 |
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
|
|
|
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHYTHE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEwww.practical-philosophy.org.uk www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org |
|
Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy
Christopher Phillips
2001 New York: Norton. pp. 224, ISBN 0-393-04956-6 (hb) $23.95.
Practical Philosophy (Book Reviews) July 2001 Volume 4.2
Reviewed by: David Arnaud
This book is an account of how Christopher Phillips came to devote his life to giving 'Socrates Cafés', an analysis of the purpose of these Cafés and copious examples of the kinds of conversations that they generate. It is written in an immediate, non-technical and engaging style, a tone much like the conversations that Phillips manages to develop in the Socrates Cafes. This use of language reflects Phillips’ commitment to returning philosophy to its practical Socratic roots and enabling everyone with the appropriate desire to lead the examined life. Phillips takes his Socrates Café to bookstores, cafes, senior centres, elementary schools, and prison.
What goes on in a Socrates Café? It all begins with a question, occasionally provided by Phillips himself but more often suggested by the group (of anything from one to sixty) that has gathered together. The topic of the question is, Phillips suggests, only limited by what the imagination and sense of wonder can produce. Examples of questions that occur in the book range from those about the very process of the Socrates Café (such as ‘Why question?’), to the immediately personal (such as ‘What is home?’ or ‘What is a friend?’ or ‘When is life not worth living?’), to the more abstract (such as ‘What if anything is the nature of individuality?’ or ‘Why is what?’ or ‘What is insanity?’), to the more traditional philosophical topics (such as ‘What is belief?’ and ‘Is there only a subjective world or is there such a thing as ultimate reality?’ - a question for a group of university philosophy professors). These questions, Phillips demonstrates through recreating many of these inquiries, lead, as Socrates says in the Republic, not to any chance investigation but rather to an investigation of ‘the way one should live’.
In seeking to answer the question the members form a community of enquiry (a term Phillips borrows from Matthew Lipman, the originator of the Philosophy for Children movement). In the community the participants, Phillips writes (p. 23), ‘confront their own dogmatism … by being confronted with an array of hypotheses, convictions, conjectures and theories offered by the other participants and themselves …which honestly and openly, rationally and imaginatively they confront by asking questions.’
Phillips emphasizes the role and power of the question. He believes that one of the most important benefits that Socrates Cafés provide is enabling people to ask better questions and hence to ‘acquire new tactics for living and thinking, so we can work towards determining, and then becoming, who we want to be’ (p.12). An illustration of this is Phillips’ encounter with a woman who phoned him asking whether she could have a solo Socrates Café. She explains that she cannot sleep at night because she keeps asking herself ‘What is the meaning of life?’ As a child she excelled in everything, so much so that she could never figure out what to do with her life. She ended by getting married at nineteen, and dropping out of college as her husband didn’t want her to work. Subsequently they divorced and she came to work as a bookkeeper. Now the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ won’t go away because she cannot find a satisfactory answer to it. Phillips wonders whether she is asking the question in the right way, and suggests she needs to ask and answer first questions like ‘Whose life am I talking about?’ She replies that she is really trying to ask ‘What gives my life meaning?’ but then manages to formulate an even better question as she didn’t explain what she meant by ‘meaning’. Her voice becomes more and more upbeat and excited as she formulates her question as (pp. 31-32), ‘What can I do to give my life the kind of meaning that makes my spirit soar, that makes me feel like I’m making this world at least a little bit better place to live in?’
This is the question that Phillips had posed himself as well when he felt his work as a photographer was meaningless. His answer to the question was to devote his life to running Socrates Cafés. The fruits from this question we can all taste by reading this joyous and inspiring account of philosophy practised as a way of life.
David Arnaud
|
|
|