"I help you to cultivate all that is best in you, so you can face life as a more wise, strong, skillful human being...."
This page discusses the second form of my philosophical counselling that I mentioned on the homepage: an alternative to mainstream therapy. Because this approach is unfamiliar to many people, I need to spend a little time unpacking it. What follows are a set of points of discussion that paint a picture of my philosophical counselling:
The essence of this philosophical counselling
I am a philosopher and a counsellor. In my service, I draw on the insights and skills of psychotherapy whenever helpful, yet what I offer is not mainstream therapy...it is philosophical counselling. The fundamental way I help is by guiding you to cultivate all that is best in you, so you can face life as a more wise, strong, skillful human being. This is what classical philosophy is about.
If we were to boil the practice down, we can say that in my philosophical counselling:
I am speaking the language of classical philosophy, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle...the philosophers of ancient Greece. Philosophy is a wide field, and my focus has always been on the ancient Greeks and the classical tradition. To cultivate the intellect is to cultivate wisdom. A good intellect is a wise intellect. To cultivate the will is to cultivate the virtues. The virtues are wisdom embodied at the level of emotion and action. A good will is a virtuous will.
Wisdom is an ability: it is a set of intellectual skills and qualities for reflecting well. You can learn, practice, and habituate those skills and qualities. They lead to clarity and depth of vision, about life in general, and about any situation you face. Over time, wisdom as an activity creates a second form of wisdom: wisdom as a map. For you accumulate many insights, which form a bigger picture of life, and that then guides you in life.
A virtue is any personal quality which makes you more strong, skillful, capable at life, and more good, and more happy and successful. To cultivate a virtue is to assess what personal qualities you need, in order to deal with your problems and to make life better, and then to strategically cultivate those qualities so that they become stable traits in you. For example, you cultivate more courageous emotions, and more disciplined behaviour.
Philosophical counselling helps with the same problems you would take to mainstream counselling:
That is, by cultivating wisdom and virtue in the context of your concerns, you are able to:
The cultivation of wisdom
Wisdom is the guiding light of the mind. It is, broadly speaking, two different but related things:
Wisdom as an actvity and ability
Wisdom is your capacity to see clearly, deeply, and to make good judgments about life in general, and about what to do in paricular situations.
This side of wisdom combines two activities:
Reason is the ability to perceive clearly, to judge well, and to think rationally (in classical logic, those are "the three acts of the intellect," the three steps for getting knowledge).
The intellectual virtues are activities which you turn into habits, at the level of thinking: mental courage, curiosity, humility, compassion, firmness, and so forth. For example, you make a point to consider the other's experience (empathy), or you include the necessity of delaying gratification in your decisions (temperance), or you hold firm to what you see is true even if it is unfashionable (firmness), or you keep pushing for an answer despite temptations to laziness (discipline, fortitude).
I help you to cultivate reason and the intellectual virtues. That is, I help you to engage in the activity that is wisom, t build the abilities that we call wisdom. How do I do that?
Based on the concerns you bring to me, I draw you into conversation about them, which exercises reason and the intellectual virtues. For example, I ask questions that lead you to reason well. What does that (concept) mean? Is this implicit belief of yours true? Does your conclusion about life really follow from that experience? I lead you also to exercise the intellectual virtues, by explaining them and guiding and challenging you to enact them. Is this conclusion about what to do really just--it seems that we're failing to consider x? If you were less afraid, how would your thinking about this change?--Okay, so how do you engage in that more courageous way of thinking?
By drawing you into wiser conversation--more rational, more intellectually virtuous--you walk away with multiple benefits:
You learn by doing.
Of course, I teach you in explicit ways as well, and I guide you in reading if you want that.
You may come to me simply because you want to work on a problem or goal, and I help you do that. But my goal is bigger: I want you to become more wise in general, that is the fundamental motivation of my work.
The word 'philosopher' is ancient Greek and means 'a lover of wisdom'. A philosopher loves, and so pursues, wisdom. As Plato pointed out, the philosopher naturally wants to share what they love with others: to guide others in the pursuit of wisdom. This is certainly true of my experience, it is the motivation of my whole career.
Wisdom as a map
The exercise of reason and the intellectual virtues reveal things about life, and eventually those insights add up. They form a map of life: of your own nature, and of what is good, what is true, of how life is, of the patterns of things, of what to avoid, and how, of what to pursue, and how.
This is the other side of wisdom: suatained reflection on life that is rational and intellectually virtuous, leads to many insights which add up to a map of life. That map then guides you in life.
Whether the question is how to respond to depression, or whether to date this person, or how to cultivate a meaningful life, the quality of your map often determines the quality of the outcome. That is why another of my definitions for wisdom is: a picture of life that is as true and as good as possible. If your map is untrue, you get lost, and even wander down bad paths, but from among the many truths of life, you want those that direct you to the best outcomes: you want good truths, truths that lead to good things.
Of course, a wise map is of little use if we don't act on it. If every recognise that we should definitely not date this person, but desire over-rides our better judgement, or we recognise the things that will dissolve this bout of depression, but we don't enact them. We need our wisdom to sink deeper, into our emotions, and so actions, reshaping them to align with wisdom.
When we apply wisdom to our emotions and action, to reshape them in accordance with wisdom, then we are cultivating the character virtues. Virtue gives you the strength to walk the path that wisdom reveals.
The cultivation of virtue
A character virtue is:
Virtues are embodiments of wisdom. Every time you choose courage over fear, or patience over frustration, you strengthen your character. You develop the muscle, and the muscle memory, that is courage, patience, and so on, so that these become characteristic of you.
Because Christianity borrowed many concepts from Greek philosophy, people often assume that the virtues are, in general, moral qualities, and in particular, altruistic ones. That is incorrect. We need to return to the Greeks. For them, the virtues include, yes, moral qualities, but also the many strengths and skills we need for living well. In their appropriate form, pride and anger are virtues, and the lack of them is a vice. A capacity for violent action which is just and proportional is a virtue. A virtue is any quality you cultivate which genuinely leads to human flourishing. Any quality which truly enables human beings, as a group and as individuals, to live well in the realities of this harsh world.
To flourish as a human being may require that you we become more:
So there are many different kinds of virue, but at the same time, they are all bound together, and dependant on one another, like the multiple threads that make up a rope. A good person will be capable of greater happiness because they will lack the shame that comes from poor behaviour, and possess the self-respect that comes with good character. They will also be more respected, and so more likely to succeed in love, work, and so on. Goodness requires strength of character, however, including temperance (discipline) regarding their own impulses, and courage to stand up to threats. Without widom, however, they are likely to miss the mark when it comes to courage, for example to become aggressive instead, which can drag everything else down.
