This entry is part of a series on practical philosophy: Part 1. Inquiring with Unknowing. Part 2: Practical Metaphilosophy. Part 3: Core Techniques.
, founded in 1923, is the longest-running general philosophy journal.
One of its mottos is: “Saving philosophy from the academy since 1923.”
Its 100th birthday issue asks the question: Where is philosophy going?
One piece by
discusses the future of philosophy and suggests it will continue to have a future of “wrong answers,” with possible aims such as:Being less wrong
Being interestingly wrong
Being usefully wrong
It's all too epistemically focused for my liking. I’d replace the word “wrong” with the opposite of “wise”: “foolish.” That’s a future for philosophy I’m willing to bet on.
Another entry, by Costica Bradatan, argues that philosophy needs a new definition without offering one himself, save for an imploration to move beyond the Western parochialism still fashionable in academia today.
It’s understandable not to have a definition, because philosophy is one of those hard-to-define words with no consensus. But I actually think it’s quite simple, and I’m happy to stick with the etymology of philosophia: the love of wisdom. I don’t think we need to make things any more definitionally fancy than this.
This, then, raises the question: What is wisdom?
My present definition: “existential wayfinding,” meaning finding one’s way (and the way) in life. (You can read multiple definitions of wisdom, many from psychologists researching the “construct” of wisdom, in this entry.)
Foolishness, then, might be called “existential waylosing,” meaning losing one’s way (and the way) in life.
With these definitions in mind, I’ll be theorizing about a practical metaphilosophy: philosophizing about philosophy in a way that leads to actually practicing it. If you don’t need a theoretical download on the practice, skip this entry and wait for the next one, which will offer the practical techniques.
A Practical Metaphilosophy
I fast-tracked high school, entering university at 17 years old, much too young to know what to do in life, so I ended up taking philosophy. This gave me a “philosophical opening” quite early on: a portal in the mind that opens it toward the whole. As far as I can tell, and as much as I’ve tried, it’s something you cannot close once it has opened.
You can do philosophy in a foolish way that leads to great pain, which I have done, but such folly can also be its own path to wisdom. Now, after 23 years since that opening, and after spending many days doing philosophy, mostly in private, I have something to show you...
A flow chart!
Yes. This is the result of 23 years of what was, at times, a painful process of philosophically induced suffering. Life often felt as if it were put on pause during these years. Instead of doing normal things fully, I was semi-conscious while doing them, constantly inquiring into the contours of reality, only to arrive at what you see above.
It’s the future of philosophy, or at least my future with philosophy.
I’ll go through each aspect below.
Theoretical Philosophy and Practical Philosophy
The first bifurcation of the different modes of philosophy dates back to Aristotle.
My favourite articulation of this distinction comes from Stephen Toulmin in his paper “The Recovery of Practical Philosophy.”
Toulmin argues that each is defined by certain features:
Theoretical philosophy: the written, the general, the universal, and the timeless.
Practical philosophy: the oral, the particular, the local, and the timely.
Theoretical philosophy is the dominant form found in academia today, as well as among many para-academic philosophers you’ll find on the internet—those primarily focused on the theories of philosophers in the Western canon.
Such theoretical philosophers prioritize written arguments over the messy, situated arguments found in everyday speech. They are concerned with general and universal matters that can be abstracted into propositional form, often forgoing the particulars of someone’s life and the context in which they are found. Philosophy is presented as a timeless pursuit with timeless ideas, rather than something done when needed—offering ideas that meet this moment, but not necessarily the next.
The general sense among many non-philosophers today is that philosophy is something terribly abstract, hopelessly heady, and primarily theoretical. This is unfortunate, but it is a consequence of prioritizing the theoretical over the practical—a shift that began around the time of René Descartes. This marked what is called the “epistemic turn” in philosophy, where theory-centered thinking—focused on posing propositional problems and solving them—became the dominant agenda.
In my meme-fest entry “All Philosophers Are Charlatans,” I detail the consequences of pursuing a philosophical opening primarily through a theoretical lens. Basically, theoretical bypassing occurs: the over-indexing on theory to solve personal problems.
Enter practical philosophy: philosophizing about something that is deeply personal, now.
It’s not an escape, as theoretical philosophy becomes when overemphasized. It’s a return to the present moment and a sensing into whatever is responsible for losing your way. It’s not that theoretical philosophy is never needed; it just needs to relearn its place.
Both kinds of philosophy have something in common: reasoning through inquiry. Yet one leads to theoretical clarity, and the other leads to practical clarity. In essence, theoretical philosophy helps us think clearly about life, while practical philosophy helps us think clearly about our lives.
Given that my philosophy is a practical one, the next bifurcation is quite important: having a philosophy and doing philosophy.
