| Popis: |
Philosophical practice aims at a critical examination of the good life. Though my argument applies to philosophical practice in general, my focus here is in the narrow sense of philosophical practice, which is a complementary alternative to psychotherapy and religious practices. What is the logic of philosophical practice? I suggest it is the logic of questions and answers. For all explanations are answers to a variety of sets of questions. One needs to know, what is the question (or set of questions) asked by the person who asks for philosophical counseling. Then, the agenda of the practice needs to be crystallized by formulation and reformulation of the questions and the alternative answers. With this the heuristic, method and the scope of a discourse is always given: a question and its range of answers. To illustrate, a typical question is the choice of one’s style of living. The alternative set of answers needs to be examined vis-a-vis the criteria of choices of style of living.The criteria of progress in philosophical practice are a function of the changes made in the critical examination of the questions and answers. Every question rests on assertions. For example, the formulation of questions and the move from an old question to a new question is progressive, if and only if, the old question rested on uncritical assertions, some defective ones. Once the assertions were criticized, a new question was formulated and if it was not based on the same set of assertions, this move is considered a progress. This notion of progress is relative to the changes in the frame of references of the discourse. It is a positive progress since some unwarranted assertions were exposed as defective and the new point of view is less opaque. |