The virtues include (but are not limited to) practical wisdom to navigate complex life, courage to face fear and adversity, temperance to master our desires and find the balance in life, justice to ensure fairness in our dealings with others, compassion to feel with and for our fellow beings, integrity to align our actions with our principles, perseverance to endure in the face of obstacles, curiosity to pursue understanding and truth, wit to engage with the world with intelligence and levity, friendliness to build bonds of community and goodwill, magnanimity to live in a generous and admirable way among others, humility to see ourselves accurately and remain open to learning, industriousness to apply ourselves fully to meaningful work, resilience to recover from hardship and maintain our equilibrium, self-knowledge to understand our own motives and nature, generosity to give freely of our resources and spirit, patience to accept the inevitable delays and frustrations of life with grace, and love in its fullest sense, as the active, devoted pursuit of good things, including the good for others and a life well-lived.
I help you to cultivate these, or whatever other virtues you need. We do not follow a rigid plan, rather we look at your problems in life, and the problems in your character. We look also at your positive challenges, and the virtues needed to achieve those. We look also at the kind of person you want to become in terms of strength, goodness, happiness, meaning, and so on. In short, we exercise wisdom, which is both an insightful examination of life, and a map--in this case, a plan--for growing, making life better, and constructing a good, meaningful life.
Further thoughts on virtue
Does all this mean that you have to become a "Renaissance man"? That you need to embody all the virtues, all the good qualities that make life better, in some whirlwind of effort? No. When you reflect on the virtues, you see areas in your life that require more virtue of a certain type, which you would do well to work on. The point is not to become manic and overwhelmed with the attempt to renovate your whole self. The goal is not perfection, but flourishing, and being tortured by your perceived weaknesses and imperfections is not wise, nor is it a form of flourishing. We exercise virtue in a wise way. Wisdom includes knowing how to enjoy life, and how to accept imperfection.
Some people imagine that the effort to exercise our intellect and will, to cultivate wisdom and virtue, will be hard work. It all sounds like a constant uphill effort, and so it sounds exhausting. In fact, it is often enjoyable. And it makes life easier, in the very moment of the effort. For to exercise a virtue is simply to do something that makes life better, and the cultivation of virtue is simply the repetition of that action. The exercise of wisdom, for example, includes accepting what is out of your control rather than fighting it. That makes life a lot easier in the very moment that you do it. The exercise of temperance means pausing when you are tempted to open Facebook or porn or another bottle of wine. Outside of severe addictions, you will be surprised by how quickly the wave of the impulse passes, and how less tortured and how much happier and lighter and proud and confident you feel afterwards. Likewise when you hold yourself back from another aggressive reaction--you avoid the embarrasment and fearful rumination that follows. As you drive down the road, or navigate bodies at the supermarket, you use every annoying occurance as an opportunity to exercise wisdom and virtue. Hopefully you see my point: this work is not drudgery, rather, life becomes easier in the very moment that we exercise wisdom and virtue. What is exhausting is more of the old impulse and frustration, more of the old egotistical rumination and anxiety or anger, what is exhausting is life that lacks wisdom and virtue.
The peak of the mountain in this work is the meaning that life takes on when we orient ourselves to wisdom and virtue. To make that our focus, and to face life's daily challenges in that way, gives positive meaning to it all. Not only that, but the more wise and virtuous you become, the more meaning you see in all of this. The more meaningful life becomes. You don't have to look elsewhere; the work has made you see the meaning and value and contentment to which you were previously blind.
The virtues do not guarantee happiness or flourishing. What they do, is make you much more capable of them. All things being equal, virtue will lead you to them, but not all things are equal. The playing field may include what classical philosophy calls "natural and moral evils" such as a disease or acar accident, or an encounter with a malevolent person. Wisdom and virtue are the most important ingrediants for a good life, and they are in your power to cultivate, but there are many things in life which are out of our control, and which play a part in our lives too. Of course, if you have cultivated deep wisdom and virtue, then you will react differently to misfortune than somebody without those qualities.
How do we know which qualities are virtues, and which are not? Consider the question: "What is the meaning or purpose of life?" Classical philosophers answered that question by paying close attention to what human beings most deeply long for, and what genuinely makes them happy. The insightful description and articulation by these philosophers of what they saw, gave answer to that question. In turn, that answer determines which qualities are virtues. For the virtues are all the qualities which lead to that meaning and purpose, which lead to genuine happiness and flourishing. Hence, there is an objectivity to the virtues--to what is and what is not a virtue, and why--because there is an objectivity to human nature. Human nature is not something you can just make up or change. Sure, we can imagine how reality and human nature could have been different, but they are what they are, and in classical philosophy we work with reality. We change what is changeable, but we get wise about what is unchanging and learn to live better with it, and to work with it. There are things in life that make us more strong, good, genuinely happy and so on, and things that have the opposite effect, and we cultivate the former.
Ancient philosophers speak about the central importance of wisdom and virtue
The ancient sages, East and West, understood all this. They recognised the primacy of wisdom and virtue for a good life. Let's consider their words.
With respect to reason and wisdom:
The ancient Roman, Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius:
The ancient Indian sage the Buddha:
Again, with respect to virtue and character:
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus:
Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism:
Problems and goals
How does wisdom and virtue help with your particular problems?
Philosophical counselling helps with the same issues that you would take to mainstream counselling. Consider some from the top of this page:
When facing emotional struggles like anxiety or despair, virtues strengthen us in a range of ways. They help us to cope, and they lead us out and beyond. Courage enables you to face difficult feelings without being overwhelmed, and it cultivates stronger emotional habits for the future. Temperance moderates runaway impulses, and cultivates feelings that strengthen our ability for resolve. Patience grants the space to endure emotional pain without resorting to destructive coping mechanisms; that in turn builds greater temperance, and also wisdom of a hard-won and so deeper kind. The virtues transform people from passive victims of their emotions into active agents who can manage their inner world and direct themselves to something better.
The practice of integrity aligns your actions with true values. Compassion and justice become the guiding principles for your interactions, allowing for healthier boundaries, more empathetic communication, and the deepening of your bonds. When navigating work challenges, or new chapters in life, virtues like industriousness, perseverance, and practical wisdom provide the toolkit to adapt, to plan thoughtfully, and to commit to a path despite uncertainty, and to follow-through. Finally, in the depths of grief and loss, it is resilience that keeps your head above the water (or at least brings you back to the surface at intervels), wisdom that enables you to make sense of things and to create a new direction, love that cherishes their memory, and it is the hope fostered by reason and courage that allows you to gradually rebuild a meaningful life, not as an embittered person made worse by their suffering, but as a more experienced, perhaps wounded but deeper, wiser, and so more virtuous human being.
