Paper presentation: The uneasiness of being a philosophical practitioner
Abstract: If you observe the field of philosophical practice, you could get the impression, that people are constantly searching to find their place and function in society. There is a lot of unrest, search for new formats, a quest for professionalization and the not so easy task to differentiate what we do from the activity of other people in the counselling and coaching business, especially from the vast continent of professional psychology and psychoanalysis. As I am myself victim of this uneasiness and of this unrest, I would like to share some personal reflections about philosophical practice, about its specificity, about the reasons for the tensions it may create and about possible paths into the future.
Short bio: Albert Hoffmann studied philosophy at the University of Zürich. Since the year 2005, he was organizing open philosophical discussions (café philo) in the center of Zürich and sporadically in other cities in Switzerland. Since 2013 he has been practicing as philosophical counsellor. On several occasions he performed philosophical rituals in public. After moving to the Czech Republic in September 2021, he started doing philosophical counselling in Prague. At the moment, he runs a café philo in Czech (weekly), a café philo in English and a café philo in German (both once a month). He is member of IGPP (Internationale Gesellschaft für Philosophische Praxis) and of ZIPPRA (Zürcher Institut für Philosophische Praxis).