Aleksandar Fatic

In this paper I discuss John Searle?s selective view of intentionality of mental states, and place it in the context of impairment to personal identity that occurs in mental illness. I criticize Searle?s view that intentionality characterizes some but not all mental states; I do so both on principled and on empirical grounds. I then proceed to examine the narrative theory of self, advanced by Paul Ricoeur, Marya Schechtman and others, and explore the extent to which the theory fits a more generalized view of intentionality that would apply to all mental states. This discussion is followed by a brief consideration of the way in which the modern DSM-based psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, reductively and mechanistically, dispenses with the issues of?strong ontology?, namely the life events and values that mental states might in fact reach for, even when ostensibly without reference. In this sense, DSM-inspired psychiatry is based on a Searlian view of mental states. It is contrasted with the narrative theory of self which, rather than defining madness by clusters of symptoms, seeks to understand the underlying ontology of reference by looking for both the initial script of the person?s?life narrative? and for ruptures and knots in that narrative that might give rise to madness. Finally I discuss and evaluate the perspective of personality enhancement through counseling aimed at repairing the personal narrative. nema

This paper examines the conceptual matrix of philosophical counseling, and philosophical practice generally, which distinguishes philosophical practice from mainstream theoretical philosophy. I argue that the essence of philosophical practice is the realization and radicalization of Pierre Hadot’s paradigmshifting view of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’ through the projection of philosophical concepts and methods to the goal of attainment of the good life by moral education and character-building. The base-line concept of the good life that the paper works with is the relatively uncontroversial concept of a life based on sustained reflected pleasures that are both socially desirable and individually fulfilling. I argue that this type of concept of the good life as qualified pleasure is inherent in any doctrinal account of what it is to lead a good life, including the ones that emphasise asceticism, such as Christian philosophy of life and ethics. Finally the paper concludes that projections of the good life by philosophical counselors are reflective on philosophical counselor themselves: philosophical counseling is a way of ‘the good life’ that aims to use the resources of philosophy as a whole to help others build the moral qualities and character required to reach their own good lives. By projecting philosophical concepts and methods to the applied conceptual matrix of moral education and the good life, philosophical counseling emancipates philosophy as a whole from its current remoteness and isolation into an active, and reflective, role in the real lives of ordinary people. This heralds a paradigm shift in philosophy, from the pseudo-science that much of mainstream philosophy painstakingly pretends to be to an intellectual powerhouse for the enhancement of the quality, clarity and integrity of life, which was the reason philosophy initially emerged for, both in the Western and in the Eastern philosophical traditions