An April 2001 HBO special reported that every seventeen minutes somebody in America commits suicide. In fact, since the 1950s there has been a 60 percent increase in suicide worldwide. Why are so many committing what Shakespeare called "self-slaughter"? The report concluded that people kill themselves because they can't see any way out of their troubling situation. Suicides feel checkmated by existence, trapped in a box, arrested without detour.

In a related vein, studies show the onset of serious disease may be linked to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. C. G. Jung claimed a third of his patients had no known "illness" but the aching sense that their lives were meaningless. Victor Frankl spoke of an "existential vacuum" poisoning the lives of his clients. Kierkegaard called this peculiar malaise the "sickness unto death."

What do all these people have in common? As far as I can see, they seem to be suffering from spiritual depression; they seem to be victims of philosophical disease. In short, they are ill at ease with how they see the world, how they interpret their condition. Their ideas, beliefs, and assumptions trip them up, often without them realizing it.

It's not that they've run out of fuel or that their SUV has a flat tire but that they lack useful maps, don't recognize signs or landmarks, have no idea which way to go or turn. They're stuck, disoriented, incommunicado. What they need is directions, a gentle shove toward their destination. But do they have a destination?

People of the 21st century have tradition, they have science, they have gigabites of data. They have psychology and sociology and plenty of pharmacology. What they don't seem to have is a sense of destination, what used to be called wisdom. Wisdom is applied philosophy. It's using our ideas to our best advantage. It's knowledge, as Vico said, that raises not rends the human condition. We need to remind ourselves that wisdom is not necessarily a function of information. Information is just raw material for the seeker of wisdom. In fact, the more information we are flooded with, the more elusive that sly and slippery goddess, Wisdom.

WHAT'S GETTING CRAZIER, PEOPLE OR THE WORLD?

Hardly a day passes without the psychiatric diagnostic manuals adding a new "disorder" to the rosters. The other day I heard on public radio that the dreaded PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome) has been elevated to a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. As Lou Marinoff notes in Plato Not Prozac, in 1952 the DSM-1 listed 112 disorders; the 1994 DSM-4 cites 394. In the 1980s psychiatrists estimated that one in ten Americans was "mentally ill;" by the end of the 90s the figures had leaped to one in two. What's happening here anyway? Are Americans becoming more prolific in the ways they are going crazy? Or is the proliferation of craziness a part of our world, part of the rationale for third party payments, and therefore more about money than madness?

One thing seems sure: The quality of life in these dawn days of the third millennium is changing at breakneck speed. Everything is accelerating. The general sense of our being is rapidly fracturing, exploding into novelty and the unexpected. An excess of possibilities is making us giddy with uncertainty. Nervous systems that took aeons to evolve are bound to recoil with agitation in the face of the relentless thrust of scientific, social, and economic change. It's getting harder and harder to just plain relax. Information technologies intensify our awareness of new risks, threats, dangers--plague, anthrax, asteroids and terrorists; they also expand our options and multiply our lifestyles. They leave us to wander fancy-free in a penny arcade of worldviews and normlessness.

A TIME OF NEED

So we can say that ours is a time of need. Besides the plethora of schools of counseling and psychotherapy that have sprung up everywhere, we see droves of needy souls turning to fortune tellers, psychics, and astrologers. Others join bizarre cults to extract their life-meaning while some bow to traditional faith, returning to their childhood religion or searching exotic wisdom traditions. Most of these paths have probably helped some people some of the time. If a word, an act of kindness or handy piece of advice gets you through a tough spot, back on your feet and whistling on the road, thank God for small mercies.

A small mercy worth adding to the list has a long history of twenty-five hundred years. I am happy to report that in the midst of this ferment of soul-searching, a band of philosophers have begun to emerge from their academic lairs and enter the fray of the practical world and its fuzzy problems. Reborn from a discipline that for years insisted on being clear, boring and irrelevant, philosophers today are seen tackling problems in the ethically-challenged fields of medicine and business, and some, more cutting, like Peter Singer, have been publicly skewering the moral self-centeredness of consumer society.