Existentialism, phenomenology, existential therapy
Young philosophers are often concerned with brilliance and depth in their thinking. I was like that too, but I have become much more pragmatic as I have aged. That is a different kind of depth. I have honed in on what really makes a difference, and on keeping it simple. The mind can be like a symphony, but we must first learn to perform the basics well. We need solid foundations. This has only strengthened my focus on classical wisdom and virtue, and my reliance on Aristotle especially. He is the philosopher of "deep common sense."
At the same time, I have found help in many philosophies among the years. Foremost among these, as it pertains to counselling, is phenomenology. I have a very contemplative side, I recognise the great power of insight, and so my work has become very phenomenological across the years.
Existentialism is another philosophy which has influenced me, especially in terms of thinkers like Albert Camus. Indeed, as I discuss on the about me page, I dedicated the 2010s to providing existential therapy in private practice.
All of these influences remain a resource in my work today. For example, if you seek existential therapy then you will encounter a rich form of it here, albeit within a broader philosophical orientation which draws especially on the ancient Greeks.
Mainstream therapy
Also as stated on the about me page, I spent years taking deep dives into the various mainstream therapies: the humanistic, the psychodynamic, and the cognitive behavioural. My way of being in counselling is greatly influenced by the Rogerian tradition, while CBT has given me many effective tools that I continue to use, and psychodyamic therapy has taught me how to read the psychological ways of being that people display, which means I can tailor my approach to what works with each different person.
Final thoughts
I have decades of experience in mainstream therapy, and love the discipline, but it is limited. We live in a world which imagines that technology will fix everything. This includes therapeutic technologies (theories, techniques). That creates a fundamentally passive way of being--waiting for the expert. That becomes also a nihilistic way of being, which consitutes also a nihilistic experience of oneself and of the world. That in turn creates many of the same problems therapy is designed to solve.
Human nature has not changed in thousands of years. When it comes to the most important things, each of us must do it for ourselves. The key to dealing with life's problems and making life good will never be found, ultimately, in a technology, in experts, or in passivity. Rather, the key is to be found in our own efforts of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. That is is fundamental premise of the service I offer you. Whatever your problems or goals, I guide you to bring forth the best in yourself.
Scroll further below for some critical reflections on why philosophical counselling is an important alternative to mainstream therapy.
This page discusses the second form of my philosophical counselling that I mentioned on the homepage: an alternative to mainstream therapy. Because this approach is unfamiliar to many people, I need to spend a little time unpacking it. What follows are a set of points of discussion that paint a picture of my philosophical counselling:
- The essence of this philosophical counselling
- The cultivation of wisdom
- The cultivation of virtue
- How it helps with common problems and goals
- The existentialism, phenomenology, and existential therapy in my approach
- The presence of mainstream therapy in my approach
- Final Thoughts
The essence of this philosophical counselling
I am a philosopher and a counsellor. In my service, I draw on the insights and skills of psychotherapy whenever helpful, yet what I offer is not mainstream therapy...it is philosophical counselling. The fundamental way I help is by guiding you to cultivate all that is best in you, so you can face life as a more wise, strong, skillful human being. This is what classical philosophy is about.
If we were to boil the practice down, we can say that in my philosophical counselling:
- You cultivate your intellect and the will,
- which is to say, you cultivate wisdom and virtue.
I am speaking the language of classical philosophy, of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle...the philosophers of ancient Greece. Philosophy is a wide field, and my focus has always been on the ancient Greeks and the classical tradition. To cultivate the intellect is to cultivate wisdom. A good intellect is a wise intellect. To cultivate the will is to cultivate the virtues. The virtues are wisdom embodied at the level of emotion and action. A good will is a virtuous will.
Wisdom is an ability: it is a set of intellectual skills and qualities for reflecting well. You can learn, practice, and habituate those skills and qualities. They lead to clarity and depth of vision, about life in general, and about any situation you face. Over time, wisdom as an activity creates a second form of wisdom: wisdom as a map. For you accumulate many insights, which form a bigger picture of life, and that then guides you in life.
A virtue is any personal quality which makes you more strong, skillful, capable at life, and more good, and more happy and successful. To cultivate a virtue is to assess what personal qualities you need, in order to deal with your problems and to make life better, and then to strategically cultivate those qualities so that they become stable traits in you. For example, you cultivate more courageous emotions, and more disciplined behaviour.
Philosophical counselling helps with the same problems you would take to mainstream counselling:
- emotional struggles
- behavioural problems
- relationship issues
- work issues
- life transitions
- grief and loss
- purpose and direction
That is, by cultivating wisdom and virtue in the context of your concerns, you are able to:
- Deal with your challenges (such as those just mentioned)
- Avoid creating new problems
- Cultivate a more strong, resilient, capable, intelligent, skillful way of being
- Become more inherently happy
- Succeed and flourish
- Embody more profound forms of meaning and value
The cultivation of wisdom
Wisdom is the guiding light of the mind. It is, broadly speaking, two different but related things:
- an activity and ability
- a map life that is as true and good as possible.
Wisdom as an actvity and ability
Wisdom is your capacity to see clearly, deeply, and to make good judgments about life in general, and about what to do in paricular situations.
This side of wisdom combines two activities:
- reason
- the intellectual virtues
Reason is the ability to perceive clearly, to judge well, and to think rationally (in classical logic, those are "the three acts of the intellect," the three steps for getting knowledge).
The intellectual virtues are activities which you turn into habits, at the level of thinking: mental courage, curiosity, humility, compassion, firmness, and so forth. For example, you make a point to consider the other's experience (empathy), or you include the necessity of delaying gratification in your decisions (temperance), or you hold firm to what you see is true even if it is unfashionable (firmness), or you keep pushing for an answer despite temptations to laziness (discipline, fortitude).
I help you to cultivate reason and the intellectual virtues. That is, I help you to engage in the activity that is wisom, t build the abilities that we call wisdom. How do I do that?
Based on the concerns you bring to me, I draw you into conversation about them, which exercises reason and the intellectual virtues. For example, I ask questions that lead you to reason well. What does that (concept) mean? Is this implicit belief of yours true? Does your conclusion about life really follow from that experience? I lead you also to exercise the intellectual virtues, by explaining them and guiding and challenging you to enact them. Is this conclusion about what to do really just--it seems that we're failing to consider x? If you were less afraid, how would your thinking about this change?--Okay, so how do you engage in that more courageous way of thinking?
By drawing you into wiser conversation--more rational, more intellectually virtuous--you walk away with multiple benefits:
- you get helpful clarity and perspective regarding your concerns. The very reason you came in the first place.
- you learn to exercise greater reason and intellectual virtue on your own. You become more wise in general.
