What Is a Philosophical Practice?

In 1981, Gerd Achenbach opened the first Philosophische Praxis (philosophical practice) in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany (Achenbach, 1984) — posing a question that hardly anyone had asked before: What if what moves a person is neither an illness nor an optimization problem, but a question that wants to be thought? What if there are people whose concern is neither clinical nor trivial — people who want to think, not be treated?

With this step, Achenbach deliberately placed philosophy alongside psychotherapy. Not as its competitor, but as an independent form of engaging with life’s questions. Since then, an international movement has developed under various names: Philosophische Praxis, Philosophische Beratung, Philosophical Counseling. The terms overlap — and precisely this overlap deserves clarification.

What Is a Philosophical Practice?

A philosophical practice is, first of all, a place. A space where existential questions are not solved but taken seriously in their depth. The person who comes here brings no diagnosis but a concern — often one that only clarifies itself in the conversation. Something is already at work in them, something dark, something unresolved, a half-unconsciousness that wants to come into the light. The practice creates the space for that.

What distinguishes a philosophical practice from a therapeutic one is the starting point. Therapy works with disorder concepts — it assumes that something is wrong and needs to be repaired. Philosophical practice begins differently: not with the disorder, but with the question. Not with the deficit, but with thinking itself. The thought is raised directly — without the detour through a diagnosis.

At the same time, a philosophical practice is more than a place. It is an attitude: the conviction that philosophy is not merely an academic discipline but a way of life. That the questions which move people in times of upheaval — Who am I? What is truly at stake? What is this really about? — are philosophical questions that deserve a philosophical counterpart. Philosophy was originally love of wisdom, knowledge of essences — insight into the deep structure of the world. In a philosophical practice, this understanding returns to everyday life.

Philosophical Practice vs. Philosophical Counseling

The terms are often used interchangeably, but they refer to different things. Philosophical practice means the institution, the tradition, the institutional framework — the place and its history since Achenbach. Philosophical counseling means the activity itself: the conversation, the accompaniment, the work with a person on their questions.

The word counseling is somewhat misleading. It sounds like someone telling you what to do — expertise coming from outside. In fact, philosophical counseling in the strict sense does something different: it accompanies a process of insight. It is not the counselor who knows the answer — what wants to be understood crystallizes in the conversation itself.

I therefore use the term philosophical consultation. The Latin consultare — to deliberate together, to weigh — captures more precisely what happens: two people thinking together. The philosopher brings something specific: logic, an overview of the great intellectual traditions, the ability to open up contexts, and at best wisdom — not as an abstract good, but as judgement that becomes effective in the concrete situation.

The three terms thus mark different levels:

• Philosophical practice — the place and the tradition
• Philosophical counseling — the activity of intellectual accompaniment
• Philosophical consultation — my term for what happens in the conversation itself: thinking together, carried by a living philosophical tradition

Philosophical Practice vs. Therapy

What therapeutic approaches achieve — bringing the hidden to the surface so it can be processed — also happens in a philosophical practice. What coaching accomplishes is included. The path is a different one.

Therapy works with disorder concepts. Every therapeutic approach has in the background a theory of the psyche and a theory of what counts as a psychological disorder. Perception is guided by the diagnosis. What is philosophical about the work in a practice like mine is that the thought is addressed directly — without the detour through a disorder concept. As a philosopher, I bring in the larger context that a therapist, focused on the client’s biography, would not.

Therapy is not rejected wholesale. That would be foolish. The repair ideal — the assumption that a person is not yet ready for life and must first be made whole — becomes problematic, however, where it does not recognize its own limits. What then arises is what I understand as a birth process theme: a culture of permanent preparation in which actual life is perpetually deferred. Philosophical practice proceeds from the opposite premise. The person who comes is already born. Something is already at work in them. The task is not repair but encounter — attending to what is already there.

If you are interested in this distinction in detail, you will find it explored further in the essay Counseling and Therapy Compared.

How Gwendolin Kirchhoff Works

My work is rooted in a tradition that reaches deeper than academic philosophical practice. It is grounded in natural philosophy — in Schelling, Novalis, Goethe — and in the work of my father, the natural philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff, who understood the human being as a spiritual-cosmic being. To this I add Martin Buber’s philosophy of encounter (Buber, 1923), the Eastern wisdom traditions — Confucius, Laozi, the I Ching — and systemic order work in the tradition of Bert Hellinger.

The heart of my work is what I call thinking empathy: a thinking that feels, and a feeling that thinks. While you describe your concern to me, I listen for the unspoken — the space between the words. I receive a felt sense of what may be at the core, and I begin to inquire in that direction. The aim is not to dissect or analyze the thought at work in you, but to clear a path for it — to move with it as it wants to unfold. True midwifery of thinking does not mean showing the other person that they do not know what they are talking about. It means clearing the way through the birth canal for what is already at work in them.

In this, I am neither an empty vessel nor a neutral facilitator. The key is not the pretense of objectivity but the disclosure of one’s own premises. The tradition I draw from does not remain abstract — it is carried into your concrete situation. And between sessions, often just as much happens as within them: what has once been spoken aloud continues to work.

My practice in Berlin brings together philosophical consultation, family constellation as systemic order work, seminars, and annual mentoring. If you are looking for a genuine conversation, schedule a free initial conversation — 30 minutes in which we clarify whether and how I can accompany you. No prior knowledge is needed — only openness, curiosity, and the desire to truly encounter your own question.

Sources

• Achenbach, G. B. (1984). Philosophische Praxis. Cologne: Jürgen Dinter.
• Buber, M. (1923). Ich und Du [I and Thou]. Leipzig: Insel.
• Kirchhoff, G. (2024). Philosophical Accompaniment — What Is It? YouTube: Gwendolin Kirchhoff.
• Kirchhoff, J. (2007). Räume, Dimensionen, Weltmodelle. Drachen Verlag.