish to explore the individual’s lived reality—not an objectified or theorized reality, but the actual horizons of our lived lives—then we must go beyond the narrow boundaries of the reasoning-about mode. We must open the door for ways of understanding that allow our reality to ‘speak’ to us in ways other than the language of theoretical reasoning.
But what kind of philosophical discourse can provide this broader scope of understanding?
It seems to me that if philosophizing is to be deeper than mere reasoning-about, then it must employ aspects of ourselves that are beyond our rational thoughts. This is not to say that philosophizing ought to be irrational, but that it should not be controlled solely by that part of our conscious self that isolates objects from the life in which they appear and captures them with objective reasoned descriptions. The philosophical discourse must be conducted by additional aspects of ourselves and by deeper dimensions of our being.
But this means that philosophizing requires that our conscious thinking self—who is so fond of chattering and so quick to impose its judgments—be silenced, at least in part, at least at times, in order to enable other ‘voices’ of understanding to speak in us. Thus, philosophizing must have an element of inward-looking attention, of silence and reflection, of openness to less familiar aspects of our being and our understanding. It must, in other words, be contemplative.
The goal of philosophical practice, as I see it, is precisely to teach us to relate to our reality from such depth understandings. Put differently, its goal is to explore how to understand from the depth our being. Reasoning-about is, of course, useful and sometimes indispensable, but never as a sole actor, never as a final arbitrator, always as one element within a broader scope of understanding.
What does it mean to understand from the depth of our being, or to engage our depth understanding?
On a theoretical level, I doubt that much can be said here, for it is not a matter that can be captured by theories—which is to say, by the reasoning self. To seek a general theory would be to commit again the error of reducing the richness of our understanding to reasoning-about. Nevertheless, some things can be said about it in a general way.
First, the idea of an understanding that involves our deeper being appears in many spiritual traditions. In Catholicism, to give one example, we find the Lectio Divina, a contemplative reading of the scriptures which arouses deep spiritual insights, whether personal or universal. Note, however, that I am not talking here about alternate states of consciousness (as, for example, in certain meditations and hallucinogenic drugs), but about alternate forms of understanding. Various versions of the idea can be found in philosophy as well, in the writings of thinkers such as Bergson, Marcel, Heidegger and others who sought forms of existential or poetic inquiry that goes beyond theoretical reasoning.
The recurrence of the idea of alternate forms of understanding attests to the fact that it is part of human experience. In fact, it seems to me that we all experience momentary glimpses of such depth understandings. It sometimes happens to us when we read a book, for example, that suddenly a particular sentence strikes us and awakens in us a sense of realization, as if something of great significance has been intimated to us. We feel that a new revelation has suddenly appeared in our awareness, like a ‘bubble’ of light rising from our obscure depths. The content of this realization is often not easy to render in precise words (i.e., in the language of the conscious thinking self), and it may take some attention and effort to reconstruct and verbalize it—this is perhaps why we often ignore and quickly forget it.
This illustrates that most of us are familiar with the experience of at least one type of understanding that seems to come into our awareness from parts of our being other than the conscious reasoning self. Thus, the idea of alternate understandings is not foreign to our everyday life.
If we take this idea seriously, then this opens new horizons of exploration for philosophical practice. It means that we can no longer satisfy ourselves with the standard reasoning-about discourse that is so common not only in academic discussions, but also in philosophical counseling. It poses for us the challenge to go beyond familiar kinds of philosophizing, to develop new ways that are attentive to other ‘voices’ inside us, to seek wisdom through alternate forms of understanding, to open ourselves to the depths of our being. This means, among other things, learning to curb our talkative reasoning self and be attentive. This exploratory direction of philosophical investigations is what I call Contemplative Philo-sophia.
Contemplative philo-sophia seems to me a tremendous task for philosophical practitioners, but fortunately it is not without precedence. As already mentioned, relevant ideas can be found in the writings of some selected philosophers. Also, several spiritual traditions have developed techniques that can facilitate alternate forms of understanding, and some of them can be adapted to our purpose. But contemplative philo-sophia is much more than techniques. It must also involve different forms of understanding and of discourse. This is an exciting direction to explore.
Reflection 8
WHERE IS PHILO-SOPHIA IN MY EVERYDAY LIFE?
Let us ask ourselves: How much of my everyday life is influenced by my philo-sophia? How, in other words, is the fact that I am a philosopher expressed throughout my day?
I do not mean how many hours we spend reading books and writing articles. This kind of activity is not uniquely philosophical—it is also done by the academic historian or biologist or economist. Indeed, I am not talking about things we professionally do, but about how philo-sophia changes the person we are, how it is manifested in the way relate to ourselves, to others, to life. I am asking what difference our philosophizing makes to our way of being.
Let us not respond too quickly. Let us first recall concrete moments in our everyday life: how we sat down for breakfast this morning, the conversation we had today with our spouse or children, yesterday’s visit to the supermarket, our reaction to the broken faucet in the bathroom, the discussion with the boss. How, if at all, were those ordinary moments ‘colored’ by our love of sophia? To what extent were they enriched and deepened by it?
One might reply that philosophy ‘colors’ our life by sharpening our reasoning capacities. It helps us make distinctions, notice hidden assumptions, detect logical fallacies.
However, this hardly addresses the issue. Reasoning capacities may be useful tools at certain moments, but no more than that. They may help us, for example, to argue more forcefully in a political debate, or to choose between two brands of computer, but in themselves they do not fundamentally transform the way we live. It is hard to see how mere abstract reasoning can make us more profound—not just in thought, not just at moments of decision-making, but in the way we live, including the way we treat our friends, or behave under time-pressure, or speak with a suffering colleague, or wait in line in a store. A person trained in philosophical reasoning may perhaps make smarter decisions, but smartness in itself does not significantly enrich our way of being.
Furthermore, to the (limited) extent to which our reasoning capacities do make a difference to our way of life, these capacities are not uniquely philosophical. The field of philosophy has no monopoly over reasoning. I see no reason to believe that a person trained in philosophical reasoning can deal with everyday moments in a better way than, say, a psychologist or a medical doctor or a businessman.
Some philosophical counselors might object that our reasoning capacities are useful not only at specific moments, but also when we tackle personal problems of a more general nature. Philosophical reasoning, or more accurately critical thinking, allows us to think more clearly about our problems and find ways to solve them more efficiently. In this way we can free our life from many problems and live more fully, deeply, meaningfully.
I imagine that this objection might find favor among some adherents of the problem-solving approach to philosophical counseling, which unfortunately is still much too prevalent. The problem with this objection, I believe, is that it assumes that a deep life is the same as a problem-free life. It pretends that the important qualities of life are just a matter of clearly defining the problem and finding a way to fix it. It thus expresses the technological spirit of our times, which treats basic life-issues as problems to be fixed.
However, for anyone who realizes that life is much more than problem-solving, this answer is hardly an answer at all. Developing my capacity to deal with specific problems has little to do with the question of how I am to deepen my way of living life.
Thus we are back at the question of how philo-sophia can express itself in our way of being. It seems to me that addressing this issue is a formidable challenge for any philosophical practice that is worth its name. Until we, who aspire to be philosophers, seriously address this challenge—concretely, in the way we live, not merely in theory—the idea of philosophical practice will remain a fantasy. Because if philo-sophia does not help transform us, if it does not make a profound difference to the kind of person we are, then our learned articles and conferences and counseling sessions are little more than idle talk. Such a philosophy is a mere academic profession; it speaks about life, without actually manifesting itself in life.
Philosophers in ancient times were very much aware of the challenge. Indeed, philosophy was regarded, by and large, not as a mere abstract discourse (as in today’s universities), but as a way of life. The Stoics, the Epicureans, the Skeptics, the Neo-Platonist, the Cynics and others attempted to incorporate their philosophy in the individual’s everyday moments so as to make life deeper, better, more beautiful and true.
However, these schools of thought were based upon specific philosophical doctrines—about the nature of the good, the cosmos, the soul, the gods, etc. And for a 21st century thinker, adhering to one specific doctrine is something difficult to do. Today we are too much aware of the existence of alternative ways of thinking, of the arbitrariness of assumptions, of the way ideas change through history and differ between cultures and individuals. Many of us feel that we cannot in good faith buy into one single doctrine without jeopardizing our intellectual integrity.
For those of us for whom adherence to a philosophical doctrine is not a viable option, philo-sophia becomes a search that is always open, always still on the way, never satisfied with finished products and final solutions. And this means that the challenge of philo-sophia in everyday life becomes even more formidable than it used to be in the past. It is no longer the straightforward question of how to apply a given doctrine to my life, but rather: How do I allow my open-ended philosophical search manifest itself in my way of being? This, I believe, represents a new historical stage in philo-sophia, and we ought to feel awed and inspired by it.
Since I mentioned the challenge, I might be expected to attempt to respond to it. However, although the issue has been with me for a long time, I will not try to offer here any solution. To offer a solution is to close the issue and to turn philo-sophia into a mere technique or doctrine, which means to belittle the challenge. The only possible response I can see to the challenge is to make it alive in our awareness, and to keep exploring ways of letting philo-sophia permeate our lives. This requires, among other things, shaking ourselves loose from the grip of complacency and automatic habits, regaining self-awareness in the face of the pressures of modern life, fumbling in the dark even when no ray of light can be seen, and forming companionships with fellow philosophers to keep the question alive.
This implies, I believe, that as philosophical practitioners we cannot satisfy ourselves with writing articles and solving counselees’ problems. We must do much more to philosophically deepen and enlighten our own personal way of life. Otherwise, if we lack the resolve or the inspiration to work towards philosophical self-transformation, then our counseling of others is in danger of turning into a pretense, our writings into empty talk, and the whole idea of philosophical practice into make-believe.
