PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

THE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICE

www.practical-philosophy.org.uk      www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org

Part 3 : Elements of the Examined Life

Practical Philosophy Spring 2002 Volume 5.1 Pages 39-39


Tim LeBon


 From Plato onwards, philosophers have had a rather ambivalent attitude towards the Socratic ideal of the examined life and his method of the elenchus. On the one hand, there has been admiration bordering on veneration. On the other, few have tried to develop his method or pursue it so single-mindedly , and neither do many agree with his view that theoretical wisdom is sufficient for the good life.[1] Even if theoretical wisdom is one ingredients of the good life, and the elenchus a way of achieving this, other methods are needed to help gain the other,  equally vital, constituents of the good life. In this section some other potential ingredients of the examined life are explored in detail.

Shane Walton focuses on both the nature and pursuit of happiness in his wide-ranging essay. He begins by making a case for John Stuart Mill’s notion of happiness as encompassing intellectual and physical pleasures, and provides Aristotelian arguments for happiness thus defined being the ultimate end.  Pointing out that Mill sees happiness having a positive and negative dimension (promoting pleasure and avoiding pain) he then, in the second, practical part of the essay fruitfully connects avoiding pain with Epicurean, Stoic and Buddhist theories and contrasts this with Nietzsche’s plea for us to aim for   passionate joy – regardless of the implicit pain.

Antonia Macaro explores how philosophy and psychology can work together to help enlighten us about how we understand and gain another ingredient of the examined life, self-control. She begins by looking at the philosophical material on weakness of will from the Greeks through to Hare and Davidson and concludes that the concept of self-control is key to the practical question of how to avoid weakness of will.  She then turns to the literatures relating to the psychology of addiction and relapse prevention, to further analyse the concept of self-control and provide practical methods to enable our clients (and ourselves!) to gain more of it.

Robert Makus describes a method of phenomenological reduction which can be used to help clients yet another element of the examined life, that of wise decision-making. Makus’s approach takes its cue from the idea that ‘clear understanding yields good judgements’.  Using a detailed case study, he describes a method which aims to disclose the ‘underlying assumptions of the client’s understanding of that phenomenon as it appears to her and thus constitute her world’  He hopes to show how such ‘an existential phenomenological reduction can be a useful addition to the philosophical counsellor’s arsenal of dialectic techniques which will include several approaches drawn from contemporary continental philosophy.’

Finally Stan van Hooft looks at the late American philosopher Robert Nozick’s contribution to practical philosophy. Drawing from Nozick’s work The Examined Life, he identifies a number of ‘reality principles’ which, if followed, will help one towards the examined life


[1] For a detailed exploration of the extent to which philosophical counsellors can be seen as following this Socratic tradition, and a discussion of whether this is a good thing, see my essay ‘Socrates, Philosophical Counselling and Thinking Through Dialogue’ in Curnow, T. (ed) 2001 Thinking Through Dialogue. Oxted: Practical Philosophy Press.

PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

page last updated 01/07/2003
contact webmaster: David Arnaud

http://www.practical-philosophy.org.uk