Philosophical Health: Thinking as a Way of Healing (Re-inventing Philosophy as a Way of Life) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1350353043 ISBN 13: 9781350353046

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024

Synopsis

Bringing together leading international and interdisciplinary scholars, this ground-breaking volume examines the theory and practice of philosophical health in contemporary contexts of care broadly understood, care for the self, care for the other, and care for the world. But what do we mean by philosophical health? Whilst this book does not seek to provide a normative definition, as it explores disparate perspectives and encourages pluralism in philosophical ways of life, one may envision philosophical health as a state of creative coherence between a person’s or a group’s way of thinking and their way of acting, such that the possibilities for a good life are increased, and the needs for flourishing satisfied. An idea central to philosophical health is the concept of ‘possibility'. Without a sense of self-possibility and openness to the future, health loses meaning, and conversely, pathologies are defined by various kinds of impossibilities. As such, philosophical health reconsiders care as a process of cultivating or pruning the compossible in embodied, psychological, and social terms, of allowing things to re-generate, or in some cases to vanish. Drawing on the history of philosophy, phenomenology, new materialism, post-colonialism but also a wide range of contemporary approaches to philosophical practice, Philosophical Health sheds light on the understudied philosophical dimension of care and the healing dimension of philosophizing. Advocating philosophy as a lived practice, it uncovers the increasing relevance of philosophical health to contemporary debates on well-being, well-belonging, counselling, and development.

About this title

About the Author

Luis de Miranda is a Researcher at the Center for Medical Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is also the initiator and founder of Philosophical Health International (https://philosophical.health/), a philosophical practitioner, and the founder of The Philosophical Parlour, through which he offers individual philosophical counselling.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350353043
• ISBN 13: 9781350353046
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Miranda Luis De