So let each of us ask himself or herself: How much of my everyday life is nurtured by my philo-sophia?
And if the answer is “Not very much yet,” then this is alright too. Because in philo-sophia we are always on the way. It is only natural that I have not arrived yet, that I am still grappling, still stumbling and failing and trying anew. The point, it seems to me, is not to reach perfection, but to keep the issue open and alive in us, and never let the stultifying hassles of life obscure it from our sight.
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.
Reflection 10
ENGAGING OUR INNER DEPTH
My fundamental starting point in thinking about philosophical practice is a yearning that I have been experiencing for a long time, and which I believe other philosophers share with me. It is a yearning to find deeper ways of understanding that would enable me to touch more deeply aspects of reality. I don’t mean that I want to acquire more theories about life, or more thinking skills. My mind is already cluttered with theories and is quite skilled in the acrobatics of thinking, and I do not need more of that. My desire is not to cram more ideas into my understanding—not to squeeze more ‘things’ into the ‘container’ that is my mind, but rather to transform the ‘container’ itself.
When I think about my philosophical activity in the past thirty years, I realize that to a large extent academic philosophy has never been able to seriously address this yearning. I have amassed knowledge, I have mastered techniques, I have acquired opinions on all kinds of issues, but all this has remained on the level of theoretical thinking, leaving me—the person who is me—basically untouched. This kind of philosophizing has taken place on the surface of my being, making me thirsty for deeper, more personal ways of philo-sophia that would engage more of me, that would involve not just my thoughts but the depths of my being, that would not be merely about life but would bring me into an intimate acquaintance with it.
I expect that some philosophers might interrupt here and ask what I mean by the fuzzy notions of ‘depth of my being,’ ‘intimate acquaintance,’ and the like. But although these are important questions, they must be postponed for later. Because before I indulge myself in theoretical explanations, I must note that my yearning comes not from theories but from my lived experience, from my way of being. Without belittling the importance of theorizing, it is the experience of yearning on which I would like to focus here, and which I take as my compass.
My experience tells me that when I seek to understand my life—and human reality in general, I find that not all understandings are the same. There are different kinds of understanding: Some of them involve only a small part of me, while others engage greater portions of my being. Some give voice only to my abstract reasoning, or to my ‘official’ opinions, or to my emotional attitudes, while others give voice to broader parts of me, or to my overall stance in the world. Some ‘speak’ in me in a language that is analytic and calculating, while others ‘speak’ in poetic or holistic ways. Some look at life from the remote perspective of an outside observer, or from a self-centered point of view, while some resonate to life through empathy or participation. Some are verbal and talkative and quick to impose concepts and distinctions, while others are quiet and attentive, letting reality voice itself through me. Some arise out of the familiar surface of my personality, or out of the image that I have of myself, while others arise out of hidden sources of knowledge of which I am only vaguely aware.
These different kinds of understanding involve different kinds of sensitivities. They require me to engage in different kinds of attitudes and relations to life, to involve different parts of myself, to make myself open in various ways.
For example, when I philosophize in the abstract, in the familiar style of academic philosophy, my thoughts reason about the issues in question quite independently of the rest of my being. For instance, I may be theoretically convinced that the poor should be helped, but this conviction may fail to move me. My emotions and behavior may remain oblivious to the new conviction, as if they take no part in it.
At other times, however, a new understanding may move me and ‘color’ my entire world and way of being. For instance, if a transformative experience leads me to recognize the goodness of the human spirit, I may come to see people differently not just in my thoughts, but through my overall attitudes to life and reality. The new understanding is now embodied in my moods, my emotions, my behavior, my thoughts. It is now understood by something deeper than mere opinions, by something that is closer to the root of my being, something that is at the root of my attitudes to life.
A philosophical idea, too, is capable of arousing in us such deep understandings. It is my experience that when I contemplate on a philosophical text, reading it slowly and quietly while maintaining an inner openness, powerful realizations sometimes bubble up into my awareness. This feels as if a deeper layer of my being, deeper than my conscious reasoning, is intimating to me its insights. Of course, this is a familiar phenomenon. Many spiritual traditions use contemplative and meditative reading techniques precisely for this purpose.
Similar powerful insights may also arise in other ways and other contexts. They may be triggered even by a casual sentence in the midst of a noisy party. They can touch hidden aspects of our being and open us to new perspectives, to new aspects of life, even to a greater reality, so that afterwards we will never be the same.
These and similar experiences, my own as well as others’, tell me that philosophy can be much more than an abstract reasoning about life. They suggest that philosophy can be philo-sophia—a voyage out of the cave of our constricted self; that it can engage our inner depths and transform us by opening us in new ways to new horizons of reality—and this is what I hope for.
Everything I have written in the previous reflections is in essence an exploration of this basic vision. In those reflections I said, among other things, that philosophical practice should aspire to more than solving problems or providing satisfaction; that we should go beyond critical thinking and academic philosophy, which focus too exclusively on abstract thinking; that philosophical practice should aim at creating an inner revolution, instead of acting as a normalizing agent of society; that the tendency to turn philosophical practice into a profession is regrettable, and that it should be seen as philo-sophia and a way of life; that rather than directing philosophical practice at clients, we should first direct it at our own lives; that it requires a contemplative attitude and an inner openness to human reality.
All these are different ways of saying that philosophical practice can be guided by a vision that is much greater than what it tends to be now. For me, one way of summarizing this basic vision is to say that the task of philosophical practice is to open more of ourselves to more of reality. Or, in a somewhat more complex formulation: To engage more of our inner depths in giving voice to broader horizons of reality.
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.
Reflection 12
MAINTAINING THE PHILOSOPHICAL ATTITUDE THROUGHOUT THE DAY
In previous reflections I suggested that philosophical practice—or what I called ‘Grand Philosophical Practice’—can be seen as an attempt to explore the philosophical life—a way of living that is permeated by a philosophical attitude to life, and that is nourished by philosophical understandings and dialogue.
But what is a philosophical life? What does it mean to live philosophically, given that our day contains so many mundane activities such as shopping in the supermarket, driving to work, talking with the boss, chatting with our spouse, or cleaning the house?
The answer, of course, is not something to be determined in advance by the verdict of a definition. It is something that should gradually unfold itself through a process of exploration, through an ongoing personal journey that would keep defining and re-defining itself.
Nevertheless, whatever such a journey might reveal, it seems to me that if it is to be a philosophical journey—a journey aimed at expanding and deepening our understanding of human reality—then at least one thing is necessary: that throughout the day we maintain inside ourselves an inner space of openness. By this I mean that as a philosophical practitioner I cultivate an element of quiet attentiveness, so that I ‘listen’ to the ‘voices’ of human reality, I attend to the hidden meanings in my world, and I open myself to insights that may arise to my consciousness from the depth of my being. Such an attitude is probably not all there is to the philosophical life, but it seems to me a necessary and important part of it.
Thus, as a philosophical practitioner I do not completely lose myself to my everyday activities. I am not totally immersed in my errands, in my worries and anxieties, in my hobbies and entertainment, in the race for success and achievement—because my everyday moments have an additional dimension to them: that of attentiveness to a larger scope of reality. To be sure, as a human being I work and make phone calls and pay my bills and watch movies, but at the same time I am more than these activities. I am broader than my little busy self, because I also maintain an inner space that is not identified with the commotion, that is attentive and observant, that opens up to broader horizons of meaning. In this sense I take part in a greater self and a greater reality, greater than my immediate concerns and worries.
This implies that it is potentially possible to be a philosopher at every moment of the day, even in the midst of the worse daily tumult. But note that I am not suggesting that we should constantly busy ourselves in academic philosophizing—in abstract thinking and rational analysis. To be sure, the capacity to disengage ourselves from the flow of life every once in a while, examine it rationally and analyze it, may be another important ingredient in the philosophical life—but we don’t want to do that all day long. Because completely disengaging ourselves from our everyday concerns is likely to result in alienation from life, and in losing touch with human reality.
In any case, I am talking here about something else: about an inner attitude of attending to life, not of inspecting it from the outside as an uninvolved observer. It is an attitude of being attuned to life while taking part in it, an openness, a sensitivity that invites hidden aspects of reality to manifest themselves in my awareness and expand me.
Such an attitude, however, is not easy to achieve. It requires that I learn to assume an attentive inner attitude and open myself to reality. Because normally, when we work or wash dishes or converse with the boss, we tend to be totally immersed in the situation, to be lost in our concerns and thoughts, and thus we are swept away by our familiar patterns of feeling and behaving and thinking. At such moments, deep new philosophical understandings are unlikely.
In contrast, when I maintain an inner space of attentiveness, I may be involved in the world—and yet be more than my involvement. I do not lose myself to whatever I am doing, because I also maintain an attentive sensitivity to that which is beyond the scope of my current worries. I am open to domains of reality that are not governed by my immediate concerns. My attitude is then philosophical in the sense that it is constantly open to deeper and broader understandings.
One might wander what it means to be ‘open’ and demand clearer explanations, but the details are not important here. The bottom line is that if philosophical practice is to be a way of life, then it requires that we maintain and develop some kind of philosophical inner attitude. Unlike academic philosophy, in which we can employ our abstract reasoning while leaving intact the rest of our personality, philosophical practice demands my entire being. Philosophical practice means that I allow philo-sophia to touch every aspect of my life—my rational thought but also my emotions, worries and aspirations, interpersonal relations, or in short, my entire way of being.
This means that philosophical practice poses a tremendous challenge for the practitioner. Doing philo-sophia is not a matter of spending a few hours in article-writing or counseling a client, but of personal transformation. It means working to expand my way of being throughout my daily existence. It is not a question of what I do, but of how I am, which is to say, of my basic attitude to life. Anyone who has ever tried making such a fundamental change knows how easy it is to slide back to our old, familiar, constricted ways of being.
