Is Philosophical Practice a Form of Therapy?

“Philosophical practice” sets itself apart from the traditional teaching of the discipline. It is not limited to a scholarly knowledge of the history of philosophy: in individual consultations or group workshops, it challenges the person while leading them to exercise and develop philosophical skills.

In this sense, philosophical practice on the one hand revives the ancient tradition — doing exercises on oneself rather than building grand theories — and on the other hand comes close to today’s personal development, or even to a form of therapy.

But can philosophical practice really be equated with therapy? This question raises others: who are the patients this therapy would treat? What illnesses could it cure us of? Individual neuroses, a collective malaise, simply human difficulties? To speak of illness is to speak of health — but what is good health, or “great health”, as Nietzsche would have said? Or again: does the person who practises philosophy care about feeling better, or about drawing closer to values such as truth, beauty, justice or love?

In these lines I propose one approach to philosophical practice, one among many that have been developing in recent years.

Becoming Aware of One’s Own Standpoint

We cannot question the world around us, or offer interpretations of it, without being as clearly aware as possible of our own standpoint. It shows where we are anchored: we do not start from an absolute point of view, but from a relative one. Being aware of this relativity is a condition for not being locked inside it.

Following Nietzsche, we can undertake a genealogy of our ideas in order to put them into perspective and evaluate them. The German philosopher thought that, ultimately, it is always our body that philosophizes. If it is weak and sick, we will tend to justify this fragility in our philosophical systems. We will value weakness, self-hatred and hatred of life in our representations, for example. If, on the contrary, we are in full health, our philosophical system will champion strength and power. In the end, according to Nietzsche, we only ever rationalize a physiological state after the fact. Behind the small reason of the mind and of consciousness, there is always the great reason of the body.

So what is the point of philosophizing if our discourse is conditioned by our state of health?

If all we ever do is justify what we are?

Through the self-knowledge it involves, philosophical practice nevertheless allows a certain flexibility with regard to this determinism of the body.

Suppose I suffer from an organic weakness that forces me to protect myself from the outside world. If I am not aware of it, I will develop a way of thinking designed to protect me from that world, and this way of thinking will seem to me the only possible point of view on the world. My ideas will merely reflect this fragile state of health, and I will not know it.

But if I now realize my initial weakness, my frail condition, several options open up to me. I now know that my system of representations is relative to my state, or to that of people in a comparable physiological condition. I become aware that there are people in much better physical health who have no need of my discourse. Since I understand the physiological origin and the function of my ideas, I do not impose them on others and I do not lock myself inside them. Having become aware of my frail condition, I can go on protecting it; I can also set about strengthening myself through exercises.

Through the distance it creates, philosophical practice offers the possibility of making oneself a field of experiment. It gives us the opportunity to observe ourselves by testing ourselves in various situations. It therefore produces a certain power over oneself and a possibility of change, however slight — for accepting oneself is already changing oneself.

My Own Standpoint

At 18, I began studying mathematics applied to the social sciences at Paris Dauphine University. But I soon understood that this path did not suit me: it only matched what I imagined my background and upbringing expected of me.

I then spent a few months in London doing temporary jobs — au pair, cleaner, waitress in a pub — before returning to France, where I had the good fortune to hear the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. I was immediately fascinated by this powerful speech. Many of the ideas escaped me, but I sensed an intense life there, something that spoke to me. I then took up the study of philosophy, which led me to pass the CAPES, the French national teaching qualification, and to become a philosophy teacher. While these studies opened my mind by introducing me to many schools of thought and perspectives on life, they were also the occasion for me to develop inhibitions and complexes.

If I trace the genealogy of my own ideas, my physiological state was probably rather fragile, and I needed to find representations supplied by a master thinker I could lean on — an outside strength to make up for my inner weakness.

