 So welcome, Professor Søren Bayer-Schul. And you are in the UK, I am in Sweden, and we're here to have a conversation about the idea, the notion of philosophical health, which is by no means normative. Therefore, I'm curious to understand and discover how you're understanding from your perspective and your experience. I know that, for example, you've worked a lot on Kant. Kant is a philosopher that I'm not a specialist of, but I do recognize that with his ideas of sapete ode, dare to know and also think for oneself, those ideas are very much attuned to what we could call the core of philosophical health. But I'm sure you have a more qualified understanding of this. Well, maybe a more qualified understanding of Kant, maybe slightly more. But as far as philosophical counseling is concerned, I mean, I could see there are some approaches in philosophical counseling where Kant seems to be used a bit more than in others. There is, for instance, a bit in logic-based therapy, where some philosophical counselors talk about developing certain virtues of reasoning. And for instance, they sometimes give the example of Kant because Kant put so much emphasis on human dignity. And how one problem, if you want advice of thinking, sometimes for individuals is that they don't give themselves the credit any human being with the dignity a human being should have. They don't give themselves enough credit that any human being should give to himself or herself. So there is the use of Kant in certain approaches. But the reason I think perhaps interesting in a very interesting way, there is a search in philosophical counseling. At least some counselors are trying to find a framework. And there are many approaches. And as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with many approaches, but one way in which some philosophical counselors try to, they don't simply want philosophical counseling or philosophical health to be about a discussion with a client or depending how one wants to call the person the counselor talks to or with, some may want to call the client, some may want patient or some may want to call them co-discussant, but they don't just want a discussion which is carrying on with it without some normative content. And sometimes they are thinking of certain general ethical principles as providing this kind of normative content. And when they talk about ethical principles, they may make reference to Kant. So there was at one point, for instance, I was talking to a philosophical, well, he's not a philosophical counseling actually, he's a psychotherapist. So he's practicing psychotherapy. And he was very curious about this idea of ethical constraints. And he asked me, okay, but what can you see as an ethical constraint? Because some people think that this is right, other people think that this is wrong. And even if you give Kant as an example, it's either to abstract or has certain assumptions which can be questionable. So my thought was that perhaps one thing that Kant does quite well is with his formula of humanity. I don't know whether there is anybody who can deny the fact that it's wrong to treat another human being merely as a means and not at the same time as an end. And I think that can be taken, I think it's intuitive. We shouldn't use the others. We shouldn't exploit them. There are various forms of using them. We should take into account the fact that they have their own purposes, their own views. So I think that's useful. That's a useful aspect of Kant's philosophy independently, perhaps from his metaphysical theories and independently from all the other parts of his theory. This is an intuitive principle which I think is difficult to reject or to debate. It's very interesting if I may interrupt you here such that we have a conversation and there are people watching this view that might not be especially seen the history of philosophy. You said two things that I found particularly interesting and I would like to connect. You talked about dignity, credit that one attributes to oneself and which sounded a bit like self-esteem and perhaps you're going to tell me what difference do you see? And then you talk about the concealing the other as an end and not only as a means. And I think this is connected because in a way this dignity in the sense of self-esteem is about also considering oneself as an end, right? And this is probably connected in the sense that people and we must say that we all indulge in that vice according to Kant, right? There are all moments that we all basically as Sartre would put it, we don't see the person, we see the function, the waiter, et cetera. And unless it's in Paris, if it's in Paris, it's the opposite. It's the waiter that sees you as an object and insults you, et cetera. But what relationship do you see between, since you're interested also in psychology, between these concepts that are more psychological like self-esteem and philosophical concepts like dignity, why is there a difference? Why is there something as philosophical health which would be different than psychological health? I think there are, I mean, I think you're absolutely right that this idea of self-esteem is quite close to the idea of dignity and also the idea which I mentioned before I provided the kind of interpretation of this idea of dignity as giving credit to yourself, at least insofar as you or I are human beings. So at least giving credit to ourselves as human beings, as moral beings and hence as morally equal to all the others. So I think there is clearly a link you're right between