I. Applied Philosophy, geared to current issues in Psychology
Course 1. Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Present Day for Psychotherapists and Allied Professionals
What is Philosophy
Philosophy today is a form of enquiry which has three major aspects.
- It is responsive, in varying measure, to people’s basic desire to make sense of the world and focus their own beliefs.
- It responds to the desire to learn an extremely fascinating, curiosity provoking, very special, all-embracing, foundational, way of thinking and investigation, which was first discovered by the Greeks.
- Finally, it remains the bedrock of critical thinking of all kinds, whether about science, art, religion, ethics, and politics, or anything else!
We are not primarily concerned with ethical philosophy, though it will be an implicitly present thread, but primarily with philosophy in its concern with knowledge.
The major contours or dimensions of philosophy, as understood today, (apart from Ethical Philosophy), are those of meaning, being, and knowledge, the domains of Semantics, Ontology, and Epistemology being the modern technical terms for these aspects of the world.
Philosophy as an academic discipline – indeed the whole modern concept of ‘the academy’ and ‘academic discipline’ as such! – we owe to Aristotle more than any other single person. And the existence of philosophy, released from inextricable entanglements with religion, as we know it at all, with some exceptions, we owe to the Greeks. At the same time, a profound paradigm shift had gradually taken place, in the West, in terms of the change in the concept of truth from one based on the totality-disclosure of being (‘aletheia’), to one based upon the idea of objectivity, as true assertion or proposition (‘legein’, ‘logos’), the emergence of what Derrida calls the logocentric paradigm of the West.
In conjunction with the Christian and Islamic doctrine of creation, this indeed made possible the rise of science, but also led to the profound split in consciousness which has characterised the modern period. The pre-eminent formulation of this, inaugurating the modern epoch in philosophy, was achieved by Descartes, in his division between res cogitans (thinking existent) and res extensa (extended existent).
Modern Philosophy for Counsellors, Psychotherapists and Allied Professionals traces how a fundamental modern philosophical dilemma dominates the philosophical dialogue for over 450 years, the split in consciousness already referred to. Arguably it is the fundamental modern philosophical dilemma, that between first person individual consciousness-based access to existence, and third person generalisable, physical entity paradigm, understandings of existence, based broadly on a certain model of science. This has been, and is, a dialogue continuing for over 450 years, and still central for us. The perspectives which shape the core modalities or approaches within psychotherapy are still stamped by various forms and formulations of that dilemma. This is a core theme I shall bring into view in this seminar, but in the wider philosophical context.
The Course Syllabus
The syllabuses for each of the courses are provisional, in the sense that modifications can be made by group negotiation in the process of the course.
I. Applied Philosophy
Course One
An Introduction to Modern Philosophy for Counsellors and Psychotherapists and Allied Professionals
Key Overall Themes: Shift from Ontology to Epistemology as central focus, via
A. the emergent third-person scientific and mathematical articulation of the world construed as a physical entity. This involves both the objectification of the world and its gradual secularization.
B. the gradual development of the understanding of first person awareness, consciousness, reflexivity, the temporal process of experience and intentionality, the primacy of process and enactment. This is understood as irreducible, and according to some viewpoints, non-convertible (but to others not), to the terms of A.
Outline Syllabus for the 10 Seminar Course
Seminar 1. Overview and Orientation to some Major Problems and Dilemmas of Modern Philosophy since Descartes, with their psychotherapeutic dimensions:
Key Overall Themes: Shift from Ontology to Epistemology as central focus, via
A. the emergent third-person scientific and mathematical articulation of the world construed as a physical entity. This involves both the objectification of the world and its gradual secularization.
B. the gradual development of the understanding of first person awareness, consciousness, reflexivity, the temporal process of experience and intentionality, the primacy of process and enactment. This is understood as irreducible, and according to some viewpoints (but to others it is!), non-convertible, to the terms of A.
Seminar 2. From Rationalism to Empiricism: Descartes and the Rationalists to Hume and Empiricism:
Key Themes: The Mind-Matter Division and the Experience vs Mathematics and Logic Division
Seminar 3. Kant and Hegel and the foundations of Consciousness
Key Themes: Emerging Deep Constructivism – inclusive of both Subjective and Objective
Seminar 4. Nineteenth century Utilitarianism, the emergence of Positivism, and the Two Cultures argument
Key Themes: The Rise of Anglo-American Positivism, with the articulation of alternatives to it
Seminar 5. The rise of Modern Socialistic Epistemologies including Marx
Key Themes: The Rise of Societal, and Socialistic, understandings, as developments of both scientific and human rights concepts of society
Seminar 6. Modern Voluntaristic and Pessimistic and Life perspectives
Key Themes: The Rise of Voluntarism-based (Will and Instinct - Life) views of experience
Roots of the Development of Psychoanalytic and analytic approaches, and the emergence of developmental psychologies
Seminar 7. The emergence and evolution of modern linguistic philosophy from logical positivism and commonsense to linguistic constructivism
Key Themes: The 20th century’s movement from mathematical-logical positivism, on to a renewed intersubjectivism grounded on a commonsense, and linguistically pragmatistic, basis.
Background of the development of behavioural, cognitive, and programmatic approaches to psychotherapeutics.
Seminar 8. Phenomenology and Existentialism and related visions
Key Themes: Intentionality and Being-in-the-World, development of thoroughgoing Intersubjectivist and Dialogical understandings.
Background of Developments of humanistic, existential, and integrative and dialogical approaches to psychotherapeutics.
Seminar 9. Structuralism, and modern literary perspectives and literary philosophy
Key Themes: The emergence of the novel as literary-philosophical paradigm, and of anthropology as a paradigm.
In the Background of Systemic, Hermeneutic and Literary-Anthropological approaches to psychotherapeutics.
Seminar 10. Post-Modernism, and its parallels, - and reactions against it
Key Themes: Radical Constructivism, deconstruction, world assimilated with text and context, unanalysability of primary frameworks
Constructivist and contextualist approaches to psychotherapeutics, and relational and symbolic mode analytic approaches
II. Philosophy in Historical Context
There will be three further courses in pure philosophy in its historical context. See the link on this website.
- Course Fees
1 course = 295 € - 2nd = 205 €
- 3rd = 95 €
- 4th = 55 €
- Total = 650 €
Offer price of 500 paid in advance entitles one to participate in all 4 courses.
His new book on the poetic paradigm for psychotherapy is: The Muse as Therapist: a New Poetic Paradigm for Psychotherapy,:
http://www.karnacbooks.com/product.php?PID=25803