But we are also seeing the symposium side of the philosophic spirit reborn. In France, Holland, England, Israel, and America, philosophers have begun to sit down in cafes, bookstores, libraries, and other public places, and people have come out of nowhere, hearing about this strange new activity away from the television, bravely throwing themselves into talk about solitude and community, trust and betrayal, love and death. These little festivals of communal discourse, usually moderated by a pro, are another form the new spirit of practical philosophy is taking today.

Even more surprising, in the 1980s, philosophers like Gerd Achenbach, started to put out their shingles as counselors and consultants, advertising their wares to help people untie the mental knots confusing and impeding their lives.

It's no exaggeration to say there are signs of a renaissance of philosophy. Not only is philosophy expanding its range under the influence of multiculturalism, with eastern, indigenous, and feminist philosophies enriching the palette of thought; it has taken a practical turn. The emphasis on practice is, of course, by no means new. All practical philosophy must look to Karl Marx as a prophet. Marx wrote: "Hitherto philosophy has sought to understand the world; the point is to change it." Actually, Marx was wrong in part. Philosophy since the days of the Greeks has been a force in changing the world and changing the way we live. Consider, for example, the words of Epicurus who died in 271 BCE: "Empty is the argument of the philosopher that does not relieve any suffering." Epicurus here adopts the same attitude as the Buddha who thought philosophy worthless unless it served to relieve suffering.

The ancient Greek and Roman thinkers were practical, and it is easy to trace how they evolved from older shamanic traditions. Philosophy was an important part of education, a tool for cultivating the art of living. How should we live? was the great question. Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great, to the benefit of human history. Plato was an educator and trainer of souls. Stoic philosophy was spiritual balm for the emperor Marcus Aurelius and the lame slave Epictetus. Even the skepticism of the ancient skeptics had a therapeutic intent, and was geared toward achieving tranquility of mind and reducing hostility and other disturbing emotions.

THE REVOLUTIONARY POWER OF PHILOSOPHY

The truth is that philosophy, for good or for ill, has been a very powerful force in world history. If that conflicts with the image of the unworldly philosopher who falls into wells, so much the better. Anyone who thinks philosophy is a nerd's game played in an ivory tower is sadly mistaken.

Philosophy invented an entirely new way of looking at reality. It spearheaded a major shift from the mythical to the rational mind, from poetic to critical consciousness. This shift in consciousness was a provocative event in human history, for it set into motion a process with unpredictable consequences so far-ranging, no one knows where it will end. Philosophy has changed human life and transmuted the living earth. What is it about this philosophy that can be so unsettling? With the exception of art, philosophy is the part of our experience where we push the idea of freedom to its limits. I mean the freedom to doubt and the freedom of creative imagination, the freedom to conceive and re-conceive what is given, what appears before us, "reality" itself. Whitehead sensed this terrifying splendor of philosophy when he said: "Negation is the peak of intellect." So did the anarchist Michael Bakunin when he said: "Every act of destruction is an act of creation."

The Greek philosophers are famous for inventing the concept of nature. Before the Greeks, people saw supernatural forces everywhere. The sky was a blue goddess for the Egyptians. Among the pre-philosophic Greeks, the earth harbored vengeful spirits and a sky god spoke through thunder and lightning. No one looked at the world as a scene of natural forces and elements, operating autonomously with law-like necessity. Then natural philosophy appeared and slowly began to rid nature of spiritual beings and replaced it with matter and motion, atoms and the void.

The Greeks further subdued the monster of contingency with logic. The concept of nature and the concept of logic joined together and laid the foundation for science. With Galileo human intelligence begins to actively manipulate nature. The art (techne) of the ancients becomes the technology of the moderns.

The plot now gets more involved. Science and technology make it possible to reinvent nature. Creature becomes creator. Heidegger said that science has made nature into a factory serving human needs. I simply want to stress the power of philosophy. From Democritus who created the concept of the atom to the splitting of the atom or the fusion of the atom as in the H-Bomb was, in spirit, a straight line.

Philosophy has made a huge dent on history in another way. French and American philosophes invented the ideas of civil or natural rights, and were the source of the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Modern democratic ideals, brainchild of European philosophy, are dominant political and planetary forces today. Despite the insidious appeal of fascism and fundamentalism, the world intuitively understands that democracy is the best working model of government around. Democratic ideals, wed to Western technology and capitalism, make for a powerful world-historical meme. Beneath this juggernaut of unrest throbs the unsatisfied anarchic genius of philosophy.

