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Steeped in Thought :The Philosophy
café Movement
Participants in the movement that has come to
be known as "applied philosophy" tend to describe themselves as escapees
from the confines of the ivory tower. Musty academics no longer,1 these
newly minted philosophical practitioners claim to be doing philosophy
"in the public sphere." While it's noteworthy that in recent years philosophy
Ph. D's have found it increasingly possible to moonlight2
as consultants and even counselors, this isn't exactly doing philosophy
pro publico.3 One might ask, then, whether
the applied philosophy movement in fact provides ordinary, thoughtful
people with public forums in which to philosophize. Thanks to a disaffected Nietzsche scholar4 in Paris,
the answer is yes. In 1992 Marc Sautet, a lecturer in philosophy, decided
that a promising academic career just wasn't enough. So he invited some
friends to participate in a pugilats d'didées ("conceptual fisticuffs")5
for two hours every Sunday morning, at the Café� des Phares on the Parisian
Place de la Bastille. Sautet's "café� Philosophique" (as it came to be
called, or café philo for short)6 seems to
have filled a void that people didn't realize they had. University students,
idle wealthy women, off-duty cab drivers, and eccentric citizens off
the street began to show up, week after week, to discuss subjects as
abstract as truth and beauty and as concrete as sex and death. Sautet, who died suddenly of a brain tumor in 1998
at the age of 51, was by all accounts a highly charismatic figure. His
1995 book Un café pour Socrate,7 written partly
in response to gibes8 from skeptics within
academic philosophy and mainstream journalism alike, compared the café
philo experience to a Socratic elenchus,9 or
cross-self-examination, through which one becomes aware that nothing
can be taken for granted. It's difficult to imagine making an ordeal
such as this seem fun and exciting, but Sautet pulled it off with great
aplomb:10 In 1997 a writer for Salon11
compared Sautet's café philo to "a college-town literature workshop
and a Quaker meeting12 rolled into one, with
a pinch of karaoke." By the time Sautet died there were more than 100
cafés-philos operating throughout France. Today there are close to 150. Still not sure what a café philo is all
about? The American Philosophical Practitioners Association explains
that "a philosopher's café is not a philosophy lecture; the philosopher
presides only as a moderator,13 to maintain
the conversation on a philosophical footing. The discussion is thoughtful
but nontechnical. You will be challenged to defend your beliefs or opinions,
but you will not be asked to refer to a list of philosophy books in
order to support your views. In fact, the opposite is usually true:
Instead of showing off your erudition14 by
referring to great works you may have studied, you will be obliged to
think for yourself, to give your own reasons for the views you hold."
Must the moderator (facilitator, if you prefer) of a philosophy café be a trained philosopher? Not necessarily. Sautet, who also worked as a philosophical counselor, once explained that, "I help my clients to structure their thoughts. I am there to nourish their doubts and pose the right questions, not to supply the answers." This could serve as an apt description of a café philo facilitator. To fill that role one should be good at helping a group of people ask themselves questions and then helping them question those questions. Philosophers are trained in this sort of inquiry, but that doesn't mean a non-philosopher can't be good at it, too. Having exploded like a revolutionist's bomb in
the infamous Place de la Bastille,15 one might
have expected that the café philo idea would eventually spread
outward from Paris. Cafés-philos have appeared in Belgium, Greece,
Switzerland, Austria, Germany, South America, and Japan. They've also
taken root and begun to flourish in Britain and the United States. I
recently tracked down half-a-dozen apostles of the café philo
movement in the latter two countries and asked them a range of questions
about philosophy cafés, from the idealistic ("What is the most important
goal, and what can one do as a facilitator or participant to achieve
this goal?") to the materialistic ("What is the most effective group
size?"). In the remainder of this article I'll take a look at the philosophy
café scene in England. The Philosophy café Crosses the Channel16 In November 1997 Gale Prawda, a Paris-based American
philosopher, traveled to London to launch a regular philosophy café
there. Prawda, who'd studied with the influential French philosopher
Paul Ricoeur in the 1970s, had turned away from philosophy since then
because, as she's written in her bimonthly newsletter Philo
News, philosophy deals with "those questions concerning [ordinary]
human existence, yet it's so incredibly inaccessible to the very people
about whom it speaks." After attending one of Sautet's "philo dinners,"
however, the two became good friends, and with his blessing she launched
an English-language philosophy café at the café de Flore, formerly the
haunt of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus.17
She continues to convene one café philo a month at the café de
Flore, but thanks to the success of the London event, she runs one philosphy