Having a Philosophy and Doing Philosophy
My practical understanding of “having a philosophy” is similar to the colloquial sense in which someone says “my philosophy,” meaning their general approach to life, which includes personal values, guiding principles, and practical frameworks. It is a lived worldview—whether conscious or unconscious, examined or unexamined, wise or foolish—that is actually used to navigate life.
“Doing philosophy,” in a practical sense, is the process of philosophizing itself: a reasoned inquiry into what matters most for an individual. This inquiry is always personal in the deepest sense and eventually leads to a practical response. As in Socrates’ day, doing philosophy in this way is still uncommonly practiced.
While not displayed on the flow chart above, theoretical philosophy also branches into its own versions of “having a philosophy” and “doing philosophy.”
The former refers to formal philosophical systems, or what Humanists call “life stances,” such as Stoicism or Existentialism—theorized worldviews that can be abstracted away from individual particulars and, in theory, adopted by anyone with the capacity to do so.
The latter are reasoned inquiries that lead to the theoretical works commonly found in modern academic and para-academic spaces.
This leaves us with the following 2×2 matrix:
The challenge arises when one’s professed life stance is not embodied, meaning it does not actually guide their body. Instead, it serves as a vanity philosophy at best—something to show off with—or at worst, to meme with in the culture war. In essence, their theoretical worldview is disconnected from their lived one.
Some examples:
A Christian who believes he should “love thy neighbour” but unlovingly judges his actual neighbour for not being Christian enough.
A Buddhist who believes that “life is suffering” but uses meditation as a form of spiritual bypassing to escape their suffering.
A Daoist who believes in “effortless effort” (wu wei) but is simply lazy and avoids any effort that feels uncomfortable or challenging.
The way to reconnect one’s theoretical worldview with one lived one is to have a philosophy that has a practice of doing philosophy.
Doing this will eventually make one’s lived worldview conscious, examined, and wise in a way that brings it into correspondence with their theoretical worldview, eventually making them one and the same.
This unification of having a philosophy and doing philosophy is what allows a truly practical philosophical inquiry to emerge. It is the next aspect of our flow chart.
Philosophical Inquiry
Andrew Taggart, the practical philosopher who showed me how to do philosophy, defines inquiry in The Art of Inquiry as follows:
An inquiry is an unrehearsed genre whose principal aims are, first, to reveal to us what we don’t know but thought we did and, second, to bring us a greater sense of clarity than we could have possibly imagined.
He continues:
One end of a philosophical inquiry, by contrast, is to draw our life into question. There is no sense in which this drawing into question can take place unless we are able to lose our footing, come to stutter, get muddled by what we mean, flail about in confusion--unless, in short, we come to know that we do not know what we thought we did, that we do not grasp what we had for so long taken for granted.
Yet a good philosophical inquiry does not leave one in a confused state:
Inquiry does not leave us forever in a state of ignorance; it also allows us to arrive at greater mutual understanding. This clarity could be likened to finally saying what is on the tip of our tongues, with the caveat that this something be novel. There is something we want to say but do not know yet; there is somewhere we want to head but this somewhere remains elusive; there is something missing we want to find but the discovery has, as of yet, remain hidden. The conclusion to an inquiry, accordingly, is like poetic naming: a new destination, a novel discovery, a long-sought-after homeland. ‘This,’ we say, ‘is it.’’
The practice of doing philosophy is philosophical inquiry. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, then wisdom—what shows the way—is loved through such an inquiry when perplexity is present.
Why?
Because wisdom demands a kind of humility that the state of inquiry fosters, particularly the kind cultivated through philosophical inquiry, which honours the mystery of what is. Other genres of inquiry do not need to sense into the mystery in quite the same way.
Again, a theoretical inquiry aims to gain clarity about life in general, while a practical one aims to gain clarity about your own life—something personally salient. Both follow the same trajectory: from confusion to clarity.
Theoretical inquiries often focus on continuing the work of “great philosophers” (which is different from “good philosophers,” as
of wisely points out) and are housed within one of the main branches of philosophy: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and logic.
Meanwhile, practical philosophical inquiries, while presently not as popular as their theoretical counterpart, are slowly entering the public consciousness again. What’s known as the “practical philosophy movement” has been gaining traction since the 1980s.
The main title used for those who do this kind of inquiry for a living is “philosophical counsellor,” and they can receive training from organizations like the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA), which was founded in 1998 by Lou Marinoff.
The starting point of a practical philosophical inquiry is what I call an “existential knot,” or x-knot, which I define as: “Being deeply confused about something that feels deeply important, without feeling like you can accurately articulate what the confusion or the importance is.”