this idea of self-esteem. I cannot see any other ground for this idea of self-esteem than this idea that we are moral beings and insofar as we are moral beings, we are equal to each other. Of course we have different talents and of course we may use our talents differently and that may create differences between us and there are plenty of differences but if we are to be considered as moral beings we are all worthy of equal consideration. So that's the link and I think you are right about this. Concerning the fact that some of the concepts we use are also used in psychology and what the connection is between psychology and philosophy or more generally philosophical counseling. I think, I mean, I'm familiar with debates. There are, there is for instance, one approach in philosophical counseling which can be called also psychotherapy but it's not in the sense traditional sense of a person doing psychotherapy but it's in this sense that some counselors I think that philosophical counselors don't take the psychology of the human being sufficiently into account and there are these views for instance that, well, what do we do when we philosophize? We use a lot of psychological processes. They also say that philosophy doesn't happen out of thin air but it takes place in the context in which we have a brain, we have thoughts, we have, there are certain psychological laws that we follow whether we want it or not and they feel that sometimes philosophical counselors don't take into account this aspect and they want a bit more of a connection between philosophical counseling and psychology. So I'm aware of this. My impression nevertheless, without denying any of this and without denying the fact that psychology can help a philosophical counselor. Knowing more about the psychology of individuals can only help us. I still feel that there is a difference in method between what philosophers do and what psychologists do and some of the concepts which are developed by psychologists are empirical concepts. They are the result of studying human psychology, the result of sometimes testing and the philosophical approach is in many cases not, I mean, without wanting to deny the fact that there are many empirical concepts in philosophy as well, we use them differently and we have different purposes. So that's how I still see a difference between the two. You mentioned Sartre, it's an interesting example because Sartre uses many psychological concepts but he always says that he sees them as ontological. He uses them in an ontological way. So he may use shame for instance, but he has a particular structure of the subject that he thinks is in place when shame occurs. And there are many such concepts that he's using but with the philosophical ontological from a philosophical ontological perspective. So I still see as a difference of methods. Now, I don't know. I mean, I would be curious to know what your view of the link between philosophical health and psychology is. Do you have a view or a theory on this? Well, there is a historical difference that I think is important is that even if one were to create a strong bridge between philosophical health and psychological health, one would be hindered by the way psychology is done today. And that gives us an explanation also on what philosophical health do because philosophical health for me at a very simple level is, and this is quite an existentialist idea, is the ad equation between the way we think and what we do. So given the fact that psychologists today are for a vast majority, engage in a process of petty fogging measuring of very small, tiny aspects of reality devoid of social context very often in love, et cetera. I'm a bit critical here, but it has, I think it has lost is philosophical roots, which it had in the 19th century and which to be fair, some psychologists today are claiming we should go back to when it's not only today. There is a parallel history of psychology with, for example, in the sixties, phenomenological, psychology, et cetera. So philosophy I think is the care for the whole and there is a reluctance in philosophy that is about being very careful about reducing the world to numbers. And I think it's one of the very few disciplines which can steal and very riskfully so because there's, I mean, the time where philosophers were respected, I think as gone or wherever. So doing philosophy is this very dangerous care for the whole that tries to say something significant without reducing the world to data, measurable data. So which doesn't mean that we should indulge on the other perhaps extreme, which would be pure speculation without empirical, you know, encounter. What I would think Hegel would call the negative. I think the negative is the real. And I mean, that's actually what Hegel says himself. So in my practice, for example, at the moment I just finished conducting interviews with people living with spinal cord injury about their interpretation of life. But the way I conduct this, I have a methodology which is six phases, which starts with the bodily sense, et cetera, I can enter into details if you wish. And that generates, yes, that generates some form of data if you want to call it qualitative data that can be analyzed and compare. And words in a way are themselves a matrix that can be analyzed in a way that it's not only a poetical. So I think there is a difference de facto in the way that things are done today. Nevertheless, I could be equally critical of the way philosophy has abandoned the empirical field again for 80% of it. And so