café a month there, as well. To Prawda cafés-philos are simply "an exercise in thinking together." Although she says that one is welcome to attend them in hopes of discovering the meaning of life, the only "point" is to question one's settled opinions, "and modify them according to reason and thinking, when necessary." Some of the most enjoyable sessions she remembers, Prawda tells me, were sparked by good questions, like "What is a fact?," "Can people communicate?," and "Why does time keep moving forward?" Her cafés-philos, and the various other open-forum philosophical discussions she now runs, are attended by people ranging in age from 15 to 80 and in occupation from businesspeople and professors to artists, writers, and scientists. She reckons the optimal size for a really successful café philo is 25 people. As a facilitator Prawda sees it as her duty to intervene in the discussion to suggest other ways of looking at the topic under debate (without being overly "directional," she hastens to add) and to help synthesize the discussion as it develops so as to build on preceding thoughts and prevent things from just circling around and around. But "by no means is consensus a desirable goal," she concludes, "as it might undermine the actual thinking process if one were coerced into thinking as the others for the purposes of agreement." Bryn Williams, a doctoral candidate in philosophy and an editor at the British "popular philosophy" magazine Philosophy Now, attended Prawda's inaugural philosophy café in 1997. Williams found Prawda's evangelistic fervor inspiring, but—having been a bartender before he began studying philosophy—he knew that in England the café is often seen as a refuge for pretentious aesthetes. The pub, on the other hand, is a community center where, as he sees it, "competing views may meet and test themselves against the demands of rational inquiry." In Feburary 1998, with the support of his colleagues at Philosophy Now, Williams founded Pub philosophy, which he advertised as a biweekly "opportunity for the exchange of ideas, the exploration of underlying assumptions, and the pure enjoyment of engaging in intellectual pursuit for its own sake." These events attracted between 10 and 50 participants at a time, Williams remembers (somewhere in between18 is the perfect size, he thinks), and tackled topics as serious as "What is it for a human to flourish?" and as humorous as "Is it just me, or is everyone paranoid now?" In 1996, completely unaware of the café philo movement in Paris, London-based philosopher Anja Steinbauer started talking to her friends about starting an organization whose objective would be to bring together professional and nonprofessional philosophers to discuss philosophical questions in a nontechnical way. In early 1998, she helped found Philosophy for All to do just that. Shortly after joining the editorial staff of Philosophy Now, she wrote in its pages that "It is one of the objectives of Philosophy for All not simply to stroll along the aisles of a philosophical supermarket, picking up ready-made and hygienically-packed solutions from the shelves. Instead we aim at informed discussion, in which we allow philosophical questioning to disturb us and perhaps even challenge beliefs that we may have long taken for granted." To this end Philosophy for All sponsors "philosophical walks" in the countryside and a monthly event called Kant's19 Cave. At these latter happenings an invited speaker gives a lecture, then those present (70 or 80 people on average) engage in a spirited debate, after which the group breaks out into smaller groups to socialize and talk philosophy. When I asked Williams about his first impressions of Prawda's philosophy café, he recalled being disappointed by what he perceived as a lack of critical rigor at that event. "There was an apparent unwillingness to distinguish between the relative validity of statements," he told me. "Attempts at critical analysis of ideas were seen as somehow 'not in the spirit' of the discussion." Pub Philosophy, then, wasn't just about a change in venue for Williams, but a change in style, too; it was, as he puts it, "an alternative for those who like their philosophy a little more hardheaded." For Williams an evening of philosophizing is a success if everyone present recognizes that "there is a philosophical dimension to any question, that even the most mundane of things may spark an investigation into the validity of our most common assumptions, and connect with the eternal questions which seem so far from everyday life." As a facilitator, therefore, he says his role is to try to tease out the specifically philosophical implications of the topic at hand, without interrupting the conversation too much with his own take on things.20 Pub Philosophy folded in the summer of 1999 because Williams needed to concentrate on his doctoral dissertation. Today, with some embarrassment, he admits to running an organization called London café Philosophy. Kant's Cave, on the other hand, which continues to meet at pubs, is still going strong. It attracts everyone from taxi drivers to professional scholars, Steinbauer tells me, and some of its most passionate discussions have been those on applied ethics. "But even topics from the area of theoretical philosophy (such as 'On Not Being' )21 have really fired up the debate." Steinbauer insists on the use of the word 'Debate" because, she says, "a genuine exchange of arguments is much more fruitful and in tune with the style of Philosophy for All than taking turns at a disjointed uttering of opinions." This latter, for Steinbauer, is a description of most philosophy cafés. "More or less random discussions on philosophical themes," that is, are not her cup of tea.22 Here's a question worth debating, then: Is Kant's Cave an example of a café philo? Steinbauer says it isn't. But why not? After all, the stated aim of Kant's Cave is "for people to engage in more philosophizing or in new ways of philosophizing; to question, be critical, and think for themselves." Isn't that the goal of a Socratic elenchus?
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