Interdisciplinary Research in Counseling, Ethics and Philosophy - IRCEP

The Phenomenon of Yātrā: A Philosophical Form of Collective Practice

Bojana Brajkov — 2026-04-14

The word Yātrā, translated from Sanskrit into English, means “journey” or “voyage.” It is often associated with significant and meaningful travel, such as a spiritual journey. Yātrā can be understood as both, an outward and inward journey, as it encompasses personal transformation, since every external journey is inherently also an inner one. Moreover, Yātrā implies collectiveness, especially in the context of spiritual pilgrimages, since it is often undertaken by groups of people joined in compassion, devotion, shared joy, growth, love, and united in difficult times. The Rajasthan Kabir Yātrā is rooted in the Bhakti and Sufi poetry of mystic saints such as Kabir, Mirabai, Bulleh Shah, and others, who are known for their devotion to love, equality, and the rejection of rigid rituals and rules. This article draws parallels between the Rajasthan Kabir Yātrā and the students’ long walks taking place in Serbia in 2025. I recognize these as a form of Student Yātrā—a journey of togetherness, care, love, and devotion—expressing a radical aesthetic of community.

Philosophy of Health in Renaissance Platonism: Between Theory and Practice

Vuk Trnavac — 2026-04-14

This research will attempt to show that the relationship between theory and practice of The Health in Renaissance thought, especially Platonist-oriented one(s), is analogous to what Hans-Georg Gadamer says in his text from 1990 - Philosophy and Practical Medicine. Here, we primarily refer to his view that it is undeniable that “classical medicine on which the research of modern medicine is largely based, is only a small sector compared to the human task that the art of healing as a whole should accomplish”. Almost all the significant thinkers of the Renaissance Platonism, among whom we will highlight - Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim – Paracelsus, although aware of the importance of empirical research, especially for the period of humanism and anticipation of the later birth of a New Science (1725) never abandoned theory as a guide to practical results when it comes to many fields, including the area of The Health and medicine. This is perhaps best reflected in the words of probably the greatest mystic, naturalist, alchemist, and empiricist in general of all the above thinkers, and that is certainly Paracelsus, who claimed that the source of every disease is in the Nature, and the Healing and the Health lies only in the Spirit.

Who Am I as a Knower? Plato, Asimov, and the Transformation of Epistemic Selfhood in the Age of AI

Rotem Waizman — 2026-04-14

This article examines how artificial intelligence reshapes not only knowledge practices but the experience of knowing itself. While contemporary discussions of AI often focus on accuracy, bias, and educational outcomes, this study shifts attention to the phenomenological and existential dimensions of epistemic change. Drawing on Plato’s allegory of the cave and Isaac Asimov’s speculative narratives, the article develops a conceptual framework for understanding knowledge as a formative and experiential process, characterized by uncertainty, dialogue, and intellectual struggle. Against this background, the article argues that AI-mediated environments introduce a qualitatively different epistemic experience, defined by immediacy, fluency, and reduced cognitive friction. The central claim is that the problem is not whether AI produces correct knowledge, but that it transforms how knowledge is encountered. This transformation contributes to the erosion of the questioning self, diminishing tolerance for uncertainty, replacing dialogue with response, and reducing opportunities for intellectual struggle. The article further explores the implications of this shift for philosophical counseling and education, proposing a reorientation toward practices that restore questioning, sustain uncertainty, and resist premature resolution. It concludes that the ethical challenge posed by AI is not only to regulate its use, but to preserve the conditions under which human beings can remain subjects who question, reflect, and engage meaningfully with knowledge.

Syllogizing LBT: Applying Formal Logic to Logic-Based Therapy

Christopher John Searle — 2026-04-14

Philosophical counselling has emerged as a contemporary movement that treats philosophical reasoning as a mode of therapeutic practice. Within this movement, Elliot D. Cohen’s Logic-Based Therapy (LBT) is the most robust attempt to resolve emotional disturbance through the application of formal reasoning. However, LBT reduces all irrational thinking to a single modus ponens schema, thereby misclassifying the logical structure of counselees’ actual inferences and locating the alleged irrationality in the propositional content of the premises rather than in the reasoning itself. This reduction overlooks the fact that beliefs, as propositional attitudes, are neither rational nor irrational; only the act of believing can be so assessed, and irrationality arises when an inference violates logical validity. In this brief paper, I argue that a classical syllogistic framework corrects this mistake. Drawing on Aristotle’s peristaseis and Boethius’s De syllogismo categorico, I outline a method for reconstructing the actual argument form underlying a counselee’s reasoning. This restores logical analysis to LBT and reveals irrationality as deriving from invalid reasoning, not falsity in propositions.

From Gift to Care: Jean-Luc Marion and the Ethical Foundations of Organ Donation in Philosophical Practice

Adrian Marcu — 2026-04-14

This article develops a philosophically grounded framework for understanding organ donation as an ethical, existential, and dialogical phenomenon. It argues that organ donation may be interpreted, in Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological vocabulary, as a paradigmatic instance of the gift, that is, as an event marked by gratuity, asymmetry, and non-reciprocity. Yet the phenomenology of the gift, taken by itself, leaves unresolved important questions concerning vulnerability, relational dependence, psychological burden, and the normative limits of advising others in morally charged contexts. For this reason, Marion’s account is placed in dialogue with Martha Nussbaum’s theory of compassion and with care ethics, especially as developed by Carol Gilligan and Virginia Held. The article further situates this conceptual framework within philosophical counselling, drawing particularly on the work of Lou Marinoff and Vasile Hațegan in order to clarify the methodological and ethical limits of reflective guidance. Special attention is given to clients whose moral reasoning is shaped by religious commitments and by concerns about bodily integrity, death, and spiritual meaning. The article argues that philosophical counselling can ethically assist such clients in clarifying the meaning of organ donation without collapsing into persuasion or moral imposition. In this way, the paper contributes both to philosophical practice and to contemporary applied ethics by articulating a non-directive but conceptually rigorous model for addressing organ donation in dialogical settings.

From Existential Vacuum to Divine Submission: A Post-Secular Hermeneutical Inquiry into Frankl and Thānwī’s Doctrines of Meaning

Zafar Iqbal — 2026-04-14

This paper presents a comparative hermeneutics of healing by examining Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy alongside the Islamic tradition of tazkiyah al-nafs, particularly as articulated by Ashraf ‘Alī Thānwī. While Frankl’s framework locates meaning within the self through the “will to meaning,” it remains ontologically grounded in secular autonomy and existential immanence. In contrast, tazkiyah—rooted in Qur’ānic revelation and prophetic spirituality—presents meaning as divinely anchored and realized through submission (ubūdiyyah). Drawing on Thānwī’s texts such as Tarbiyat al-Sālik, al-Takashshuf and Ashraf al-Jawāb, the paper argues that these two models are not interdisciplinary partners but metaphysically incompatible paradigms. Meaning, in the Islamic tradition, is not self-constructed but revealed, not therapeutic but devotional. This paper therefore proposes a post-secular rethinking of philosophical counseling that affirms a metaphysical either/or rather than an integrative “and,” reclaiming tazkiyah from the reductionism of modern psychology and repositioning it as a theologically coherent alternative to Western therapeutic discourses.