Perhaps the most revolutionary practical invention of philosophy is the computer. The computer, lest we forget, is a logic machine. Without logic, which Bertrand Russell called the essence of philosophy, there would be no computer. The computer, as technical basis of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, bioengineering, gene therapy, and the rest of the machine arsenal, threatens to throw earth off balance. Some say we have made the computer into an idol, modeling the soul after a machine that crunches numbers. Others dream of the coming singularity when the computer learns to outstrip and get rid of man. The blasphemous computer--a philosophical toy--steals God's power and promises to engineer a Second Creation.

THE NEW ART OF BEING HUMAN

Philosophy, I submit, is powerful stuff. It has been an incalculable force in human history. Yet, I believe we have still to witness its greatest creative potential. So far, it has focused on transforming the external world, giving birth to science, democracy and technology, which in turn have spawned consumerism, globalization, and artificial intelligence. Swept up in this nonstop whirlwind of change, the tempo of history seems to be dangerously accelerating. The question is: Where are we going? The human image seems to be fragmenting into bits and pieces. We have entered a period when the idea of who and what we are is completely fluid and chaotic. The metaphysical landscape is so fluid that one is driven to talk about the need for a new art of being human. It's here--in the unprecedented freedom of postmodern times--that philosophy has yet to reveal its greatest promise.

But how? By applying philosophical skills, ideas, and virtues to deconstructing and revising our worldviews. I can imagine that this will be the art form of the 21st century. What greater art than the art of constructing our own life-shaping visions of the truth? What more necessary art in a world without landmarks, a world where our most cherished illusions of self are in doubt. What more useful than to help revise and adapt one's worldview in our fluid a-centric world. The issue of worldview is central to the new improvisational art of being human.

What exactly is a worldview? In response to a challenging, changing world, all people develop worldviews. A worldview at first is an instinctive style of conceiving the nature of reality, forming values, gaining knowledge, and mastering behavior. Our lives are in reality the acting out of our worldviews. Most of the time they act upon us without our being conscious of their influence. Philosophical liberation begins when we start to examine them. "The unexamined life is not worth living," as Socrates famously said. The job is to ferret out the unconscious ideas, the hidden assumptions and automatic dispositions that make up our worldview--the lens we use to interpret and experience the world.

The first step in this revisionary art is consciously facing difficulties. Wisdom is not a formula or magic pill, but learning to apply mind to the art of living, learning to deal with the unpredictable. In other words, the raw materials of the art of philosophy are the very things we prefer to avoid and repress: opposition and negativity. But perhaps we need the negative to wake up to what we are and may be. "Without contraries is no progression," said William Blake. Hegel puts it like this: "Contradiction is the force that moves things." In short, when life contradicts us it may be a blessing in disguise. To find the blessing in the contradiction is part of the art of philosophy.

Practical philosophy in a democratic age is a humble therapeutes. A therapeutes, in Greek, is an attendant; a friend that lends an ear, respects your freedom, helps you on your way through a rough day or a bad night. A philosophical therapeutes appeals to your critical mind, your conceptual agility, your skill to spot a fallacy or lapse into self-deception. He or she helps you out of the conceptual box you're in, nudges you to re-imagine your hang-up, drills you to use your precious evolutionary gift of free will. This is short-term philosophical therapy.

There is also the long-range for bolder athletes of the spirit. Now, instead of negotiating a few turns in the road, we head out on a long journey, and prepare to kiss all that is easy and familiar goodbye. We use the obstacles we meet to confront the deep structure of our worldview, the web of beliefs that unconsciously guides or misguides our lives. We welcome the electric shock of the stingray, the soul-quickening bite of the gadfly, and willingly enter into a state the Greeks called aporia, a therapeutic loss of way. The deep sense of what is is up for grabs; and the foundation rocks. But instead of replacing a dysfunctional part, we are ready to scrap the whole shaky edifice. Whether this frees us to find our way home or drives us crazier than we are is the risk of the philosophic venture.