It follows that the philosophical life requires considerable commitment and devotion. I would even say that it is a constant uphill battle against our tendency to lose ourselves to our ordinary patterns and worries. To counter this tendency, we might set aside quiet intervals of time throughout the day in order to recollect ourselves and return to the inner attentiveness that is required for genuine openness. But leading a philosophical life is more than those intervals; it is a full-time job.
Here, philosophical companions may be very helpful in supporting, empowering and inspiring one another. They can also serve as the ‘other’ who signifies the world beyond my own narrow boundaries. After all, openness to beyond myself includes openness to another person, to somebody else’s life and philosophical quest.
In this way, it seems to me, philo-sophia can become more than a specific activity within life or about it. Doing philo-sophia would thus imply not turning away from everyday life to academic abstractions, but rather living everyday moments more fully and deeply, with greater wisdom and greater sensitivity towards others, towards life, and towards reality.
Reflection 13
ON BUBBLES
I have said in my previous Reflections that in philosophical practice it is not enough to understand with our abstract thinking. A deeper form of understanding is needed, one that involves more of ourselves. If we want philosophical practice to do more than theory-construction and analysis, if we want it to be woven into our everyday lives and transform them, then the philosophical process must permeate our entire being. Philosophizing must take place not just in the specific domain of theoretical thinking, but in broader, deeper aspects of ourselves.
This is not to say that abstract reasoning or critical thinking is unimportant, but rather that its role is limited. It can critique and evaluate and sharpen already-existing understandings, but its capacity to produce new understandings is very restricted. It needs insights or ideas as materials to work on. And these must come from somewhere else in us.
Here we might speak about sources of understanding that are more profound or more superficial. Thus, some ideas may be based on one-sided and limited encounters with the world, while others may be insights that give voice to the deeper aspects of human reality. This is what I mean when I talk about understanding from the depth of our being.
But what does it mean to understand from the deeper aspects of our being?
It might be tempting to answer this question with a theory about the nature of ‘depth-understanding.’ However, the problem is that such a theory would have to be formulated in the language of theoretical thinking. This would amount to imposing the format of abstract reasoning on all forms of understanding. It seems to me, therefore, that instead of trying to capture depth-understandings with a theory, it is better to point to them by way of examples.
My friend Gerald Rochelle has described one such example, and kindly allowed me to quote it:
On a tram. I am sitting on a tram near the Mexican border. It is hot. Opposite me, a young girl sits close to her corpulent mother. She pushes herself under her mother’s fat arms and smiles at me. It is a nervous but becoming smile. The mother nods and turns to stroke the girl’s forehead.
Suddenly, I realize motherhood. I see that everyone has a mother, that having a mother is a peculiar bond, that it is naturally loving, protective, that something flows between mother and child, and so something flows between all individuals; there is something which is not constrained by our natural isolation, and I see that love is what flows, and the child’s smile and the mother’s caress flow to me and I am their child, the child of the child and the child of the mother, and I realize the harmony of it all, the perfect nature of it all, and I am filled with it and I look around for others to love; and I look back again and it is still happening, and I can hardly bear it, it is too much, too much for the individual, too much to contain within isolation. It is all to do with how we fit together, how we belong to each other in all relative ways, and I see the child’s face again, and again she smiles, and it fixes in my mind, and I feel myself changing. My stomach fills with nerves because I know I cannot explain what is going on. I try to distill it, put it into order, and I realize that it will not be rationalized, it is too much, I will only be able to retain part of it, an image maybe, a shape, a smile, a caress, something to remind me, to stimulate my memory, and I relax a bit, allow it to go. I have an insight, it is inside me, and I am changed.
And the mother gets up, stretches out her hand. I shake her hand, rather embarrassed, and the young girl bows low. They both leave, and I shiver with excitement. The world has opened up something new. I have seen that some of the shadow-images are not self-animating puppets but are being operated. There is a force within the world which can be seen, it is available, it is not ‘beyond’ so much, as existing there to be seen—if we see, look, perceive. I stare through the tram window. I know I will never be the same again. I have had a revelation.
I believe that most of us occasionally experience similar moments in which some new understanding appears in our consciousness and moves us deeply: It opens for us new perspectives, often infusing us with new kinds of energy, or motivating us to embark on a certain action, or to relate to life in novel and unfamiliar ways. We are moved, but not simply because of the verbal content of the new understanding. The idea itself may not be new to us. We may have thought or read about it many times in the past, without being filled with it and moved by it—until today.
For example, some time ago, as I was cleaning my house, my eyes fell on a large grasshopper that was standing on the floor. I turned towards the insect, and it turned towards me. For a few seconds we stood face to face. At that moment I was struck by how similar we were to each other. I could ‘see’ how we both took part in the same urge to self-protect and assert, in the same impetus to individuate ourselves from our environment, how we were both enclosed in our personal concerns and worldviews. This realization inspired in me a sense of intimate connection with all forms of life, while at the same time filling me with a sense of smallness, with a realization of the absurdity of my petty personal concerns, and with a desperate desire to go beyond myself, beyond the particularity of my self-interests.
If I translate this realization into a theory—e.g., that all forms of life are self-enclosed and intimately connected—the result is a disappointing cliché. The theoretical statement does not do justice to the many meanings which the realization had for me and in me. After all, prior to that experience I was familiar with the theoretical idea, and yet it was only an abstract theory which I could recite and analyze in my thoughts. But now, thanks to the experience, the idea was understood in a broader sense, as rich with meanings that were grasped by my entire being. That is why it moved me and transformed me.
Evidently, there is a significant difference between this kind of realization and understanding-in-thought, even if both can be translated into the same verbal statement.
I call these insights ‘bubbles’, because they rise to consciousness just as a bubble rises to the surface from the obscure depth of a lake. Such bubbles are quite common, as I have discovered in my conversations with friends, counselees and students. To me, personally, they are often triggered by words. Thus, I may be half-listening to a boring conversation, or browsing through some books at a bookstore in an airport, when suddenly a sentence grabs my attention. It reverberates inside me and triggers a new understanding that permeates my depths.
This bubble-experience is one specific example of understandings that go beyond mere thought. But they are enough to demonstrate that not all understandings are the same. Different understandings are capable of conveying to us different kinds of meanings in different ways and to different extents, by involving different aspects of our being. Some forms of understanding involve merely our thinking faculty, while others involve more of ourselves, and thus open us to broader and richer horizons of meanings.
This is, of course, not a new idea. Many wisdom and spiritual traditions have developed ways to facilitate various forms of deep understandings, using a variety of techniques: meditations, contemplative reading and writing techniques, and even bodily exercises and spiritual dances. Monastic Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Islamic Sufi school are a few examples of such traditions.
To me these considerations suggest that philo-sophia—as the attempt to understand the foundation of human reality—need not be limited to intellectual argumentation. For too long Western philosophy has been focused almost exclusively on verbal reasoning. It is time now to open ourselves to broader forms of understanding. It is time that philosophers start attending not just to the voice of logical reasoning, but also to other voices of reality.
This, it appears to me, is an inspiring vision especially for philosophical practitioners. Because these deeper forms of understandings are usually born not just in abstract conversations in air-conditioned classrooms, but while riding a bus or looking at an insect or finding ourselves trapped in a boring conversation, or in short—in the midst of everyday life.
Reflection 14
WE NEED A NEW LANGUAGE FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
I think that it is fair to say that almost every mainstream philosophical text aims at making statements: “That’s the way things are.” Examples are philosophical theories that attempt to state what knowledge is, or how the mind relates to the body, or what is justice, or how words attain meaning. These theories are composed of statements which seek to state what is true—about the world, about society, about beauty, about moral behavior, etc.
Thus, the discourse of Western philosophy centers on the goal of making statements. It is a discourse that consists of generalizations, arguments, counter-arguments, assumptions, inferences, explanations—and all theses are geared towards determining what is true (or false) about the topic in question.
It seems to me that for us, philosophical practitioners, this should be disconcerting. If we want philo-sophia to be a living practice and a way of life, then are we sure that the project of statement-making is relevant for us? Can we take it for granted that the search for wisdom has much in common with the search for true statements?
This is a crucial question. Because it opens the door to the possibility that the discourse found in traditional philosophy is very different from the discourse which we need in philosophical practice. The two may turn out to be as different from each other as the language of poetry and the language of science, as literature and literary criticism. In fact, it may turn out that the classical philosophical texts—which, after all, are focused on statement-making—are of no relevance for philosophical practice.
And indeed, several considerations suggest that statement-making discourse is not relevant for us:
First, making a statement (in a theory, for example) means offering an objective representation or ‘picture’ of the way things are; which means declaring a bottom line, a conclusion, an end-product. But if philosophical practice is supposedly an ongoing personal exploration in which we constantly grow and develop, then its language should be that of openness and not that of closure, of an ever-developing ‘melody’ and not of final statements. Life, like a melody, does not have a bottom line. If we want philo-sophia to be woven into everyday life, then philosophical ideas should be like notes in a piece of music: always leading to newer notes, never concluding with an end-result. But if so, then how can a final product, such as a theory by Descartes or Kant, be relevant for us?
In short, there seems to be a gap between philo-sophia as a personal process and way of life, and philosophy as a search for intellectual products (theories). If philosophical practice accepts from standard philosophy the role of statement-making, then its job becomes collecting and constructing statements (or theories) about life. This may be an interesting academic endeavor, but its focus is intellectual products and not the process of life.
One might reply that philosophical theories are nevertheless relevant to everyday life, because they can be used to illuminate concrete situations. Thus, a theory about the meaning of death, or about authenticity, or about love, can help us understand ourselves more deeply.