Faced with the great philosophers, I felt a sharp and shameful awareness of my own mediocrity. Instead of humbly acknowledging it and devoting myself passionately to my studies, I tried, more or less — and rather less than more — to hide it. Since then, I have noticed that I was not the only one suffering from this pathology: many philosophy teachers spend a great deal of energy concealing the poor image they have of themselves. To do so, they overdo it — displaying the books they have read, for instance, or showing contempt for some philosopher they consider inept, too conservative or not conservative enough, without the content of his ideas ever being discussed. Some lose their audience in speeches as obscure as they are pompous. The more confidently they deliver them, the more stupid the audience feels for not understanding, and the more some of its members in turn seize the floor to impress, and so on.

This pathology is unfortunately encouraged by the academic world, where what matters is not so much the hypotheses or questions put forward for discussion as one’s place in the hierarchy of the teaching system.

In short, I in turn began to play this little game — until the day I crossed paths with… a new master, the philosopher Oscar Brenifier. It was at a meeting on philosophical practice at UNESCO. I watched him conduct a philosophical consultation with one of my colleagues. He made no concessions whatsoever, and this teacher’s system was laid bare in the thirty or so minutes the exercise lasted. Although she was a philosophy teacher, she had to acknowledge her dogmatic side, her unfamiliarity with the critical exercise of thought. She too was trying to impress, and was terrified of being thought stupid. The consultation Brenifier led shocked me at first, but in the end it seemed to me deeply salutary and liberating. I in turn submitted to the exercise of consultation, understood many things about myself, and it was the beginning of an important turning point in my life.

First, I learned to care more about working on skills and attitudes than about looking intelligent by masking what I considered my mediocrity. I set out to become a philosophical practitioner. I made quite a few enemies, which unsettled me at first — I who for years had been enslaved to the need to please. But in the end, the pleasure I found in practising philosophy in workshops, consultations and all kinds of encounters won out over the pleasure of pleasing.

Eventually I was dismissed by Brenifier, my master, and this dismissal was salutary: it rid me of my need to lean on a master. From now on, I have to make do with myself, work with my own small person and philosophize through it for as long as that remains possible.

Philosophical Practice and the Care of the Self

Even though it departs from them on essential points, philosophical practice as I propose to set it up owes a great deal to the philosophies of antiquity and to the work of Pierre Hadot, who showed how their approach differs from that of contemporary philosophies.

Pierre Hadot showed in his books that, in antiquity, the philosophical act did not belong only to the order of knowledge, but to the order of the self and of being. It was a progress that made one be more fully and made one better — a conversion that overturned one’s whole life and changed the being of the person who accomplished it, taking them from an inauthentic life, clouded by unconsciousness and eaten away by worry, to an authentic life in which a human being reaches self-awareness, an accurate vision of the world, inner peace and freedom.

As in antiquity, the person who takes up philosophical practice is not content to theorize — about natural and vain desires in Epicurus, for example, or about joy and sadness according to Spinoza. They examine what is happening within themselves in the light of these philosophers’ concepts.

With philosophical practice, the aim is to think what we live and to live what we think, bringing the two as close together as possible.

As the Stoics recommended — themselves heirs of Socrates — the exercises begin with work on oneself, to learn to know oneself better. In a philosophical consultation, then, the aim is to become aware of one’s finitude, of the passions that drive us and of the representations that guide them. Do they make us free and independent, or do they, on the contrary, enslave us to what does not depend on us?

In antiquity, once this knowledge had been brought to light, suitable exercises were proposed to each disciple of the school. These exercises were to be carried out with constancy and regularity. Their aim was to reach ataraxia, that is, the absence of trouble.

The passions were then regarded as illnesses to be cured of, by the Stoics and the Epicureans alike. These passions, to which human beings are so often subject, drive them towards excess, lack of measure, chronic dissatisfaction and suffering.

Ancient philosophy can therefore be considered a form of therapy. Through repeated and varied exercises, it cures us of slavery to our passions and to our mistaken representations. We then move towards serenity and self-mastery.

