In experiential philosophical practice, workshops and counseling sessions are developed on the basis of discursive analysis and by training with transformative exercises.
Experiential philosophical practice is grounded in the fact that reasoning is insufficient for bringing about an intimate and radical change in all cases. Having said that, this metamorphosis is produced in experiences such as giving birth or rearing a child, being close to death or coping with the demise of someone close, or being abandoned by one's partner. The suffering caused by these situations does not only change our ideas, but also our way of understanding and facing the world, our feelings, our decisions and even our desires and aversions.
The experiential dimension that philosophical practice leverages involves exercises for training in dispositions that facilitate change. It makes this reality possible in scenarios and transformative vital metaphors. Thus, philosophical action is understood as a pilgrimage, a journey or an action akin to cultivating a plant. Its objective is not to achieve uncritical and deficient capitalist happiness, but to encourage us to lead deeper and more critical, aware and authentic lives.
This book explains how to develop workshops seriously and rigorously, in which philosophical aspects are not lost in a dialogue or reasoning that any professional can deploy. Following this, it describes the four mainstays of the experiential approach: exercises, dispositions, scenarios and metaphors. Lastly, it qualifies this approach with real experiences, including the author's last one in South American prisons: the philosophical practice in prisons project BOECIO.
Jose Barrientos-Rastrojo is a tenured professor of philosophy at Seville University, the leader of the philosophical practice in prisons project BOECIO, a philosophical practice project aimed at developing philosophical skills for volunteers and international aid workers, and the "Experiencialidad" research group, as well as being the director of HASER. Revista Internacional de Filosofia Aplicada. After defending the first European dissertation on philosophical counseling, he has subsequently supervised a dozen PhD, MA and BA theses dealing with philosophical practice and philosophy for/with children.
Although educated in Spain, Barrientos has researched at the Universities of Harvard, Cambridge, Princeton, Chicago, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and the UNAM in Mexico. His research has resulted in approximately 500 publications, conference papers and keynotes the world over. He has also been the youngest director of the International Conference on Philosophical Practice, while creating and organizing other international events including the Iberoamerican Conference on Philosophical Practice, with Professor Jose Ordonez, and the International Sophia Retreat on Contemplative Philosophy, with Ran Lahav. Likewise, he has designed and managed university MA and training programs in this respect in different countries.
He has received the Award Cooperation Acknowledgment (2018) and the first Premio Internacional de Filosofia (2018), both in Mexico, the first Premio Internacional de Filosofia (2014) in Portugal and the first Premio Nazionale di Filosofia "Le figure del pensiero" (2012) in Italy.
He often posts information about his activities as a philosophical practitioner and scholar on his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Email: barrientos@us.es.
