We're all philosophers
We all sometimes ask ourselves life’s big questions …
What is the nature of this world we inhabit?
What must we do to truly live well?
How can we be sure?
Such questions can feel all-important, for the significance of all our beliefs and all our actions depends on the answers we settle on.
In Search of Clarity
I’ve been obsessed with philosophical questions since I was a teenager. I saw that everything I would go on to do depended on the answers I gave to these questions. Nothing could be more important.
I looked to academic philosophy for answers. There was much to learn there, but the clarity I was seeking wasn’t to be found.
So I developed an approach of my own. I built on the works of philosophers like Hume and Wittgenstein. I learnt from other philosophical traditions. And I drew on perspectives from contemporary science, and the arts.
All this time, I was mostly earning my living from leadership development and coaching. So I saw the challenges, doubts and dilemmas that people commonly face and I became determined to make my approach a good fit for the shape of life as people actually experience it.
The New Approach
There are two key elements to the approach that eventually delivered the clarity I’d long been seeking.
The Givens
My starting point was an acknowledgment of the givens of the human condition.
Reality is what it is.
Overcoming Problems
My mission was to find a way to see the territory of philosophy that overcomes all sense of the philosophically problematic.
Philosophy Becoming Useful
Philosophical clarity is important in itself.
It gains additional value, however, from how it can help people think clearly and fulfil their potential to live well.
Escaping Illusion
Since we think using ideas, we tend to see our ideas projected out into the world. It is easy to mistake these projections for reality itself.
Philosophy can help us escape this trap and enter a healthy relationship with the fullness of reality.
Living Well
It turns out that there’s no single recipe for living well and that, for us to fulfil our potential to live well, we must investigate what living well means in the specific contexts of our own lives.
Philosophy can show what such investigations should look like.