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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
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Thinking Through Dialogue
Trevor Curnow (ed.)
Oxted: Practical Philosophy Press, pp. 251(pb) £29.95
Practical Philosophy (Book Reviews) November 2001 Volume 4.3
Reviewed by: Peter B. Raabe
This volume consist of a collection of 42 of the theoretical and practical papers presented at the Fifth International Conference on Philosophy in Practice held at Oxford, UK in 1999. The organisers of this conference and the editor of this book, Trevor Curnow, chose not to limit the conception of ‘philosophy in practice’ to philosophical counselling. While the 24 essays of the first section deal with some aspect of philosophical counselling under various appellations, the following six are on philosophy and children, the next seven are on some aspect of philosophy in business, and the final five are miscellaneous essays discussing such issues as the nature of dialogue, and dialogue in relation to humour and euthanasia. Curnow has written a helpful editorial introduction to each section as well as an informative essay titled ‘Thinking about Dialogue’ (pp. 234-8) which offers a discussion of the etymology of the word ‘dialogue,’ its common usage, and its relevance to counselling and consulting work.
Among the various issues discussed in the area of philosophical counselling are the Oslo model for training counsellors, emotion and rationality, the role of critical thinking and contemplation, the effects of multicultural values on the counselling relationship, how philosophical counselling may benefit autistic clients, and the relevance of Chinese philosophy to philosophical counselling. The section titled > ‘Philosophy with Children’ includes essays on issues such as a philosophical approach to art, how philosophy is best done with children, and the differences between philosophy for and with children. In the section titled ‘Philosophy in the Workplace’ the reader can find discussions about issues such as the role of philosophy in business, the relationship between moral philosophy and medical practice, and how philosophical dialogue can be used in leadership roles. >
The essay which I found the most fascinating is in the first section: ‘Philosophical Counselling and Autism: Tracing Possible Connections’ by Mason Marshall (pp. 124-33). While the prevailing attitude is that autistic individuals are incapable of meaningful dialogue, Marshall argues that the philosophical counsellor has a lot to offer the autistic, and should not simply leave him or her to be ‘treated’ by medical experts. Other notable essays are by Emmy van Deurzen (‘Speech is Silver, Silence is Golden: Psychotherapy and Philosophical Consultancy’, pp. 35-41) and Dôna D. Warren > (‘Healing Thrasymachus: > the Psychotherapeutic use of Dialogue’, pp. 42-9) who offer two very well-written comparisons between psychology and philosophical counselling, and by Andrew Cathcart (‘Are Philosophical Counsellors Sophists?’, pp. 20-7) and Tim LeBon (‘Socrates, Philosophical Counselling and Thinking Through Dialogue’, pp. 28-34) who do a fine job differentiating philosophical counselling from academic philosophy. Vaughana Feary once again offers an excellent essay, this time on the various types of multiculturalism, and which approach to multicultural counselling makes the most philosophical sense (‘Philosophical Dialogue and Multicultural Values in Counselling and Practice’, pp. 116-23).
There are also many wonderfully written passages in a number of the essays which give a welcome relief from the conventional critical/analytical writing found in so many philosophy papers. Creative philosophical thinking shines brightly in some of the essays such as, for example, when David O’Donaghue and L. Leigh Hursh write, ‘When the philosophers say ‘madman’ or ‘angst’ or injured self-esteem, they are talking about emerging phenomena in the context of the nature of human process’ (p. 137). Elsewhere Emmy van Deurzen writes: ‘On the one hand, the discourse of philosophy, with its tendency to argue rather than listen needs to be counterbalanced by the facilitative silence of psychotherapy, the silence in which the person is drawn out to speak their personal truth. On the other hand, the discourse of psychotherapy with its interpretative bias needs to be supplemented with the silence of philosophy, where wonder and doubt about human existence can take up their rightful place once more and the search for wisdom can replace the search for mere mental health’ (p. 40). This sort of writing is what makes philosophy not only informative but also a pleasure to read.
There are a few, what I would call, ‘lightweight’ papers which attempt to clarify definitions or discuss issues at a level of discourse surpassed long ago by other writers in the field. And some are unfortunately still defining philosophy as some variation of ‘the pursuit of Truth,’ which may have been appropriate in ancient times when philosophy still included ‘natural philosophy’ (science) but is clearly of limited explanatory value in a discussion of philosophical counselling. I agree with David O’Donaghue who writes in his essay ‘At Play in the Fields of Philosophy’, ‘Philosophical counselling should not be in the business of making truth claims’ (p. 103). Some of the essays, rather than offering information to the reader, strike me as an unfinished record of their author’s struggles to think through something just discovered. This is certainly in keeping with the title of the book in that it overtly displays the author’s thinking process through the ‘dialogue’ between writer and reader. But it gives the impression that a few of the essays are works in progress rather than finished papers. Of course an extreme postmodernist might argue that a paper is never finished and therefore may be published in an unfinished form, and that the reader should simply accept it as-is. I did, and I read them all, but my point is that some left me unsatisfied.
This book is a rich aggregation of information and insights for both the novice and the experienced practitioner. But, like any collection, not all of the essays will evoke immediate agreement in every reader. In fact some are quite controversial such as for example, Warren Shibles’ discussion of anger and feminism (‘The Philosophical Practitioner and Emotion’, pp. 50-7), and Shlomit Schuster’s puzzling discussion of philosophical counselling as a ‘beyond-method method’ which, paradoxically, its founder Gerd Achenbach is said to be teaching to his students in his school of philosophy practice (‘Philosophical Counselling and Rationality, pp. 58-61).
Regrettably, as in so many published collections of essays and conference papers, there is no index. This means if the reader wants to compare what various authors have said about, for example, the ‘self’ in relation to practical philosophy it requires a prohibitively tedious page-by-page search. Despite these few criticisms I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for both a broader and a deeper understanding of philosophy in practice.
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