This service is currently under further development, and will be launched later in 2025. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you are interested to hear when I have launched. I plan to present a lot of writing of my own, as the core resource and springboard to wider reading. In the meantime, some of the books which clients can opt to read will include:
Plato Apology
Plato Symposium
Plato Gorgias
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Craig Boyd and Kevin Timpe The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction
Raymond J. Devettere Introduction to Virtue Ethics: Insights of the Ancient Greeks
Ward Farnsworth The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook
Peter J. Kreeft Socratic Logic: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles
Sister Miriam Joseph The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
Ward Farnsworth The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual
Epictetus Discourses
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Pierre Hadot Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision
W. Norris Clarke The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
Robert Brennan Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man
Iris Murdoch The Sovereignty of Good
Anthony Kenny A Brief History of Western Philosophy
In the meantime, you can read about the service below, but please see my Philosophical Counselling here for the service I currently offer.
Character Formation
I am a philosopher in the traditions of Plato and Aristotle, which is to say Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. These have continued as distinct philosophical traditions up to our day, passing through historical epochs which included the Stoicism (Epictetus) and Neoplatonism (Plotinus) of ancient Rome, and the scholasticism (Aquinas) of the European middle ages. The philosophers of our day who continue in these traditions do so because of their profundity, especially when contrasted with the nihilistic, reductive ideologies of modernity. Platonism and Aristotelianism also differ from modern philosophy because they are not mere intellectual pursuits, rather they challenge the reader to grow and transform. Such philosophy is a guide to life, and specifically to a life which is committed to the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
Stoicism is a variation on the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Students of Stoicism would attend the school of a philosopher to develop their mind and their character. That was an education which would equip the student to live well as a human being, no matter their profession, although parents sent their sons to such schools because they recognised that it would also greatly benefitted their child's success in life. Stoicism focused on three areas of learning: logic, ethics, and metaphysics. I use that framework too. Hence, I guide my clients in the study of logic: the capacity for reason, for critical thinking. I guide my clients also in ethics, the study of character and virtue, and I coach my clients, as a personal trainer does for the body, in the development of such qualities. Finally, I guide my clients in exploring the metaphysics (i.e. philosophical pictures of reality and meaning) of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neoplatonists, and the medieval (scholastic) philosophers. The goal is a classical education which shapes not only your mind but your character.
The primary goals of this guidance are two-fold. First, and most importantly, it equips a person to live a genuinely good and meaningful life, aimed at the things that matter most. Second, it equips a person to succeed better in life. For example virtues like courage and temperance (self-control) make all the difference in realising one's desires. As does an education in classical logic, which hones the intellect into a far superior tool for seeing what it true, and what is possible, and for cutting through the increasing irrationalities of today's culture.
Plato Apology
Plato Symposium
Plato Gorgias
Aristotle Nichomachean Ethics
Craig Boyd and Kevin Timpe The Virtues: A Very Short Introduction
Raymond J. Devettere Introduction to Virtue Ethics: Insights of the Ancient Greeks
Ward Farnsworth The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook
Peter J. Kreeft Socratic Logic: A Logic Text Using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelian Principles
Sister Miriam Joseph The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
Ward Farnsworth The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual
Epictetus Discourses
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Pierre Hadot Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision
W. Norris Clarke The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
Robert Brennan Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man
Iris Murdoch The Sovereignty of Good
Anthony Kenny A Brief History of Western Philosophy
In the meantime, you can read about the service below, but please see my Philosophical Counselling here for the service I currently offer.
Character Formation
I am a philosopher in the traditions of Plato and Aristotle, which is to say Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. These have continued as distinct philosophical traditions up to our day, passing through historical epochs which included the Stoicism (Epictetus) and Neoplatonism (Plotinus) of ancient Rome, and the scholasticism (Aquinas) of the European middle ages. The philosophers of our day who continue in these traditions do so because of their profundity, especially when contrasted with the nihilistic, reductive ideologies of modernity. Platonism and Aristotelianism also differ from modern philosophy because they are not mere intellectual pursuits, rather they challenge the reader to grow and transform. Such philosophy is a guide to life, and specifically to a life which is committed to the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
Stoicism is a variation on the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Students of Stoicism would attend the school of a philosopher to develop their mind and their character. That was an education which would equip the student to live well as a human being, no matter their profession, although parents sent their sons to such schools because they recognised that it would also greatly benefitted their child's success in life. Stoicism focused on three areas of learning: logic, ethics, and metaphysics. I use that framework too. Hence, I guide my clients in the study of logic: the capacity for reason, for critical thinking. I guide my clients also in ethics, the study of character and virtue, and I coach my clients, as a personal trainer does for the body, in the development of such qualities. Finally, I guide my clients in exploring the metaphysics (i.e. philosophical pictures of reality and meaning) of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neoplatonists, and the medieval (scholastic) philosophers. The goal is a classical education which shapes not only your mind but your character.
The primary goals of this guidance are two-fold. First, and most importantly, it equips a person to live a genuinely good and meaningful life, aimed at the things that matter most. Second, it equips a person to succeed better in life. For example virtues like courage and temperance (self-control) make all the difference in realising one's desires. As does an education in classical logic, which hones the intellect into a far superior tool for seeing what it true, and what is possible, and for cutting through the increasing irrationalities of today's culture.