Medical analogies are commonly invoked in both Indian Buddhist dharma and Hellenistic philosophy. In the Pāli Canon, nirvana (or, in Pāli, nibbāna) is depicted as a form of health, and the Buddha is portrayed as a doctor who helps us attain it. Much later in the tradition, Śāntideva described the Buddha’s teaching as ‘the sole medicine for the ailments of the world, the mine of all success and happiness.’ Cicero expressed the view of many Hellenistic philosophers when he said that philosophy is ‘a medical science for the mind.’ He thought we should ‘hand ourselves over to philosophy, and let ourselves be healed.’ ‘For as long as these ills [of the mind] remain,’ he wrote, ‘we cannot attain to happiness.’ There are many different forms of medical analogy in these two traditions, but the most general form may be stated as follows: just as medicine cures bodily diseases and brings about physical health, so Buddhist dharma or Hellenistic philosophy cures mental diseases and brings about psychological health—where psychological health is understood as the highest form of happiness or well-being. Insofar as Buddhist dharma involves philosophy, as it does, both renditions of the analogy may be said to declare that philosophy cures mental diseases and brings about psychological health. This feature of the analogy—philosophy as analogous to medical treatment—has attracted considerable attention.

A given statement may be plausible, well founded or true. An individual action may be judged courageous, useful or good. Human beings are judged as well, for statements or actions that invite such evaluations, though the terms used may be different: a person may be described as truthful and virtuous, clever and happy. Epistemology and ethics – the theories that justify theoretical and practical judgements – may address not only the criteria used to assess states of belief, assertions, knowledge and the like, actions, omissions and feelings, but also the people that give rise to them. Nowadays, the issue of when and how a human being becomes clever, truthful, good or happy is less a matter of philosophy and more a question for religion, psychology and pedagogy. This has not always been the case. There has been a perceptible shift in moral philosophy: in antiquity, inquiries as to when a life is to be classified as good or happy were prevalent; in the modern era, the focus is primarily on when an individual action is to be regarded as right or good, wrong or bad.

The scholastic mode of intellectual enquiry has been looked down upon in Western philosophical circles over the last few centuries, not least because of the central role of authorities shaping the reasoning that takes place and because of the fine distinctions and disputational mode of discourse it employs. The scholastic approach is, however, a prime example of philosophy as therapeia, of intellectual inquiry and reflection concerned with the healing transformation of human life, with what kind of knowledge and behaviour brings about human happiness. The scholastic approach is motivated and determined by consideration of what the final human goal might be and what are the means to achieve it. Authorities are important because they tell us about the goal and means. Distinctions and disputation are important because they help us learn in a way that transforms our minds and actions.

In 1931, in the remarks collected as Culture and Value, Wittgenstein writes: ‘A thinker is very much like a draughtsman whose aim it is to represent all the interrelations between things.’ At a glance it is clear that this analogy might contribute significantly to a full description of the autobiographical thinker as well. And this conjunction of relations between things and the work of the draughtsman immediately and strongly suggests that the grasping of relations is in a sense visual, or that networks or constellations of relations are the kinds of things (to continue the ocular metaphor) brought into focus by seeing in the right way.

When we speak of philosophy and therapy, or of philosophy as therapy, the usual intent is to suggest that ‘philosophizing’ is or should be a way to clarify the mind or purify the soul. While there may be little point in arguing with psychoses or deeply-embedded neuroses our more ordinary misjudgements, biases and obsessions may be alleviated, at least, by trying to ‘see things clearly and to see them whole’, by carefully identifying premises and seeing what they – rationally – support, and by seeking to eliminate the residual influence of premises that we have long since, rationally, dismissed. I don't intend to argue with this account – though of course it may be as well to remember that ‘philosophizing’ may have more dangerous effects. It is not obvious that philosophical argument will always help us ‘see things straight’, and the Athenian democracy was not altogether wrong to think that some of Socrates' followers or pupils learnt quite the wrong things from him.

Socrates famously compares himself to a midwife in Plato's Theaetetus. Much less well known is the developed metaphor of pregnancy at the centre of the initiation ritual that begins Brahmanical education. In this ritual, called Upanayana, the teacher is presented as becoming pregnant with the student. The Arthavaveda states:

Of the many interrelated themes in Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, two strike me as having a particular centrality. First, there is the theme of attention to the present instant. Hadot describes this as the ‘key to spiritual exercises’ (p.84), and he finds the idea encapsulated in a quotation from Goethe's Second Faust: ‘Only the present is our happiness’ (p.217). The second theme is that of viewing the world from above: ‘philosophy signified the attempt to raise up mankind from individuality and particularity to universality and objectivity’ (p.242). Insofar as both attention to the present and raising oneself to an objective view imply the mastery of individual anxiety, passion and desire, they belong to a single conception, that conception being one of a ‘return to the self’:

