Philosophical Practices

"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
          --Marcus Aurelius

"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think." 
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts. It is made up of our thoughts."
          --The Buddha

"Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny."
          --​Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism

"Character is fate."
          --The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus

Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. So too is philosophical counselling. Wisdom is the ability to see what is most true and good. When we see clearly enough, our ambitions and desires come to reflect that, which means that wisdom is the source of virtue (of desires and actions that lead to what is good).

Wisdom is not some mysterious talent that falls on some and not others. It is composed of ingredients which can be recognised and cultivated. You can make yourself more wise. In what follows, I will explore some of these ingredients which have an important place in the work we do together:

• vision
• reasoning
• intellectual virtue

• imagination
• metaphysics

Vision

A fundamental insight of Plato's, which is the insight of perhaps all great sages from around the world and across time, is that we are what we think. Or more precisely, we are what we see. If our vision of reality is distorted, then we are going to crash up against reality. This is the story told over and again in the ancient Greek tragedies, where the protagonist has, as good and wise as he or she may otherwise be, has a fatal blindness, and it is that which brings them unstuck. Of course, modern psychotherapy repeats this same insight, across the many different schools of psychotherapy. Here is Carl Jung: "If we do not make the unconscious conscious, then it will direct our life and we will call that fate."

There is a more simple and direct way in which our vision of life can harm or improve us, than by its errors colliding with reality. One way of seeing life leads to despair. Another to fear. Another to anger. Another to peace. Another to motivation and achievement, whether outwardly or within. What makes any vision wise, versus harmful and/or foolish? Plato lists certain fundamental values that are windows into reality. These include goodness, truth, justice, and beauty. From them, many others can be discerned at a lower, medium level of value, such as kindness from goodness, authenticity from truth, flourishing from justice, joy from beauty, and so on. Put in its most essential terms, a wise vision is one that is true and good. The goal is to see life in ways that are as true and as good as possible.

If the truth about some aspect of life is unpleasant or distressing then so be it--truth is better than delusion, and the challenge is to live well with reality. Oftentimes, however, a person's negative picture of life is distorted, and sometimes it is outright false. In every case, our vision is not as true and good as it could be, and we suffer for the lack, in myriad overt or subtle ways. This invites the Socratic work of examining one's picture of life, and of improving it, or even rejecting it for something better. That is the work of reason. It is also the work of cultivating virtue, includint the intellectual virtues. It is also the work of intelligent imagination.Classical philosophy is transformative attention to life. We need a vision of life that is as true and good as possible. Further below I will discuss these three activities (reason, intellectual virtue, imagination). First let's note a few other aspects of wisdom.

Wisdom begins with the big picture, and flows down into the details of life. Wisdom is the ability to ask the right questions, to find answers to them, and to enact them. It is the ability to recognise what to do, and how to do it, in any situation. It is traditionally described as "doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason, to the right degree." Will things be okay if I quit this job right now? How do I get these people to understand? What do I most need to work on in myself? How do I balance independence and dependence in my relationship? How do I achieve happiness in my particular life, and what does that involve on a daily basis? 

Some peope say that wisdom comes from experience. Or that suffering makes us wiser. That is untrue. Loosely-speaking, many people become worse through experience. For example, somebody suffers a significant betrayal or interpersonal disappointment. Because they are relatively unreflective (they ruminate, but they do not reflect) their egotism, vices, and psychological forces get an easy hold on them. So they naively and arrogantly conclude that they are unique in their suffering. Thus they become envious of the apparet naivety, ease, and happiness of others, which makes them bitter, and over time that bitterness and all that flows from it becomes their way of being. What is missing here? Experience is neutral. It is the perspective we take on it which shapes us. As Epictetus wrote: "We are shaped not by events, but by our opinion of them."

Aristotle points out that practical wisdom grows through a feedback process between experience and reflection. By reflection, I do not mean rumination. I mean the wise and virtuous exercise of the intellect and will: the exercise of reason, intellectual virtue, intelligent imagination and so on, all of which I am about to discuss. We experience some aspect of life, and we wisely and virtuously reflect on it. That reflection leads to insight: insight into this kind of situation, into the effects of our actions, and the value of our response, and who we are, and so on. When we face such a situation again, we respond in a new way, guided by our new insight. That leads to a new experience, which again we reflect on, which refines our previous insight. On and on this process of experience, and reflection, and experience, goes. It becomes a whole way of living: as a wisely reflective person. This is how we grow in wisdom: by living reflectively.

