 This is our next speaker now, Dr. Luis Demiranda. He lives in Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden and is a philosophical practitioner and a researcher at Uppsala University where he currently works on the theory and practice of philosophical health at the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Sciences. A PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He's an international author of nonfiction and fiction. Some of his books have been translated into dozens of languages and his essays have been published by reputed presses around the world. We welcome you, Dr. Miranda, and we're looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much. And I'm delighted to be here. The format will be a bit different because I would like to engage if possible in the form of dialogue. Also, because when we talk about philosophical counseling and philosophical practice, I think it's important that people understand that it's not only about analytic intelligence. So when we make presentations in conferences as academics, we tend to use that discourse because it is our currency and it is important. But there is a dimension that is a dimension of dialectics of which we have been talking in the last sessions in the last day. And I believe there is another dimension which is a Creolelectic dimension and I will speak about it a bit. So I am copying here in the chat a few articles that explain what I mean by philosophical health, how I practice it in counseling and also by Creolelectic. So this is to avoid having an analytic presentation. Please feel free to read the articles. They are often open access. The other thing that is important is that when we speak of philosophy, there is this assumption that it is an elitist practice. For example, I was at a conference last year and someone probably well-intentioned told me, oh yes, you are a philosophical counselor, but this is for the happy few. Think about India and how they are suffering now with COVID and this kind of Euro-pean or Occidental-centric cliches, right? That the people in so-called developing countries, they don't have time to think. They are worried with food and suffering. This is very annoying. And at the very same time where I had this remark, I was actually counseling because I do most of my counseling online with people who lived in India and who had people die in their family. And yet they felt vital to have a philosophical conversation, which of course, I believe is a universal need in various forms. The other thing is, so I consider that we are, as counselors, practicing philosophical health. But I don't mean that in a normative way in the sense that sometimes physical health or psychological health, which are also in the history of humanity, relatively recent constructs, tend to become more and more normative. This is what you should eat. This is what the kind of exercise you should do to be healthy physically. This is what you should think to be healthy psychologically. And psychological health is itself more and more normative. It's interesting to see that schools like psychoanalysis and I am trained as a psycho, now it's myself, or cognitive behavioral therapy, they historically started with a philosophical insight and over the decades, they become more and more normative, more and more embedded in the analytic scientific discourse. So here we have a little time of respiration but I want to mention perhaps that in one article, that is called The Five Principles of Philosophical Health, I try to identify five core activities that we engage in a philosophical practice that are five aspects of what perhaps constitutes a state of philosophical health. And by the way, there is an intellectual history of that idea, if not that phrase itself, the idea of philosophical health is very present, of course, in the Greeks, Michel Foucault wrote a lot about it. And it comes back a little bit with Spinoza and then with Nietzsche, who had this idea of the great health of which we can talk about later. But according to me, the first element is there is some form of mental heroism. And this was also the idea of the Greeks, by the way, the Stoics, for example. Although I don't want to hear to sound like I am an advocate of the Stoics, there are also critiques that we can address. To them, for example, it's worth mentioning because the Stoics are very popular when people discover philosophical practice, they often read some best seller about the Stoics. And there is this idea that we should adapt, we should accept, we should endure. Well, in some cases this might be true, but in other cases, no, we should actually co-create, fight, propose new forms of what we think is paradise on earth, so that there is a political dimension also, I think, in philosophical practice. So mental heroism is needed because, well, I don't know if this is a specificity of our world, but we are constantly bombarded with life options, lifestyles, ways to reach happiness, et cetera. And it seems to me that, and I often discuss that with people in consultation that, well, if there is no coherence, consistency, some sort of repetition of what? Well, we will see with the second principle, a, an idea, an admiration, some core set of conceptual constellations that we decide is our direction, we end up never growing roots for ourselves. But heroism, because it's very difficult, we live in a world where the normative is extremely present because we used to be in this village where 20 people told us what to think, that was really a strong pressure, but now we have eight billion people telling us what to, what to think. We are bombarded with, with forms of, so of course there is a diversity into that, so it's, it's a dialectic there, right? Of course we discover new ways, but there's a lot of, it's not because you add more people that you have more diversity. We see, I mean, we see that with COVID, for example, there's a lot of standardization of discourses, there's a lot of normativity. The second principle of philosophical health, I called deep orientation, and I already talked a bit about that, is the idea that a, and this actually is a term that is also used by