Philosophical practice as I set it up returns to ancient philosophy insofar as it is not content with a theoretical approach. It challenges the very being of the person who philosophizes, first leading them to know themselves better, then offering them exercises to work on themselves.

However, philosophical practice as I propose it departs from ancient philosophy, because its primary goal is not therapeutic: it is not essentially about “caring for oneself”, nor about reaching the absence of trouble, ataraxia.

Health, or the Capacity to Face Suffering

The renewed interest in ancient philosophies, Zen meditation retreats, personal development and nonviolent communication should no doubt be seen alongside our era, in which dangers loom: terrorism, ecological and economic disasters. We want to cling to something soothing and reassuring. Technical progress has considerably relieved the pains and sufferings of the body, but our soul has become sicker, excessively sensitive, unable to face pain.

Our difficulty is such that we suffer from suffering! It is suffering squared. But why try to get rid of it? Isn’t suffering part of existence? Why make such a fuss about it?

The person who is in good health does not ask how to push suffering away; that is not their problem. They see it rather as a bad moment to get through, even as a stimulant, an incentive to grow stronger.

For them, pleasure, suffering and well-being are not values; they are states that accompany or condition the search for more fundamental values.

Thus the philosophical practitioner seeks questioning rather than feeling better. They train, they exercise philosophical skills. Their aim is not their own well-being, but thought, the encounter with otherness, the path towards truth.

The Philosophical Consultation: Facing Existential Anxiety. Valérie’s Case

Valérie would like to have a philosophical consultation. She is a psychologist herself, but psychology is of no help to her in facing her existential questions. She writes me a long email telling me about her difficulties concerning her wish for a child, freedom and solitude.

“I’m afraid of regretting, later in life, not having had a child, when it really is too late to go back (I’d like to know what philosophers say about regret; I haven’t found anything satisfying on the psychology side).

— I’m afraid of ending my life alone and dying alone (I know quite a few philosophers have dealt with this question, and I would like to find some peace through their wisdom).”

Valérie gives me her programme: she wants to know what philosophers think, and she is therefore looking to them for “peace”. Before she has even come to see me, she states what she wants. But how could she avoid dying alone? How can she fear regretting not having had children when she does not want any? Valérie thus struggles to face the great existential questions: accepting death, and the importance of choice — for one cannot not choose (either she will have children or she will not), and to choose is also to give something up.

In the consultation I conduct with her, the aim is therefore not to soothe her, as she asks, by answering her questions, but rather to bring her face to face with herself. The length of her email and the many comments she makes during the consultation conceal an anxiety she finds hard to look at, and which, as a result, spreads through her whole being. During the consultation, she realizes that behind her calm and reassuring appearance, she is in fact driven by very intense emotions. She notices that she tries to stay in control by talking a lot, but she does not know why. What would happen if she did not control things? What might burst out that frightens her so much?

The work will therefore consist in confronting Valérie with her existential anxiety. Usually, rather than facing anxiety, we flee it in distractions, in idle talk or in everyday worries — but in doing so we dissolve into the empty neutrality of what Heidegger called the “they”. We forget ourselves by doing as others do. The philosophical consultation challenges our being and leads us out of this easy path in which we so readily lose ourselves so as not to suffer from our condition. Instead of fleeing, the point is now to look things in the face: I am not the person I imagine myself to be; I am a finite, mortal, imperfect being. But in the time I have left to live, I can recognize what I am, resolve to be myself, and hold to a choice that will make sense for me and be authentic.

The primary aim of the philosophical consultation is not to soothe by providing a solution to a situation deemed problematic: losing weight, quitting smoking, having or not having a child, being less indecisive, and so on. Behind the preoccupations that often gnaw at our daily lives, the consultation brings to light a more fundamental existential anxiety.

“You say you want to lose weight or stop smoking — but where does this idea come from? Is it to conform to a social norm? But why do you want to conform to it? You say it is to be healthy — but what would this good health be for? Is it better to be overweight, to smoke and to own it, to give meaning to what you do while in fragile health — or to slim down or stop smoking, working to give yourself a chance of living longer, but without knowing why? What do you want to live for? What do you want to choose and focus your energy on? What matters most to you?”

