People
turn to philosophy when they become dissatisfied with
shallow and obvious solutions to the quest for meaning,
when they begin to have doubts about what always seemed
certain, when they begin to re-examine how to live a good
life that is moral and meaningful.Venturing past the truisms
that circulate in our culture, some find that friends
and family members may not "get it"; They turn
to the books of the great philosophers and enter into
a kind of quiet dialog through close reading and questioning.
Others prefer to engage in living dialog with a philosopher-practitioner.
My name
is Amélie Benedikt. I am a philosopher-practitioner.
I am also an adjunct professor of philosophy at St. Edward's
New College. I earned my Ph.D. in philosophy at the University
of Texas at Austin. In my doctoral research, I asked some
basic questions. If philosophy is "the love of wisdom,"
what is wisdom? Is it knowledge? Something else entirely?
Can the wisdom of one person be transferred to another?
How does philosophical wisdom differ from the wisdom of
religion, or the wisdom of psychotherapy?
Today,
I use what I have learned when I teach my university students
how to apply ethical analysis to day-to-day problems,
but especially when I help my private clients shape better
lives for themselves through philosophical examination
of their core-values and beliefs. If you are interested
in how philosophy can help you move beyond the obvious,
I invite you to contact me or any APPA certified philosopher-practitioner.