there is, I think, and I'd like to know that this is my follow-up question is that you tell me more about your experience of philosophical counseling and why you're interested in it. But I think there is a domain that has been abandoned both by mainstream philosophy or academic philosophy and by academic psychology. And that domain is the domain of the person, basically we could say in the very simple terms, the domain of the person and the domain of sense-making. And this is where philosophical health is meaningful because as the name indicated, bridges the physical experience, the embodied experience, I'd say in a more general sense, and the meaning-making experience. And this is something that cannot be reduced to logic and can neither be reduced to behaviorism or neo-behaviorism. So there was a question in my answer, which is how, I mean, you can of course, react and comment to what I just said, but I'm interested how you came about and being interested in philosophical counseling. Yeah, I'm not practicing philosophical counseling. I'm teaching philosophical counseling and I'm teaching philosophical grounds or philosophical counseling. Well, I teach certain aspects of philosophical counseling too, but because my training in counseling hasn't yet started, that's something I plan to do and only plan to do at the moment for the purpose of my teaching, not for the purpose of practicing. I might get to practice at some point, but at the moment I find it that although the area it's so interesting, there is so little time to do this properly. So for the moment I'm moving bit by bit. So I started by teaching philosophical counseling to advanced our third year students, just because I thought that this is an area that they should know about, they should be interested in. But then I discovered little by little all sorts of interesting things. I mean, it just seemed to me extraordinary to think a bit about what some philosophical counselors claim, especially following the tradition of Ahambach, namely that you can only do philosophy properly through philosophical counseling. And those people who do academic philosophy don't really do philosophy proper. And that I thought was very interesting. I thought that that can be presented as a challenge to many of the academic philosophers, especially those who take pride in being at the top of the hierarchy, whatever hierarchy that might be, because it might turn out that they are at the bottom of that hierarchy instead of being the best philosopher, they might be the worst philosopher. If you think that doing proper philosophy might involve something more, might involve something like, as you mentioned, a dialogue with a person, taking a person to be fully an individual who is not just a mind but also a body who is also part of a context. And we might not get in contact with persons in teaching. In teaching we get in contact with students but our teaching is not focusing on specific problems. Our teaching is focusing on general problems of philosophy. So that's another interesting aspect which simply fascinated me and made me to continue to look at this area. So I started with this, I started also with an interest. I mean, I did a lot of research on Kant and also did research on Sartre but my favorite philosopher is actually Piro, the ancient Greek skeptic, radical skeptic. And they were doing philosophy differently. They were just doing philosophy as a way of life. They were interested in trying to lead a good life and we lost that, I think we lost that connection. Philosophy is not done today for that. Philosophy is done for many other reasons but perhaps only towards the end also for this. I mean, it's been, of course, rediscovered with Pierre Ado and this tradition is being and with increasing interest in philosophical counseling as well and there is more recently in philosophy an interest in the question of the meaning of life and people are looking at that with philosophical tools that are all these, but perhaps that's the way to reconnect strongly with that tradition through philosophical counseling. And that's one thing that I'm teaching and one thing that I'm pursuing in my research as well. So yeah, so that's basically what the starting point was and did you have a starting point yourself where you're interested from the beginning in philosophy or counseling or how did you? Right, yeah, I'm going to answer. I just wanna say the fact that you teach philosophical counseling is itself an admirable singularity given our academic system. I actually avoided academia for many years. I was writing philosophical essays in Paris where there's a tradition of getting published while not having a PhD or not writing philosophy in the academic way. I was writing novels also and sort of avoiding academia because I felt that for many years I was not strong enough not to be let's say hindered in my creativity by the academic game. And I did a training in psychoanalysis, Lacanian psychoanalysis and I even wrote a book about it, but I didn't feel either that I wanted to practice as a psychoanalyst because I think unfortunately it has become itself a practice that is too normative and too much burdened by a nomenclature that is also what we see in other psychological fields. So it took me a long time and actually when I, so I eventually felt old enough and perhaps strong enough or had the illusion of being strong enough to do a PhD at Edinburgh actually not far from where you were or where you were. And then when I moved to Sweden for personal reasons my daughter