(NEW) Ora Gruengard (Israel)

Ora Gruengard (Israel) - PhD, Shenkar College
(Ramat Gan), the President of the Israeli Association
for Philosophical Practice (with Lydia Amir).
Can philosophical counseling be detached from politics? (Lecture)
What would you do if Hamlet were your counselee? (Round table discussion)
Did philosophy ever mattered to me? (Workshop)
Presentation Language: English
Can philosophical counseling be detached from politics? (Lecture)
In
this lecture I propose to challenge the position that philosophical counseling
should be detached from politics and wonder whether it can. I examine seemingly
anti-political arguments and explore different meanings of 'politics'. I
maintain, despite my awareness to the history of misuse of philosophical
rhetoric in the use of political propaganda and indoctrination and cases of
dishonest compliance of philosophers with oppressive regimes, that any
philosophy that deals with knowledge, action, life and morality has political
aspects, and argue that such aspects may and sometime should come to the fore
in philosophical counseling as well. I therefore stress the importance of
meta-philosophical dialogues among philosophical counselors about the
complexities and risks of discussing such issues in counseling sessions.
What would you do if Hamlet were your counselee? (Round table discussion)
What
would you do if Hamlet (Anna Karenina, Socrates....) were your counselee? In
this roundtable philosophical counselors will exemplify their approaches in the
case of a famous fictional or a real past figure, whose problem situation,
worldviews and acknowledged dilemmas are documented in literary of historical
texts (information that is not shared by participants and audience in a case of
a living volunteer who presents a problem for demonstrative purposes). The aim,
however, is not just to expose alternative approaches, but to estimate them in
at least two ways: First, to examine thoroughly their relevance to the concerns
of the counselee in her problem situation from her perspective (an issue that
is evaded when the polite volunteering counselee is more eager to please the
demonstrator than deal with a real concern) and then explore critically not
only how it can help but also whether it can cause harm (a matter of moral
responsibility to the counselee and to others that is too often avoided in
expositions of alternatives approaches ). We hope to promote thereby a debate
about the issue of understanding the concerns of the counselee from her
perspective and the plausible interpretation of given information about it, and
relate to controversies about the rationality and morality of counseling.
Did philosophy ever mattered to me? (Workshop)
In
many workshops participants are trained for counseling by learning the art of
questioning and other methods and procedures. I believe that philosophical
counseling should be based on the counselor's personal understanding of
philosophy, and should not be done if the counselor does not sincerely believe
that philosophizing can make a difference. The training should therefore start
with the exploration whether and in what sense the trainee has ever experienced
that philosophy mattered to her and helped her cope with an intriguing issue.
Feed-backs from other participants and listening to their experiences from
their personal perspectives may help her become aware that what worked for her
will not necessarily work for others. Comparisons and discussions should help
her formulate, tentatively, her own approach and understand better which
knowledge and expertise she still has to acquire in order to do the job of
counseling in her own way, and yet do it a philosophically, with honesty and
moral responsibility. I expect to get feed-back on my approach to counseling
and training, which would enable me to try to improve it.