I am very excited! I am in the final edits (I think I said that before!) of my new book Mental Health Philosophy.
Since I have never really worked to promote any of my books, and I am in the process of figuring out how I will go about it, Someone suggested publishing parts of it, giving tastes of it. So here is a note on mental health philosophy.
Here is a few paragraphs from the
Note of Approach to mental health
Mental health is an epistemological, conjunctive, conjugation. It is a notice of state and activity, a bringing together that which is held apart for the purpose of socially navigating the real world. It is inclusive and expansive and by this attitude and manner The Two Routes is pronounced. The Two Routes accounts for all things known and thereby articulates mental health. It is an odd sort of thing, for, if we have to prove this in argument, then there does the two routes present itself, and if still it is not noticed, or is not believed, then the Two Routes are thus proven, although perhaps not yet.
Knowledge is not simply thoughts or cognitions, and definitely not simply the compendium of written books and papers of the world. Mental health is the condition of all things known and knowable, it is the experience itself of what is sensed, felt, and thought about, and every time we define any of those; if we must have a soul or a spirit, or any other item to encapsulate mental health, then there does the argument for proving again announce itself as the only way to know and mental health endures in the way this Philosophy describes. The definition is valid however it might be used as a product. I say this in full confidence because we use the term ‘mental health’ regularly to mean something before we start to critique and deconstruct it, before we start to insist that it is a result of scarce resources (I can’t take it any more!) and be compelled to prove to another by taking from them what they know (stop doing that!). I say, if indeed we are using the term ‘mental health’ to mean anything that is consistent with the meaning we suppose by it, then, again, we have an articulation of two ways of knowing arising to be known.
The history of philosophy, likewise where and whenever it arises and has arisen, is constituted by The Two Routes, and these routes form the basis of all philosophical endeavor: the reconciling human and experience of things. Rene Descartes, the ‘philosopher of duality’, was but a marker of a moment, not a god of creation. Not much more can be said there without resorting to an attempt to put into precise definition the situation, that effort I call conventional because it is based within the philosophical problem that is come upon whenever we try to navigate our lives whether it be in the real world or true universe.
To make notice of this situation is sticky, if not precarious, because real sustenance strategies are on the line, based often enough in keeping things clearly smooth, slick, and safe, and more often people are primarily concerned with the anxieties of living and their expression than they are with being people.
Just so, many philosophers who have noticed this epistemological phenomenon of being human find themselves in a problem of aggravation. The relieving of this aggravation (i.e. existential anxiety) has been the task of most philosophers that we know of (in the West, at least, whoever they are, from Plato to Peterson — but not so much Socrates to Zizek) as they are involved with and by us in a particular way. This way I say is conventional, meaning inherently assumptive and automatically on the social involvement as the criterion against which then all communicative expression must find address and meaning. The evidence of this philosophical route (as I say) is that there is inevitably more and more discussion about what is right and wrong about any philosophically communicative act (argumentative proposal), and even as this sentence is being read, beyond doubt, corrective proof is being formulated. The inescapable (assumed) operation of the conventional route is proof through definitional convincing. Its method is critical and reductive, and toward the erecting and construction of social definition (identity), presumably for the purpose of instructing or convincing people that they must think or behave a certain manner to be correct or incorrect.
In short, conventional philosophy is unable, unsuited, unfit, to realize mental health beyond definition. This can be problematic, especially if we are putting all our health marbles in the bag of identity. So I say, mental health coincides while exceeding definition and articulates The Two Routes as disciplinary protocol in every proposal of intervention, every structured idea designed to help. Further I say that such definition presents the problem that mental health solves through the act that is knowing itself — the act is not separate –and the solution (if there must be one) is nothing less than Being before the real argument, much as one ‘stands before the people’, for example. Knowledge is Being constituted. Therefore, the Argument of Mental Health Philosophy is less an argument of proving or trying to convince anything to anyone; it is an argument of validation, what some philosophers have called edifying. as we well see going forward.
mental health philosophy
coming to mind near you.
Read it. Feel it. Know it.