Here, a second consideration comes into the picture: If we expect philo-sophia to make an impact on our self-understanding by making statements, then we must be careful to use only those statements that are true. Obviously, if we want to develop our understanding, we don’t want to apply to ourselves a theory that is false.
However, if the value of a philosophy depends on the truth of its statements, then it is hard to see how any philosophy can be of much use. Because virtually no philosophical theory has ever been proved true, or even proved more likely than all its opponents. For every theory on a given topic, there are conflicting theories, and each of them has its own reasoning, merits, and popularity. How can we decide whether, for example, love is as Sartre analyzes it, or as Fromm analyzes it, or as Ortega y Gasset? To be sure, many philosophers have stubborn convictions, but it is a historical fact that no such conviction has ever been proved against opposing convictions. No argument can force us, by the sheer power of reason, to concede that a given philosophical theory is right. But if so, then what value does a theory have, if its claim—”That’s the way things are!”—cannot be substantiated?
Of course, if philosophizing is only a game of intellectual enjoyment, or a tool for making our counselee feel better (as in philosophical therapy), then truth is not important. But if we take seriously the statements made by a philosophical theory, if we wish to use theories for a better understanding of life, then the question—”How do you know which theory is true?”—becomes crucial.
These two considerations suggest that standard philosophical discourse—as a discourse aimed at making true statements—is not very appropriate for philosophical practice and for the philosophical life.
But the statement-making conception of philosophy raises a third problem for us: It makes inter-personal dialogue very limited, and thus it casts doubt on the possibility of true philosophical companionship.
More specifically, if the point of philosophy is to make true statements, then two philosophers can relate to each other only in two ways: either they agree with each other, or they disagree. If you have one theory about (for example) love, and I have a different theory, then all we can do is argue about who is right. I can attack you with arguments, and you can do the same, but there is no possibility of real togetherness, of joint exploration. The only togetherness which seems possible is when we both happen to agree—but this is an uninteresting kind of togetherness, because it does not allow me to encounter you as a real ‘other’; it does not enable me to go beyond my horizons. To be sure, I can be ‘tolerant’ towards your theories, but tolerance is not enough for companionship. It only means that I forgive your ‘mistaken’ views.
In sum, if we wish philosophical practice to be an open exploration and a way of life, if we want it to involve true dialogue and companionship, then I think we must look for alternative forms of philosophical discourse. We should look for ways of philosophizing that are not focused on making true statements.
This conclusion seems perplexing. How can a philosophical discourse not aim at true statements? What can it possibly aim at—fiction? Imagination?
However, the question is not as baffling as it might seem, if we recall that there are types of discourse that are significant and enlightening—not because of their statement-making. A poem, for example, opens us to beauty, harmony, and to hidden meanings that are otherwise unavailable to us, although its sentences do not express statements about what reality is like. Similarly, a mythology enables the person to take part in the (alleged) supernatural realm—not merely by making statements about the world, as if it was a scientific theory, but through stories, imagery, and ritual. Likewise, a conversation between two lovers is not just a sequence of statements that X loves Y, or that Y has almond-shaped eyes, but mainly a way of opening ourselves to the beloved, and connecting ourselves to the reality of the other person.
In a similar way, I suggest that the discourse of philosophical practice need not be limited to statement-making. Different philosophical ideas need not be viewed as conflicting statements that compete for truth. For example, it is not interesting to regard different conceptions of love—e.g., by Sartre, Ortega y Gasset, and Fromm—as conflicting statements about the reality of love. As statements, they have a more or less equal claim to truth, and there is no reasonable procedure to determine which is the correct one. What is more interesting about them, however, is that they open for us ways of connecting to different aspects of human reality.
What I am suggesting here is that, as philosophical practitioners, we should abandon the traditional form of philosophical discourse, which focuses so obsessively on proving and disproving and declaring—or in short, on making statements. We need to develop a new form of discourse that is more concerned with connecting to human reality than with making statements about it. This would enable, among other things, a true dialogue between different individuals, where inter-personal differences would no longer mean disagreement and argumentation, but a togetherness-though-differences.
I realize that I am suggesting here a fundamental revolution in our conception of what philosophizing is. Traditional philosophy has been modeled around statement-making kinds of discourse, and has focused almost exclusively on one single kind of philosophical understanding: understanding through statements-about. In order to develop a different discourse, based on different forms of understanding, we need tremendous creativity, visionary powers, and courage. And yet, if we wish philosophical practice to be different from statement-making, theory-constructing academic philosophy, then I believe we must embark on this ambitious project.
Reflection 15
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS DON’T HAVE TO BE THEORIES
In my last Reflection I suggested that a new kind of discourse is needed for philosophical practice, one that is not focused on theories. In such a discourse, philosophical ideas would not be regarded primarily as theories, in other words, as attempts to state a general truth.
But if the discourse of philosophical practice doesn’t focus on theories that supposedly describe reality, then what can it possibly do? What role can philosophical ideas play, if not to make general statement about the way things really are?
Let us tackle the issue from this direction: What are philosophical discourses for? Why should we bother to philosophize about, say, knowledge or about language or about love?
An obvious answer is: We want to get closer to the nature of things, to appreciate more of our world, to be in touch with reality, to enrich and deepen our understanding.
This seems a reasonable goal. But there is something peculiar about the way in which traditional philosophy tries to achieve this goal: by means of theories about reality. It attempts to ‘capture’ reality with statements. In this sense, a philosophical theory serves as a ‘picture’ made of words, which supposedly corresponds to the way reality is.
This traditional approach may seem natural, but in fact it makes a big assumption: that the way to understand reality is through theories that state the truth about it. This is a legitimate assumption if our aim is to write academic articles. But if we are interested in philosophical practice, if we want philosophy to make a difference to our self-understanding not just in abstract thought but in our everyday life, if we want to be in touch with reality not only through our thinking but through our entire way of being, then the question is: Are we sure that this theory-based kind of understanding is appropriate for us?
But what other, alternative kinds of understanding are there?
Ramakrishna, the great 19th century Indian sage, is quoted as saying:
“Everyone foolishly assumes that his clock alone tells the correct time. Christians claim to possess exclusive truth… Countless varieties of Hindus insist that their sect, no matter how small and insignificant, expresses the ultimate position. Devout Muslims maintain that Koranic revelation supersedes all others. The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: ‘My religion alone is true.’… But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays and meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the goal of spiritual evolution.” (The World’s Wisdom, Philip Novak, HarperCollins 1994, p. 42)
Ramakrishna speaks here about the truth of religions, saying (somewhat like Kierkegaard) that our access to the Real depends on our inner attitude, not on dogma or ritual. But his words are relevant to us, because philosophical practice, too, seeks to get in touch with the real. Paraphrasing Ramakrishna’s words, we may say:
“The world of philosophy is being driven insane by this single phrase: ‘My philosophical theory alone is true.’ But if any sincere philosopher, within whatever tradition or approach, philosophizes with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, reality will flood his mind and heart. His particular philosophical ideas will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the goal of understanding and wisdom.”
This suggests a radical revolution in our conception of the function of philosophical ideas, at least within the context of philosophical practice. It suggests that the value of our philosophizing depends not on the objective content of our theories, but on our attitude while we philosophize. The important point is not how our ideas mirror reality, but how they enable us to relate to reality. The point is, in other words, how philosophical ideas operate within us: how they ‘speak’ in us and awaken us, how they enrich our states of consciousness, how they break through the walls of our preconceptions, or in short, how they open us to more of reality.
This means that if I acquire a sophisticated theory full of brilliant reasoning, but which remains in my abstract thinking alone, then I am no closer to reality than I had been before. If my life continues to be governed by the same self-centered conceptions and concerns, by the same patterns of thought and emotion, by the same chattering consciousness, then I am certainly not in greater touch with the world. As long as my relationship to reality is limited to theorizing-about, I remain very far from it.
Conversely, an insight or ‘bubble’ can touch me and greatly deepen my appreciation of life, even if its theoretical content is simple and sketchy. It may open new channels of relating to myself and others, arouse in me dormant sensitivities, stir up previously unexpressed aspects of myself and give them voice, turn my attention to perspectives that have been neglected by my automatic thought-patterns, or in short open me to a richer understanding of human reality.
In order for this to happen, I don’t need a sophisticated philosophical theory. A simple flash of an idea is sufficient to greatly influence and edify me. Moreover, I don’t need to accept the idea as a true theory. On the contrary, if I contemplate on it without deciding whether to accept or reject it, it can act in me more powerfully. Because, as odd as it may sound, we can better appreciate the richness of human reality when we are in a state of openness, of indecision, or wonder and awe, of yearning and even confusion, than when we are seized by a particular conviction. The many ‘voices’ of human reality can better speak in us when we are beyond any particular theory. Once we grab a specific theory—or once a specific theory grabs us, our openness tends to shut down; until some new realization shakes it and opens us anew.
I suggest, therefore, that unlike the traditional philosophical discourse which is concerned with what might be called ‘descriptive truth’ (the degree to which a theory or statement accurately describes the facts), for philosophical practice something else is more significant: the degree to which an idea acts in us and opens us to a greater appreciation of human reality.
Some might object here: If we give up philosophy’s aim of descriptive truth, then aren’t we opening the door for subjective preferences, for popular vogues, for arbitrary personal tastes? Without truth, is there any criterion left to distinguish between good and bad philosophizing?
One answer is that we should not give up descriptive truth altogether, only in the specific context of the discourse of philosophical practice. We can still find use for philosophical theories in other contexts.
More importantly, it seems to me simply false that descriptive truth has ever helped to defend philosophy against subjective, personal preferences. Despite philosophy’s ideal of truth, many contradictory theories have always existed side by side throughout history. Thus, if we throw away the aspiration for descriptive truth, the landscape of philosophy will not be any more subjective and pluralistic than it already is anyway. On the contrary, we will finally be reconciled with the obvious fact that no single philosophical theory has ever been proved against all its competitors.
