Nobody Governs Truth

Guest Editorial

GERALD ROCHELLE FORMER CHAIR, SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE, SHROPSHIRE, UK

I think of myself as a Practical Philosopher and yet still wonder what Practical Philosophy is and what it is to practice it? Is this still a live debate? If it is not, I believe it should be. As an introduction to this issue—and on the basis that it is sometimes useful to take a pause and consider afresh—I would like to share with you a few of my reflections on this quandary. I believe the reflective method has great value and does, of course, draw on well established philosophically meditative traditions which we generally consider Cartesian.

I define philosophy as ‘a system for asking questions to which it appears there are currently no known answers’. For me, this is convenient and makes sense—it gives philosophy a broad remit and testifies to its methodology. When I think of Practical Philosophy, I add, ‘... in our engagement with our self, with another, or with the world in which we live.’ This makes Practical Philosophy, as well as being questioning and systematic, a matter which is also individual, social and ethical. This may not entirely answer what Practical Philosophy is, but in an important sense it does distinguish it from merely ‘philosophy’. This is important if Practical Philosophy is to flourish in an environment outside that of the normal philosophical domain—in order for philosophers to be practical they need to know what this entails. There is, however, an inherent conflict between these additional features—individually they seem disparate, in combination puzzling; and, without some reinforcement, we might begin to wonder why ‘practical’ philosophy is any more meaningful than, for example, ‘practical’ history or ‘practical’ literature.

In thinking this way, I do not abandon altogether the idea of an objective definition; indeed, the diverse nature of Philosophical Practice may well be a reflection of an objective core, although, to me, this seems unlikely. Distinctions of difference are only ontologically meaningful if known in a sense relative to an object independent of the objects of difference which distinguish them one from another. In Philosophical Practice, it is not immediately obvious what this might be, instead it seems that this central theme—this ‘independent object’—may not be so independent or objective, but instead, perhaps paradoxically, more a reflection of the world and the individual’s relationships within that world. Because this relationship is what I wish to reflect on here, and I do not have inclination at the moment to try and separate this relationship from any possible ‘independent object’, I do not pursue the matter of independent objectivity any further.

Life, particularly in respect of our interaction with the world, is a complex experience (by the ‘world’ here I mean the world as we find it, not the metaphysical ‘world as all possible contents’). Aspects of this relationship often bring about tensions and contradictions that are difficult for us to resolve or accept. When we approach these difficulties—perhaps looking for preferred approaches, solutions, or even deciding whether we should tackle them at all—we face often pressing moral, psychological and metaphysical concerns. Such concerns, in one form or another, and in different mixtures and weightings, are not only the stuff of Philosophy in Practice but the source of confusion which causes us to philosophise, and, in the absence of some categorical imperative, the means by which I believe we may eventually define it.

ISSN 17428181 online © 2009 APPA

There are many different ways of placing ourselves in the world. We can, like the Epicureans, think the world a neutral machine of chance within which our salvation lies in vanquishing our fears; like Stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius believe that each of us is a minute part of a divine, rational and harmonious system within which we must fit; or like Plato pursue conformity to an objective world of ideal justice and good. Whatever our election—no matter how ‘separated’ from the world our ultimate beliefs may be—still we must acknowledge that all psychological or theological systems stem from an initial wonderment, fear, or interpretation of the world in which we live.

Practical Philosophy for many is defined by Philosophical Counselling. There are sound reasons for this—not least that the Philosophical Counselling situation is one in which we can not only relate closely with another, but can also use what gains philosophy has made for another’s benefit. It is still right to consolidate and deepen our understanding of the methodology, theory and ethics of Philosophical Counselling and its relationship to other forms of therapy, as well as come to know what part it plays in Philosophical Practice in a broader sense. But Philosophical Counselling does not define Philosophical Practice. There has been no mould created by Philosophical Counselling from which we can see ourselves arising as broadly Practical Philosophers, no template here against which we should consider ourselves shaped other than as practitioners of a certain philosophical sort. Our philosophically practical interrelation with others as Philosophical Counsellors is not itself a metaphysical matter; its occurrence is a distinctly practical one and is subject to the influences of the practical world. The constant pressure of modern neoliberal values, and the curative approaches and broadly therapeutic influences drawn from the psychoanalytical model, have influenced the direction of contemporary Western Philosophical Counselling. Although Philosophical Counselling is an aspect of Practical Philosophy, Practical Philosophy includes other features which go beyond the parameters of Philosophical Counselling.