Life is multi-faceted, and that process of experience and reflection leads to a plethora of insights, altogether which create a map of life. That is another feature of wisdom which I mentioned above. This is a map both of the big pictures of life, and of how to live it: it is both contemplative and practical. It is therefore also a normative map, because it tells us what is true and good and what matters, and it tells us what to pursue or avoid and how. Our map guides us through life. As above, by living reflectively we continually modify this map, adding new insights and correcting old ones in light of further experience and reflection. This is what we sometimes call "the getting of wisdom." Not only does this ongoing pursuit of wisdom make life fascinating, not only does it fascinate and wake us up, but whether the question is how to respond to depression, or whether to date this person, or how to deal with a bully, the quality of our map contributes greatly to the outcomes of our life. Furthermore, and very importantly, it shapes who and what we become across time. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, the map we live by, is, as I say, transformative.








An activity and ability
I said that wisdom is an activity and an ability. This claim takes us to the heart of wisdom as a set of ingredients we can cultivate. I will set out three major activities which constitute the three main ingredients of wisdom: reason, the intellectual virtues, and imagination.

Reason
One ingredient of wisdom is reason. We need to reason well, or to put it differently, to perceive and think well, if we are to see life in ways that are true and good. Aristotle mapped out the ingredients (or steps) to doing this, which are called "the three acts of the intellect." They are:

1. perception (or conceptualisation)
2. judgement
3. reasoning (or logical thinking)

To think well, to think rationally, to think critically, is to examine your concepts, and your judgements (which are combinations of concepts), and your reasoning (which are combinations of judgements). As a philosopher, one of my key skills lies in paying attention to each of these in my own thinking and in the thinking of others. I do that by my knowledge of logic, but more informally by a practice known as "Socratic questioning." That is, I engage you in curious, exploratory conversation, to help you analyse any or each of these factors whenever there is a hint of error in them that is worth examining. So, you do not need to become a logician, instead I imitate Socrates, who would engage people in coversation about their concerns, via questions and noticings that would lead them to examine their own thinking, so that they could abandon error, and perceive, judge, and reason in ways that are more true and good.

This examination matters because our thinking matters. As the quotes above from Marcus Aurelius and the Buddha point out, how we think shapes our whole life. It shapes our further thinking, it shapes our decisions, it shapes our emotions and desires, it shapes our actions, it also shapes our experience and sense of the meaning of things, it shapes the direction and shape of our life, and it shapes who we become and what values we embody. This insight lies at the core of classical philosophy. It was picked up by modern psychological research, which provides a mass of empirical research to show that it is true, as well as modern psychotherapy such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which is a more narrowly psychological and therapeutic version of this insight and cultivation.

The intellectual virtues
There is more to wisdom than reasoning well. An just person sees a different world to an unjust one. Likewise, a courageously hopeful person versus a pessimistic one. Your vision of life depends on your qualities as a person. This includes the qualities of your mind. We call good mental qualities "intellectual virtues." 

Nathan King wrote a book called The Excellent Mind: Intellectual Virtues for Everyday Life which is very accessible and recommended. The contents page provides us with a nice list of primary intellectual virtues: curiosity--a healthy appetite for knowledge; carefulness--mind your evidence; autonomy--think for yourself; humility and self-confidence--own your weaknesses, and your strengths; honesty--don't distort the truth; perseverence--overcome obstacles; courage--persist despite threats; open-mindedness and firmness--transcend and maintain your perspective; fair-mindedness and charity--a just, as well as kind and compassionate, view of life.

Consider what a difference it would make to your thinking--and so also to your emotions, actions, and the shape and direction of your whole life--if your thinking embodied all these virtues to a higher degree. I help you to cultivate such virtues.

Imagination
Imagination is something that happens to us--a fantasy takes over our mind, or in sleep we dream--and that can be a good teacher, for example when a dream alerts us to something we are ignoring. Importantly, however, imagination is also something we can choose to do. It can be a chosen activity. Many forms of classical philosophy make a fine art of the intelligent, intentional use of imagination.

Consider the many spiritual exercises of Stoicism, such as the view from above, the death-bed meditation, and pre-meditatio malorum ("meditation on future potential evils"). Taking the latter, consider a fear you have carried in your life. It is not something that has happened. Rationally it may be unlikely to occur, but that is, at least partly, beside the point, for the vulnerability of the human condition means that it could happen. And for whatever reason, you are psychologically fixated on it. For many people, this fear is so terrible to them that they cannot look at it clearly, even as it mentally haunts them. They are bullied and oppressed by it, they are avoidantly backed into a corner of their own mind, and they suffer chronic distress. Not only that, but their fear undermines their character here and now, for when we give into fear as a habit then we become cowardly. And not only that, for any vice breeds many others, and other negative consequences besides.