This chapter seeks to make a contribution to the growing interest in Nietzsche's relation to traditions of therapy in philosophy that has emerged in recent years. It is in the texts of his middle period (1878–82) that Nietzsche's writing comes closest to being an exercise in philosophical therapeutics, and in this chapter I focus on Dawn from 1881 as a way of exploring this. Dawn is a text that has been admired in recent years for its ethical naturalism and for its anticipation of phenomenology. My interest in the text in this chapter is in the way it revitalises for a modern age ancient philosophical concerns, notably a teaching for mortal souls who wish to be liberated from the fear and anguish of existence, as well as from God, the ‘metaphysical need’, and romantic music, and are able to affirm their mortal conditions of existence. As a general point of inspiration I have adopted Pierre Hadot's insight into the therapeutic ambitions of ancient philosophy which was, he claims, ‘intended to cure mankind's anguish’ (for example, anguish over our mortality). This is evident in the teaching of Epicurus which sought to demonstrate the mortality of the soul and whose aim was, ‘to free humans from “the fears of the mind”.’ Similarly, Nietzsche's teaching in Dawn is for mortal souls. In the face of the loss of the dream of the soul's immortality, philosophy for Nietzsche, I shall show, has new consolations to offer in the form of new sublimities. Indeed, for Nietzsche it is by reflecting, with the aid of psychological observation, on what is ‘human, all too human’, that ‘we can lighten the burden of life’ (HH 35). Nietzsche's thinking in Dawn contains a number of proposals and recommendations of tremendous value to philosophical therapeia, including (a) a call for a new honesty about the human ego and human relations, including relations of self and other and love, so as to free us from certain delusions; (b) the search for an authentic mode of existence which appreciates the value of solitude and independence; (c) the importance of having a rich and mature taste in order to eschew the fanatical. After an introduction to Nietzsche's text the chapter is divided into two main parts. In the first main part I explore various aspects of his conception of philosophical therapy, including purification of the higher feelings and liberation from the destructive effects of ‘morality’ and Christianity. In the second main part I explore his conception of ‘the passion of knowledge’, which is the passion that guides modern free spirits as they seek to overcome the need of religion and constraints of ‘morality’, and to access the new sublimities of philosophy.

One way to understand philosophy as a form of therapy is this: it involves a philosopher who is trying to cure himself. He has been drawn into a certain philosophical frame of mind—the ‘disease’—and has thus infected himself with this illness. Now he is sick and trying to employ philosophy to cure himself. So philosophy is both: the ailment and the cure. And the philosopher is all three: pathogenic agent, patient, and therapist.

It seems uncontroversial that Buddhism is therapeutic in intent. The word ‘therapy’ is often used, however, to denote methods of treating medically defined mental illnesses, while in the Buddhist context it refers to the treatment of deep-seated dissatisfaction and confusion that, it is claimed, afflict us all. The Buddha is likened to a doctor who offers a medicine to cure the spiritual ills of the suffering world. In the Pāli scriptures, one of the epithets of the Buddha is ‘the Great Physician’ and the therapeutic regimen or healing treatment is his teaching, the Dhamma. This metaphor is continued in later literature, most famously in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra, where the Buddha is said to be like a benevolent doctor who attempts to administer appropriate medicine to his sons. In the Mahāyāna pantheon, one of the most popular of the celestial Buddhas is Bhaiṣajyaguru, the master of healing, who is believed to offer cures for both the spiritual and more mundane ailments of sentient beings. The four truths, possibly the most pervasive of all Buddhist teachings, are expressed in the form of a medical diagnosis. The first truth, that there is suffering (dukkha), is the diagnosis of the disease. The second truth, that suffering arises from a cause (or causes), seeks to identify the root source of the disease. The third truth, that suffering can be ended, is a prognosis that the disease is curable. The fourth truth describes the path to end suffering, and is the prescription of treatment.

This chapter tries to show that there is indubitable evidence for the claim that the Yoga philosophy of Patañjali can be said to be a philosophy as therapeia. For this reference will be made particularly to the Sāṅkhya school, whose ontology and metaphysics are presupposed by Yoga philosophy. The Sāṅkhya school begins with the question about overcoming three kinds of ‘suffering’ that torment human beings, and Patañjali himself says that the implementation of yoga, is, among other things, for the sake of minimising the afflictions (kleśas, YS 2, 2). The second part of the chapter will be concerned with the philosophical activity referred to in Yoga itself, namely the active yoga, or yoga in the form of action (kriyāyoga, YS 2, 1), in order to show how this can be seen as advancing the case for Yoga as therapeia.