Once an x-knot is untied, lightness in the body occurs, along with clarity on the way forward.
I think one reason practical philosophical inquiries have been largely ignored is due to the popularity of other inquiry genres, such as therapy and coaching. This, I argue, is a mistake—one I hope to help rectify through this less foolish approach.
Inquiry Genres
A practical philosophical inquiry is different from coaching and therapeutic inquiries—or, more specifically, from life coaching and psychotherapy. To understand more deeply what these types of inquiries are, it will be helpful to differentiate them. I’ll also include another inquiry genre that is rising in popularity: guides, or spiritual guides.
We can understand each—The Philosopher, The Coach, The Therapist, and The Guide—as follows:
The Philosopher (philosophical counsellor) – brings clarity to the way, or your way.
The Coach (life coach) – offers support to accomplish along the way.
The Therapist (psychotherapist) – brings loving acceptance to what blocks the way.
The Guide (spiritual guide) – helps align you wholly with the way.
In the following modified 2×2, I’ve added “reflective” and “actuating” on one axis, and “evaluative” and “integrative” on the other, placing each inquiry genre accordingly.
Some caveats: these labels serve more as archetypes than as a perfect taxonomy. Many coaches and therapists do bring the kind of clarity associated with the philosopher role. There are surely more genres as well, but these are the most popular ones I see today.
Each genre can be appropriate for a person, given the right issue. However, if you place your practice within the market economy and are unduly driven by profit, without a clear understanding of the contours of your practice and how it relates to others, category errors will occur. This means, for example, addressing a therapeutic issue with a coaching mindset—trying to achieve a goal when what is truly needed is self-love—or the reverse.
To avoid such category errors, philosophical inquiry, I argue, is the foundational inquiry practice. It is the one that, within both theory and practice, affords the discernment to recognize when other forms of inquiry are needed.
It possesses the greatest “meta” capacity since wisdom can be understood as the “meta-value” so that other values and their corresponding inquiries can be seen and pointed toward when appropriate.
In essence, when perplexed about how to receive help, see a philosopher.
Less Foolish Inquiry
I will make a subtle point now, but a central one: returning to the definition of philosophy, the love of wisdom, a philosophical inquiry is a “love of wisdom” inquiry, not a “wise inquiry,” since one can love wisdom without being wise.
To hope for a wise inquiry to emerge, or at least a less foolish one, one needs all the inquiry genres mentioned above, perhaps others as well, and must weave between them at the right time and in the right way. Again, a philosophical inquiry is a starting point when things are existentially knotty and there is perplexity about the issue or its “solution” (or even whether a solution is needed).
Then, depending on the x-knot, a good inquirer will pivot toward a different genre, such as a more coaching-oriented, therapeutic, or guiding disposition, or recommend that their inquiry partner speak with someone who has greater capacity in those areas.
While my specialty is philosophical inquiry, I strive to become proficient in each genre, becoming a kind of Swiss Army knife of inquiry. I believe this will one day become a commonly held skill. It is what is needed for a “friendship of virtue,” as Aristotle calls it, to emerge.
Yet, even if you have the capacity in all the inquiry genres, and start with a philosophical one, it may still be foolish if not a handmaiden for something else, which I’ll discuss in a later entry.
Conclusion
There you have it: my less foolish philosophy.
It is a work in progress, and my framing above will surely change with more practice, along with more exposure to different ways of cultivating wisdom, which is what we explore at The Stoa.
I also do not think philosophy or philosophical inquiry is the only way to find the way. Prayer, life experience, the good kind of self-help, and being around wise people are all ways to cultivate greater wisdom.
Lastly, I hope this entry was not seen as an unfair criticism of theoretical philosophy. I do criticize those who overindex on its importance, but it is also something we need. I actively read it and practice it myself. In fact, this entry itself is a theoretical take on practical philosophy.
Theory helps inform practice, and vice versa.
In the next entry of this series, I’ll be describing my practice in a way that allows you to practice it.
How does The Stoa experience relate to the practical philosophy discussed in this entry? This saying from Heraclitus sums it up:
"Those who love wisdom must investigate many things."
A practical philosopher—someone who puts the love of wisdom into practice—must cast a wide net of interests. The explorations we do at The Stoa not only help with my own wayfinding, but also assist me in guiding others with theirs.
The upcoming sessions are:
Team: Getting Things Done with Others w/ David Allen and Edward Lamont. June 2nd @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
AI Embodiment w/ Ari Kuschnir and Schuyler Brown. June 9th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Internet’s Dark Forests w/ Marta Ceccarelli. June 11th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
iConscious: Accelerating Human Potential w/ Ted Strauss. July 7th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
High Archetypal Penetrance w/ Tim Read. July 9th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
More to come.