Philosophical accompaniment is a form of intellectual work in which existential questions are not solved but taken seriously in their depth. It does not aim at healing or goal attainment, but at clarity — a clarity that cannot be manufactured, yet arises when a conversation opens the space for it.
What Philosophical Accompaniment Means
The word accompaniment already carries the decisive distinction. To accompany means to walk alongside without dictating the destination. This fundamentally sets this work apart from approaches that treat, advise, or train. To treat presupposes that something is wrong. To advise presupposes that someone knows the answer. To accompany presupposes that the person who comes is already thinking, already feeling, and that what moves them is not their defect but their path of understanding.
In Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s work, this attitude combines with what she calls thinking empathy: a thinking that attunes itself to the essence of the other, and a feeling that does not remain self-enclosed but thinks along. It is neither analysis from the outside nor mere sympathy, but an attentiveness that accomplishes both at once — and thereby can hear what lies between the words.
The subject of this work is not the problem someone brings, but the question hiding behind the problem. Philosophical accompaniment does not first ask: What do you want to change? It asks: What wants to be understood? This difference is not rhetorical; it determines the entire course of a conversation.
Where the Concept Comes From
The idea that philosophy can be not merely an academic discipline but a way of life reaches back to Socrates. His method of maieutics — intellectual midwifery — did not produce knowledge of its own but helped the other person give birth to their own insights. Philosophy here was not instruction but encounter.
In the modern era, Gerd Achenbach revived this thought in 1981 with the founding of the Philosophische Praxis (Philosophical Practice). 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 of philosophical counselling has developed, with contributions from Lou Marinoff, Ran Lahav, and Oscar Brenifier, among others.
Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s approach differs from the academically oriented Philosophical Practice through two sources she explicitly draws upon: Martin Buber’s (1878-1965) philosophy of encounter, in which “all real living is meeting,” and the natural philosophy of Jochen Kirchhoff (1944-2025), which understands the human being not merely as a psychological but as a spiritual-cosmic being. Philosophical accompaniment here becomes a form of work that takes the personal seriously without stopping at the personal.
Philosophical Accompaniment in Practice
In the concrete work, philosophical accompaniment takes the form of a conversation that follows no method in the technical sense. There is no protocol, no standardised questioning technique, no prescribed session structure. What sustains the conversation is the quality of attention: the willingness to listen even where it becomes uncomfortable, and to pose a question even where the answer is not yet in sight.
Whoever enters this process brings not a diagnosis but a concern — often one that only clarifies itself within the conversation. The work frequently moves along the boundary between what someone believes they know about themselves and what reveals itself when that knowledge is questioned. Entanglements rooted in family history, patterns of thought mistaken for one’s own opinion, feelings that are not one’s own — all of this can become the subject without being pathologised. What therapeutic approaches achieve through disorder concepts and diagnostic categories happens here too. The path is different: it is not the diagnosis that guides perception, but the thought itself is directly elevated.
Between sessions, often just as much happens as within them. What has once been spoken aloud continues to work. Philosophical accompaniment therefore understands itself not as a one-off intervention but as a process with its own rhythm — one that cannot be rushed.
Related Concepts
Philosophical accompaniment is closely connected to Thinking Empathy, the way of knowing that sustains the conversation, and to Judgement, which can develop through this process. Those who wish to explore the systemic dimension of this work will find the connection to Bert Hellinger’s constellation work and its philosophical development in Order Work.
The question of what distinguishes philosophical accompaniment from therapy and coaching cannot be answered through a simple demarcation. It points to a more fundamental issue: what it means to encounter another person intellectually without wanting to change them, and why precisely this attitude often accomplishes more than any method.