Pierre Ado who with Foucault rediscovered the philosophical care dimension of philosophy since its origins. In orientation, a vision, a direction, a sum ideal that we tend to and that we keep faithful to. The third principle, I'm going faster here because I promised a conversation, I realized that I'm talking already too much, but critical creativity. The fourth principle, deep listening, and this is very interesting because we could say that all counseling practices share that feature of deep listening. And there is a little bit of research on that in musicology, for example. This is, of course, easier said than done. And it can be very irritating. We saw it in the last session with Brené Fiery, he sometimes was listening and sometimes he was not listening, he was listening to himself. And if you assume that the person is saying something that he didn't said, you might miss something. There is this example, one day an Indian actually, she was Indian but living in Stockholm when I had my practice in real life. And she came to me and said, I don't know why I'm here, really. My life is fantastic, I'm so happy. I love plants, I love to look at plants, especially the leaves, the shape of the leaves, the color of the leaves, the way leaves grow. Really, I could look at leaves forever. And I just asked her, is there someone you would like to leave? And of course she started crying and said, yes, my husband. So this is a typical example that is not specific to philosophical counseling, right? But deep listening, I think it's a very important component. And the fifth principle is a relationship to what I call the creel, just the real with a big C, the C of creation. And in other words, infinite possibility and not infinite possibility in the sense of neoliberalism, the choices we have. But rather possibility as potential, as way of thinking of the impossible in ways that are not culturally or socially formatted. So I think I will pause here but just with the, by giving two examples of practice that I have found myself in, where I have tried to apply these and other aspects of what I believe is philosophical health. And by the way, you can also check on internet, there is a philosophical health international network that you're most welcome to join it's an open network of conversation. And I've been working with two populations. One for several years and one I'm starting now. So the first one is the multinational company, Vattenfa, it's Swedish company that is present in several other countries that produce energy. And we conducted, I started a philosophical health program there that started individually, right? So many counselors we start individually with personal dialogue, with top managers, strategic R&D, but after a while, I noticed that I was, since I had several of them, I was getting some sort of an overview of the company. I was seeing things that perhaps they didn't see. And one of the things I was seeing is that most people in the company were very joyful about the fact that the company in five years ago became included fossil free in their horizon. So they are very close to achieve this sort of neutrality. But I told them, is that enough? Being neutral in our world of today where we are actually living in extremist conditions is planetary thinking, planetary speaking. And this is important because I believe that planetary thinking, which is by the way a Heideggerian, I didn't think I would cite Heidegger, but here you go. Planetary thinking is very important today for philosophical health. So Vattenfa is now engaging in a transition to think and we are doing that together. Well, what's beyond fossil free? What would be a form of growth because let's face it, we all want to grow. I don't think, I think it would be hypocritical for a company, but for any living being to say, I don't want any form of growth, whether it's spiritual, et cetera. I want to stagnate, or I want to actually could be an interesting form of thinking. Like I want to reduce myself to an infinite point, but I think that would be a form of growth too. So how can we invent a form of growth today? Planetary growth that is healing, right? We have the model of growth that is expanding on someone else's territory, winners and losers. Can we have a form of growth that heals as the being growth? And this is connected with the second group with whom I'm working is, and this is very fresh, I'm starting now, but I've done a lot of preparatory research to understand this population that I, to be honest, I had no idea of how they live. It's people living with spinal cord injury. So this is a partnership. I started with Link-Champing University Hospital in Sweden. And we are going to, we're starting now to ask them, what's your philosophy of life? And why is that important? Well, because people who live with spinal cord injury, they are suddenly faced with a condition where there is no return to normal. They are either tetraplegic or parplegic. They live in a wheelchair. Some parts of their body, they cannot even move. But their mind is intact. And so they have to reinvent their life. And our hypothesis is, well, probably, it is probably some of them use philosophical strategies, which is different from psychological strategies in the sense that in healthcare, I work at the Center for Medical Humanities of Uppsala University. There's a lot of this idea of psychological health as being based on willpower. And I think that philosophical health is not about willpower. It's much more complex than nuance. And so this is an interesting metaphor because I think that today, people with spinal cord injury are not the only ones who live in extremist conditions without a possible return to normal. I think we all do. I think we have reached a stage of human civilization where we are all living in extremism. So we can learn from people who actually know that they cannot return to normal. They have to reinvent a new form of life while we tend to think that, well, okay, we will return to normal. Oh, yes, now there is a crisis there, but in three months we will return to normal. So, and by the way, of course, since philosophy, I think shouldn't be normative. Is it