An important part of Practical Philosophy is the inner search for wisdom or clarity of purpose— and the commensurate idea that self-reflection must lead us there. This search—with a deeply embedded philosophical heritage—may indeed be born of Philosophical Counselling, but it may also be, and commonly is, a separate pursuit. In trying to live our ‘philosophically practical’ lives we find ourselves always under the influence of social, economic and political pressures. There is nothing new about this, though its manifestation always has new features for each generation or culture. We do not have to look far in philosophy or literature to find evidence of this; the widest range of commentators from Homer and Ecclesiastes to Cicero and Jerome K. Jerome express our struggle to reconcile life’s passage through time and culture. This strain is at the heart of Rousseau’s constant tension between the longing for solitude and the necessity of others and the world which they form part—the perverse rejection of something we need.

The way the world is organised throws additional light on our question; if we are responsive to, or reflective of, the world, we will be shaped or coloured by its form. If we have a philosophical approach which is practical we need to know how it derives from, or is applied to, the world as it is constituted by social, political and economic forces. It is possible to categorize state activity, and our part in it, roughly into two separate groups—those activities that cater to the general or common good and those that are based upon a theory of social contract. The idea of the common good has a long philosophical lineage running from Plato and Aristotle to Bentham and J.S. Mill. The idea of the social contract—in part reactionary to the common good thesis—starts much later with Hobbes and Locke, is developed by Rousseau and Kant and given new force more recently by Rawls. The distinction between the two categories revolves around who benefits and by what. The common good looks for collective benefit—the well being and interests of all—the social contract justifies the state by virtue of voluntary agreements entered into by freely choosing individuals. This distinction is roughly analogous to Rousseau’s tension—the common good resembling our interaction with the world, the social contract our inner sense of ethical worth. Bringing about balance between these two possibilities relies upon an ethical approach to the world in which we live—how we maintain a sense of inner knowledge and certainty while both facing up to, and drawing inspiration from, the relative confusion it presents to us. Any Practical Philosophy is enhanced by such an ethical foundation.

Philosophy as a rational method is equipped to handle questions about the abstract—to investigate immutable human value and meaning. However, when we bring philosophy into the transient world of practice, we sometimes struggle to disentangle ourselves, or at least identify ourselves as separate from these metaphysical aspirations. Sometimes we reduce this to a stark choice—the naturalistic route to withdrawal and communion of self with itself or nature (a route inspired by many philosophers, theologians and mystics from Jesus to Thoreau), or we can look outward, for example, like Socrates who believed he could only learn—and so come to know himself—not from communion with nature but from the company of others. The naturalistic choice, even if reduced to the life of a hermit, is hard pressed to show itself completely immune from worldly influence. If we follow Socrates we are faced immediately with it. On either account—as an insidious or as an obvious influence—the practical confusion the world brings to us is not straightforward, provides little consistency and does not yield to simple analysis.

In some senses we are all victims of what dramatists call ‘reception’—it is not so much what the writer meant in writing the play but what we go home thinking it has meant to us that counts. Unavoidably, we measure our response to things we perceive in our lives against the world in which we find ourselves. And it is a changing one—the world’s underlying theme is its inconstancy: today’s heroes are tomorrow’s villains; tomorrow’s popular beliefs are the next day’s reviled ideologies; today’s boom is tomorrow’s bust. We are all subject to the influences of our cultural heritage and the society in which we find ourselves—torture, slavery and capital punishment have, amongst other areas of opinion or conduct, at one time been morally detested and at another had their moral ascendance. A few pages of any of Foucault’s work quickly consolidate the dramatic effects on conduct and belief found in the ‘archaeology’ of the past. In our contemporary postmodern world, influenced by secularism and economic changes, on such a huge scale that the individual is made almost redundant except as a consumer, we can easily feel any sense of ourselves as anything other than a response to our environment entirely undermined. This feeling of powerlessness can be overwhelming—our troubles, like the plight of Ovid’s drowning Ceyx, can threaten to crush us and cast us into an Orphean underworld from which there is no return. Overbearing worldly pressure and the resultant despair can readily lead us to nihilism—and there is plenty of literary and philosophical support and justification for holding such a view; Thomas Hardy, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus, for example, all provide different justifications for ultimate desolation. Rescue from this is not readily found in philosophy. Historically, philosophy is not abundant with optimism and it is not a term frequently found in its literature. It does, though, find some form in loosely ‘curative’ approaches. For example, the reductionist Epicurus and the positive minded Bertrand Russell provide ‘approaches’ to living which somehow prevent or limit some of its effects. Idealists such as Plato, Plotinus and McTaggart guide us towards a belief-based metaphysics and therefore some salvation in a ‘world beyond’ the world in which we are living. However, most philosophies fall short on recommendations for how their method can make us happy in this world, or indeed what happiness constitutes either in the way we experience it or in the way we think about it.

