One Year On, Part One: Philosophy as Therapy

This website is one year old. One year on, I think and feel very differently about things: this shows it’s done its work.

I’d been conducting my ‘experiment’ of philosophy as a way of life for a few years prior to writing about it. Not much has changed in my commitment to that. I remain convinced that philosophy is one of the most important things a human being can do, and certainly that I can do, though I appreciate that it is necessary for some in a way that it isn’t necessary for others. I confess that it is a kind of fault in me, that I can’t just follow the call of Callicles and have an ordinary life.

I say: ‘If I went along easily in the world I would not be a philosopher.’ And I say: ‘It is a greater achievement for a philosopher to be happy. Most superficially happy people are happy because they are ignorant or shallow: they find happiness in luxury and frivolity, seeing no more, knowing no better. But this is not an option for a philosopher.’

I say a lot of things. But whatever I say, I have made more progress as this strange kind of cynic than I ever did as an academic. I am evidence enough for myself, but I doubt this is universalizable because I expect I am a peculiar case. Which makes this website a document of my personal experience but nothing more. And the more I recognise this, the more I’m inclined to turn away from it.

Philosophy as Therapy or Self-Help

Clearly, philosophy is a kind of therapy or self-help for me, and a useful part of that process is to write about it, because the attempt to find the right words in the right order helps to clarify your thinking in much the same way as a good conversation. But the problem with conversations with yourself is that you rarely get anything you didn’t expect. So having written this stuff, I thought, why not share it? Why not put it into this strange form of public conversation that is so characteristic of our times? I might learn a thing or two by this (and in the process I have), and perhaps what I’ve written might be of some help to someone.

A year ago I expressed doubts that anything I could say here would be helpful to anyone. Now I am pretty convinced by this doubt. I think the idea of philosophy as therapy is unrealistic because, in most cases, it is not the right tool for the job.

Two things make me say this. Firstly, I wonder if philosophy appeals to a profoundly thinking aspect of human beings, and when someone is truly in need of therapeutic help, this is just what they lack, because they have lost their minds. They cannot think clearly; they cannot see straight. Often what they need in that moment is compassion and understanding, a ‘response in human terms’, and this is rarely the first impression of the ‘bitter medicine’ that is philosophy. They would be better off going to a conventional therapist. They would be better off with art or myth. They would be better off with the platitudes of a caring friend; not because the platitudes say anything of any great worth (because platitudes mostly say nothing) but simply because of the care that they show.

People in the pit are looking for a helping hand, a leg up, or just a hug and for someone to sit in the pit with them for a while. They want comfort and consolation. They need non-judgemental support. Most therapists understand this to be the first step in any therapeutic process: to make that unconditional caring connection. (Boethius seemed to understand it.) But philosophy – at least of the kind that can be offered online – offers no comfort (unless you happen to find reading it comforting, which is rare) and it cannot avoid offering a particular kind of judgement: it throws a ladder into the pit and says ‘help yourself, or don’t, but know that you have everything you need’. Which might be true, but is not comforting, and remains profoundly tone deaf: to offer seeds to someone starving.

Secondly, even if they are at that point where they are looking for the ladder, ‘looking for answers’, still I doubt philosophy is the right tool for this job for most people. Philosophy is fundamentally too difficult to grasp when you are in a dire mental state. It takes years, I think, of broad and broadly pointless study to cultivate what’s required to really understand philosophical answers, and then who knows how many years to actually apply these answers to some kind of beneficial lived practice.

I have no idea how long this should take, but I know that I studied and taught philosophy for 17 long years before I even tried to live by it, and when I tried to do what I taught I found I was no better than a child. For all my learning, I fared no better than if I’d never learned a thing. But this is because I’d failed to learn the one most important thing. As I said a year ago:

‘The lesson is an old one. It is a matter of digestion. If you don’t eat food then you will starve. But if you eat food only to throw it up, in order to show what you have eaten, then you will starve just the same as if you hadn’t eaten anything at all. You must eat, and digest, and allow what you have eaten to become what you are. I have eaten a feast of philosophy; I have eaten enough to fill the belly of any soul. Do I now vomit it up for all to see, and in doing so call myself a philosopher? No. I digest. I am fed and I consider myself fortunate.’

Demarcation

I understand why Plato made his students study maths and geometry and the like, as a preparation. Nowadays we make young philosophers study logic and the history of philosophy and the other ‘benchmarks’ of a philosophy degree. These are essential foundations to real philosophical understanding, but they do not come in the space of time required for therapeutic benefit (unless the individual happens to find the study itself therapeutic, which is rare).

Plato presents his ‘test’ for prospective students, outlining the length and sheer difficulty of the study required to make progress in this discipline: any who are put off by the magnitude of this task would likely never benefit from it, and so they are better off without it, but those who rise to the challenge need nothing more than to have it laid out before them and they will right away recognise this ‘marvellous quest that they must at once enter upon with all earnestness, or life is not worth living’. Since they need nothing more than this, you don’t need to do anything more, because they will do the rest for themselves. Try to stop a philosophical nature from looking for wisdom and greater understanding: you will find that you cannot.

I think there is some truth in this. But when combined with the first point it leaves the idea of ‘philosophy as therapy’ in a paradoxical bind.

For anyone in need of therapeutic help: if they really need help, philosophy won’t help them. But when philosophy could help them, they will find their own way to it.

Either way, it seems that we shouldn’t or needn’t offer it. Most people really are better helped by platitudes and placebos with a small grain of truth. If we really want people to be helped, we should leave them to it. All those over-confident and charismatic charlatans selling ‘the cure’ or ‘the answer’ will be better able to cure people if they are believed, and they are more likely to be believed if sceptics aren’t pointing out their nonsense. Had we a better answer, a better cure, then we ought to provide that in place of the nonsense; but since we don’t, for most people, we shouldn’t. ‘Physician, heal thyself!’

I suspect ‘philosophy as therapy’ is a kind of last port of call for anyone who has tried everything and found it lacking. But by that point they will probably know more about themselves than any philosopher.

For me, I accidentally and unknowingly took Plato’s ‘test’ as a young person and needed nothing more. It’s too late for me: just try to stop me. And after my 17 years of study, I was ‘prepared’ for the ladder to be thrown into the pit. It worked for me – now I need only remind myself of the ‘incantations’ of Socrates and the students of Socrates, and return to my methods, and I know I have everything I need – but I am not a typical case. I think it would be reckless and stupid to announce this as a good method for other people. And on the basis of that, I’m inclined to stop writing about it.