Asking “How Might One Live, Here, Today?” in Philosophical Counselling: Introducing African Philosophical Perspectives

“How might one live?” is one of the most important questions for philosophical counselling. The reason being that in this collaborative undertaking with the counselee, the philosophical counsellor will consider, experiment with, and create alternative ways of being becoming and thinking/living. However, this explicit Deleuzian question—“How might one live?”—even if crucial as I maintain, lacks important contextualising factors and situating questions. That is, explicit situating and contextual factors are not immediately interrogated, incorporated, and taken seriously. Contemporary African philosophers explicitly think from and through these situating questions—From where does one write?; In what language does one think/speak?. Turning to these African philosophers, I want to positively expand the Deleuzian question by adding two crucial situating elements, viz., here, today. The expanded question thus reads “How might one live, here, today?”. Asking the question in this manner and speaking/writing from a (South) African perspective necessitates serious consideration of these perspectives from African philosophy.