Handbook of Philosophical Companionships

By Ran Lahav

A philosophical companionship is a group of people, philosophers or non-philosophers, who meet online or face-to-face and contemplate in togetherness on philosophical ideas. They resonate with each other and give voice to their inner depth, developing together profound insights. The companionship format has been developed in recent years by Ran Lahav and his colleagues from the Philosophical Practice movement.
This handbook is a practical and theoretical guide to philosophical companionships. Ran Lahav explains here the general principles of the companionship and provides a detailed survey of practical procedures and exercises, for the use of facilitators and groups wishing to experience philosophical contemplation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ran Lahav
• Release date: Aug 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370367269

Ran Lahav

Ran Lahav is a writer, philosophical practitioner and counselor, and a university professor of philosophy and psychology. He received his PhD in philosophy and Master’s in psychology from the University of Michigan. For more than two decades he has been active in the philosophical practice movement, which believes that philosophy can make life deeper, richer, and more meaningful. He has been working extensively with individuals and groups and giving workshops and lectures in many countries. His publications include numerous academic articles, four professional books, and four books of fiction and spirituality. He now lives in rural Vermont, USA, and emerges occasionally for philosophical activities around the world.

Book preview

Handbook of Philosophical Companionships

Principles, procedures, exercises

Second Edition

Ran Lahav

Loyev Books

Text copyright @ 2016 by Ran Lahav

All Rights Reserved

Cover photograph © 2016 Ran Lahav

Loyev Books

1165 Hopkins Hill Road, Hardwick, Vermont 05843, USA

philopractice.org/web/loyev-books

Contents

Foreword by Silvia Peronaci

Chapter 1: GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Chapter 2: BASIC CONCEPTS

Chapter 3: PRACTICAL ISSUES

Chapter 4: PROCEDURES AND EXERCISES

Conclusion

About the Author

Books by the author

Foreword by Silvia Peronaci

Ran Lahav has been working in the field of philosophical practice for over 20 years. As a philosophical practitioner, he has taught university courses on the topic, published articles and books in the field, developed new practices, and employed them successfully with groups and individuals. He has also arranged international conferences, collected videotaped materials, etc.

Almost two years ago, in cooperation with Carmen Zavala, he opened the website Philo-Practice Agora: The electronic meeting-place of philosophical practitioners (https://philopractice.org), available in several languages. This new philosophical temple of thinking in togetherness is cosmopolitan. It welcomes everybody, not only the professional but also the philosophical practitioner who resides within each one of us. Its purpose is to make us pause and to help us take our time to reflect. In a word, it is aimed at philosophy – that human tradition which has been confined to books, and which we now want back in everyday life.

Meaning is what we want back. Meaning is the experience of a relationship we crave, the touch of the other awakening us. It is a meeting that is more than a mere physical encounter and that reminds us how time passes. Only when we overcome our self-enclosed mindset and switch to an open attitude of togetherness can we truly become friends. Only then can we appreciate and live the wisdom which says that each moment is unique. This understanding makes us oscillate like a pendulum between love and fear, awe and disgust, philo-sophy and phobo-sophy.

We yearn to be converted and to receive the preciousness of this wisdom. Just before sunrise, however, we change our minds again. And then we have to start all over again. Every day our inner attitude calls us to refine ourselves. Human reality never speaks in me by itself, suggests Ran Lahav in the work presented here. Philosophical practice, he explains, consists of a receptive act which is also highly creative. And as a form of philosophy, one might add, it is also a critical and intellectually responsible form of investigation, unlike many popular New Age sects and gurus.

Ran Lahav needs no further introduction, not just because of his reputation and untiring activities. Since traveling is a regular part of his philosophical work, the majority in the small international world of philosophical practice has met him in person and has spoken to him face-to-face.

You may be able to forget what you talked with him about, but you will unlikely forget the way Ran Lahav made you feel: a good old friend of his, important, precious, unique. Throughout time, this special talent has proved to be more than a personal gift and has become his guiding daemon. This is the calling in which his work as a philosophical practitioner is anchored.

Recently Ran Lahav has given birth to the philosophical-contemplative companionship, a new vision of philosophical practice which he had been nursing for a long time. The present Handbook of Philosophical Companionships is dedicated to explaining and realizing this project. Whereas philosophical counseling is focused on the counselee, and the philosophical café concentrates on discussing a specific issue, this newborn format of philosophical practice, which can take place both in online and face-to-face meetings, is centered on togetherness. As explained by our author with the help of an instructive contrast: Togetherness consists of thinking with each other instead of thinking about each other’s ideas.

To fully grasp the difference, let us think of sharing bread with someone versus eating separately. Here is where the significance of the word companionship lies. In the first case, bread is something we eat together in companionship (from the Latin – cum with and panis – bread). Like thinking with, it is the bread of a shared experience. In the second case, bread is analogous to something we think about each one separately. It is bread eaten (or not eaten) alongside