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[Thomas Gutknecht
[1]:
"Toward Philosophy of the Practice of Philosophy.
An invitation to philosophical dialogue among practitioners of philosophy about the nature of their work."]
(Thomas Gutknecht / Translation: Petra von Morstein)
1.
In joining celebrations of the 25th anniversary of Gerd Achenbach’s foundational work in the Practice of Philosophy I have to note nonetheless that the practice of Philosophy still suffers from a great theoretical deficit, beside other deficits. I am of course far from belittling Achenbach’s merits.
There are many open questions which it is the mandate of the IGPP to address in order to overcome those deficits. The questions include the
following:
What makes the Practice of Philosophy philosophical in its diverse manifestation such as Counselling, Education, Philosophy cafes etc.? What is the connection between extra-academic work in Philosophy and academic Philosophy? What is characteristic of the culture of dialogical thinking?
Although the Practice of Philosophy is not identical with the academic study of Philosophy it must nonetheless integrate theory without being captivated by it. It must support academic research and teaching in Philosophy as well as be nurtured by academic research and teaching.
The horizon of the Practice of Philosophy is Logos. We know that Logos unifies language, sense, activity and potential.
Do we agree that Philosophical Practice is not equivalent to therapeutic activity? It clearly is not a therapy among therapies. Rather it is an alternative to therapies. We do not apply, let alone sell philosophical ideas and methods. Rather we call on them and transform them as appropriate to concrete contemporary life situations and thus open the space of freedom and responsibilities among individuals in philosophical dialogue, - that is, in human community.
The primary mandate of the IGPP consists in recognition and pursuit of theoretical aspects of the Practice of Philosophy on the experiential basis of lived experience where philosophical questions originate.
2.
Evidently, at the end of the last century the need for the Practice of Philosophy became a matter of global Zeitgeist. Around the time when Gerd Achenbach initiated the Practice of Philosophy in German speaking countries there were comparable initiatives across Europe, USA, Canada, Latin America, Isreal and far Eastern countries.
It hardly needs saying that a cognitively and morally adequate development of globalisation in our work is a major challenge. To be sure, the IGPP has not yet succeeded in establishing an open organic community of international Philosophical Practitioners. It is not yet what it will have to become: a place of free dialogical meetings of diverse ideas, a place for integrating diversity without levelling it out, a place for balancing the dynamic of individuality and community.
Gerd Achenbach, my much esteemed predecessor as President of the IGPP, has as yet neglected the tasks of theoretical work and of dialogical integration. Instead it was political processes of strategies and divisions which obscured the nature of the work we are committed to.
Philosophers have to be autonomous thinkers. I point out the obvious when I say that philosophical dialogue in theory and practice is to further, not undermine, an individual’s originality and self-sufficiency. With this in mind we need to counteract strategies and divisions and, instead, build bridges, cultivate mutual understanding through the hard work of explorative dialogue, aim at mutual understanding and the transformation of our ideas, make conflicts productive, work as teams - with that mixture of respect and critique which is characteristic of true collegiality and friendship. We need to recognize and develop theoretical aspects inherent in our work through a web of dialogue. We need to be a community which entails and can hold and nurture diversity.
This points to a set of obvious moral requirements: co-operation; pleasure and interest in team-work; suspension of self-serving interests; collegial exchange in transparency and mutual trust. We must avoid working against each other. I may emphasize that work with each other does not mean: thinking and working in the same way as each other. The will to dialogue goes hand in hand with the will to authenticity and
transformation; it precludes conformism.
Thus our main professional goal is the organic development of the organisation of practicing philosophers. This is vital for the professionalism of a practicing philosopher.
3.
Requirements of professionalism raise the question of appropriate courses of study to lead to the attainment of relevant professional qualifications. There are various, so far one-sided and unintegrated, offerings of such courses of study, tied to individual initiators, for instance in the USA and in Germany. In Italy a few universities now offer Master Programmes for future Philosophical Counsellors, following an academic degree in Philosophy. In such programmes I see, among others, the danger, that philosophy gets instrumentalized for frameworks of purposes, and that philosophical methods and ideas get applied rather than explored in union with lived experiences. Philosophy, however, does not apply methods and ideas, but explores them. Philosophical Practice explores them as they emerge in varied life situations. Philosophy does not justify ends, but investigates the ends we set. Philosophy precludes reductionism.
Co-operation, teamwork, dialogue and the willingness, in trust and respect to be open to collegial criticism are necessary for a culture of learning in community. Really, we as practicing philosophers need to learn and work in the context of the whole of human existence.
The vital necessity of the Practice of Philosophy stems from the severe disorientation which characterizes our contemporary ways of living with contemporary developments in nature, politics, society, technology. The disorientation shows itself in four major ways:
- the decrease of awareness of oneself as a subject
- the loss of intellectual and spiritual energy
- the renunciation of autonomy in the face of the sciences
- fundamentalism, beside nihilism and relativism
It is to overcome these that the Practice of Philosophy is vitally necessary.
4.
It may considered morally problematic to require fees for professional help in re-orientation in our “Lebenswelt”. We don’t sell anything, we do not offer the fulfilment of objective ends. Rather, we aim to further persons as ends-in-themselves. We cannot offer courses of study for future Philosophical Practitioners and at the same time hold any promise of a profession which may earn them a living. A Philosophical Practitioner who refrains from betraying Philosophy by instrumentalizing it in systems of ends may need to have another profession as well to sustain her or his profession of Philosophical Practitioner. And yet it will have to be required that a Philosophical Counsellor is also academically at home in historical and contemporary methods of philosophical enquiry.