There are two main steps to a premeditatio malorum:

1. You imaginatively put yourself in the terrible situation of which you are so afraid. This is not easy, because your anxiety screams at you to look the other way and flee. But instead of freezing or running, you willfully turn around and engage, imagining in all its horrible detail the feared event.
2. You imaginatively put your best foot forward, in terms of all your inner and outer capabilities. Your inner capabilities include your freedom to choose the attitude and spirit with which you respond to any situation, including those in your imagination which may never happen. As the Stoic Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

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Do you fear and imagine being old, sick, poor, homeless? I live in north-western Victoria. There are many relatively impoverished people here, young and old, living in caravans and the like. They are real, thoughtful, vulnerable people just like you. How do they deal with this? Many of them work at greater wisdom and acceptance; they cultivate enjoyable social bonds; they cultivate the skills and community needed to deal with relative poverty; and so on. Let's take another common example, do you fear doing something publically for which everybody then hates you? A crime, whether legal, or merely social? In that state of social death, what more profound philosophical or spiritual meaning could you cultivate and live according to? What good thing could you do with your damaged life that is much more meaningful than what you are likely to do on your current, comfort-seeking trajectory?

In premeditatio malorum, you have probably not experienced the feared situation, but you intentionally live through it in your imagintion. You may do this in depth, detail, and often. Because the root of who and what we are lies, not in outward action, but in our mind and heart (from which outward action flows), therefore to do this imaginative, heroic work is to become a wiser, stronger, more virtuous person here and now. 

Have you suffered very painful and damaging things in your life, and later when asked if you wished it had never happened, you realise that without that experience you would not be the person you are today? In premeditatio malorum, you engage in the growth that can emerge from suffering, but in response to suffering that is currently only in the imagination. Of course, while it may be in the imagination only, nonetheless the distress is very real. It is a terrible thing to live in fear.

Of course, there is a more positive side to the use of imagination that almost goes without saying. Just as you reason your way to a better future, so too imagination provides a powerful means for envisioning new possibilities, and even for testing them out. That enables and motivates you to do new, better things; to choose a better path forward in life, and to make it actual. This is a major part of philosophical counselling: I help you to see other possibilities and to pursue them.

I have not touched on other ways of knowing, indeed I have focused on the more active: reason, intellectual virtue, intentional imagination. There are more contemplative forms of knowing that are intellectual in the classical sense, but not rational in the modern, calculative sense. This is why we speak of intuition as well, and what it can teach us. However, this section has become long, and we must move on, and that discussion must take place another time.

How I guide you in these
People's lives are limited by their thinking. Conversely, we are made more free, strong, happy, good, and flourishing by means of good thinking and effort. Classical philosophy, and so philosophical counselling, helps a person to cultivate wisdom, which is to say, reason, intellectual virtue, and imagination. How does it do this? I engage you in conversation about your concerns, asking questions or making observations which lead you to reason better, to enact the intellectual virtues, and to exercise more beneficial imagination. You do not have to learn the theory behind this, rather I guide you to reflect in ways that implicitly embody and develop these things. Of course, if you want to read about and better understand the theory and practice for yourself, I very gladly help you in that. My goal is not simply to help you catch a fish, but to teach you how to fish.

The main practice in philosophical counselling is Socratic questioning. I might question your concepts, or judgments, or reasoning about something. For example, with respect to concepts, you call human beings "an invasive species," but what does that concept mean? What is written into it, and is each assumption sound, and on examination do you agree with each element, and do you apply all of them to human beings? This is not pedantic, rather it may lead to recognition that one's experience of life was based on an error, on confused metaphors and logic with real consequences. That may not follow from a mere moment of analysis, but it may follow from a series of such analyses.
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I might also ask questions that lead you to exercise the intellectual virtues: "Okay, you are angry at yourself (or them), but you yourself said you are possibly being unjust. How so? How might all this look, from a perspective which, perhaps, is more just?" The discussions may lead to questions such as "What is justice itself, and how does that differ from the concept of justice you have carried hitherto, which seems distorted in such and such a way?" Notice how this will often lead to deeper, wider growth, beyond dealing with the particular concern of the day. For example you gain a clearer vision of justice which shapes your perception, thinking, feeling, and action in future.

Finally, I might lead you also into imaginative reflection, for example through a premeditatio malorum about your fears. Or I might ask questions which lead you to better intuit and recognise your deeper desires, or the felt possibilities for a better future. Or we might explore your fundamental intuitions, and build something better based on those that seem sound and important.

metaphysics