You learn by doing.
Of course, I teach you in explicit ways as well, and I guide you in reading if you want that.
You may come to me simply because you want to work on a problem or goal, and I help you do that. But my goal is bigger: I want you to become more wise in general, that is the fundamental motivation of my work.
The word 'philosopher' is ancient Greek and means 'a lover of wisdom'. A philosopher loves, and so pursues, wisdom. As Plato pointed out, the philosopher naturally wants to share what they love with others: to guide others in the pursuit of wisdom. This is certainly true of my experience, it is the motivation of my whole career.
Wisdom as a map
The exercise of reason and the intellectual virtues reveal things about life, and eventually those insights add up. They form a map of life: of your own nature, and of what is good, what is true, of how life is, of the patterns of things, of what to avoid, and how, of what to pursue, and how.
This is the other side of wisdom: suatained reflection on life that is rational and intellectually virtuous, leads to many insights which add up to a map of life. That map then guides you in life.
Whether the question is how to respond to depression, or whether to date this person, or how to cultivate a meaningful life, the quality of your map often determines the quality of the outcome. That is why another of my definitions for wisdom is: a picture of life that is as true and as good as possible. If your map is untrue, you get lost, and even wander down bad paths, but from among the many truths of life, you want those that direct you to the best outcomes: you want good truths, truths that lead to good things.
Of course, a wise map is of little use if we don't act on it. If every recognise that we should definitely not date this person, but desire over-rides our better judgement, or we recognise the things that will dissolve this bout of depression, but we don't enact them. We need our wisdom to sink deeper, into our emotions, and so actions, reshaping them to align with wisdom.
When we apply wisdom to our emotions and action, to reshape them in accordance with wisdom, then we are cultivating the character virtues. Virtue gives you the strength to walk the path that wisdom reveals.
The cultivation of virtue
A character virtue is:
- a good personal quality, as determined by wise reflection
- at the level of emotion or action
- which you intentionally turn into a habit through strategic repetition
- which makes you and your life better, in terms of human flourishing.
Virtues are embodiments of wisdom. Every time you choose courage over fear, or patience over frustration, you strengthen your character. You develop the muscle, and the muscle memory, that is courage, patience, and so on, so that these become characteristic of you.
Because Christianity borrowed many concepts from Greek philosophy, people often assume that the virtues are, in general, moral qualities, and in particular, altruistic ones. That is incorrect. We need to return to the Greeks. For them, the virtues include, yes, moral qualities, but also the many strengths and skills we need for living well. In their appropriate form, pride and anger are virtues, and the lack of them is a vice. A capacity for violent action which is just and proportional is a virtue. A virtue is any quality you cultivate which genuinely leads to human flourishing. Any quality which truly enables human beings, as a group and as individuals, to live well in the realities of this harsh world.
To flourish as a human being may require that you we become more:
- wise
- mentally strong
- fit and healthy
- skillful and capable at life
- interested, motivated, passionate
- happy, or capable of happiness
- as well as, yes, morally good--integrity, justice, compassion, and so on.
So there are many different kinds of virue, but at the same time, they are all bound together, and dependant on one another, like the multiple threads that make up a rope. A good person will be capable of greater happiness because they will lack the shame that comes from poor behaviour, and possess the self-respect that comes with good character. They will also be more respected, and so more likely to succeed in love, work, and so on. Goodness requires strength of character, however, including temperance (discipline) regarding their own impulses, and courage to stand up to threats. Without widom, however, they are likely to miss the mark when it comes to courage, for example to become aggressive instead, which can drag everything else down.
The virtues include (but are not limited to) practical wisdom to navigate complex life, courage to face fear and adversity, temperance to master our desires and find the balance in life, justice to ensure fairness in our dealings with others, compassion to feel with and for our fellow beings, integrity to align our actions with our principles, perseverance to endure in the face of obstacles, curiosity to pursue understanding and truth, wit to engage with the world with intelligence and levity, friendliness to build bonds of community and goodwill, magnanimity to live in a generous and admirable way among others, humility to see ourselves accurately and remain open to learning, industriousness to apply ourselves fully to meaningful work, resilience to recover from hardship and maintain our equilibrium, self-knowledge to understand our own motives and nature, generosity to give freely of our resources and spirit, patience to accept the inevitable delays and frustrations of life with grace, and love in its fullest sense, as the active, devoted pursuit of good things, including the good for others and a life well-lived.
I help you to cultivate these, or whatever other virtues you need. We do not follow a rigid plan, rather we look at your problems in life, and the problems in your character. We look also at your positive challenges, and the virtues needed to achieve those. We look also at the kind of person you want to become in terms of strength, goodness, happiness, meaning, and so on. In short, we exercise wisdom, which is both an insightful examination of life, and a map--in this case, a plan--for growing, making life better, and constructing a good, meaningful life.
Further thoughts on virtue
Does all this mean that you have to become a "Renaissance man"? That you need to embody all the virtues, all the good qualities that make life better, in some whirlwind of effort? No. When you reflect on the virtues, you see areas in your life that require more virtue of a certain type, which you would do well to work on. The point is not to become manic and overwhelmed with the attempt to renovate your whole self. The goal is not perfection, but flourishing, and being tortured by your perceived weaknesses and imperfections is not wise, nor is it a form of flourishing. We exercise virtue in a wise way. Wisdom includes knowing how to enjoy life, and how to accept imperfection.
Some people imagine that the effort to exercise our intellect and will, to cultivate wisdom and virtue, will be hard work. It all sounds like a constant uphill effort, and so it sounds exhausting. In fact, it is often enjoyable. And it makes life easier, in the very moment of the effort. For to exercise a virtue is simply to do something that makes life better, and the cultivation of virtue is simply the repetition of that action. The exercise of wisdom, for example, includes accepting what is out of your control rather than fighting it. That makes life a lot easier in the very moment that you do it. The exercise of temperance means pausing when you are tempted to open Facebook or porn or another bottle of wine. Outside of severe addictions, you will be surprised by how quickly the wave of the impulse passes, and how less tortured and how much happier and lighter and proud and confident you feel afterwards. Likewise when you hold yourself back from another aggressive reaction--you avoid the embarrasment and fearful rumination that follows. As you drive down the road, or navigate bodies at the supermarket, you use every annoying occurance as an opportunity to exercise wisdom and virtue. Hopefully you see my point: this work is not drudgery, rather, life becomes easier in the very moment that we exercise wisdom and virtue. What is exhausting is more of the old impulse and frustration, more of the old egotistical rumination and anxiety or anger, what is exhausting is life that lacks wisdom and virtue.