I suggest, then, that as philosophical practitioners we should not be preoccupied with theories, or with whether a given theory is true or false. Our focus should be on ideas as means for developing our relationship to human reality, not on ideas as theories about human reality.
One important benefit of this approach is that differences between philosophical practitioners would no longer be a cause for disagreement and for philosophical battles. On the contrary, differences would be an opportunity for us to enrich one another. We would thus be able to relate to fellow philosophers as companions who, precisely because they differ from us, can join us on a philosophical journey.
Reflection 16
The POWER of Living ideas
Philosophy deals with ideas. And philosophical practice, too, is inspired by the power of ideas, and seeks to use it to broaden life, to edify it, to enlighten it.
The trouble is that traditionally, philosophical IDEAS have been equated with philosophical THEORIES. This implied that philosophy’s primary role is to theorize. However, it seems to me that ideas can do much more than to serve as general, abstract statements about the way things are.
My philosophical companion Stefano recently wrote the following ‘philosophical sketch’ on the forum of our companionship
This morning I shook hands with a person I didn't know and whom I will never see again. At that moment I understood the meaning of the philosophical problem of ‘communication’. And I understood that the way we usually deal with it is wrong: It makes no sense to ask how it is possible to meet the other person. I must realize that I simply do not exist without the presence of the other. I cannot think of myself without the other, because the other belongs to me (and vice versa).
“Returning home, I wondered: what consequences does this thought have for my relationship with my wife, with my daughter, with my friends?
This brief text might seem like a philosophical theory about the nature of self-identity. But is it really?
If Stefano meant his text to be a theory, then he is committed to defending it as a universal truth, to accepting its logical implications and presuppositions, and to arguing against contradictory theories.
But is he really committed to all this? If he found his idea enlightening in one particular situation, what forces him to apply it to EVERY possible situation? What stops him from finding it significant and instructive, but not universally true? Why can’t he find it meaningful at one moment, and a moment later find meaning in a contradictory idea?
I think that like Stefano, most of us experience interesting realizations from time to time, and we often put them in words, whether in a conversation, in a letter, or in a personal journal. When we do so, I don’t think we are necessarily attempting to construct a general theory, but rather to give voice to a certain idea that moved us. We write down the idea not as a final intellectual product, but as a moment in our ongoing interaction with life, like a sentence in a conversation, like a musical phrase in an ongoing symphony. Our idea is meaningful to us because it points to something previously unnoticed, because it intrigues, inspires, challenges, questions our convictions, responds to our wondering and raises new questions. In short, a ‘philosophical sketch’ like Stefano’s is not primarily a fixed description of a fixed opinion, but a movement in the dynamics of life.
One might object that if this is the case, then a ‘philosophical sketch’ is only a subjective expression of a personal experience. And if so, then it is not really philosophical.
But in fact, the text is much more than merely subjective. Because it may express a theme in the melody of life, which is common to many lives, and which often surfaces in the lives of many people. Indeed, the dependence of my self-identity on others is a prominent theme that appears in many situations – although not universally, not always, not in the same way. We are all familiar with times at which Stefano’s inter-dependence theme is prominent in our lives. But we are equally familiar with different times, of blessed solitude, when we experience ourselves as independent monads. Still at other times, the two themes may appear side by side, or fight each other, or merge together to give birth to some synthesis, or simply disappear when the question of self-identity is not at issue.
Like a musical phrase in a symphony, a theme in life may appear and disappear and appear again, and in the process change forms and contexts and meanings. Think, for example, of the opening ta-ta-ta-ta of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and how it appears and reappears in all kinds of variations, sometimes resembling only vaguely the original phrase. But although a theme in life cannot be generalized into a universal theory about, e.g. the essence of self-identity, it is nevertheless an important thread in the fabric of human reality. This is why we can read somebody else’s philosophical sketch and be moved by it.
In this sense, the philosophical sketch gives voice to something beyond the writer’s particular life. The idea which it expresses functions as a theme that is woven in the lives of many. Life ‘speaks’ through the philosopher and through his words. And to the extent that the philosopher is attentive and sensitive and truthful and articulate, he or she can give voice to life, and give life to its voices.
Doing such a philosophy is obviously not a matter of inventing and analyzing ideas with our brain-power, but rather of attending and letting life speak in us, to us, with us. Here, philosophical ideas no longer serve as theories that capture reality, but as ‘voices’ of reality. Unlike theories, they are part of life; they are alive – they are living philosophical ideas. This is why I prefer to call them ‘themes’, because the word ‘ideas’ implies something too abstract, static, and remote from concrete life.
From the perspective of theoretical philosophy, philosophical sketches – and the living ideas which they express – may seem too vague, too undeveloped. Stefano’s text, for example, when judged as a theory, is much too brief and superficial. It leaves many issues unanswered: In what sense are other persons part of me? Why can’t I exist by myself as a Robinson Crusoe? What about alternative approaches to personal identity, such as John Locke’s memory-theory?
However, it is not the purpose of a philosophical sketch to provide a complete picture that answers all questions once and for all. Its aim is not to solve an issue, to determine, to fix, to settle, but on the contrary – to unsettle, to challenge, raise wonder, make us look in new ways, give us words for further quests, or in short, to open a window to new realms beyond our current boundaries.
This means that an idea may be powerful, even though – and precisely because – it is sketchy and undeveloped. Its power comes from the fact that it opens life.A forty-page theory that is finished and complete would not have the same effect.
This seems to me the kind of discourse which we need to develop in philosophical practice. If philosophy is to be woven into everyday life, then it must reject the traditional hegemony of descriptive truth. Because living ideas are powerful as active forces that open up, rather than as finished products to memorize and analyze.
The implication of all this seems to me far-reaching. It is not merely an issue of method, but of an inner revolution. Because it means that as a philosophical seeker I let go of my attempts to capture reality with theories, I let go of my convictions, of my attempts to be right and justified. It means that I give up the desire to stand on the ‘firm’ ground of certainty, of solutions, of answers, and renounce the hope that any such theoretic ground could offer me rest and relief. It means that I embrace the groundless and indeterminate human reality, which is always more than what it is and is open beyond itself.
But in giving up all this I discover that I am not really losing anything. On the contrary, by letting go of descriptive truth I become more truthful to human reality and to its radical openness. I then discover that openness is not a nothing, that it is not a lack, but a full and rich reality. I realize that no-answer is more than an answer, and no-theory is more than a theory. And I find that I myself am an openness – an open space for the many voices of reality to speak in me by means of my encounters with the world around me and with my fellow humans.
The great power of ideas is to open. To be sure, ideas can also close: define, determine, circumscribe – and sometimes this is an important function. But for us as philosophical seekers, they are more significant in their capacity to open a window towards the indeterminate, towards the groundless, which is, I think, towards what some call wisdom, or love, or reality, or Being, or Lu.
Reflection 17
BEYOND THE WALLS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL PRISON
It is fascinating to see how new university students are initiated into philosophy. At first their thinking seems confused—at least relative to what we regard as good philosophical thinking. They fail to see obvious lines of reasoning, to detect fallacies, to notice hidden assumptions. Little by little, however, as they follow the example of their teachers and their texts, they learn to walk in the paths of mainstream philosophy. Soon they can quote Sartre, or discuss Hume, or formulate an argument. Now all this seems so natural to them, that they can hardly imagine how anybody can possibly think differently.
How fascinating: A mind has been trained. A mind has been initiated into… into what? What is the nature of this philosophical realm into which they have been initiated?
Western philosophy can be seen as a specialized form of discourse. It is a discourse which encompasses certain issues, theories, concepts, methods of inquiry, and which is largely inspired by a few ‘canonical texts’ or ‘philosophical scriptures’: the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, etc., plus a few ‘minor’ philosophers who occupy the periphery of this respectable club.
Numerous other thinkers throughout Western history are not included in this exclusive club. Many of them were ignored because powerful professors judged their ideas as uninteresting or irrelevant. Others were discouraged from writing, or were not even accepted to schools, because their ways of thinking were too different and ‘strange.’ Moreover, many potential thinkers never developed their thoughts because they were discouraged by the intellectual atmosphere that was so foreign to them. (Think how a young Wittgenstein would be discouraged in a Taoist culture!).
These thinkers and potential thinkers have been marginalized, ignored, or simply not heard. Their thoughts could have inspired different kinds of philosophy, but they have not. The discourse of Western philosophy came to be shaped by a small group of canonical thinker and their texts, methods, issues, and concepts. These define, more or less, what counts as Western philosophy. Indeed, you must learn this specialized discourse if you wish to be regarded as a serious philosopher. Otherwise, no respectable journal will publish your writings and no departments will hire you.
All this is curious. If philosophy is the search for wisdom and understanding, then why did it exclude so many forms of discourse? After all, in other cultures there are other ways of thinking, ones that are based on different assumptions or concepts, on different ways of thinking, on different approaches to life. What was the driving force that made philosophy such a specialized discourse?
The ‘official’ story, which we learn in philosophy classes, is that there are reasons that made Plato and Descartes etc. paradigms for what philosophy is. There are good reasons that explain why, for example, Diogenes the Cynic or some Mr. Anonymous have not become philosophical heroes. Presumably, reason is the judge that determines whether a given philosophical approach would flourish or perish in history.
But is this official story the true story? After all, history is often shaped not by reason, but by power struggles, personal interests, competition for fame and control. Is it possible that the ‘official’ story is one-sided, like propaganda published by the authorities?
Let us look at the history of philosophy from a sociological perspective. A specialized discourse, based on canonical texts and methods, means a tradition: a body of ideas that is relatively stable, that develops slowly, and that is revered, studied, discussed.
