Have you ever consider whether
philosophy could be applied to everyday life? Do you think philosophy is just
for academic purposes where it seems quite intellectual or incomprehensible? Philosophy
does not just give effective insights for problem solving, but also as Socrates
mentioned ‘the unexamined life is not worth of living’ (Plato, 1969: pg.72); it
brings meaning, virtue and self-improvement to the lives by the self discovery.
Exploring inside of the self enables people to discover their personal and
unique thoughts as well as exchange them with other people; as a result they
can realize the alteration in their lives. I think
philosophy should be concerned as a useful tool that can help almost anyone for
a happy and fulfilled life as it is applied to everyday problems and dilemmas. In
that sense, it should be advocated that philosophy is present within life where
everyone could utilize from it in everyday situations and conditions. In any situation if guidance is asked, by reading a book or
an article about philosophy, the (remedy) solution to the problem can be heard
in ears. Therefore, due to the fact that philosophy is the way of
thinking about life and self; by changing the philosophy, people could change their
lives in general.
From the birth, philosophy
concentrated on the main human questions such as the best way to live, the
criteria for the good as well as the nature of knowledge, beliefs and
reasoning. All the main subjects of life that are about goodness, death,
personal identity, also the meaning and purpose of reality are included in philosophy;
in that sense we could say anyone who reflects on his daily problems is a
philosopher. To say, as most of the
people experience relationship crises, moral and personal dilemmas,
professional and economical concerns or reason-emotion conflicts in an ordinary
day, it is absolutely valid to maintain the strong connection between
philosophy and life. In ancient periods,
philosophy was considered as the art of living where the fundamental questions
about universe, life, knowledge and human conditions are tried to be reconciled
with the daily practices and experiences. To me, in
contrast to modern and contemporary attitude that regards philosophy as an
academic, abstract, distant and inconsequential discipline, it is the life
itself that all people with different proportions have in their lives. As
we can witness, in the institutionalized or academic philosophy people should
focus on the doctrines of philosophers with an objective and distant manners in
which history of ideas, arguments about various ideas and objections about
various ideas are concerned. However, like in old and ancient traditions,
philosophy should involve an examination of thoughts with connection to
subjective views, by which these ideas could be pertained to daily lives. This might be illustrated in the sense
that academic philosophy is the history of dance and philosophy in practice is
the dance itself. Also, as Pierre Hadot holds, “Philosophers should be judged
by how they live, not what they say”,
philosophy is a way of life that cannot be alienated from experiences. A
genuine philosophical wisdom should be reached, only if it is exercised in practice
and theory. So, in every attempt to solve the big questions of philosophy, it
is necessary to grasp the correlation between systematic thoughts and daily
experiences. Moreover, philosophy is not something that one could put
apart, as it is a way of life. In general, an examination of a philosophical
topic, which could be about the meaning of life, conception of the good life or
the proper place of reason, would bring new perspectives. Therefore, by
broadening horizons, philosophy helps people to develop ways to solve the
everyday problems that could be related to well-being, happiness, pleasure,
right or wrong and reason or emotions. As it is said, “Philosophy has a big
contribution to make to wise living (Lebon,
2001),” philosophy aims not only abstract and creative thinking, but also
virtuous life with self- awareness and life-awareness. Philosophical
self-knowledge is gained through the observation, investigation and reflection
of all existing things and life; hence it affects human visions, behaviors and
attitudes. In that sense, it is almost impossible to separate philosophy from
life.
Furthermore, philosophy enables
people share intrinsic values and thought with speeches and dialogues. By that
people think about themselves in critical and analytic manner; hence, gain
insights into themselves. Philosophy and its dialogues can be considered as a
way to socialization where two or more people would exchange their ideas. With
this therapeutic sharing, people conduct deep inner thoughts, advance their
life-perspectives and change their living conditions. Also, as philosophers
have always tried to derive questions that are not queried before, people could
learn and understand much about the concepts and universals that could be
related to their problems. By observing more sophisticated and
institutionalized versions of thoughts, people can find answers to their
inquiries and fill the deficient zones in mind. What is more, everybody has a
way to deal with life; therefore it could be hold that everyone has his own
philosophy. This personal viewpoint could be associated with a philosophical
doctrine, a famous thinker or a unique approach, where it provides a glass to
evaluate the world beyond it. In that sense necessary to understand personal
philosophy with its strong and weak points as well as to find out how that
affects our life and behaviors. In other words, personal philosophy should be
discovered because by that one could evaluate the life, find the causes to the
problems or ways to solve the problems and build up new ideas.
In addition, it is necessary to
question whether or how philosophy can be applied to life. Firstly, philosophy
can guide people to see and understand their personal problems as well as help
them to invent solutions. In this process, what is important after
comprehending personal belief system, way of thinking and components of
problems is the discovery of the best philosophical approach that is
well-matched to their principles. At that point, one might read and find the best
philosophical doctrine by himself/herself or need a help of a philosophical
counselor who could help him to provide a large scale of philosophical
contemplations and suggest the best option to choose. That view is also claimed
in Lou Marinoff’s book, Plato, Not Prozac, which is very important for the philosophical
counseling, “People’s everyday problems are essentially philosophical.”
All the troubles in daily life could be seen physical or emotional; however,
they have deeper dimensions and causes that are commonly related to personal perspectives and attitudes. To that
effect, philosophical thinking enables people to examine their lives and
solve their problems by shedding light on fallacies
and misconstruances. To say, when the problems and their real causes are
exposed, with the help of any philosophical outlook that
is appropriate to that situation, the solution would appear immediately.