The peak of the mountain in this work is the meaning that life takes on when we orient ourselves to wisdom and virtue. To make that our focus, and to face life's daily challenges in that way, gives positive meaning to it all. Not only that, but the more wise and virtuous you become, the more meaning you see in all of this. The more meaningful life becomes. You don't have to look elsewhere; the work has made you see the meaning and value and contentment to which you were previously blind.
The virtues do not guarantee happiness or flourishing. What they do, is make you much more capable of them. All things being equal, virtue will lead you to them, but not all things are equal. The playing field may include what classical philosophy calls "natural and moral evils" such as a disease or acar accident, or an encounter with a malevolent person. Wisdom and virtue are the most important ingrediants for a good life, and they are in your power to cultivate, but there are many things in life which are out of our control, and which play a part in our lives too. Of course, if you have cultivated deep wisdom and virtue, then you will react differently to misfortune than somebody without those qualities.
How do we know which qualities are virtues, and which are not? Consider the question: "What is the meaning or purpose of life?" Classical philosophers answered that question by paying close attention to what human beings most deeply long for, and what genuinely makes them happy. The insightful description and articulation by these philosophers of what they saw, gave answer to that question. In turn, that answer determines which qualities are virtues. For the virtues are all the qualities which lead to that meaning and purpose, which lead to genuine happiness and flourishing. Hence, there is an objectivity to the virtues--to what is and what is not a virtue, and why--because there is an objectivity to human nature. Human nature is not something you can just make up or change. Sure, we can imagine how reality and human nature could have been different, but they are what they are, and in classical philosophy we work with reality. We change what is changeable, but we get wise about what is unchanging and learn to live better with it, and to work with it. There are things in life that make us more strong, good, genuinely happy and so on, and things that have the opposite effect, and we cultivate the former.
Ancient philosophers speak about the central importance of wisdom and virtue
The ancient sages, East and West, understood all this. They recognised the primacy of wisdom and virtue for a good life. Let's consider their words.
With respect to reason and wisdom:
The ancient Roman, Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius:
- "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
The ancient Indian sage the Buddha:
- "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."
Again, with respect to virtue and character:
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus:
- "Character is fate."
Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism:
- "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."
Problems and goals
How does wisdom and virtue help with your particular problems?
Philosophical counselling helps with the same issues that you would take to mainstream counselling. Consider some from the top of this page:
- Emotional problems (depression, despair, demotivation; confusion; fear, anxiety; anger; boredom; loneliness, et cetera)
- Behavioural problems (the above emotional problems manifested in action, plus compulsive behaviour toward screens, alcohol, and so on)
- Relationship issues (finding a partner, dealing with relationship problems, cultivating a good relationship, parenting, friendships, and so on)
- Work and career (defining a career, making it happen, dealing with other people at work, the personal challenges of being in business, and so on)
- Loss and change (death, mortality, changed life circumstances (retirement, disability) and so on)
When facing emotional struggles like anxiety or despair, virtues strengthen us in a range of ways. They help us to cope, and they lead us out and beyond. Courage enables you to face difficult feelings without being overwhelmed, and it cultivates stronger emotional habits for the future. Temperance moderates runaway impulses, and cultivates feelings that strengthen our ability for resolve. Patience grants the space to endure emotional pain without resorting to destructive coping mechanisms; that in turn builds greater temperance, and also wisdom of a hard-won and so deeper kind. The virtues transform people from passive victims of their emotions into active agents who can manage their inner world and direct themselves to something better.
The practice of integrity aligns your actions with true values. Compassion and justice become the guiding principles for your interactions, allowing for healthier boundaries, more empathetic communication, and the deepening of your bonds. When navigating work challenges, or new chapters in life, virtues like industriousness, perseverance, and practical wisdom provide the toolkit to adapt, to plan thoughtfully, and to commit to a path despite uncertainty, and to follow-through. Finally, in the depths of grief and loss, it is resilience that keeps your head above the water (or at least brings you back to the surface at intervels), wisdom that enables you to make sense of things and to create a new direction, love that cherishes their memory, and it is the hope fostered by reason and courage that allows you to gradually rebuild a meaningful life, not as an embittered person made worse by their suffering, but as a more experienced, perhaps wounded but deeper, wiser, and so more virtuous human being.
Existentialism, phenomenology, existential therapy
Young philosophers are often concerned with brilliance and depth in their thinking. I was like that too, but I have become much more pragmatic as I have aged. That is a different kind of depth. I have honed in on what really makes a difference, and on keeping it simple. The mind can be like a symphony, but we must first learn to perform the basics well. We need solid foundations. This has only strengthened my focus on classical wisdom and virtue, and my reliance on Aristotle especially. He is the philosopher of "deep common sense."
At the same time, I have found help in many philosophies among the years. Foremost among these, as it pertains to counselling, is phenomenology. I have a very contemplative side, I recognise the great power of insight, and so my work has become very phenomenological across the years.
Existentialism is another philosophy which has influenced me, especially in terms of thinkers like Albert Camus. Indeed, as I discuss on the about me page, I dedicated the 2010s to providing existential therapy in private practice.
All of these influences remain a resource in my work today. For example, if you seek existential therapy then you will encounter a rich form of it here, albeit within a broader philosophical orientation which draws especially on the ancient Greeks.
Mainstream therapy
Also as stated on the about me page, I spent years taking deep dives into the various mainstream therapies: the humanistic, the psychodynamic, and the cognitive behavioural. My way of being in counselling is greatly influenced by the Rogerian tradition, while CBT has given me many effective tools that I continue to use, and psychodyamic therapy has taught me how to read the psychological ways of being that people display, which means I can tailor my approach to what works with each different person.
Final thoughts
I have decades of experience in mainstream therapy, and love the discipline, but it is limited. We live in a world which imagines that technology will fix everything. This includes therapeutic technologies (theories, techniques). That creates a fundamentally passive way of being--waiting for the expert. That becomes also a nihilistic way of being, which consitutes also a nihilistic experience of oneself and of the world. That in turn creates many of the same problems therapy is designed to solve.
Human nature has not changed in thousands of years. When it comes to the most important things, each of us must do it for ourselves. The key to dealing with life's problems and making life good will never be found, ultimately, in a technology, in experts, or in passivity. Rather, the key is to be found in our own efforts of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. That is is fundamental premise of the service I offer you. Whatever your problems or goals, I guide you to bring forth the best in yourself.
Scroll further below for some critical reflections on why philosophical counselling is an important alternative to mainstream therapy.
