Philosophical Lexicon
Philosophical concepts that inform my work — not a reference book, but movements of thought. Each entry connects tradition with the present.
Foundations
- Encounter Encounter is what happens between two people when neither reduces the other to an object — a reality in the space between them that transforms both.
- Logic Logic encompasses formal validity and a content layer: the inner structure of a thought, the paradigmatic myth that determines a concept from within.
- Natural Philosophy Why the question about the nature of nature forms the foundation of all serious philosophy, and what it means to think the cosmos as living.
- Space-Organ The Space-Organ is the faculty for perceiving living space — the order encoded in space and its dissonance. An ontological claim, not a metaphor.
- The Analogy Model The analogy model is an epistemological principle: we always think in analogies, and the choice of analogical source determines what we can know.
- Tradition Overview Tradition overview is the knowledge of the great answers to life's fundamental questions, brought into the living encounter with a concrete person.
- Wisdom Wisdom is a living order-giving instance in which the human being participates. It orients action and non-action equally.
Consultation & Method
- C.G. Jung — The Unconscious and Philosophy C.G. Jung understood the unconscious not as a source of disturbance but as a space of genuine knowledge. His work stands in the tradition of Romantic natural philosophy and opens paths that reach far beyond Freudian psychoanalysis. A philosophical overview.
- Contextual Disclosure Contextual disclosure uncovers the invisible premises that determine how a person thinks, judges, and acts — making an epoch's dominant thought-forms visible.
- Family Constellation Familienaufstellung (family constellation) reveals the hidden orders within relational systems by allowing representatives to physically experience unconscious bonds and entanglements in space.
- I-Thou Relationship The I-Thou relationship is the operative principle of philosophical consultation: an attitude that addresses the other as a whole being and opens the space in which what truly matters can reveal itself.
- Judgement Judgement is the capacity to distinguish the essential from the inessential — not through more knowledge, but through a different way of seeing.
- Life Counseling Life counseling is a vast field. But when philosophy enters it, something different happens than coaching with a more refined vocabulary. Thought itself is elevated — without diagnosis, without goal-setting, without a method that inserts itself between the person and their question.
- Maieutics The Socratic art of midwifery conceals, behind an image of modesty, a philosophical seizure of power. Corrected maieutics restores the conditions under which knowledge as remembering can succeed.
- Order — A Philosophical Concept Between Cosmos and Relationship Order is not a human invention but a discoverable structure that extends from the cosmos through the natural world into the relationships between people — and that can only be restored through recognition, not through control.
- Order Work Order work makes the hidden orders within family and relationship systems visible — restoring them through recognition, not change, by naming what was silenced.
- Philosophical Accompaniment Philosophical accompaniment supports a process of understanding, not a process of healing. It works with the thought itself, not through the detour of a diagnosis.
- Philosophical Counseling Philosophical counseling is not therapy by another name. It has its own history, its own methods, and its own epistemic claim — from Socrates through Achenbach to the philosophical consultation.
- Recognition Recognition is the act of naming what has happened and giving it its rightful place — not approval, not forgiveness, but the precondition of every resolution.
- Socratic Dialogue The Socratic dialogue is considered the epitome of philosophical conversation. But the historical method was not open inquiry — it was targeted refutation. What this means for philosophical practice today.
- Socratic Method The Socratic method is the Western tradition's most celebrated form of philosophical inquiry. But its claim to neutrality conceals a seizure of power. What the method actually does — and what it cannot.
- Socratic Questioning Socratic questioning uses structured inquiry to surface hidden assumptions, clarify concepts, and open deeper understanding. But the method only works when the questioner brings more than technique.
- Systemic Constellation Systemic constellation is a method that makes hidden orders in relational systems spatially visible — in families, organizations, and wherever people stand in structures they did not choose.
- Thinking Empathy Thinking empathy is a form of knowing in which thinking and feeling operate as a unity — directed at what is actually at work in a person, not merely expressed.
Leadership & Relationship
- Confucian Relational Order The Confucian relational order describes five fundamental relationships sustaining every community — a 2,500-year-old insight constellation work confirms.
- Confucianism — The Five Relationships and Their Relevance Today Confucianism conceives of the human being through relationships, not as an isolated individual. Ren, Li, De, and the Five Relationships form an ordering framework that remains viable for leadership, family, and ethical action today.
- Daoism — Wu Wei, Laozi, and the Art of Non-Action Daoism rethinks leadership and action from the standpoint of letting go. Wu Wei, non-action in Laozi's sense, does not mean passivity but acting in harmony with the living order of reality.
- Entanglement and Resolution Entanglement is the unconscious bond to another's fate within the family system. Resolution comes through recognition, not understanding.
- I Ching — The Book of Changes as the Art of Decision The I Ching is the oldest book of wisdom in human history. Its 64 hexagrams describe situations in transition and cultivate the ability to recognize the right moment for action and non-action.
- Leadership Ethics — What Philosophy Knows About Good Leadership Leadership ethics does not ask about techniques but about the inner disposition of the one who leads. The philosophical tradition from Confucius through Mengzi to natural philosophy shows: good leadership is rooted in self-cultivation, not in methods.