A tradition in this sense means conservatism. It promotes a discourse which requires much training and learning, and it rejects approaches that are personal and free-spirited. It draws a clear distinction between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, between legitimate philosophy (‘good,’ ‘deep,’ etc.) and illegitimate philosophy (‘superficial,’ ‘unreasonable,’ etc.), between the correct and the incorrect. A philosophical tradition promotes ways of philosophizing that produce products (theories, methodologies) which can be collected and transmitted, and it suppresses philosophies that are open-ended. It therefore prefers ideas that can be possessed in thought and in writing, as opposed to ideas to be lived in everyday life.
This is precisely the philosophy that we have today, the philosophy which has been preserved in history books, and which we call ‘Western philosophy.’
How did that happen? Who made Western philosophy such a conservative discourse? Who gained from this kind of conservatism?
The answer, it seems to me, is clear: The conservatism of philosophy is in the interest of institutions: the university, the academia, the church or the monastery, the philosophy journal. Institutions need stability. The philosophical establishment needs specialized terminologies, methodologies, texts, or else it would be unable to justify its special status. Institutional philosophers need knowledge and methods in order to maintain their authority. Only thanks to their professionalism can they draw a line between those who are initiated and those who are not, between acceptable philosophies and unacceptable philosophies, between the high and the low, between themselves and others.
In short, mainstream Western philosophy is the philosophy of the establishment, of powerful institutions. It is the philosophy of those who are in power and need to maintain their authority.
I do not mean to suggest that university professors are cynics who are hungry for power. I imagine that most of them, including those who are at the very top, are truly interested in philosophy. My point is that specific flowers grow in specific habitats. In the soil of institutions grow conservative philosophies. Of course, from time to time we might find even in the academic world alternative forms of philosophy (think of Kierkegaard, for example, or the ancient Cynics), but they cannot last for long. They will either quickly disappear from the scene, or they will be domesticated and re-interpreted and assimilated into the ‘orthodoxy.’
To see this, imagine what will happen if a certain philosophy department will start philosophizing in a personal, free, open-ended ways: No more worship of canonical texts and methodologies, no more reverence for the knowledge of old professors, no more professional journals that determine who will be published and who will not.
In such a department, there would no longer be a distinction between the old professor and the young professor, or even the student. Some kinds of philosophy might gain popularity and some individuals might gain influence, but this would no longer be based on the authority of the tradition. Orthodox philosophy would lose its footing, and professorship would become meaningless. Philosophy professor would no longer have anything to ‘sell’ to students. Their ideas would be ignored.
This is not to say that tradition in philosophy is bad. After all, tradition enables us to remember inspiring ideas, and to gradually develop and refine our thinking, as can be witnessed by the wonderful intellectual treasures of the past.
But there is also a heavy price to pay: Orthodoxy limits philosophy to a very specific kind of discourse, and it suppresses other potential forms of discourse. In Western philosophy, this happened when philosophy became focused on abstract discussions that are aimed at producing theories, while ignoring virtually every other way of way of understanding life.
This situation is especially problematic for philosophical practice, which is not the philosophy of academic institutions. Anybody who has ever done some philosophical counseling knows how irrelevant Aristotle and Descartes are for everyday life. Most great orthodox texts have very little to say about real life. Even those ancient philosophies that tried to guide everyday life are very far from the life of a concrete, particular person. What relevance do the rigid Stoic formulas have to the life of a person in the street?
Admittedly, as philosophical practitioners we can sometimes borrow from orthodox texts a specific sentence or idea, but not much more than that. Concrete life is much more complex and rich, much more multi-sided, much more contradictory and dynamic and personal than universal formulas. And orthodox philosophy is much too narrow and rigid to appreciate this.
To me this suggests that there is not much for us, philosophical practitioners, in the academic field that is called ‘philosophy.’ It suggests that we should stop our allegiance with the philosophical orthodoxy and look for new ways of understanding life. Let us free ourselves from the heritage of institutional philosophy. We no longer need to revere the orthodox philosophical heroes—Plato and Spinoza and Kant and the rest. Down with the kings! They are indeed great kings, but not our kings.
For many of us, philosophical practitioners, this is a difficult thought. We have spent so many years studying in philosophy departments reading philosophy books, writing philosophy articles, teaching philosophical courses, that it is hard to see ourselves as anything but philosophers. But we must realize that as philosophers, what we are looking for has very little to do with orthodox philosophy. Aristotle or Leibniz is no more relevant to us than Sigmund Freud or Mircea Eliade or Meister Eckhart or Dostoyevski or Rilke, or indeed a wise Amazonian shaman. As philosophers, we are not part of the specialized professional discourse which orthodoxy calls ‘philosophy.’ We are travelers in a much larger world.
Thus, if we want to seriously look for new ways of touching life, I think that we should break out of the walls of philosophical orthodoxy. This is a tremendous task. It is not a matter of formulating a new theory or a novel set of assumptions—to do so would be to remain within the prison of orthodoxy, or at most to invent a new orthodoxy. The goal is nothing less than learning new ways of relating to life.
One might ask me: But what are you proposing instead? What alternative discourse are you suggesting? If we break out of academic thinking, then where do we go from there? How do you want us to start thinking and understanding and discussing?
But of course, I have no intention of supplying an answer to these questions. I don’t want to offer another intellectual prison to replace the old one. There are already enough gurus and spiritual teachers and philosophers who are busy selling their answers to life’s problems, as well as their dreams of salvation and ultimate resting-place.
For me, as philosophers we are nomads without a resting-place. We belong to no particular discourse or method or discipline, we possess no theories or answers. We are those who feel all the human hopes and fears and pains, but who have no medicine to offer. We are interested in every kind of joy and predicament, but we are empty-handed. We know a thousand salvations but not one ultimate Salvation. We are familiar with many ways of thinking and understanding, but not with The Way. We are in touch with human folly and grandeur, with unquenched thirst and satisfaction, with the joys and pains of love, with hate and anger—but we don’t know how to map them out and squeeze them all into an organized theory.
This is, I think, who we are as philosophers. We are eternal nomads—not because of disillusion or cynicism, but because in these vast, strange, awesome expanses of life, this is where we find the fullness of human existence. This is where we encounter Reality, or Lu, or Being.
Our mission, therefore, is not to offer resting places for those who are tired, but to invite those who are resting to stand up and join us in our nomadic wanderings. Everybody is invited, not just those who have a doctorate or a degree in philosophy, but everyone who agrees to be an un-knower.
Reflection 18
TO CONTEMPLATE BEYOND THE GAMES
- What is the goal of philo-sophical practice?
- I cannot talk about THE goal. My reflections express only the personal voice of a particular person.
- Alright, so what is YOUR goal in philo-sophia?
- As I see it now: to go beyond the boundaries of games.
- Games? What do you mean?
Consider a chess game. We toss a coin – “I am white!”
Indeed, I AM white. The white plastic figures on the wooden board are not just mine – they are ME. When I am absorbed in the game, they are the focus of my hopes, of my thoughts, of my regrets and my joys. When your black queen takes my white bishop, I feel a very real pain. The actions of the white pieces are my actions. Through them I move, attack, take revenge, triumph, live. Because they are me. For the duration of the game, the 64 black and white squares are my world.
To play a game is to be transported from 'real life' into another reality – into a chess board, or a set of cards, or a basketball court. When I sit down to play, I am no longer the man who was born in Israel, who teaches philosophy, and who has a dentist appointment tomorrow. These facts make no difference to where my mind is now. They have almost no existence for me.
Nevertheless, in the back of my mind I am aware that it's only a game, and that I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow. In effect, I am split into two parts: One part of me lives the game, while another part of me is vaguely aware of the wider world. I live in two different realities at once: the game, and the 'real' world.
Playing games is such a common phenomenon, that we usually don’t realize how amazing it is. It is amazing that I can BE the white soldiers on the board and forget my normal concerns and identity. It is amazing that I can live two different lives. Different lives – because in each of them I have different intentions and preferences, different hopes, fears, and behaviors. It is as if there are, inside me, two sources motivation, of thought and emotion, of life.
Games are devices that enable me to live a second life, an alternative reality. In this respect, they are similar to movies and novels. In a movie I bite my fingernails when the hero is attacked, and sigh in relief when he is rescued. I identify myself with the protagonist, with his concerns, fears, hopes.
And yet, I usually don’t confuse the two realities. I never confuse a person on the movie screen with my neighbor sitting next to me.
How is a game different from the ‘real’ world?
A game has rules that limit the player’s behavior (e.g., the king can move only one square, or you cannot kick the ball). But in the ‘real’ world, too, our life is governed by rules: the law of gravity, psychological patterns, social norms.
A game has a goal (e.g., you should try to take the opponent’s king, or to insert the basketball in the basket). But in ‘real’ life, too, our actions are governed by our goals: having fun, success, fame, security, etc.
Games are therefore imitations of reality, and this is why they are so fascinating. But they are not reality. Because the rules and the goal of a game are imaginary. They are make-believe. In the game I behave AS IF it is important to put the basketball inside the hoop; AS IF the ball cannot be kicked but only touched by hand. These rules and goals don’t have a real power over me. I am bound by them only as long as I accept them, only as long as I identify with them as determining my reality.
The amazing power of games comes from our capacity to identify with imaginary rules and imaginary goals as if they were real. We identify ourselves with fictional situations and push ‘real’ reality outside our awareness.
There are board-games and ball-games and card-games, but there are also psychological and social games. I may play the game of ‘I am pretty’ or ‘I am wise’, or the game of ‘I am a philosopher’. These are games if I identify myself with them; if I pretend that they determine who I am. For example, I may let the idea of ‘I am pretty’ control my way of acting and speaking. Or, I may adopt a certain posture and speech according to ‘I am wise’. I impose on myself specific standards (rules, goals) and restrict myself to them. My reality is now narrower.
