For a philosophy in action - part I - Praxisophy

Carving out your own representation of the world

Philosophy is not a doctrine
but an activity.
L.Witgenstein

If philosophy is "the love of wisdom", the common meaning of the word "philosophy" does not reveal the active, world-transforming side that lies behind it. We associate a philosopher with someone who is more of an attentive observer, illuminating our questions with the right words. This is how we see those who profess to speak about philosophy.

But if "loving wisdom" is a practice, what would a practice of loving wisdom be?

An appropriate philosophy

One of my teachers at the Cnam, Pierre Pastré, professed the existence of a "theory in act", by which he meant that there was a difference between, on the one hand, "theory" in its general sense (Marxism, quantum physics.....) what we might call "ideological models" made available to all by science, and on the other hand, the "theory in act" of the individual: the model of the world he constructs for himself through the encounter between his experience and the representations he makes of it.

Pierre Pastré shows that what guides an individual's action is his own theory of the world. A theory that may differ from existing theoretical models, even if it draws on and refers to them. A theory in action, which is of course built from concepts/tools derived from general theories, but which is specific to the individual and different from the general model. This "theory in action" is particular because it is the product of the individual and corresponds to his or her life experience.

It's particular too, because it's constructed with the biases of meaning generated by each individual according to his or her flaws, blind spots, shortcomings and desires.

Particular, too, because it contains unconscious elements of beliefs built up through experience or lack of experience. I'm reminded of this anecdote told by the author of the book "Les grecs croyaient-il à leurs mythes" (Did the Greeks believe in their myths?): a child being taken for a drive by his father saw a house under construction, and thought: so, not all houses are built. No doubt unaccustomed to leaving his neighborhood, he had developed the unconscious belief that all houses were built, through lack of experience of construction. Not only was the belief present, it was unthought of and therefore uncriticizable.

The meaning of action

Our theory in action is therefore a kind of "meaning-making toolbox" that equips each and every one of us to make decisions about meaning and decisions about action. Many of the tools in this box are the lessons each of us has learned from our experiences and transformed into a belief. Beliefs that we use on a daily basis to decide the meaning we give to the world. Because the meaning we give to the world is a decision we make at every moment, as A. Berthoz clearly shows in his book "La décision" ("Decision").

It's the decisions we make about meaning that form the basis of our decisions to act. Decisions of meaning that we make most of the time unconsciously. And do we make these decisions? Or could we say with Alain Berthoz. "We think we're making decisions, but it's often our decisions that make us.

This process is not really reflective, but rather pre-reflective, non-conscious and guided by banal thinking. It introduces distortions of meaning known as cognitive biases.

Fertile confrontation

We can take up the idea of a difference between a general theory and a theory in act, and say that there is philosophy as a discipline on the one hand, and its own philosophy in act on the other. Philosophy, as a discipline built by philosophers and taught in schools, is, like general theories, a reservoir of tools for the intelligibility of reality.

The practice of philosophy has the function of helping us to constantly elaborate and question our philosophy in action. The practice of philosophy consists in learning to open one's "meaning-making toolbox", which is one's own model of the world, and to weed out parasitic beliefs, which are bound to grow when we think automatically and allow cognitive biases and "lazy" banal thinking to cause us to construct inaccurate beliefs or maintain beliefs that have become obsolete. It's in this sense that the raison d'être of introspection approaches, commonly called spiritual approaches or sometimes associated with psychotherapy, is not to heal but to help us grow, as Frédéric Lenoir reminds us in his book Jung un voyage vers soi.

It's about learning to question our beliefs, which form the basis of our life postures and choices. Accepting to confront them through controversy, just as we accept to meet an adversary on the aikido tatami. To realize that, in the end, your only adversary is yourself, and that the other person is merely helping you to expose your shortcomings, flaws and blind spots, so that you can work on them.

This possibility of producing a fruitful confrontation is based on a certain number of skills and rules that correspond to an ethic of confrontation codified both by the rules of martial arts practice and the deontological codes of the support professions.

A benevolent provocateur

This is particularly the raison d'être of supervision, which consists of being accompanied in questioning one's model of the world by drawing on one's inner conflicts and cognitive dissonances. The practice of philosophy then appears as a means of becoming aware of the errors in the construction of meaning that are at the root of them.

Every suffering encountered, every cognitive conflict, every situation of failure experienced, contains the seeds of information about the unthought-of meaning that has little to do with the reality of lived experience, and whose meaning it is supposed to carry. Without an encounter with an unexpected reality (like a child seeing a house under construction for the first time), belief can only remain unthought of, and its philosophy in action unquestioned.

The practice of philosophy is not at all about getting as close as possible to a knowledge of existing philosophical models, but about sharpening one's own questioning tools, using the conceptual tools available in the various "question boxes" that are these theoretical models to chisel out one's own representation of the world.

Illustration: DepositPhotos - ngupakarti

Pour une philosophie en acte - Part 1 - Philosophy or praxisophy?

Pour une philosophie en acte - Part 2 - To philosophize is to die

Pour une philosophie en acte - Part 3 - Why philosophize?

Bibliography

Berthoz Alain, ((2003) La décision. ed : Odile Jacob - https://www.decitre.fr/livres/la-decision-9782738111029.html

Lenoir. F.,(2021) Jung un voyage vers soi - Albin Michel - https://www.decitre.fr/livres/jung-9782226438195.html

Pastré P., (2002). L'analyse du travail en didactique professionnelle. Revue Française de Pédagogie, 138, 9-17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41201763

Veyne. P., (2014) Les Grecs Ont-Ils Cru Leurs Mythes? Essai Sur L'Imagination Constituante ed: Point essai.
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/les-grecs-ont-ils-cru-a-leurs-mythes-essai-sur-l-imagination-constituante-9782757841143.html

Wittgenstein L. - Le Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1922) Ed: Flammarion 2021
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/tractatus-logico-philosophicus-9782070758647.html