- Mencius — The Optimistic Confucian and Innate Goodness Mencius (Mengzi, c. 372–289 BCE) taught that human nature is inherently good. His doctrine of the Four Sprouts and the cultivation of the heart provides a philosophical foundation for working with what is already present in a person.
- Succession Succession describes the systemic transition of responsibility between generations -- in families, businesses, and communities. Where predecessors are bypassed, a disorder arises that the entire system feels.
- The Uprooted Powerful The uprooted powerful describes the figure of the risen leader whose power has severed him from his roots.
German Intellectual Tradition
- Buber: I and Thou Martin Buber's I and Thou articulates the ontological foundation of encounter: the human being becomes an I through the Thou. Relation is primary.
- German Idealism — Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the Freedom of Spirit German Idealism emerges after Kant as a philosophy of freedom. Fichte thinks the I as pure act, Schelling thinks nature as living spirit, Hegel thinks spirit as dialectical process. Why Schelling's natural philosophy is the most fruitful strand of this tradition.
- Nihilism — From Nietzsche to the Present What nihilism means philosophically, why Nietzsche did not preach it but diagnosed it, and what form the nihilistic impulse has taken in our time.
- Organic Organic describes a foundational principle of philosophical work: genuine next steps emerge from the process itself, not through planning or method.
- The Philosophy of Romanticism — Novalis, Schlegel, and the Poetic Experience of the World The philosophy of Romanticism is not a program of sentimentality but an epistemological project. Novalis' concept of Romantisieren means qualitative intensification: lending the ordinary an infinite radiance. Why early German Romanticism remains philosophically vital today.
Existence & Knowledge
- Birth Process The birth process reframes crises as passages: what appears as breakdown follows the pattern of a birth that wants to be accompanied, not repaired.
- Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence Why the question 'Can AI be conscious?' obscures the real problem. Natural philosophy shows: consciousness is not a product of computation but the medium in which everything — including every computation — takes place.
- Consciousness Research Consciousness research as cartography of inner reality: how Stanislav Grof's perinatal matrices and Jochen Kirchhoff's natural philosophy expand the concept of knowledge — beyond neuroreductionism and esoteric arbitrariness.
- Cosmic Anthropos The Cosmic Anthropos describes the primordial form of the human being in its full dignity and creative power, in whom all layers of existence are present.
- Cosmology — Philosophical Questions about the Cosmos Philosophical cosmology does not ask how the universe works but what the cosmos is — a dead mechanism or a living organism. From Plato's Timaeus through Giordano Bruno to Jochen Kirchhoff.
- Critique of Science Philosophical critique of science asks not whether science makes mistakes, but what dimensions of reality its method excludes from the outset — from Goethe's participatory observation of nature through Kuhn's paradigm analysis to Jochen Kirchhoff's critique of materialism.
- Death in Philosophy — From Socrates through Heidegger to the Free Human Being Philosophy has placed death at its centre from the very beginning. Yet the most fruitful response lies not in accepting finitude, but in a shift of perspective — from a philosophy of death to a philosophy of birth.
- Epistemology — How We Know What We Know What epistemology means beyond rationalism and empiricism: a living theory of knowledge in which knower and known touch each other.
- Existential Philosophy — Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, and the Question of Being Existential philosophy asks what it means to be human in a world with no inherent meaning. An overview of its thinkers, its central concepts, and its limits.
- Myth and Logos — Two Modes of Experiencing the World Myth and Logos are commonly treated as opposites, yet every concept carries a paradigmatic myth within it. What the Presocratics knew and the Enlightenment forgot.
- Pathogenesis, Not Progress Why the diagnostic gaze that recognises a symptom in progress is neither cultural pessimism nor hostility to technology, but philosophical method.
- Philosophy of Consciousness What is consciousness from the perspective of natural philosophy? Pillar page for the consciousness cluster: Schelling's living nature, Kirchhoff's cosmic anthropos, Grof's perinatal matrices — and why neuroscience cannot pose the decisive question.
- Pre-Birth Pre-birth is the fundamental structure of all human emotionality: something always wants to be born. The question is what wants to come into being.
- The Hard Problem of Consciousness The hard problem of consciousness asks why subjective experience exists at all. But the harder problem is the assumption behind it: that consciousness must be explained from matter. From Schelling and Kirchhoff, the question dissolves — because consciousness was never secondary.
- The Layer Model The layer model describes cognition along two axes: vertical movement from surface to ontological depth, and the feeling-core as living centre of a situation.
- The Meaning of Life — Philosophical Answers from Antiquity to the Present What is the meaning of life? The philosophical tradition offers no formula, but orientations: from Aristotle's eudaimonia through Nietzsche's nihilism to a philosophy of birth.
- Transhumanism — Promise, Critique, and the Question of the Human What transhumanism promises, what image of the human being it rests upon, and why philosophical critique recognizes in it not evolution but a pathogenesis.
Bring philosophy to life
These concepts are not mere theory — they work in life. If you'd like to think them through in your own situation, I'm happy to accompany you.