We must, nevertheless, still assume that even within this heavily influencing structure of culture there is something of the individual which is immune from its influence—we do not, as Thoreau reminds us, spend too much time in this life, or the next, under the rule of government. And there are some useful and practical pointers to be found—some more obviously ‘philosophical’ than others. For example, as individuals we could take a broadly transcendentalist route like Emerson and Thoreau and look for victory of intuition over logical reason and experience of the senses. On the other hand, like Socrates, who settles onto the perfectly shaped grass slope to talk to Phaedrus, we could look to our ‘comfort’ and, at the same time, realise the value and contribution which the world makes to us and us to it.

It is possible to ‘remove’ ourselves from worldly influences—to meditate, isolate our lives and thinking, retreat from the activities of work and society—but this is itself precarious. If we take this path, and if we find we lack belief, we may be unsure that our views are tested against anything with metaphysical meaning; if we are our own arbiter of thought and its conclusions we are on uncertain and philosophically doubtful ground. Indeed, such an absence of external foundation may leave us suspicious of any gain in wisdom, self-knowledge or happiness. This lack of broadly ontological certainty is one of the main drives to associate in groups of the similarly minded. For example, the comfort brought by early sects such as Isis-worship, Orphism, Mithraism, the Bacchics and Pythagoreans—themselves all drawing in some degree from the Babylonian religions or Hinduism—continues to be reflected closely in the reassuring values, ritualism and symbolism of subsequent and contemporary followings. We could include in this category any monastic enterprise or religious fellowship or communal belief. Though a sense of the divine or other worldly is not an essential ingredient for those seeking certainty in the company of others, politics, for example, fulfils in a secular manner many of the same needs as does the idolisation of celebrity, sporting teams, or adherence to some scientific or cosmological theories.

The alternative to retreat is to come to terms with the world in which we find ourselves—look out as well as in—and blend the essential contribution which the world makes to our well-being with a knowledge that well-being is a central part of self. Modern states and their political systems operate in and influence all spheres of human interest. They control the distribution of resources, wealth, the implementation of justice, the protection or inhibition of individual freedoms, the access to and involvement of citizens in the political process, and how the state stands in respect of, and responds to, others living in states whose political, religious, ethnic or economic views lead them along different paths. This is the scenery of our living world, and the way we ‘receive’ it contributes importantly to what we are. If, like Socrates, we see good philosophical reason to take part in the world, we might heed his other requirement—understand how we can attain an inner harmony as well as know where we can sit most comfortably. It may be that unless we form a picture of ourselves in the worldly context we may be banking a great deal of hope on spiritual transcendence, inner wisdom, or relative ethics. Better, perhaps, to take Pascal’s view and wager our well-being on the route least likely to lose most—in assessing the worth of our lives, account for the world in which we live.

The contributions to this issue all touch upon matters which affect how we view modern Philosophical Practice, and so, I hope, does my preamble to their efforts. They each bring Philosophical Practice into the world in which we pass our lives, and they do this in ways which express Practical Philosophy as a tool for understanding, a method of personal reflection, a system of analysis, a way of looking at history, or a means of seeing the world in light of business, economics or politics. None of them explicitly tries to define Practical Philosophy but they do, I believe, by their insights, show us how we can increasingly gain a clearer picture of what it means to do more than merely ‘philosophy’. Geoffrey Klempner sets the scene with his reflective piece ‘Philosophy in the Business Arena’ where he considers the tensions between business, greed and a ‘philosophical’ view. Eli Eilon shows us in ‘Philosophical Counselling and the Philosopher-Entrepreneur: The Counsellee as a Partner in a Philosophical Process’, how Philosophical Counselling can work in the business environment and in particular where the counsellee is a philosopher. Farzaneh Yazdani and Christopher Williams in their ‘Law and Well-being: Applying the Philosophy of Occupational Therapy in Schools’ bring the concept of law into the world of ethical utility, focussing in particular on the world of children—the world of schools. Roberto Franzini Tibaldeo in ‘Community of Enquiry and Ethics of Responsibility’ develops the idea of further extending the reach of a given philosophy and placing it in the public context. All these lead us to look at our Philosophical Practice from different ‘worldly’ angles, helping us to reach towards a clearer understanding of what Practical Philosophy is by showing us ways of viewing the diversity involved in its processes not as merely fragmentary parts in themselves but as expressions of difference to what is an increasingly revealed central theme.

correspondence: gerald.rochelle@btinternet.com