A further reflection on philosophical counselling as an alternative to mainsteam therapy
I said on the homepage that this version of my philosophical counselling is for people who seek it as an alternative to mainstream therapy. I have said on the current page that, when it comes to dealing with the kinds of issues people bring to mainstream counselling, the cultivation of intellect and will, wisdom and virtue, is actually more important than a purely psychological focus (at least, for most people, most of the time.) I want to emphasise this, but without denigrating mainstream therapy (or at least, mainstream therapy when it is at its best). I have given you a positive vision of what philosophical counselling is, but let's now indulge in some critical reflections. This will be only a set of general brush strokes, addressing only a few aspects.
Let's start with an important set of distinctions, so you can know what I am offering and not offering. When I practiced mainstream counselling, people would often confuse me with a psychologist, not realising that the two professions are very different. That confusion is very common, and that is very problematic, for we are talking about very different services. There is a difference between:
The first type--clinical professionals--work according to "the medical model." They view your problems as illnesses or disorders. They focus on assessment, diagnosis, related treatment, as well as management, reports, et cetera. I am not a clinical professional, and I do not offer those clinical services. The second type--counsellors and psychotherapists--are for the most part what we might call "personal growth" professionals. They help you to cope with life's challenges and make your life better, by cultivating your own insight, motivation, skills, personal growth, and so on. Their lens is generally practical, and psychological. (Note well: their "psychological" focus is different to the "clinical psychological" focus of the clinical professionals.) The third type--philosophical counsellors--may have a degree in philosophy only, or they may have degrees in both philosophy and in the above counselling, such as I do. They study mainstream counselling as well, not because they seek a permanent career in it, but because they want to use the framework of counselling for their philosophical practice, and because they want the psychological know-how of a therapist. They want to integrate psychological know-how into their philosophical work.
Why would a philosophical counsellor go to the long and intensive trouble of cultivating a whole second career in therapy, without the intention of remaining in it? In our culture, which is to say, modernity, we tend to divide life up unnaturally. Our professions reflect this. We reduce the whole to a part. We then focus only on the part. (Often, we also then treat that part as the whole.) Modernity is reductive. "We are nothing but psychological mechanisms." Or, "No, we are (medical) systems in a state of health or disease." Or we are reducible to our brains. Or reducible to social or economic forces. Or everything is about gut health, or meditation. Or it's all a problem of moral character. Hence, in modernity, therapists help people by viewing them through a psychological lens. Philosophical counsellors then arise, but their work is purely one of abstract conceptual reflection. I disagree. The whole tradition my work is based in, which is pre-modern, disagrees. It does not reduce or explain, so much as pay attention and describe. In that sense, it is thinking that comes out of living. Classical philosophy focuses on the parts as parts of the whole. It makes sense of them through the whole. It is wholistic, integrationist, concerned with the dynamic, living form which unifies the parts.
And so classical philosophy explores the parts of the human being, and the further parts that make up the various parts, but it does so with a view to the over-all form and nature of our humanity. For example, it is traditional to speak of a human being as "mind and body." As combining an intellectual part, and an animal part. On the one hand we are consciousness, which is a mystery. We know, we choose, and we are the awareness of all this. On the other hand, we are also an animal, in the sense of a body, but one that has an animal psychology: sense perception, appetite (desire), and impulsive or compulsive movement toward pleasure and away from pain. This is why you struggle so much between what you value and want to do at a reflective level, and what you actually do, or feeled pulled to do. You are like a rider and a horse, in one. If we have a clear sense of both dimensions of our humanity, then we can recognise that both are real and important. They are also distinct but combined in some weird way. This is an age-old philosophical problem, but at the practical level of our lives, it means that we need to make efforts at the level of consciousness: to be more awake, to see clearly, to reason, to choose and act in good ways. And we need to work on our psychology as something distinct from consciousness, mapping its patterns and manipulating those patterns to better serve our conscious values and direction.
Classical philosophy is the practical work we do as conscious beings. It is the effort of intellect and will. Psychology focuses on the more blind, animal aspect of us that is our psychology. Modernity is technocratic, and so modern culture has tended to reduce us to "psychological mechanisms" and the like. Hence, you can easily find a psychological therapist whose training focuses on your psychology, and even reduces you to that. But you will struggle to find somebody to help you cultivate wisdom and virtue. Many "humanistic" therapists will claim to focus on consciousness, but again, they unwittingly reduce consciousness to psychology. Because therapist training ignores the intellect, most therapists lack the skills to analyse and see this problem, to understand the conceptual confusions in the claims they make.
The effectiveness of my philosophical counselling is greatly increased by the fact that I bring the perception, knowledge, and skill of a highly experience psychotherapist. I draw on that psychological knowledge and skill in my work with you, however, what I offer is not mainstream therapy. Why do I need to say that? A therapist operates in a wider social and legal context, and so has responsibilities that can undermine a philosophical focus and outcomes. They must pay attention to certain things, in certain ways, and this means they can easily end up not paying much attention to other things. Those other things include philosophical goals. For me, those philosophical goals are central. They are why I studied mainstream counselling in the first place, they are my focus and concern. So I no longer offer mainstream therapy, but only philosophical counselling. You get psychological help, but in the context of philosophical help. I am as skillful as most mainstream therapists, when it comes to the at psychological work, but it is a secondary resource.
I am the first person in Australia to make a career as a philosophical counsellor. I have been approached by numerous people who want to do the same, and I recommend the same pathway: all of them have philosophy degrees, so I suggest studying counselling next. When speaking to a modern philosopher, they already recognise how psychology needs philosophy, but I will point out how philosophy needs psychology. Psychological immaturity or entanglement leads people to distorted philosophical views. Anybody who has spent time among academic philosophers has seen this. I mention modern philosophers, because I came from a different perspective. From the start, I was gripped by ancient philosophy. The classical philosophers are also psychologists. Indeeed, "philosophical psychology" is a major field in classical philosophy. Many books with that title dominate my shelves. That philosophical psychology is pre-modern--ancient Greek, Roman, medieval. It is wholistic rather than reductive. It has much to teach modern psychotherapy. Yet, modern psychotherapy has much to teach in turn. Laying aside its many flaws, which are driven by modernist ideology, modern mainstream therapy is full of insights and related practices that are not only highly helpful and transformative, but new to a classical philosopher. Classical philosophical psychology was a part of my thinking before studying counselling. The ancient and modern forms of psychology each possess things lacking in the other, and they are highly conplementary.
