Mahmoud Moghaddasi's lecture “What Is Philosophical Counselling?”

With the growth of applied philosophies in the Persian-speaking world and the ever-increasing expansion of psychotherapies in the country, the idea of “philosophical counselling” has come to the threshold of our awareness more than ever before: counselling sessions with a philosopher on philosophical topics related to life. In these sessions, the individual seeks to answer questions that today can hardly be addressed with the help of traditional sources such as religion and culture, and their hope that psychology and psychotherapy might also provide answers to these questions has been disappointed. They are confronted with the reality that they must personally arrive at answers to life’s most important questions and be able to envision a personal perspective on meaning, pleasure, suffering, and so forth. During these sessions, the counsellor, in dialogue with the client, strives to formulate their worldview, show them the conflicts within this worldview, assist them in analyzing important life-related concepts, bring greater clarity and precision to their questions, acquaint them with the various narratives and answers philosophers have given to life’s important questions, and ultimately provide them with the possibility of searching among these answers. Sometimes these sessions focus on a specific topic such as love, death, loneliness, illness, or the meaning of life, but they generally go beyond these topics and reach a deeper analysis of the individual’s worldview. These sessions are generally conducted with the presupposition that the individual’s narrative of self, other, life, and the world contains aspects where holding unexamined beliefs and incorrect presuppositions about them has caused intellectual confusion and emotional costs for the individual. In these sessions, the individual indirectly, through dialogue with the counsellor, learns the method of philosophical thinking, gains access, with the philosophical counsellor’s accompaniment, to the vast realm of philosophical knowledge, and after the sessions conclude, can independently, and as needed, pursue their questions within philosophical works.

In these two sessions, which are accompanied by dialogues between him and the audience, Dr. Mahmoud Moghaddasi attempts to answer the most important questions about the nature, importance, and methodology of philosophical counselling. In his view, philosophical counselling is a movement that, if it can maintain its boundaries—especially in terms of content—with psychotherapy sessions, offers individuals a considerable option for well-being and a new opportunity for meaningfulness and mental health.

In these two sessions, he argues that philosophical counselling sessions can take place before, during, after, and independently of psychotherapy sessions, and at each stage, they can bring achievements appropriate to that stage for individuals. In these two sessions, he examines philosophical counselling theoretically and practically in detail, with various examples, under the following headings:

1_ The cultural background of the emergence of philosophical counselling 2_ The history of philosophical counselling 3_ The domain of topics examined in philosophical counselling sessions 4_ The question of method in philosophical counselling 5_ Examples of the content of these sessions 6_ Ethical codes governing the practice of philosophical counsellors 7_ The professional status of philosophical counselling 8_ The effectiveness of philosophical counselling 9_ Comparing philosophical counselling with various traditions of psychotherapy 10_ A critical evaluation and pathology of philosophical counselling.

Along this path, he refers to various approaches to philosophical counselling and, in examining them, seeks to answer the questions of three groups of people: academic philosophers, psychologists and psychotherapists, and finally, ordinary people who can be the recipients of these professional services.

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Audio of the First Session

Audio of the Second Session

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What Is Philosophical Counselling?

Speaker: Mahmoud Moghaddasi

Azar 1398

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