American Philosophical Practitioners Association

Lian Baruch-Pelled, MA

I realize now that I was a philosopher when I was nine years old. I didn’t know what philosophy was, that was to come much later. I would gather a team of girlfriends and we would sit around asking questions, mostly ‘why?’ I came to believe that everything happens for a reason. I drove my parents crazy, I still do.

I attended Bar-Ilan University in Israel. I got my BA in political science and it was then that I fell in love, as an adult, with what I now know to be philosophy. I took a course on political thought. It was my introduction to the theories of great minds such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Machiavelli and others. Those discussions made such an impression on me that I decided to minor in philosophy. I knew then that I wanted to devote myself to philosophy. I went on to earn my masters degree, graduating magna cum laude.

While working on my masters, I became familiar with topics such as Bio-Ethics, Physics, Feminism, Philosophy of Religion and even Kabala. I wrote essays on the nature of time, the Body–Mind connection, Psychoanalysis, the effects of a male centered society on medicine and many more. I also translated articles composed by my professor Dr. A. Elitzur, concerning Indeterminism and the Time arrow. Dr. Elitzur is well known in the field and has debated Hawking and other great minds of today.

I am a Certified Member of the APPA. I see what philosophy has done for me, how it made me a whole and better person. I know how it can be used to help others. I feel that I can combine my unique experiences in Kabbalah and Spirituality with philosophy to be even more effective in my solutions for people.

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