is here, et cetera. And I thought, well, now it's time since you're going to do research with the academic discourse rules, et cetera, which I find interesting at now to start counseling. And I opened a counseling office in Stockholm in 2018. It was a sort of a Trojan horse because I opened it within a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Institute. And of course I'm a little bit critical of how CBT is used today and the mechanical view that they have sometimes as a human being. So, and I was very surprised to see that people were coming to see me. I mean, we're not queuing in hundreds but there was an interest and I felt that I had, that it worked. But my approach was very intuitive and I would have a dialogue that was very much in a creative flow adapted to the person. Now I have a more, I combine it with a more specific six step methodology where I ask people about their bodily sense and then their sense of self, then their sense of belonging, then comes the sense of the possible and eventually the sense of purpose and the philosophical sense. And what I have discovered is that people might be intimidated or confused if you attack the problems or their concerns or their questions too philosophically, if you proceed by degrees, then you start with the bodily sense and you go through these steps at whatever rhythm is necessary, then they are able to bring about and articulate explicitly insights that they were not aware of, they're more philosophical about their worldview or the way they justify their actions or ground them conceptually, morally, rationally, et cetera. So this is, and I was not aware of the history then like you I entered a little bit in the history and the various schools and I think that it's very interesting that this phenomenon is appearing in the last 20, 30 years. One of the reasons for it I believe is this is what you said is that academic philosophy which has its interest, I'm not a, I wouldn't say that speculation is necessarily a bad thing. There's a beautiful creativity and poetry in it, but because academic philosophy has abandoned that sense of care for the soul that you mentioned with Pyro and other ancient schools, that has, because it's a need, it's a human need that has gone somewhere else, for good and for bad. And so it has gone, for example in all sorts of self-help books that are now using philosophy or transpositions of philosophy sometimes a bit in a simple way, et cetera, but that is performed how it is because university is not considering it and then it has escaped also into philosophical counseling which can be, I mean, I personally do it with individuals but also with, I work with the corporation Vattenfall who is producing energy in Sweden so it performs a very simple function if I should use the term function but a hygiene of the mind which people are in need of and which they sometimes get disappointed because they, for example, go to university they subscribe for a course and they arise, this course is not, is disconnected from my own concerns and my embodiment and I think that's, I will finish here but I think this idea of effectuations this idea of we use what we have what is my experience of the world and from that we think and then of course it's important to, we're not negating the tradition it's important to see that there are other philosophers who thought about this question but the fact that academic philosophy too often, but I'm sure there's a lot of brilliant professors who do it, but too often does not start from our experience of the world then people try to address these questions elsewhere and I think that's what philosophical counseling is offering in the best cases Yes, yes, I guess that's right that's right, there is perhaps a lack I mean, I'm trying to think whether it's probably just not only one aspect because I'm not sure whether academic philosophy has changed the way has changed more recently the way in which it's been conceived and practiced I mean, we had the ancient philosophers who had the concern for the good life and but then modern philosophy I don't think they were so much concerned about that you get more and more philosophers who are doing sometimes armchair philosophy they are not so much engaged with they reflect on their own ideas and construct philosophical theories rather than being so much concerned with the concrete aspects or specific individuals or specific problems so it's probably a combination because it seems that philosophy has been done academic philosophy practiced in this way for a few hundred years but it might be that we are at the stage where now more and more people have the capacity to or the ability to raise philosophical questions to think those philosophical questions to raise questions about the good life and perhaps to try to find answers and perhaps as you mentioned they don't immediately find answers in the academic philosophy published so then they try to see whether they are searching for they don't find this if they go to a psychotherapist they sometimes don't find this if they try to look for answers in well answers concerning the good life I mean of course they will find some answers from the psychotherapist from the psychoanalyst but perhaps not the answers that the philosopher would provide so yeah there might be the space now a combination of the way in which academic philosophy is done with the fact that there is more interesting by each individual is asking themselves well is this the good life could I do something that is better and more and more are