Leonard Waks

Contemporary psychotherapy is mainly dominated by Western psychological paradigms, yet philosophy and religion have long served as frameworks for healing and guidance. This paper argues that Chinese wisdom traditions—Confucianism, Daoism, and Chinese Buddhism—can meaningfully contribute to philosophical therapy, serving not merely as cultural supplements but as foundational normative frameworks in their own right. Like Stoicism and Epicureanism in the Hellenistic era, these traditions provide distinct visions of the good life, structured practices for self-cultivation, and pathways to inner harmony. Drawing on Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) as a template, we propose that Chinese philosophical traditions can contribute to therapeutic practice in three distinct ways: first, as augmentations to existing cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT); second, as components of an eclectic Chinese Philosophical Therapy (CPT) that systematically combines all three traditions; and third, as independent normatively-directed therapeutic specializations, each with its own theoretical coherence and clinical protocols. We outline three complementary approaches: Daoist therapy (emphasizing effortless action and alignment with nature), Buddhist therapy (following the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path to alleviate suffering), and Confucian therapy (focusing on moral cultivation and social harmony). Each approach includes specific doctrines, practices, and pedagogies aimed at transforming clients’ “lived understandings”—their deeply embodied habits of thought, feeling, and action—thereby relieving emotional distress and promoting wholeness and virtue. By positioning Chinese traditions within a normative philosophical therapy framework, this work lays the groundwork for culturally attuned therapeutic models. We conclude by discussing implications for therapist training, multicultural competence, ethical safeguards, and directions for future empirical research.

In this paper we outline a theory of aesthetic education in the university, following John Dewey’s theory of art as experience. In the first section we provide a summary of Dewey’s theory, including his account of the spread of aesthetic experiences and creative impulses among audiences in artists’ communities. In section two we offer an illustration of the effect of art in community life in the work of artist and social activist Romare Beardon, whose thought and artistic practice were influenced by Dewey. Beardon insisted, with Dewey, that art is experience that engages the imagination of audiences and engenders the desire for more creative and satisfying ways of living. After surveying the lessons from Dewey and Bearden, in the third section we extend this account of art and aesthetic experience to university education. Starting with a single student learning about some topic, we move to the level of a teacher conducting a course, and finally to a university faculty committee planning a meaningful and coherent program of study for the lower college—the first two years of undergraduate study. Our goal is to show how art and aesthetic experience can function at each of these levels to enrich university life.

In July 2023 a group of philosophers gathered in Lisbon to address the boundaries, crossroads, and deadlocks in philosophy as a way of life (PWL). This short paper, based on my Lisbon talk, addresses all three topics. First, I want to highlight the boundary separating the university from everyday life. I offer a distinction between philosophers as academic professionals – university-based scholars – and philosophers as lovers of wisdom, life-guiding sages offering intelligent instruction concerning problems of living. Academic philosophers typically address fellow scholars and university students. By contrast, philosophical sages have audiences composed largely of non-philosophy professionals, including interested – and often spiritually ill – people from all walks of life. My question is: does academia set a boundary for PWL that excludes philosophers as life-guiding sages as teachers and scholars? And does this boundary create a roadblock in the development of PWL?

Important works in the Dewey corpus — particularly those discussing the theory and practice of art and aesthetic education, prepared from 1896 through 1900 while Dewey was working out the plan for the University's Laboratory School—remain virtually unstudied. When interpreting or building upon Dewey's theory of art and art education, scholars have relied on major works including _Democracy and Education, Experience and Nature_, and _Art as Experience_. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the Lab School works and reinterpret them for contemporary philosophers of education and art educators.

In this paper, Leonard Waks investigates connections between listening and expertise or mastery, contrasting approaches from Eastern and Western philosophy. The first section accounts for listening in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a work addressing themes in Chinese philosophy through metaphor and story narratives. In one story a character named “Confucius” advises a student to fast the mind and listen recklessly. The affinity between reckless and what has been called “apophatic” listening is demonstrated by the shared feature of mental emptiness — listening without the imposition of conceptual categories. The second section demonstrates close affinities between the account of listening and expertise or mastery in the Zhuangzi and in the account of expert perception in contemporary Western philosophy and psychology, as exemplified by phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus.

In this essay we explore whether and how we should use bibliometrics in hiring, promoting, and granting in the academy. We suggest a Deweyan-Hickmanian pragmatist approach to reflecting on the technology of bibliometrics as a resource for inherently qualitative judgements in these deliberations. We begin with a literature review of current work evaluating the role and use of bibliometrics in the academy, from advocating for them to questioning their construct validity and assessing their limitations and/or dangerous consequences. In the next section, we take a step back and provide a Deweyan philosophical analysis of the validity and practical use of qualitative assessment. In our conclusion we reflect on what pragmatism can teach about recent algorithmic tools used for faculty evaluation.

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism

Through expert analysis, this text proves that John Dewey's views on efficiency in education are as relevant as ever. By exploring Deweyan theories of teaching and learning, the volume illustrates how they can aid educators in navigating the theoretical and practical implications of accountability, standardization, and assessment. The Contemporary Relevance of John Dewey's Theories on Teaching and Learning deconstructs issues regarding accountability mechanisms, uniform assessment systems, and standardization processes through a Deweyan lens. Connecting the zeitgeist of the era from which Dewey's ideas emerged and current global political, social, and economic contexts, the book emphasizes the importance of resilient systems in reconciliating the tension between standardized assessments and individual student development. Contributors provide insights from a range of settings across Pre-K, primary, secondary, and higher education and address topics including teacher agency, voice, leadership, and democracy. The volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and academics with an interest in philosophy of education, education policy and the impact of neoliberal agendas, as well as teaching and learning more broadly.