[Gerd B. Achenbach [2]: "A short answer to the question: What is Philosophical Practice?"]
The notion of "Philosophical Practice" was given shape by me in 1981 with the world's first founding of such an institution. 1982 the "Society for Philosophical Practice" was founded, also in Bergisch-Gladbach, which meanwhile has become the "International Society for Philosophical Practice". Today, it is the umbrella organisation for a variety of national societies.
What is Philosophical Practice?
Philosophical life counselling in a philosopher's practice nowadays has become an alternative to the psychotherapies. It is an institution for people who are tortured by sorrows or problems, who can't cope with their lives or who think they somehow "got stuck"; who have questions they neither solve nor get rid of; who get along in the prose of their everyday lives but have a vague feeling of not really being challenged - for instance if they realise that their actualities don't meet their possibilities. In Philosophical Practice, people show up who don't just want to live or to get through but rather want to give account of their lives and who want clarity about their lives' shape, the from-where, in-what, where-to. Their demand quite often is to reflect upon the special circumstances, the peculiar entanglements and the somehow ambivalent course of their lives. In short: They visit a Philosophical Practice in order to understand and to be understood. It is almost never the Kantian question "How shall I live" which moves them, but more often the question of Montaigne: "What am I actually doing?"
Behind this you'll possibly find the oldest philosophical insight, namely Socrates' maxim that only an examined life is worth living. Maybe this maxim shows up as a vague fear that a life merely lived down in an emphatic sense is "not really lived", "wasted", somehow "missed" and dispersed.
Schopenhauer: "When looking back, most people will find they had being living all life ad interim, and they will be surprised to see that what they let pass by unconsciuously and unaware was precisely their life, that what they had been expecting all the time. And so, the usual course of man's life is that he, fooled by hope, dances death into its arms".
He who realises this as a horrifying possibility will see the weight of philosphical reflection as a promise, for the philosphical attitude towards life really is a respectful overload: Thus, it gives weight to our life, importance to our being and meaning to our presence.
Usually, there are certain triggers who made the guest of philosophical counselling looking for the dialogue with a practical philosopher. These triggers normally are disappointments, unexpected experiences, collisions with other human beings, strokes of fate, failures, bad or just boring accounts of life. And then he presumes what Karl Popper - even if only vaguely - determined as the task of Philosophical Practice before it existed:
"We all have our philosophies, if we realise it or not, and they are rather worthless. But their effects on our acting and on our lives are quite often disastreous. Therefore the attempt is necessary to improve our philosophies by critique. This is my only excuse why philosophy exists at all."
If it where to be announced briefly in what manner the Philosphical Practitioner helps his visitor - the question usually is what "method" is being used -, it must be answered that philosophy works on methods rather than with methods. Obedience towards methods is a matter of science, not of philosophy.
Philosophical thinking is not moving within pre-arranged ways but rather looks for the "right way" forever anwew; it doesn't use thinking routines but sabotages them in order to enlighten them. Also, the object is not to show the guest a - philosophically determined - track but rather to help him advancing in his own way. By the way, this presupposes an attitude of the philosopher which respects the other "neither with approval nor with reproach" (to use Goethe's words) without having to agree with him.
Also, philosophy is not just "applied", for instance by treatring the guest's matters with Platon, Hegel or whomever: Readings are no recipees for healing. Is any sick person seeing a doctor in order to listen to a lecture in medicine? In the Philosophical Practice, nobody gets a lecture, is fed with sophisticated remarks or served with "theories". The question rather is whether the philosopher learned to understand and to be aware, whether he developed sensors for that what usually is overlooked and whether he has become able to feel at home even in deviant and unusal thinking, feeling, and judging, because only as fellow thinker and fellow feeler he is able to liberate the visitor from his loneliness - or forlornness -, and by these means might get him to change his opinions about life and his circumstances.
Isn't this also the aim of psychologists and psychotherapists? And of spiritual welfarers? Unavoidably, in a flourishing culture of therapy the question rises how Philosophical Practice distinguishes itself from the psychotherapies. Well: Whereas the psycho-logical view is trained on recognising the special in a special way, above all psychogenic, that is psychically caused fatalities (the psychologist and psychotherapist is a specialist, and if he is not specialist, he is a dilettante), the Philosophical Practitioner is, to use a paradox, specialist for the non-special, be it the general and clear (also for the rich tradition of sensible thoughts), be it contradiction and deviancy, be it - with special emphasis - the individual and unique.
In this way, the philosopher takes his visitor serious: He isn't understood by theories, i.e. schematically; not as an "example for a rule", but as the unique human being which he is. He isn't judged by any "measure" (also none of "health"), the question rather is whether he lives according to himself - with Nietzsche's famous phrase: whether he became what he is.
It has to be added that Philosophical Practice proves itself not only in individual counselling but also (since years) supports companies, organisations, and associations in their attempts to find solid convictions and orientating guidelines.
[cf. the article "Praxis, Philosophische" by Odo Marquardt in the "Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie", edited by Joachim Ritter et. al., Vol. VII, Basel 1989, pp. 1307f.]
Translation: Dr. Patrick Neubauer
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