interested in that then it's perhaps a combination access to access to resources perhaps education which is better than it used to be at least in general so yeah there is I think you're right there is the space for philosophical counseling and yeah and it's interesting because going back to something I mentioned before there isn't a method one unique method people sometimes give the example of psychoanalysis where you have Freud as the kind of big founding father you don't have something like that in philosophical counseling but I think it might not be bad or perhaps the founding father is very old like Socrates and dead a long time I want to hear more about pyro and radical skepticism because I know there is a twist there it's not skepticism is not what we usually think but before that I just want to mention that I believe that philosophical health it's also about it's of course about the good life but it's also about the good articulation of our thoughts and I think this is very needed today because we both have students I have medical students you have philosophical students and I realize that and that's the same with adults and people in private sector is that the capacity to articulate clearly and explicitly what is moving us not only in the emotional sense but in the existential sense what makes us do things that that is quite underdeveloped in a time where we have social media we have all these technological tools but in fact even the AI specialists are saying our problem with AI is human is that humans are not good at identifying their goals from a really teleonomic perspective so I think that what philosophical health performs to is that it helps people rationalize their behavior but not in a way that is normative not in a way that's necessarily logical but in a way that encapsulates you wrote a book about freedom and such this freedom that is a modern project but which has not yet been realized at the level of the mind it has been realized in a physical way as Anna Hermann said we have domesticated freedom and now we can go to the supermarket we have freedom of choice for our body to get fed and perhaps we go on YouTube and we see other videos than this one which is a mistake and all these choices are not really radical in the sense that they express some form of systematic worldview which of course might be an ideal perhaps we could say no one has a systematic worldview but I believe that's the ideal of philosophy I think that's one of the horizons of philosophy what would it be if I could express the truth of my experience and I see the world in a harmonious matter a style that is coherent yes I think yes I think that that might be right it might be that there is there are more fundamental problems connected to the question of the good life but more fundamental than that which create a need for philosophical counseling such as the ability to articulate in a coherent plan thoughts purposes these are important for fundamental for a person I think they are also important for having a good life but perhaps there are even more fundamental than that that's true and yes and perhaps it's a matter of becoming literate with our own thoughts more literate with our own thoughts and that's perhaps something that is missing especially for generations who are sometimes find a better partner in the mobile phone rather than in the company of another person because sometimes technology is answering to what we to the input we provide but it's answering in in a way which is not stimulating all the mental capacities we need in order to provide the coherent coherent plan a coherent view in order to understand ourselves in the world coherently i agree i mean there is perhaps here a way to connect this all this with the pyro because you mentioned you you you you're interested in in in pyro to hear more about pyro i mean it seems to me that pyronian skeptic yes you're right that pyronians one aspect which is very interesting with pyronian skepticism is that it and skepticism in general is that it provides some of the concepts for phenomenology which i found very interesting i mean what what pyro so so pyron skepticism is of course about you know questioning certain you know questioning the dogmatic claims of traditional philosophers that was what pyro was about but then ultimately it's again about well what do we do once we question those and they were quite successful quite quite successful at at doing this this job of challenging the traditional philosophers but but but then sometimes that seems to be scary okay so if we question and challenge some of the most fundamental truths of on which we rely what are we left with and then the stories of pyro who would question whether there is a a pit in front of him and then he would fall there and you know have an accident and had to have friends with him to save him from dogs because he was questioning whether the dog would bite or not this make skepticism not very attractive but at the same time pyro was quite clear what he wanted he said well of course we are not going to question these things of course we are not going to to question what communities of people who live a usual life take for granted this is not what he wanted but his his his answer ultimately was to say if you take a dogmatic claim given that i can formulate the opposite of that claim and that both of them are equally strong what i need to do is to suspend judgment and this gives me is the notion of ataraxia is the notion of unperturbedness a calmness of mind that gives me the attitude which