Five Forms of Philosophical Therapy

Abstract

Philosophy as has become a buzzword these days. If I were old enough, it might remind me of the catchiness of logical positivism in days of yore. The mere mention of the term instills in one some sense of what the disciplinary community of philosophy all about-some sense of the significance (or purported significance) surrounding all the spilled ink. But much like older buzzwords, the notion of philosophy as a slippery one-and for this very reason should probably be held at arm's length until some clarity can be attached to the notion in question. The aim of this essay to articulate five distinct versions of philosophical therapy, each of which in some way implied by utterances concerning the role of philosophical reflection when the term therapy used in a rough and ready way. My aim here twofold: on the one hand, I will suggest, via exegesis, that there no explanatorily significant unifying strand which unites therapeutic perspectives: we have only family resemblance. On the other hand, I will suggest that the notion of philosophical can still be a fruitful one, provided we construe the therapeutic as an interpretive strategy instead of a philosophical position one maintains. My argumentative strategy in this essay can, in a certain sense, be seen along therapeutic lines as well. My aim will be to provide a genealogical account of versions of philosophical that litter the academic landscape in order to better understand what we might have in mind when we call a philosophical project therapeutic. The point of juxtaposing differing therapeutic models itself a therapeutic one: by representing the often vastly divergent approaches to philosophical therapy, I will suggest that we should understand the current cash-value of this notion as an approach to texts and problems rather than as a philosophical position one maintains. Therapy in the Ancient World In one sense, philosophy was construed as from its very beginnings. Socrates aimed at a practice that would effectively rid one of a delusional fear of death-a fear that for too long had led his fellow Athenians to misconstrue their own lives and the roles they might play within Athenian society. The gadfly Socrates aimed to correct the false views of his philosophical interlocutors through a practice which would throw into relief the fact that death was nothing to be feared. Philosophical for the midwife Socrates turned out to be a preparation of the soul for death. Thus in Plato's Phaedo Socrates, in giving an account of the immortality of the soul and the need to detach from bodily concerns, claims that the avoidance of bodily concerns is no other than practicing philosophy in the right way, [it is] in fact, training to die easily (Plato, 80e). Socratic thus the acquisition of the right attitude towards death-an acquisition which made possible by paying proper attention to those things which matter most: namely, matters of the soul. Indeed, the ancient world littered with those whose thought hinged on the practical side of philosophical reflection-on its ability to allow one to cope in the appropriate way with daily matters. One thinks of the Cynics defecating in the street as a means of revealing the emptiness of social practices, or of the original skeptics before the bastardization made possible by epistemologically-centered post-Cartesian thought: a plea for ignorance belied by the thought that commitments can do nothing but harm. The Stoics are perhaps the paradigm case for philosophy as in the ancient world: slaves and emperors who made their primary concern an understanding of the world which would relieve the pain of everyday life. Cicero provides an interesting synthesis of several ancient schools, and hence provides an ideal source for an exposition of the role of the therapeutic in ancient philosophy. His eclecticism allows him to integrate very diverse doctrines in Hellenistic philosophy while still maintaining the view that the fundamental role of the philosophical endeavor a therapeutic one. …