Affirmative dimensions of applied ethics. Appreciative therapies (English version)

Gilles Lipovetsky claims that the phrase “age of minimalism” is better suited to the postmodern society than “the society of generalised permissiveness”. The postmodern society is a post-moralist one, at the twilight of duty. Transmodern (“hypermodern” in Lipovetsky’s reading) ethics establishes moral norms based on liberal and pragmatic principles. The preferred focus is on the value of positivism, of cooperation as a source of efficiency, of personal enrichment – be it cultural, spiritual or moral – derived from the access to alterity. Tolerance as an ethical value is legitimised by a utilitarian humanism. The fundamental change proposed by Tel Franklin’s appreciative therapy consists of shifting attention from illness as a state of disorder of the living system to that of implicit order, called “perfect health”. We can view the counselling process as congruence between solving the problems of the human ego and facilitating the functionality of the social networks and systems the individuals is a part of. It is precisely at the level of the functionality of social systems that we can identify the reference space of the affirmative-appreciative counselling. The particularity of this approach is the replacement of the focus on problems with the focus on the individual’s positive experience, on the strategies for “managing one’s own existence” that the subject has successfully applied.