The philosophical questions of the counselees

Abstract

I propose the view that the philosophical counselling has to be “client oriented” that is, oriented by the counselees’ philosophical questions. Counselees are not always aware of the philosophical aspects of the dilemmas, confusions, conflicts etc. behind their sense of inability to deal satisfactorily with their difficulties. Unless they are already philosophers, they do not tend to conceive their personal philosophical problem as a particular instance of a general philosophical problem. Even if they do, they are not always capable to formulate philosophical questions. Yet they do have philosophical questions. They have such questions because, whatever have caused them to conceive something as a problem in their problem-situation, some ready-made, mostly inherited unexamined, taken for granted philosophical answers to possible philosophical questions are, so to speak, “called into question”. People, including philosophers, learn such answers unknowingly (of course, not as answers but as “evident truths”, “facts”, “moral imperatives” etc.), before it occurs to them that such questions can be asked. Most of our beliefs, including the philosophical ones, belong to that category of answers to unasked questions. The pretension to be able to hold only examined beliefs is, therefore, non-realistic, and it is mistaken to assume that the unexamined ideas are the cause of our difficulties. The philosophical counsellor, as a trained philosopher, should know how to help the counselees realize what is at stake, formulate explicitly their questions, examine the unsatisfactory answers and explore alternatives ones - that is what philosophers normally do when they want to help colleagues, students (or past philosophers) who “got stuck” in their philosophical projects. I deal with the implications of that conviction for philosophical counselling.