With philosophical practice, then, the point is not so much to heal, to reach ataraxia, peace of soul, the absence of trouble or well-being, as to commit oneself authentically to existence.

Going Beyond the Self

Philosophical practice, like philosophy in general since it has existed, is linked to a quest that goes beyond the self. It transcends the self towards values. For Plato, these were the good, the beautiful and the true. Others could of course be added, such as justice or love. This is what the philosophical practitioner, faithful in this to a long tradition, seeks to draw closer to.

The aim is therefore not to “feel better” or to be cured of a neurosis, as is the case in psychoanalysis or in any form of therapy. Nor can philosophical practice be reduced to a personal development project. It is not first and foremost about defending one’s self, protecting it, or even helping it flourish. If we stopped there, we would only lock it inside personal views — whereas philosophy precisely frees us, for a time, from these narrow views. It lifts us up and lets us share in the objects of its contemplation; for a while, thanks to it, we stop the struggle, as feverish as it is desperate, for our self-preservation, for our self.

Living Better: A Condition for Philosophizing

Yet while feeling better is not the goal of philosophizing, it is one of its conditions. How could one aspire to truth, to the good, to love, while being mired up to the neck in one’s neurosis? How can one try to go beyond oneself without even being aware of being locked inside one’s subjectivity, without knowing one’s limits?

Consequently, a minimum of psychological health is needed to claim to philosophize, and the apprentice philosopher cannot avoid examining the state of their health — and therefore of their illness too. For these two states do not differ in nature, but in degree. One is not either sick or healthy; rather, one leans to one side. Good health is a momentary victory over illness. It is a question of balance, only ever reached temporarily, and which will in any case be broken by death.

To philosophize, it is therefore essential to examine oneself, and the tools of philosophy are effective for this self-examination, as the exercise of the philosophical consultation shows.

Illness, or the Absence of Openness and Exchange

Here we can rely on a definition of psychological illness close to that of neurosis: it is what locks us inside ourselves and makes us prisoners of our past. It leads us to face the same difficulties again and again, without ever managing to leave the existential framework we have confusedly built under the influence of our upbringing.

In the same way, the body falls ill when exchanges with its environment become more and more difficult — either because this environment is too aggressive and destroys it (microbes, viruses), or because the body isolates itself from it through an inner destruction, as in the case of cancer.

In contrast to illness, I would define health as the capacity to establish productive exchanges with the outside world.

Resistance: The Secondary Benefits of Illness

To reach such health, we still need to become aware of what hinders it, of what prevents these exchanges with the outside. Yet this awareness is difficult and often arouses a great deal of resistance. For by living inside the framework that confines us, we draw a few secondary benefits — security, protection, control — which are precisely what make it hard to leave the illness behind. We know these benefits; we enjoy their very relative comfort, since it comes at the price of a diminishment of our being. Even if we clearly feel the oppression of what limits us, we are on familiar ground, and venturing beyond it worries us. We know what we would be leaving, and we do not know what awaits us if we leave it.

The Philosophical Consultation, Psychological Health and the Activity of Philosophizing

One sign of good health would therefore be a certain capacity to go beyond the framework in which we have enclosed our existence, to venture outside, to take risks, to encounter otherness without letting ourselves be destroyed by what comes from outside. But to go beyond this framework, we must first know it and observe it from a certain distance. This is one of the aims of the philosophical consultation: to confront us with the limits of our being and to understand their outlines, however disappointing they may be compared with the image we have forged of ourselves.

In this respect, philosophical practice can resemble a form of therapy, even though healing is not its ultimate goal.

How could a dancer attempt the splits without being aware of the stiffness they need to work on? Whether they like it or not, if they want to achieve a particular movement, they will have to become aware of their clumsy gestures and of the bad habits their body has acquired. The same goes for anyone who wants to start philosophizing: they must begin by becoming aware of themselves. That is the indispensable first step.