It is interesting to note that the most largescale and respected research into what makes psychological therapy effective--the "common factors" research--agrees with my focus the primacy of wisdom and virtue over psychological concerns. It does so implicitly, not explicitly, for it is thinking only of mainstream therapy, but the implication is obvious. For that field of (meta) research shows that the thing which makes the greatest difference in therapy, is not the expertise or effort of the therapist, but rather the effort of the client, both in the sessions and outside of them. That is, thee research makes clear that is the client's efforts at the level of intellect and will, which makes the greatest difference in therapy. Some people imagine that they can attend therapy as they attend the doctor's office: passively, waiting while the expert analyses and treats them with some technology. Such people tend to become very frustrated in therapy, because "it does not work." They are right: it does not work, except insofar as the client makes real efforts. The therapist, as with the philosophical counsellor is only a guide. The client must do the work, and at its core, that work begins with an effort of mind and of will.
This is why I claim that the cultivation of wisdom and virtue is more important than psychological therapeutic work. I can imagine somebody reacting: "For crying out loud, I've analysed and ruminated endlessly, and I can tell you that simply thinking about things does not help!" or "I have tensed the muscles of my will, and I get nowhere!" I respond that if you do anything badly it will not help. Wise reflection is very different to sloppy rumination or obsessive over-thinking. And the wise exercise of your will is very different to merely thinking about things, or to simply tensing your mental or physical muscles. As you can see above, the cultivation of widom, and of virtue, involves knowledge and practice. We are not shooting in the dark. The work is analogous to personal training at the gym. Of course, with the cultural neglect of wisdom and virtue, people have lost sight of the fact that there is this detailed path to their cultivation.
Why does our culture neglect these things? It was with Freud that the West abandoned its focus on wisdom and virtue. Therapy is an expression of the culture out of which it arose, and therapy expresses modernity's preference for reduction. This is what C. S. Lewis called "nothing buttery." That is, life is nothing but struggle, human beings are nothing but blind psychological dynamics, love is nothing but chemicals, and so on. If human beings are nothing but blind psychological animals, then wisdom and virtue is not real. Like truth, and goodness, and beauty, and so on, it is merely an expression of preference, a projection of some psychological force in us. (Curiously, people who think this way never take seriously the problem that their own claims are therefore not true, are merely expresssions of psychological force rather than of something meaningful. Freud reduced everybody else, but treated himself as an exception to the rule.)
Since the rise of psychological therapy at the beginning of the 20th, people have been taught to reduce themselves to psychological animals. And so they have been taught to dismiss the reality, and neglect the need for the cultivation of, wisdom and virtue. Not only that, but therapy has spilled well beyond its bounds. Here is where I speak as one trained in therapy, and with frustration. Mainstream therapy is wonderful and powerful, within its own domain, within its own limitations. But we have turned it into a religion. We now live in "a therapeutic culture." Instead of the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, which is hard at the level of egotism--I may be wrong, I may need to change--people have been trained in the therapeutic culture to become narcissistic, hedonistic consumers, whose main sense of value often lies in some weaponised clinical diagnosis.
The problems I have just outlined are of what happens when we get drunk on psychology, to the point of reducing everything to psychology, and in time creating a pathological religion out of therapy. In the nineteenth century we tended to reduce psychological problems to failures of character, and that was harmful. Now, we reduce character to psychology, and that is harmful. We need to do better. That is, to be wiser. What I aim to offer is an approach which:
Philosophical counselling draws on 2,500 years of detailed wisdom to craft a wise head and and a virtuous heart. To transform ourselves into strong, good, skillful, happy, successful people.
I said on the homepage that this version of my philosophical counselling is for people who seek it as an alternative to mainstream therapy. I have said on the current page that, when it comes to dealing with the kinds of issues people bring to mainstream counselling, the cultivation of intellect and will, wisdom and virtue, is actually more important than a purely psychological focus (at least, for most people, most of the time.) I want to emphasise this, but without denigrating mainstream therapy (or at least, mainstream therapy when it is at its best). I have given you a positive vision of what philosophical counselling is, but let's now indulge in some critical reflections. This will be only a set of general brush strokes, addressing only a few aspects.
Let's start with an important set of distinctions, so you can know what I am offering and not offering. When I practiced mainstream counselling, people would often confuse me with a psychologist, not realising that the two professions are very different. That confusion is very common, and that is very problematic, for we are talking about very different services. There is a difference between:
- Clinical mental health professionals such as Psychologists, Psychiatrists, clinical Social Workers
- Counsellors and Psychotherapists
- Philosophical Counsellors
The first type--clinical professionals--work according to "the medical model." They view your problems as illnesses or disorders. They focus on assessment, diagnosis, related treatment, as well as management, reports, et cetera. I am not a clinical professional, and I do not offer those clinical services. The second type--counsellors and psychotherapists--are for the most part what we might call "personal growth" professionals. They help you to cope with life's challenges and make your life better, by cultivating your own insight, motivation, skills, personal growth, and so on. Their lens is generally practical, and psychological. (Note well: their "psychological" focus is different to the "clinical psychological" focus of the clinical professionals.) The third type--philosophical counsellors--may have a degree in philosophy only, or they may have degrees in both philosophy and in the above counselling, such as I do. They study mainstream counselling as well, not because they seek a permanent career in it, but because they want to use the framework of counselling for their philosophical practice, and because they want the psychological know-how of a therapist. They want to integrate psychological know-how into their philosophical work.
Why would a philosophical counsellor go to the long and intensive trouble of cultivating a whole second career in therapy, without the intention of remaining in it? In our culture, which is to say, modernity, we tend to divide life up unnaturally. Our professions reflect this. We reduce the whole to a part. We then focus only on the part. (Often, we also then treat that part as the whole.) Modernity is reductive. "We are nothing but psychological mechanisms." Or, "No, we are (medical) systems in a state of health or disease." Or we are reducible to our brains. Or reducible to social or economic forces. Or everything is about gut health, or meditation. Or it's all a problem of moral character. Hence, in modernity, therapists help people by viewing them through a psychological lens. Philosophical counsellors then arise, but their work is purely one of abstract conceptual reflection. I disagree. The whole tradition my work is based in, which is pre-modern, disagrees. It does not reduce or explain, so much as pay attention and describe. In that sense, it is thinking that comes out of living. Classical philosophy focuses on the parts as parts of the whole. It makes sense of them through the whole. It is wholistic, integrationist, concerned with the dynamic, living form which unifies the parts.
And so classical philosophy explores the parts of the human being, and the further parts that make up the various parts, but it does so with a view to the over-all form and nature of our humanity. For example, it is traditional to speak of a human being as "mind and body." As combining an intellectual part, and an animal part. On the one hand we are consciousness, which is a mystery. We know, we choose, and we are the awareness of all this. On the other hand, we are also an animal, in the sense of a body, but one that has an animal psychology: sense perception, appetite (desire), and impulsive or compulsive movement toward pleasure and away from pain. This is why you struggle so much between what you value and want to do at a reflective level, and what you actually do, or feeled pulled to do. You are like a rider and a horse, in one. If we have a clear sense of both dimensions of our humanity, then we can recognise that both are real and important. They are also distinct but combined in some weird way. This is an age-old philosophical problem, but at the practical level of our lives, it means that we need to make efforts at the level of consciousness: to be more awake, to see clearly, to reason, to choose and act in good ways. And we need to work on our psychology as something distinct from consciousness, mapping its patterns and manipulating those patterns to better serve our conscious values and direction.
