Philosophical Counseling: Contemporary Russian Experience and Tradition of Russian Religious Philosophy in the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

The Western tradition of philosophical counseling determined its development in Russia, where the process of forming the branch of philosophical counseling and the professional community of philosophers-practitioners is currently underway, leading their activities in a wide field of philosophical counseling, where one can designate a philosopher-author (author of philosophical texts), a philosopher-practitioner, philosopher-layman (client, guest, visitor). The problem of finding a philosopher-layman either in a situation of religiosity or in a situation of secularity can be solved through an appeal based on the polylogue method to the texts of Russian religious philosophy of the first half of the 20th century. This allows in a situation of philosophical counseling through the disclosure of knowledge of the meanings of the symbols of sobornost of Russian religious philosophy “wandering”, “exile”, “heroism”, “self-sacrificing”, “symphony” to determine the form of sociality in which the philosopher-layman resides - secular, religious, religious-secular. We note that it is dialectically necessary to move away from the division of socialities into religious, secular and religious-secular, and it is possible to designate them as different forms of the dialectical formation of sobornost, or forms of disclosure of religiosity in the personality of a philosopher-layman.