Just as the dancer’s activity consists in becoming aware of their stiffness, practising regular exercises to become more supple, then dancing with other partners in a choreography, for example, so the philosophical practitioner’s activity consists in becoming aware of their rigidities and of what they leave unthought, practising exercises to become more supple, then philosophizing with other partners in a philosophical practice workshop or simply in everyday life. In both cases, physical or psychological health is not the goal of dancing or philosophizing, but it is both a condition and a consequence. A minimum of suppleness is needed to start dancing or philosophizing; on the other hand, dancing or philosophizing develops suppleness, better health and a certain well-being. Still, for the dancer, the goal is to dance, and for the philosopher, to philosophize.

Philosophical Training: Laura’s Case

Laura is a woman who is easily enthusiastic. She reads a lot and rarely goes out. She works on herself and regularly attends Zen meditation retreats. She has writing projects: a dissertation on ancient philosophy, a journal, another text on education. In short, she is not short of projects, but the time she has left to live may not be enough for them all. During a consultation we had together, it turned out that Laura is also very afraid of other people’s judgement.

It is a very common fear, linked to an even deeper one: the fear of being rejected and ending up alone. Laura is in fact a rather solitary woman, but it is a solitude she has chosen and does not think she endures. She is alone among her books, which cannot judge her. Reading thus seems to offer her a comfortable refuge, which gives her, as a bonus, the feeling of being intelligent. Laura does not read so much to confront herself by testing herself against different ideas, as to protect herself from others and their judgements. It is easy to see why she finds it hard to complete her writing projects. If she did, she would expose herself to the judgement of others, which she fears above all; she would no doubt also experience their indifference, which would send her back to a solitude she had not chosen.

Laura is therefore in a paradoxical situation: by trying to escape the judgement of others, she submits to it all the same, because she acts under the influence of the fear it inspires in her. Rather than facing this fear, she endures it — without escaping the gaze of others, who may well judge her timid and indecisive.

Is Laura healthy? Is she ill? She has managed to make her system familiar and more or less liveable. She suffers only moderately and experiences moments of keen pleasure when, in her reading, she becomes enthusiastic about one author or another. Yet the life she leads no longer satisfies her, which is why she wants to undertake work through philosophical practice. Is this just the start of yet another vain attempt at change? Or will it lead to a real transformation in Laura’s life?

During the first consultation, Laura becomes aware of the system she has adopted and of its limits. She is driven by a form of powerlessness, since she merely reacts to a fear. I invite her to think about what might be positive and interesting in other people’s judgements. She discovers that they make it possible to assess oneself, to situate oneself and to see more clearly. Whether pleasant or unpleasant, another person’s judgement says something about me; it also says something about the person who makes it. Once it has been put into words, it can be analysed — one can then judge the judgement. When everything remains unspoken, as is often the case, the greatest confusion reigns and it is impossible to move forward and find meaning.

Earlier, I proposed a definition of good health as the capacity to establish productive exchanges with the outside world. In other words, good health is a manifestation of power in the sense of Spinoza or Nietzsche: a capacity to give meaning, to give form to the world around us and, at the same time, to ourselves.

Having become aware, during the first consultation, of her system based on fear and flight, Laura also perceived its limits. She now wants to assert herself, take risks, establish more exchanges with the outside world — in short, to give more meaning to her existence.

First, I give her argumentation exercises, because her statements lack rigour. No surprise: she has grown used to thinking far from others and, since it suits her, to looking in her reading for what confirmed her way of thinking rather than for what unsettled it. Now I ask her to take charge of a question put to her, even if she dislikes it and it leads her towards unexpected and unfamiliar ideas. She learns to answer by producing an argument, without falling back on a purely subjective justification: “because I like it”, “because I have the impression that…”. An argument, if it is well founded and well constructed, is in principle valid for everyone. It tends towards objectivity, even if an objection can certainly always be raised against it. So Laura starts working on philosophical skills: argumentation, synthesis, analysis, conceptualization, giving examples, questioning.