is a better attitude than that of the dogmatic who wants at you know no matter what to prove that they are right but that doesn't mean that we question everything as skeptics so that's one thing which i find interesting the epohé again it's their notion but the other thing which i find interesting is that i think some philosophers take these questions very seriously and that's interesting because it's stimulating you i and i have here in mind academic philosophers i'm an academic philosopher there are interesting questions they raise and looking at the history of philosophy it seems to me that hence my interest in can't can't is one of the philosopher one of one of the best philosophers in terms of being able to answer skeptical questions by taking them very seriously there are ways to answer skeptical questions by not taking them seriously by saying well we know that we are not going to question this well if you don't question it how do you know whether you are right or not well i think can't is one of those few philosophers who take the skeptical questions very far and still managed to provide some answers not all of them are good so many of them are questioned and so on and so forth but the the success of can't in philosophy today is an indication that perhaps some of some things you got right so and since my interest but of course can't can't is just one of the philosophers i'm interested in as you know i'm also interested in so true and many other philosophers but yeah yeah as you were talking about skepticism i thought that the contemporary psyche is i think a very much a skeptic psyche but without the equanimity without the right and so that's true you have a lot of people who are incapable of holding a philosophical stance about life so on monday they might think something and on tuesday the opposite and and there's a fragmentation also of use that is probably due to the fact that we have a lot of information right so a little bit like a philosopher who is too much in form of the the history of philosophy at one point we gain a form of sympathy for views that are that may be completely opposed but the risk there is a i mean i would say that perhaps the the sphere of assertivity is abandoned to indeed to dogmatists whether they are political ones uh and so in this search of the good kind soul that that is a preoccupation of many of our contemporaries there is a risk of depoliticization of becoming uh insipid or or or losing a form of uh character which is always a risk right because of course then a character is always a choice also is like i i stand for this while i might be open in dialogue to other views um but i think that perhaps what philosophical health can bring is uh both the capacity for people to to be able to understand other views to mentalize other views instead of getting emotional and there's a lot of that today right but also to uh not to renounce uh the search for a um a vision of the world the the search for a stance because the it is not necessarily opposed so so i think perhaps we could uh conclude here by saying that uh perhaps we could mix the skeptics with with the agalians and and try to see what happens uh uh of such um extreme um combination but which might be interesting today yes sounds sounds like a good uh like like like a good suggestion yes to try and see see what happens we could talk i mean i could certainly talk for much more time that the principle of this interview is that the last more less than one hour uh but we we can uh start again is there anything you would like to conclude with um um yeah i i i i think um um i think it's a good idea not to have it too long as you said and it would be a pleasure of course to to uh to meet again and to to discuss um anything to conclude with well um now i'm i'm attracted by by your suggestion of combining skepticism with agalians yes i think i think it's fruitful um and by all means uh i agree with what you said about uh dogmatism as being the risk um uh of course we want to be open to a plurality of views the problem is that um if we are um if that plurality of views is not looked at carefully and is not um it is just accepted as such and perhaps enjoyed but we without a proper examination without trying to see well is this view fitting with the other i like because they might not the risk is that we end up with uh discrete thoughts which don't fit together and that's a recipe for um first of all um extreme skepticism which you mentioned and then that makes room for dogmatism i absolutely agree huge political problems and so on and so forth so yes perhaps we can finish with this thought that philosophical health and counseling has also a very important political dimension uh which may not be that direct one but it may have indirectly uh it can make a political contribution quite important i couldn't agree more and as you were talking i was thinking about um the uh the the drawing of francesco goya the sleep of reason produces monsters and i think this is something that the world should meditate today we see a lot of examples of this of course and uh and therefore philosophical health is not really not only i hope a a a new calmer in the long list of various therapies but also a movement uh a political movement in the noble uh sense of uh you know doing something that i think philosophy is interested in since playto answering the question what would paradise on earth looked like uh such that it doesn't become hell on earth so well thanks a lot thank you and um i will stop the recording now if that's okay