Exchanging the Word — The Mission

The mission is to make philosophical contact beyond philosophy with strangers to philosophy in an inherently non-philosophical way (that is a way which does not consciously use philosophy, its method or technique, and which does not declare itself as anything philosophical).

It is not:

1. Getting philosophers together to talk about Exchanging the Word

2. Getting people together in Philosophical Cafes or interest groups and either talking to them about philosophy or encouraging them to talk about matters in a philosophical way.

3. Counselling people using philosophical techniques and references.

4. Bringing to bear philosophical methodology in environments such as education, the business world and so on.

It is:

1. Allowing the product of having ‘gone through’ philosophy to permeate focussed interest in another.

2. Approaching and engaging strangers.

3. Offering clarity and focus to another.

4. Looking for the wisdom available in another.

5. Exchanging the benefit of another’s wisdom and clarity, mixing it with any wisdom or clarity produced by the exchange and sharing it with that other. The exchange process is cumulative in this way.

Exchanging the Word should be given to strangers who if they have an expectation have a broadly non-philosophical one but perhaps one for revelation, insights, purpose. It is in this respect that exchanging the Word comes close to ‘Preaching the Word’.