There are also intellectual games: I impose on myself specific standards of thinking and believing – ‘I am an existentialist’, ‘I believe in dualism’, ‘I have a refined taste’. I adjust my thoughts to specific patterns, ways of thinking, assumptions.
These are games if I identify my reality with them, if I let them restrict my way of thinking and being, if I imagine that they determine who I am.
To play games is, then, to confine myself to a narrow imaginary reality. This is not necessarily bad. Games can be fun. They can also help us achieve certain goals. Social games save society from chaos.
But if I fall into games without awareness, if I lose myself in them for long periods of time, then I don’t fully live my life. I then lose touch with much of human reality. I start living the virtual world that is constructed by lofty ideals and philosophies, by the demands of society, by my whims and fantasies.
We are amazingly ‘good’ at losing ourselves in fictional rules and goals. Israeli children quickly learn the rules of Israeli identity, and Arab children the rules of Arab identity. The American cheers to his baseball team, and the Italian cheers to his Italian soccer team. The poor farmer in Africa dreams about plentiful banana trees in his field, while the American philosopher dreams about becoming famous (famous among other intellectuals!).
We are amazingly good at adjusting our thoughts, our emotions, aspirations, and behavior to a narrow aspect of human reality.
But it seems that we are not totally imprisoned in our games. The chess-player has some vague awareness that he is playing, and that his reality is broader than the chess-board. A rich lady in a high-society party may act and feel according to the social norms, and yet something in the back of her mind may whisper to her that she is acting.
I am not totally imprisoned in my games. Even when I am forced to play by the rules of my society or of my psychology, I don’t have to completely identify with them and restrict my existence to them. Even when I find myself controlled by my habits or obsessions or fears, I can realize that my reality is greater than these games.
Modern psychology has developed ways to help people become aware of their psychological games (‘emotional patterns’, ‘defenses’, ‘repressions’, etc.) and go beyond them. But this task, as important as it might be, is still very limited. Because going beyond psychological games is not yet going beyond our more fundamental prison, the conceptual prison – the games of our understanding: the rules and goals which we follow in constructing the basic coordinates of our world. These are the games of our cognitive patterns, of our cultural biases, of the structures (or rules) which our particular autobiography imposes on reality.
Is it possible for us to become aware of those more fundamental games and to go beyond our normal conception of reality? Is there a way to transcend our usual ways of understanding which shape our world?
This would be a tremendous task. It is hard to think of a more ambitious aspiration. And yet, I believe that it is not altogether impossible. Of course, as a human being I cannot be free of all boundaries. I cannot get rid of all my cognitive and cultural patterns. But the point is that I don’t need to identify myself with them. I don’t have to limit my awareness to specific intellectual games. I can ‘listen’ to a broader awareness of the greater reality. I can contemplate beyond my boundaries.
If this is indeed possible, if I can be greater than my games and be in touch with a broader realm of human existence, then this seems an appropriate task for philo-sophia. Because, to use Plato imagery, it is the goal of the philo-sopher to step out of the narrow cave towards a wider world.
This, then, is my personal answer (at least at the moment) to the question at the beginning of this reflection. My goal in philo-sophia is not to look for answers or theories or explanations, and not to limit myself to the voice of reason or the voice of morality or beauty. My goal is, rather, to go beyond the boundaries of my normal understanding and to be a witness to a broader horizon of human reality – through my awareness, through my thoughts and writings, through my relationships, and throughout my daily life.
Reflection 19
THE POLYPHONIC DIALOGUE
I sometimes receive interesting reactions to my writings, and I am glad that the writers voice their understandings in a different way from mine. After all, my own philosophical voice is only one voice. It comes from the life-experience of one single person. It expresses the way human reality speaks through my particular life, but not through other ways of being. Without other voices, my voice would be one-sided, incomplete.
I therefore regard the different voices of my fellow philosophical practitioners not as contrary to my voice, but as complementing my voice. They join me to create a fuller understanding, a richer music like different voices in a choir. My single voice is never sufficient to express the richness of human reality—just as a single flute would never give voice to a symphony.
For this reason I don’t like to argue about my reflections. I enjoy hearing other people’s reactions, but I am not very interested in whether or not they agree with me. The aim of my reflections is not to convince, but to arouse and inspire—and be inspired. My intention is not to state a universal truth, but to be a single voice in a larger choir. My hope is that other voices would resonate with me, respond to me just as a soprano singer responds to a tenor, and thus enrich the philosophical music.
This kind of philosophical interaction can be called ‘a polyphonic dialogue' (I owe this name to my friend Stefano Zampieri). It is very different from the ‘I-am-right-you-are-wrong’ model that is common in orthodox philosophy. The basic thought here is not: ‘If we think differently, then one of us must be wrong about reality,’ but rather: ‘If we think differently, then together we can express more of reality’– just as a duet can often express more than a solo.
In a polyphonic dialogue my aim is not to silence you by proving you wrong, but to inspire you to voice your best qualities, and likewise to be inspired by you. If I use arguments and counter-arguments, then it is not in order to force you to think like me, but in order that we may be able to help each other clarify and sharpen the ideas that speak in us. Because our common aim is to give voice to the richness of our reality. Our different philosophical voices, if they are faithful to what moves them, if they are precise and coherent, can add up to a multi-dimensional philosophical choir precisely because they are different.
The idea of philosophizing as a polyphonic dialogue might seem strange. After all, the goal of philosophy is to understand—to get in touch with the truth about reality. How can we accept two philosophical statements that are different? If your idea is true, then how can my contradictory idea be true as well?
Furthermore, doesn’t polyphonic philo-sophia mean that we must give up the ideal of truth? Doesn’t it lead to extreme relativism or subjectivism, where there is no right or wrong, where everything is relative, where everything is equally true?
The problem with this objection is that it makes a significant assumption—about what it means to be in touch with truth. We often think of truth as ‘descriptive truth’ or ‘theoretical truth’: Presumably, truth means that we talk accurately about reality. It means that we capture reality with descriptions or theories.
However, there is no reason to limit ourselves to this orthodox assumption. We can seek reality in other ways—for example, by taking part in it, or by giving voice to it. From this alternative perspective, understanding reality means that I assume a certain way of being and I open myself to reality. It is a way of being, not something I capture with words. The role of words is, then, not to define, to enclose, to fix an opinion, but to open me beyond opinions in the companionship of others.
For these reasons, I am sometimes perplexed when people talk to me about ‘my approach’ to philosophical practice, or about ‘my opinions’ on philosophical issues. Do I really have a philosophical approach? Do I have philosophical views?
It is true that sometimes my words sound like categorical statements—about the nature of wisdom, or about the goal of philo-sophia, or (as in this reflection) about the philosophical dialogue. And sometimes I sound argumentative, especially when I discuss orthodox philosophy.
And yet, I don’t have philosophical opinions that I wish to defend as universally true. I write ideas, not truths. I give voice to the words that speak in me, to flashes of realization, bubbles, observations, or in short, to musical sentences in an ongoing symphony. What I say is not intended to be a bottom line, but a phrase in a developing song. Because in philo-sophia there are no final words, only ever-developing music.
And even this reflection, which seems to say something definitive about the meaning of philosophical dialogues, is only a line in an ongoing music.
Why, then, do my reflections often sound like categorical statements?
One reason is that this is my way to inspire—I write in a strong and provocative language in order to stimulate the reader. Also, sometimes I criticize orthodox philosophy in order to encourage us to examine non-orthodox roads. My assertions are intended to question the monopoly which orthodoxy has, and thus to open the door for alternative ways of philosophizing.
But a third reason is much more important: because of the limitations of grammar. That’s the problem with the rules of language, that when we combine a subject and a predicate and construct a grammatical sentence, the result sounds like a categorical statement.
I wish there was another way to construct sentences. I wish there was a special linguistic conjugation, or a special grammatical tense, which could express ideas without making them into statements. We could call it ‘the philosophical tense,’ or ‘the reflective tense’: past tense, present tense, future tense… and reflective tense.
Perhaps we should invent it…
But there is a fourth reason why my reflections often sound like final statements. I said earlier that I don’t have philosophical opinions, and that I don’t intend my words to be universally true. Well, this is inaccurate. In fact, many times I am carried away and I make declarations about what is right and what is wrong, how philosophy should be and how it shouldn’t be.
I admit it. And yet, it is only one part of me that is speaking. It is only part of me that is playing the game of orthodox philosophy, the game of trying to capture the universal truth. I sometimes lose myself to the game, but as I suggested in the previous reflection, the person who plays a game is also greater than the game. The chess-player who is absorbed in playing is also aware that it is only a game. The person who watches a movie knows in the back of her mind that it she is sitting in a movie theater.
In the same way, only part of me plays the game of categorical statements. I am a human being; I cannot be free of all games. I have my cognitive mechanisms and psychological patterns and cultural conditionings and biological programming. They have their function and value, but they also tempt me to pretend that my words are the universal truth, that my single voice is the entire music, that my little chess-board is the entire world. And yet, even during those moments when I play by the rules of categorical statements and theoretical truth, I also know in the back of my mind that this is only a limited way of relating to reality.
In a sense, therefore, while my narrow self is preoccupied with its theoretical games, my broader understanding contemplates beyond the bounds of theories. It thus reaches out to those horizons of human existence which no single universal theory can capture.
This, I suggest, is the philosopher in me (and in us): the understanding which is broader than my normal boundaries, and which is a witness to the vast realm of human reality: to the variety of human games and limitations, as well as to what lies beyond them.
Reflection 20
HOW OPEN-ENDED IDEAS OPEN ME
A few weeks ago somebody wanted to discuss with me my recent reflections. He started by explaining what he understood from my text and saying what he thought I intended to say.
