Inducing Mindfulness Through Life‐Philosophical Lecturing

Abstract

Since 2001, the senior writer of this paper has held a mass lecture series at Aalto University, Finland (formerly Helsinki University of Technology, now part of the new Aalto University), on what seems like a presentation of some key ideas of the philosophy and psychology of the good life. The course is entitled “Philosophy and Systems Thinking,” but little theory is presented. Instead, numerous stories, anecdotes, personal reflections, and selected video clips in interplay with conceptual lines of thought are employed to create a space for free thought. Explicit reference to great thinkers of the past is merely occasional. From the very beginning, the lecturer makes clear that the aim is not to teach academic theories but rather to create a context in which the participant could engage in the thinking of their own thinking with insight and sustained focus, accompanied by the possibility to experience the significance of those thoughts from the point of view of their everyday life. Instead of being addressed as cognitive processors for the delivery of objectively defined contents, the participants are invited to the lecture hall as human beings with an abundant internal world and with a rich cognitive and affective endowment. In other words, the participants are welcomed as agents capable of attention, metacognitive insight, and thinking of their own thinking, and as adept observers of human reality. With personal agency as the engine and thinking as the instrument, the aim is to reach personal insights on how to live one’s life. During the 12 years of its history, many students have decided to retake the course, often several times. Many students also pop in for a lecture or two after they have graduated (in Finnish universities, lectures are open to anybody). It is not uncommon for a student to ask friends, parents, or other loved ones to join in for a session or two, and indeed the lectures have become something of an event at the campus. The course