She practises these exercises the way one practises scales, to bring more rigour and clarity into her thinking, just as a pianist loosens their fingers and brings more clarity into their playing. Through these exercises, she also confronts a reality, and therefore a form of otherness: that of language and logical rigour. When we simply let the flow of our ideas run, we stay comfortably with ourselves. Philosophical practice therefore consists in introducing, by every possible means, strangeness, difference — and thus play and movement. Laura learns to produce hypotheses that could also make sense to people other than herself. She then learns to question them and contradict them. Little by little, she sheds a certain rigidity she had acquired over the years. The paths she takes become more varied, and she will be better able to choose those that seem most relevant to her.

This work on skills goes hand in hand with work on attitudes, each driving the other. For example, having become more concerned with clarity, she no longer hesitates to interrupt someone who is speaking to her when she does not understand what they are saying. Before, she pretended to follow and “bounced off” a few words. Now, more concerned with reflection than with pleasing others, she no longer hesitates to interrupt a stream of confused words. She takes more risks and worries less about the judgement of others.

I have spoken at length about Laura’s case, but of course each person who trains in philosophical practice has a different profile.

Vincent is a man who takes up a lot of room in workshops. He shows that he exists, finds it hard to hold back from speaking out of turn, and leaves little space for others. He knows it, though: from the first consultation, the words “enlightened dictator” helped describe his way of being, and in all the years he has spent in his own company, he has already become aware of this pattern. He wants what is good for others and sees himself as a generous man. This way of being is no doubt accompanied by a strong need for recognition, and therefore by a negative self-image. Indeed, why would he need to be recognized if he recognized himself enough? He finds it hard to accept the contingency of his existence. How could he exist for nothing, recognized by no one? But of course, by constantly asking for this recognition, he gets exactly the opposite.

Like Laura, Vincent is led to work on the rigour of his thinking by developing philosophical skills. For him, it is not easy to question himself and to think what he does not usually think, because he is a man of conviction, with firmly settled ideas. This gives him determination, but also a form of rigidity and difficulty in listening. Unlike Laura, he will therefore practise stepping back, being less “active” and accepting his own contingency.

Conclusion

Philosophical practice as I propose it is not meant to be a therapy. First, it makes no claim to cure serious pathologies, which only doctors and therapists are qualified to treat. Second, it is not centred on the individual, on their recovery, well-being or fulfilment: it is above all an exercise of thought and a commitment, a quest for values such as truth, justice, love and beauty. It is closer to the martial arts or to dance than to therapy.

The martial arts or dance do not aim at good health, well-being or fulfilment, but they clearly presuppose them to some extent and produce them. In the same way, practising philosophy by exercising one’s skills and attitudes will bring better psychological health, greater freedom of thought and, at the same time, a sense of fulfilment.

The work is not centred on the individual — but that does not mean the individual is disregarded, as often happens in classical philosophy studies, where one can write an essay on bad faith in Sartre without ever observing the mechanisms of bad faith in one’s own way of being. No: in philosophical practice, as in the time of Socrates, it is the person’s very being that is challenged and led to commit to what they say and do.

Kind attention is paid to the individual, according to the work they are or are not able to do on themselves at a given moment. I have compared philosophical practice to dance, and I would take as a model the choreographer Pina Bausch, who did not seek to idealize bodies but to work with what they are, with their fragility and imperfection.

In the same way, the philosophical trainer is attentive to each person, encourages them and avoids provoking sterile resistance or blockages. Truth is certainly a value they pursue, but truth without love is mere dryness, cold and contemptuous stupidity — just as love without truth is complacency, flattery, sentimentality and stupidity too. There are values that cannot be separated from one another without losing each of them, as if, paradoxically, an excess of purity corrupted. Finding the intelligence to combine them is the whole art of the philosopher.