While talking with him, I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was distorting what I wanted to say, or even trivializing it (without bad intention, of course). But at first I could not put my finger on what exactly was bothering me.
And then I understood: He was trying to make my texts more precise than they really were. He was ‘translating’ my words into well-defined ideas.
When I speak or write in philo-sophia, my words always contain an element that is indefinite, undefined. When I say, for example, “to go beyond my boundaries” or “voices of human reality,” I don’t have an exact definition of what these words mean. I may have some picture in my mind, an image, some partial understanding, but much remains vague in my understanding.
This is not an unfortunate accident. I value the indefinite element in the ideas that speak in me. I don’t want to force upon them sharp boundaries. Because they can do something very important precisely because they are indefinite: Their openness enables me to be in openness. Since their meaning is open-ended, they do not imprison me within the walls of a finished opinion. When I reflect on them, they make me explore what exactly they imply and thus encourage me to investigate new meanings. They act more like wise questions than like answers, like road-signs that direct me to walk in a certain direction which I have not yet fully explored.
In short, the role of such indefinite ideas is to help unfold a vision that is not yet clear to me. They don’t enclose my thoughts in definitions and distinctions, they don’t sharpen my vision, but open my gaze to further meanings and new ways of understanding.
I don’t mean to say that definite ideas are inferior, and that they all must be made indefinite. They, too, have their function, but that function is different. My point is that when we have only well-defined ideas, we tend to be imprisoned in inflexible theories and opinions. The outlines of our world are then too sharp, the distinctions too final and too rigid—like the walls of Plato’s cave.
It seems to me that in the history of philosophy, the indefinite element in ideas has often been ignored and even suppressed. Many philosophers have been preoccupied with defining and clarifying and sharpening ideas, as if trying to purify them from any trace of suspicious vagueness.
Perhaps this is because traditional philosophy often regards ideas as theories to possess and transmit. However, if philo-sophia is to be a search for wisdom and a way of life, then ideas are important not as possessions, but because of what they can do to us: to unfold new roads for understanding that lead us beyond our current boundaries.
Of course, all this should not serve as an excuse for careless thinking or for confused writing. Philosophical words must be precise, although not in the sense of accurate definitions, but more like the precision of a poem. Words ought to be carefully chosen in order to give voice to the intended ideas, and to enable them to perform their important function, namely, to truly open us to still-unexplored visions.
From this point of view, my reflections should not be seen as theories. My writings are valuable only to the extent that they take an active part in my open search for new horizons of understanding and wisdom—and hopefully also help others in their search. This is why when my reader translated my text into clear-cut ideas, a crucial element was lost: its openness.
What, then, do I mean when I say “to give voice to human reality” or “to be open to new horizons of understanding?”
I can give only a vague answer. But this is why these ideas inspire me to keep searching.
And even the reflections which I have written in this book are not a definite idea. I am writing them here not in order to lay down the principles of philo-sophia, but in order to give voice to an open-ended vision that arises in me and wishes to be explored. I am in fact describing my personal experience while writing my reflections: the experience of giving voice to ideas which I do not fully understand. Whenever I write a reflection, I can see that the ideas that rise in me point in a certain direction, I can see that they wish to take me further, but I cannot see where exactly they are leading me. Little by little they reveal more of themselves, and also lead me to further ideas, which themselves lead me further through their openness.
And that’s fine with me. I don’t feel the need to grasp and possess and control these ideas. Let them develop in their own pace and in their own way. I trust that they will take me through meaningful landscapes.
I remember the first meeting of a philosophical companionship go which I once belonged. We met in Florence, and it was our first face-to-face meeting. For all of us, I think, it was a tremendous experience of philosophical togetherness. This might seem surprising. When eight philosophers from five different countries meet, they are likely to find themselves arguing and disputing. All of us are active philosophical practitioners (including some heads of organizations), and people like that usually have their own personal agendas and convictions. Normally, such a situation invites disagreement. And yet, although we philosophized for an entire weekend, we never came to a real dispute.
I don’t mean to say that we agreed on all philosophical issues. The point is that the question of agreement or disagreement was never important in our conversations. Each of us had, of course, a different perspective on the philosophical issues, but instead of fighting over those differences, we welcomed them and used them to construct a ‘polyphonic dialogue.’ We ‘sang’ different ‘voices’ in a common choir.
How was that possible? How could philosophizing—such a confrontational discourse—transcend differences in personal opinion?
I think that the main answer is this: We were not interested in defining our opinions. We were not busy making our concepts clearer and our ideas more precise, as is so common in traditional philosophy. Indeed, we were not interested in what academic philosophy regards as precision or accuracy. On the contrary, we preferred to leave our concepts and ideas somewhat open, with somewhat indefinite boundaries. Consequently, our different philosophical ‘voices’ could accept each other. They could interact and explore together, instead of clashing and contradicting. The walls that commonly separate one opinion from another were dismantled.
In other words, we did not treat our ideas as finished and well-defined products. When one of us expressed an idea, he or she did not intend it to be a final answer, but a door for further exploration, a finger that points beyond itself, a source of inspiration for further ideas, an invitation for others to join and respond.
I don’t think that we did this with full conscious intention. But looking back at the process, I believe that this is what in fact happened, and what enabled us to experience a new kind of philosophical dialogue.
Reflection 21
DEVELOPING THE PHILOSOPHICAL SENSITIVITY
As I have often said, it seems to me that if we want philo-sophia to be a way of being, if we want it to be not only about life but in life, then it cannot be limited to thinking only. Philo-sophia must be present not just when we discuss abstract issues in the classroom or when we write articles, but also when we go shopping, chat with a friend, or sit down to eat. After all, the philosopher is a human being in this world, and her wisdom is in this world too. Philo-sophia does not mean taking a break from life, but is like an additional dimension to life, a dimension of understanding, of meaning.
Thus, as a human being I drive to work, wash dishes, make phone calls, meet friends—but as a philosopher I do all this with an additional sensitivity to new understandings. I maintain a special openness, a readiness to discern the ‘voices’ of life and express them—not just in my words but in my entire way of being. I am a witness to the manifold of meanings of human reality.
This implies, it seems to me, that as a philosopher I do not think and speak only in the name of my own little self. I do not feel and act from my self-centered ego, from the prison of my preconceptions, from my psychological and social games. Instead, I let a greater understanding speak in me. In other words, I give voice to those parts of my being that are usually suppressed and marginalized by social games, by my psychological needs, by my personal agendas and cultural prejudices. I seek to have a broader awareness that would allow other parts of my reality speak through me, and thus let a richer range of understanding act in my life.
Obviously, being a philosopher in this sense requires a deep transformation, a transformation that involves new sensitivities and new attitudes. As a human being I continue to be the same person as before, with my familiar tendencies and preferences and talents and shortcoming, but at the same time, as a philosopher I am no longer totally confined to this old self, I am not completely immersed in my personal irritations and pleasures and subjective viewpoint. I am no longer only my little self, because my understanding goes beyond the boundaries of my self. I now extend beyond my prison, and in this sense I am bigger than myself. My life is impregnated with an additional dimension, a greater awareness, indeed a greater reality. I now belong not just to my self but to a broader realm of meaning and understanding.
I can imagine somebody complaining that my words here are too vague, too poetic. “I don’t understand what you are describing!”
And she would be right. What I have written here is not intended to be an analysis or a theory. Indeed, I don’t think that a theory can ‘capture’ the meaning of the philosophical life, because philo-sophia is by its very nature an open search into the unknown. My words are intended to serve only as a finger pointing in a certain direction that needs to be explored. They are like a gesture towards the beginning of a road that disappears beyond the horizon.
Nevertheless, even though I am only pointing in a direction to be explored, it is legitimate to ask: How are we to walk in this direction? And furthermore, what kind of guidance or mentorship can we offer to those who wish to join us on this road?
I suggest that one important thing needed for this kind of philosophical life and exploration is what can be called ‘philosophical sensitivity.’ As a philosopher I must develop a sensitivity to meanings, an ‘ear’ for new understandings, an ‘eyesight’ to see beyond my normal walls. I need to develop a capacity to detect new voices of human reality and let them speak in me, instead of imposing on the world my own smartness. This requires a special attitude, a contemplative attitude throughout the day. Contemplative—in the sense of opening myself beyond myself for new understandings to speak in me.
But how do we attain this kind of philosophical sensitivity? How do we train ourselves, and how do we train others?
I think that it would be helpful here to consider an analogy to the world of art. When we teach music or painting, we hope that our student would eventually be able to play or paint in a creative way. We hope that she would develop her own personal artistic vision. But this is the final end, not the beginning. A student cannot start by creating great works. In order to create music or paintings she must first study basic techniques, learn musical keys or methods of putting paint on the canvas, master the rules of harmony or the rules of perspective, and be familiar with much classical material. She must spend many hours doing exercises. Only then, after she has mastered the basic skills and techniques, after she has acquired the appropriate sensitivities and a capacity to listen and see, only then is she ready to go beyond these tools, to go ‘through’ these technicalities to the real thing.
I suggest that in the same way, I cannot be a real philosopher out of nothing. I must start by learning techniques of analyzing concepts, methods of exposing hidden assumptions, ways of constructing arguments. I must learn the writings of great thinkers and see how they expressed the ideas that arose in them. Little by little I will gain the technical skills, the knowledge, and the appropriate sensitivities, and only then will I gradually be able to start creating, opening myself to new understandings, incorporating philo-sophia in my life.
This implies that the philosophy curriculum in universities is not altogether useless for us. Some of its aspects are relevant for us as philosophers, especially those that deal with philosophical techniques and with everyday topics such as love, freedom, or authenticity. Although this academic material is not important as a goal in itself, it is part of the training exercises that can help us develop our philosophical sensitivity, provided that eventually we will go beyond them.
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