Philosophy Help Desk Project

What is an active philosophy help desk?

It’s a place where one can speak with a philosopher. Active Philosophy aims to give rational skills and deepness in thinking and it can be a useful tool in creating and maintaining your sense of wisdom and overall self-improving capacity. It is very helpful in life’s change, integration, self-identity, in decisions making and facing life’s storms. The consultation focuses on effective strategies. Active philosophy actively helps you to reach a solution.

It is available to anybody at no charge. This service is accessible at municipalities and humanitarian organisations, social and health institutions, job- centres, schools.

Is it a kind of psychotherapy?

Not at all. Psychology is about the act of knowing (mental acts) while philosophy is about the object of knowledge, that is, reality. Philosophy believes that many of the predicaments affecting people come not from mental disorders but from misinterpretations of reality.

What does it mean

Some people do not understand the level of reality they are living in, the dynamics, in short, what is going on. They are confused. According to Wittgenstein ‘the world is the totality of facts not of things’. All the same the world is not the totality of emotions and feelings but the totality of facts. Philosophy is about the world and ‘all what is the case’.

Sometimes to make sense of one’s life we have to reach a higher level (or descriptive domains) of reality. What makes sense at one level, may be incomprehensible at another level.

Descriptive domains

Reality is not an abstract word. Within a size range of 41 powers of ten, that is, from the size of an electron (10^-15 meters) to that of a supercluster of galaxies (10 ²⁶ meters), it is possible to recognize a succession – by increasing orders of magnitude – of levels of reality, organized structures, descriptive domains, in short, “systems” each with its own typical predominant entities: from simple to complex ones, from cells to bacteria, from neurons to brains,  from societies to biospheres, from planets to stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters…..

Although it is often difficult to identify clear boundaries of separation between these levels of description of reality, it is, however, equally true that each of them has its own rules, its own laws, its own competencies, its own “epiphenomena” (i.e., phenomena “emerging” only at that level). Above all, each level has its own set of skills and meanings: what makes sense at one

level, may be incomprehensible at another level; what appears significant in one domain of reality may not retain that status when observed from another domain…….

So what?

It is about getting through higher levels of descriptions, acquiring a better awareness of systems and organised structures present at a higher level and getting acquainted with specific epiphenomena.

Can you make an example?

Of course. Let’s take a marriage or a couple’s relationship. We can struggle and having difficulties without really knowing why. We tend to blame our partner  if things don’t work out, features such as character, personality and mentality.

Maybe we simply ignore what a marriage or a partnership is. We ignore some basic rules of social reality and what does it mean (in philosophy) to do things together. Marriage or relationship or social activities  rules follow rules of Social Cooperative Agency a) commitment to the common project b)  mutual responsivness c) mutual support.

Social reality is made by invisible and weightless structures, and the lack of knowledge makes us confused, drifting along a descriptive level we do not comprehend.

Luigi Amato Kunst

Luigi Amato Kunst is a philosophy consulting analyst. Specialized in Theoretical Philosophy, Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, is the founder of PHILOACTIVA organisation.