Abstract

Moving from a Bourdieusian framework, the article analyze the rise of a new kind of «expert system» in Italy, the «philosophical counselor», using in depth interviews, ethnographies, quantitative data. The article starts inquiring how the offer and the demand of philosophy in Italy has changed during the past decade, than sketches some properties of this new expert system and its birth, contextualizing it in the broader change that is involving Italian phi- losophy, especially in the academic field, and concluding with drawing some features of the philosophical counselors' habitus.