Classical philosophy is the practical work we do as conscious beings. It is the effort of intellect and will. Psychology focuses on the more blind, animal aspect of us that is our psychology. Modernity is technocratic, and so modern culture has tended to reduce us to "psychological mechanisms" and the like. Hence, you can easily find a psychological therapist whose training focuses on your psychology, and even reduces you to that. But you will struggle to find somebody to help you cultivate wisdom and virtue. Many "humanistic" therapists will claim to focus on consciousness, but again, they unwittingly reduce consciousness to psychology. Because therapist training ignores the intellect, most therapists lack the skills to analyse and see this problem, to understand the conceptual confusions in the claims they make.
The effectiveness of my philosophical counselling is greatly increased by the fact that I bring the perception, knowledge, and skill of a highly experience psychotherapist. I draw on that psychological knowledge and skill in my work with you, however, what I offer is not mainstream therapy. Why do I need to say that? A therapist operates in a wider social and legal context, and so has responsibilities that can undermine a philosophical focus and outcomes. They must pay attention to certain things, in certain ways, and this means they can easily end up not paying much attention to other things. Those other things include philosophical goals. For me, those philosophical goals are central. They are why I studied mainstream counselling in the first place, they are my focus and concern. So I no longer offer mainstream therapy, but only philosophical counselling. You get psychological help, but in the context of philosophical help. I am as skillful as most mainstream therapists, when it comes to the at psychological work, but it is a secondary resource.
I am the first person in Australia to make a career as a philosophical counsellor. I have been approached by numerous people who want to do the same, and I recommend the same pathway: all of them have philosophy degrees, so I suggest studying counselling next. When speaking to a modern philosopher, they already recognise how psychology needs philosophy, but I will point out how philosophy needs psychology. Psychological immaturity or entanglement leads people to distorted philosophical views. Anybody who has spent time among academic philosophers has seen this. I mention modern philosophers, because I came from a different perspective. From the start, I was gripped by ancient philosophy. The classical philosophers are also psychologists. Indeeed, "philosophical psychology" is a major field in classical philosophy. Many books with that title dominate my shelves. That philosophical psychology is pre-modern--ancient Greek, Roman, medieval. It is wholistic rather than reductive. It has much to teach modern psychotherapy. Yet, modern psychotherapy has much to teach in turn. Laying aside its many flaws, which are driven by modernist ideology, modern mainstream therapy is full of insights and related practices that are not only highly helpful and transformative, but new to a classical philosopher. Classical philosophical psychology was a part of my thinking before studying counselling. The ancient and modern forms of psychology each possess things lacking in the other, and they are highly conplementary.
It is interesting to note that the most largescale and respected research into what makes psychological therapy effective--the "common factors" research--agrees with my focus the primacy of wisdom and virtue over psychological concerns. It does so implicitly, not explicitly, for it is thinking only of mainstream therapy, but the implication is obvious. For that field of (meta) research shows that the thing which makes the greatest difference in therapy, is not the expertise or effort of the therapist, but rather the effort of the client, both in the sessions and outside of them. That is, thee research makes clear that is the client's efforts at the level of intellect and will, which makes the greatest difference in therapy. Some people imagine that they can attend therapy as they attend the doctor's office: passively, waiting while the expert analyses and treats them with some technology. Such people tend to become very frustrated in therapy, because "it does not work." They are right: it does not work, except insofar as the client makes real efforts. The therapist, as with the philosophical counsellor is only a guide. The client must do the work, and at its core, that work begins with an effort of mind and of will.
This is why I claim that the cultivation of wisdom and virtue is more important than psychological therapeutic work. I can imagine somebody reacting: "For crying out loud, I've analysed and ruminated endlessly, and I can tell you that simply thinking about things does not help!" or "I have tensed the muscles of my will, and I get nowhere!" I respond that if you do anything badly it will not help. Wise reflection is very different to sloppy rumination or obsessive over-thinking. And the wise exercise of your will is very different to merely thinking about things, or to simply tensing your mental or physical muscles. As you can see above, the cultivation of widom, and of virtue, involves knowledge and practice. We are not shooting in the dark. The work is analogous to personal training at the gym. Of course, with the cultural neglect of wisdom and virtue, people have lost sight of the fact that there is this detailed path to their cultivation.
Why does our culture neglect these things? It was with Freud that the West abandoned its focus on wisdom and virtue. Therapy is an expression of the culture out of which it arose, and therapy expresses modernity's preference for reduction. This is what C. S. Lewis called "nothing buttery." That is, life is nothing but struggle, human beings are nothing but blind psychological dynamics, love is nothing but chemicals, and so on. If human beings are nothing but blind psychological animals, then wisdom and virtue is not real. Like truth, and goodness, and beauty, and so on, it is merely an expression of preference, a projection of some psychological force in us. (Curiously, people who think this way never take seriously the problem that their own claims are therefore not true, are merely expresssions of psychological force rather than of something meaningful. Freud reduced everybody else, but treated himself as an exception to the rule.)
Since the rise of psychological therapy at the beginning of the 20th, people have been taught to reduce themselves to psychological animals. And so they have been taught to dismiss the reality, and neglect the need for the cultivation of, wisdom and virtue. Not only that, but therapy has spilled well beyond its bounds. Here is where I speak as one trained in therapy, and with frustration. Mainstream therapy is wonderful and powerful, within its own domain, within its own limitations. But we have turned it into a religion. We now live in "a therapeutic culture." Instead of the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, which is hard at the level of egotism--I may be wrong, I may need to change--people have been trained in the therapeutic culture to become narcissistic, hedonistic consumers, whose main sense of value often lies in some weaponised clinical diagnosis.
The problems I have just outlined are of what happens when we get drunk on psychology, to the point of reducing everything to psychology, and in time creating a pathological religion out of therapy. In the nineteenth century we tended to reduce psychological problems to failures of character, and that was harmful. Now, we reduce character to psychology, and that is harmful. We need to do better. That is, to be wiser. What I aim to offer is an approach which:
- focuses on the cultivation of wisdom and virtue as its primary focus, but which also
- integrates that with the best of psychological therapy.
Philosophical counselling draws on 2,500 years of detailed wisdom to craft a wise head and and a virtuous heart. To transform ourselves into strong, good, skillful, happy, successful people.