More to the point, William James’ claim,” The greatest discovery of my
generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their
attitudes” shows how philosophical thinking affects lives. For many
philosophers, in order to change the life physically, it is necessary to change
its theoretical dimension or philosophical understanding. Although people
cannot easily change their circumstances, they can always change the way to
interpret them. As a result, it might be supported that all the physical or
daily problems that are mostly philosophical stem from the misconception of
them theoretically. It is not the case that every problem has a solution, but
what is necessary is to reconsider the problem from certain and different perspectives.
With the right standpoint people could overcome their struggles and even
consider the situations not as source of any problem. That is to say, by the
guidance of a philosopher, it is possible to broaden perspectives towards life;
thereby the cause of the problems could be
solved.
With the book
Plato, Not Prozac, Lou Marinoff supports the
necessity of philosophical wisdom in everyday situations. He considers
philosophy as the key for counseling practices and solving different kinds of
problems. In that context almost
everyone could get a happy and fulfilled life as well as handle everyday
problems and dilemmas just by the help of philosophical thinking. Moreover, in
the book Marinoff supports the vital position of philosophy in counseling, where he inspired
by Gerd B. Achenbach who first mentioned the philosophical counseling movement in the world. Since, for
them, people’s everyday problems are fundamentally philosophical, with
different approaches, different kinds of people overcome their various difficulties
and dilemmas. Also, in Marinoff‘s five stages of the counseling
process that he abbreviated as PEACE, “Problem
identification, Expressing
emotion, Analyzing options, Contemplation, Equilibrium;” philosophy plays an important role. In addition, Lou Marinoff makes a comparison
between philosophy and psychology. He maintains the significance of philosophy
in prevailing over many mental problems, and he puts forward weaknesses of
modern mental health professions. In that sense, he does not count philosophy
as therapy that people tries to
sell around the globe, rather as an efficient approach that is
substitute to psychology and psychiatry. For him
modern psychology and its techniques like psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral
or existential-humanistic therapy is quite outdated where these practices are
inadequate that they use the standard
categorization of disorders in
every situation. However, as people cannot conclude their problems with one
universally accepted view, using philosophy in counseling could be difficult,
complicated and even confusing. As a merit of the book, that while allowing for
philosophy, Marinoff does not restrict himself to the western way of thinking,
besides utilizes from eastern methodologies. For example in many cases, he
compensates Existentialism (taking responsibility) with Buddhism (not being
worried about what one cannot change), Ayn Rand (virtue of selfishness) with
Dalai Lama (virtue of helping others), Hobbes (finding the balance of powers in
every change) with the ancient Chinese text
I Ching (everything changes) or Hegel’s theory of master-slave with the Yin-Yang
theory in Taoism. To say, Marinoff, open new windows to customary methodologies
by the synthesis of all kinds of attitudes
In Marinoff’s other book, Big Questions, after listing 8
ways how philosophy can change your life (Healing, Flourishing,
Attaining, Emancipating, Awakening, Managing, Purifying, Being) he states,
“philosophy can be helpful to ordinary people through the application of useful
ideas to their concrete problems of living (Marinoff, 2004).” It is claimed
that philosophy is about clarifying, questioning and exploring big questions of
life, where it guides people to have happy, wise and deep lives. He
also mentions the
differences between disease and dis-ease, where the former is about things that
are medically wrong with you and the other is more psychological and mental
that is about discomforts in conscious. In that sense, for him everyday
problems are related to dis-eases and the solutions for them can be found
philosophically. The book provides
good advices to deal with everyday problems of life. All in all, in his books,
Marinoff emphases on the useful and effective function of philosophy in
psychoanalysis and general life problems.
Resembling the notions mentioned
above, Tim Lebon advocates the view, “every approach to counseling is based on some philosophical assumptions”
in his book Wise Therapy. This
book contains main human issues like love, wisdom, happiness, success,
pain, complications and difficulties in philosophical perspective. In the sense
that many personal and ethical problems are covered mainly from three basic
viewpoints, existential-phenomenological counseling, cognitive behavior
therapy, and philosophical counseling, the book is should be concerned as an efficient
work which is a composition of psychology and
philosophy. Wise Therapy in
general could be considered as the guideline to operate philosophy in ethical
and personal dilemmas. Hence, philosophy practically brings wisdom and healing within one’s life. Like Pierre Hadot
mentioned in the name of his famous book “Philosophy
As A Way Of Life “ philosophy, a way of life, is directly about finding
methods to resolve lifetime difficulties and struggles.
Taking everything into
consideration, it is undeniable that philosophy could change lives positively. Philosophical inquiry about the life motivates
different interpretations of the situations, it is crucial for the happy and
virtues life. People can solve their concrete
and difficult problems of living, with the guidance of new and useful
philosophical visions. As Albert Einstein quotes, “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created
them”, in order to overcome a problem, it is necessary to change the way to
look at it. To say, philosophy is the wand to transform the problems to the
wisdom by just changing the perspectives. Since all daily struggles are the
nodules of the loop of life, by the philosophical contemplations to the small
problems, the big is questions of existence would be resolved automatically.
Bibliography
Hadot, P., Davidson, A., Chase, M. (1995). Philosophy
as A Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell
Lebon, T. (2001). Wise Therapy: Philosophy for Counselors. New York: Continuum
Marinoff, L. (2000). Plato, Not Prozac!: Applying Eternal Wisdom to
Everyday Problems. New York: HarperCollins
Publishers.
Marinoff, L. (2004). The Big Questions:
How Philosophy Can Change Your Life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Plato, (1969). The Last Days Of Socrates: Euthypro, The Apology,
Crito [And] Phaedo. Harmondworth, Middlesex, Baltimore: Penguin Classics
