The therapeutic approach to philosophy sees philosophical problems as misconceptions that are to be therapeutically dissolved. The approach stems from
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consider ...
.
Some noted philosophers who can be said to take a therapeutic approach are
John McDowell
John Henry McDowell, FBA (born 7 March 1942) is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ...
,
Alice Crary, and
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic phi ...
.
Quietists, philosophers associated with ''
The New Wittgenstein
''The New Wittgenstein'' (2000) is a book containing a family of interpretations of the work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. In particular, those associated with this interpretation, such as Cora Diamond, Alice Crary, and James F. Conant, ...
'' and
anti-philosophy Antiphilosophy is an opposition to traditional philosophy.Penelope Maddy, "Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy of Mathematics", Johannes Czermak and Klaus Paul, eds., ''Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics'', 1993, http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~pjmaddy/ ...
are all pertinent to the therapeutic approach.
Hans-Johann Glock Hans-Johann Glock (born 12 February 1960, Freudenstadt) is a German philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Zurich.
Biography
Glock studied philosophy, German studies, and mathematics at University of Tübingen, University of ...
has argued against the plausibility of the therapeutic approach as accurately characterizing Wittgenstein's philosophy.
Hans Sluga
Hans D. Sluga (; born April 24, 1937) is a German philosopher who spent most of his career as professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Sluga teaches and writes on topics in the history of analytic philosophy, the history ...
and
Rupert Read
Rupert Read (born 1966) is an academic and a Green Party campaigner and a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. Read is a reader in philosophy at the University of East Anglia have advocated a "post-therapeutic" or "liberatory" interpretation of Wittgenstein.
See also
*
Existential therapy
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence incl ...
*
Philosophical counseling Philosophical consultancy, also sometimes called philosophical practice or philosophical counseling or clinical philosophy, is a contemporary movement in practical philosophy. Developing since the 1980s as a profession but since the 1950s as a prac ...
References
{{Reflist
Philosophical methodology
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Metaphilosophy