At first, I thought that problem solving was the main goal of philosophical counselling. A few years later, I’ve encountered this question: “What is philosophical in philosophical counselling?” and I went back to think about what is philosophy.

Most of the people see philosophy as defined by its etymology – love for wisdom. The problem is, we are not so sure what wisdom is. So, how can we love something we can’t strictly define, and therefore can’t strictly know? I see philosophy as a search for wisdom, and hence I see philosophical counselling as a dialogue in search for wiser thoughts about a given subject, topic or theme.

Later on, I figured out that the main goal of philosophical counselling wasn’t to give answers or solutions, but to ask questions which can clarify the path towards solutions, to give new ways of understanding the questions in order to prepare for a solution – which makes us wiser, even if we are still unclear what wisdom means.

What is philosophical in our philosophical counselling depends only on what we consider philosophy itself. I see philosophical counselling as examination of thinking, a dialogue between two people who question behavior, acts, thoughts, ideas, possible outcomes, and a whole range of different understandings of their own world and the world which surrounds them. Two people searching for wisdom within a given theme, sharing questions, ideas, previous experiences, future acts – two people conversing. This is why I like to drop the counselling/consultation debate, and call it simply philosophical dialogue, because that’s what it is in its basis – a dialogical examination of our worldviews, a dialogical search for wisdom.