A private tutor in philosophy does for the intellect of a person what a gym instructor does for their body or a psychoanalyst does for their emotional life. 

 

Private tutoring has a history which ranges from teaching terribly dim, bored aristocrats how not to humiliate themselves in conversation, to torturing little boys and girls behind closed doors. It has been executed by unemployed, disenfranchised scholars, sadistic monks and half educated spinsters.

 

There are many of our most loved scholars, writers and artists who have schooled and been schooled in this manner. David Hume tutored the Marquis of Annondale, with not much success. Bertrand Russell was tutored by a man who became his mother’s lover. Luca Pacioli, a Catholic monk, mathematician and the inventor of modern bookkeeping tutored Leonardo da Vinci. Virginia Woolf was tutored by her intellectual and literary parents and all the rest of the cognoscenti frequenting her childhood home. There was Abelard and Heloise. 

 

The tutoring offered here amounts to the teaching of a very particular skill; that of thinking analytically, critically and logically. Such thinking is the primary tool with which philosophers ply their trade.

 

In the corporate world such skills make for much more effective problem solving and also better diagnostic thinking. The teaching of them is simple, but the benefits significant. For private indivuals, analytic skills will improve the understanding and enjoyment of everything from a novel to a book with more critical content. 

 

Instead of psychotherapy (so deeply irrational), life coaching (so agonisingly embarrassing) and gym instruction (so excruciatingly boring) private tutoring in philosophy is the one thing which demands a sense of humour and a healthy dose of scepticism, whilst imparting some formidably impressive skills.