good? Is it desirable to return to normal? So I'll stop here. I realize that I have, I don't know, maybe talk for 20 minutes, 15 minutes, I don't know. But is there other questions, reactions, comments since I will unfortunately have to leave in 10 minutes? I'd be happy to share with you a little conversation if anyone wants to say something or ask something. Everyone, you may kindly raise your hand if you wish to come on video and ask Dr. Miranda a question or you can send it on chat as he won't be available with us after this. He has to leave, unfortunately. Yes, so we have Navneet who raised a hand. Hello, Miranda. Yeah, I would like to hear a little bit more on contribution of Hyde-Garion Phenomenology in philosophical counseling from your side. Right, specifically Hyde-Garion. Yeah, if you like speaking. Right, well, what is interesting is the influence that Hyde-Garion Phenomenology had in people who were working in care like Ludwig Bidswanger, for example. And since we don't have much time, I will only emphasize one aspect that I find extremely important and that is in Hyde-Garion, but also in Bidswanger and Erwin Staus who worked a very interesting book about the sense of sense. The word is to sense something. And it's the concept of possibleization. And I think this is important. I actually connected to Creolectics, so I promised to talk about Creolectics, is I believe that we have a more or less expandable domain of possibility. And again, this has nothing to do with choices of products that are there, available in the supermarket of post-modernity. It has to do with our sense of what can we think from the idea of impossibility, for example, or what can I do with my life in a way that is articulated with some idea of attunement with the others. So yeah, so if you're interested in that matter, I think for me, the concept of possibleization in care is very interesting. Thank you for your question. So, authenticity, I guess, and will you connect? Authenticity, yes and no, because, well, the idea of authenticity might also, for some people, resonate as an identity that is fixed. And this has both advantages and disadvantages because what was authentic for me 10 years ago might not be what is authentic for me now. Of course, we can say, well, but the intention of authenticity is actually what is authenticity. We never reach, if you think like socrates, we can say we never reach the sense of exactly who we are. I'm not even sure that's interesting. And that's an interesting question. What is more interesting is what can I put on the table that are my horizon and can I share it with the others? Thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe we still have, what, five minutes? Or am I done? I'm no more. No, no, not at all, Dr. Miranda. I mean, if you talk to him to you. Yes, so anyone else would like to comment or ask a question? Right, so perhaps one thing that I can add here, since there is just a few minutes left, is that there is, very often, when people have this perception of personal growth, the concept of self-realization is very popular, right? And less people know that actually Maslow himself at the end of his life say, well, well, self-realization is actually not, necessarily not the ultimate stage. There is a stage that he called self-transcendence, where in fact, we are less obsessed by, so this sort of prolongs the question about authenticity. We are less obsessed by the question, who am I? And more interested by the question, what am I doing? Like, what are we doing here in this conference? I think we are celebrating the fact that we believe that thinking is a joy, as Greenifer said, but also an activity that is as important as breathing. There is a Rayya who raises his hand. I believe we have, I don't want to take time of the speaker after me, so, but we have perhaps two minutes. I just wanted to pick up on that last remark that you made about self-transcendence. And I was thinking that maybe you'd be going somewhere else with it, not to what am I doing, but who are you? Right, who are you, who's the other? Because the self, as Iris Murdoch says, one of my favorite quotes from her is such a bedazzling object that we might look nowhere else once we look there. And, but understanding the self without seeing, being able to see oneself through the eyes of the other seems also a very difficult thing to do. So I was wondering whether this self-transcendence is also other directed, because that's often not so much in the focus. And which I completely thank you for that addition. And I think it's important to make that clear that when I'm doing something, it's always in more or less harmonious attunement with the world and with others. So the doing is an engagement with the world. And so that the dimension of the other, which by the way, so one of the articles that I refer to think into the place of the other, I wrote other with a capital O, of course, because in order to avoid our obsession for humanity, we are very humanity obsessed, which sometimes is needed, but the other is all forms of being, but also the relation to the sublime, that what I call the creative other, the big other. Thanks. Thank you all. I suppose I have exhausted my time. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Luis, for this interesting presentation, telling about your work mostly that you have been doing since a long time on philosophical health. In fact, friends a few months back, I think, yeah, for a few months back, I had come across this concept of philosophical health. And then I was like, we have been doing practice in philosophical counseling, which is a means, but a means to what? No, we only leave it at the level of wellbeing, no a broader concept and then leave it there, but Luis has come out with a clear cut conceptualization of philosophical health. And how to reach that and how do you conceptualize philosophical practice, philosophical counseling itself in order to reach that philosophical health in terms of pre-electrics, that really attracted me. So thank you so much for that wonderful contribution, Luis. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you Balam. And thank you all.