Customer Reviews

Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is the fascinating story of a young man imbued with the love of philosophy, who wants to bring philosophical thinking into the lives of more people. So, in his words, as a Johnny Appleseed of Philosophy, he begins going to book stores, coffee shops, elementary schools, senior centers, even prisons, to hold philosophical jam sessions. With a little advance notice, he can usually draw at least a small crowd. Sometimes he's surprised at the numbers of people who show up. He introduces himself, and asks what questions the folks in attendance would like to discuss philosophically. Suggestions are made, and soon a free wheeling, yet Socratically disciplined conversation begins, typically among people who don't know each other, and who are perhaps from very different backgrounds, occupations, and worldviews. With Chris playing the role of Socrates, and teaching by example how we can all play that role - the role of a seeker after wisdom who is willing to question everything in search of the truth - he ignites philosophy in a place where it may never before have happened. He teaches and he learns. And he moves on to the next opportunity for creating philosophical community.

It's quite a story. This is a man on fire to help people think more deeply about their lives and experiences. And a man willing to go wherever he can to make this happen. Throughout the pages of the book, he comes across as an idealist who is willing to do what it takes to see his dream come true. And the book consists of stories from along the way. We get to sit in on discussions all over the place, in a prison, or in a school. We are allowed to listen in on people's ruminations, reflections, and efforts to articulate their deepest beliefs. We overhear polite disagreements and witness collaborative efforts to get at the truth. What is the examined life recommended by Socrates? How can we live it? What is the best sort of life to live? And how do we get our bearings day to day, whatever we happen to be doing?

The conversations can veer from the practical to the theoretical, but always the voices of real people break through. I couldn't put it down until I had read the whole book, and it's rare for a new book to hold my attention like that when I really should be reading three others I've already started.

Take a look at Socrates Cafe and you may find yourself drawn into its great conversations like I was. And somewhere up in Platonic Heaven, Socrates himself may smile.

The book started off in a very interesting fashion. The dialogues he initiates are interesting. They also have some enlightening answers. Not to mention rational thinking, a very under-used part of the mind, is given an arena to exercise itself. However, I felt the second part dragged. Or as a family member described it, "he turned into his own commerical." The more I look back on it, the better that statement seems to describe later sections of the book. His writing is for the most part good. His aim is admirable. But in the process the book became bogged down and uninteresting. I also think the premise that truth can be arrived at through conversation is an untenable one. It can map out exactly what we are talking about and the complexities of the issue, but not much more than that. I don't think the book has anything lasting about it. It merely seems to reflect a trend to bring philosophy into the pragmatic, everyday world, such as Alain de Botton. I would recommend Botton's work as opposed to this, which has much greater insights into everyday life using traditional philosophy. If more people take this route, philosophy can be saved from word games and deconstruction, which even Derrida himself said "can not be a method and should not be one."

I was blessed to go to a reading-signing conducted by Chris Phillips, who also facilitated a live Socrates Cafe. I was astounded by how his dialogues in his books don't just mirror his live dialogues, but tie in all these wonderful threads with great thinkers across the disciplines from the past and present, while Phillips himself weighs in critically and creatively -- Socratically, I guess he'd say -- on so many timeless topics. He shows what a sham it is to create all these artificial divides between the disciplines, he shows how art and poetry and the hardest of the hard sciences are all intertwined, and how we can reveal hidden likeness between so many things by joining him in his exhilarating pursuit to question, question, and question some more in a decidedly Socratic way. My favorite vignette of all from his book is "What's Love Got to Do With It," where he recounts movingly the story of how he met his wife at a Socrates Cafe; in fact, she was the only one who came to that particular session -- they discussed the question, "What is love?" -- and they ended up marrying one another! It's so beautiful, and all the sections of the book are deeply moving, penetrating and insightful. Best of all, Phillips never talks down to his readers. Rather, he prods us to think through our own unique answers to life's great questions. What a gift he has given to us. Already, thanks to his book, I'm asking myself, and answering more fruitfully, "Who am I?" and "WHo can I become?"

The only people who won't like this book are academics who have made their discipline irrelevant and sophists who have made their discipline a laughingstock. They'll feel threatened by the new and invigorating and exhilarating life Phillips breathes into philosophy. Phillips shows in a way that I have not seen before in a modern philosophy book that philosophy isn't merely about asking certain questions -- What is truth? What is being? -- in the way questions are asked. So it is that via his mesmerizing version of the Socratic method of philosophical inquiry, Phillips explores in a profound and yet sweeping way in "Socrates Cafe" such questions as "Why is what?" "How can an intelligent, sensitive person get stuck in a lousy job?", "What is home?" and "What is silence?" He has recaptured the tradition of unendlingly novel and illuminating philosophical exploration that sadly has gone by the wayside for the most part since Socrates' lifetime. This book is for everyone who wants to push their thinking, for everyone who wants to better answer such questions as "Who am I?" and "Who can I become?" Thank you Christopher Phillips for bringing philosophy back to the people and for having the courage of your convictions in presenting such a compelling alternative to the narrow, unimaginative thinking that passes for philosophy today in books by academics and sophists.

This book provides us with an easey forum to run through some of the life's most basic and yet not so often thought or talked about questions. What is home? Granted it touches on some philosophical subjects which certainly have been covered in more depth in 'proper' philosophy books, however this format allows the reader to think about the questions and have a private discourse by reading what others have said and thought. Its a very friendly book on philosophy, and thats what philosophy on the surface should be.

I loved and and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in having an entertaining yet thought provoking time with some of the people at the Socrates Cafe.

This is a great little book that is part Robert Pirsig, part Robert Fripp, part Gurdijeff, part Plato. I mean this in all the highest forms of flattery. Phillips presents philosophy as something lived and to be lived. It is a bit like taking the Socratic pursuit of Thinking, throwing it in Heideggerian fashion into being and then asking for questions in most unacademic places. Christopher Phillips has "rescued" Thinking from its academic brackets in the process.
It is also Chris's story. Interwoven with his wonder at the remarkable observations of children, senior citizens, prisoners, men and women he meets in cafes is the story of his life as well. So, at times I thought of Robert Pirsig, at times King Crimson diarist Robert Fripp. Elements of Gurdijeff's MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN are given uncanny twists: sometimes it is a Mexican kid from the mission district in San Francisco, sometimes a white collar criminal who realizes too late how and whereby he messed up his life. Some of the people are looking for Truth, be it emotional or spiritual truth. Sometimes unexpected answers are uncovered. At all times, Phillips recognizes that this is as close to the real deal as Philosophy can get.
This will not satisfy the academic who believes that sophisticated answers are found only in the in-bred world of the ivory tower. There is no Wittgenstein upheaval of Western Thought, no Quine like analyses of the logical positivistic framework. Nope, just folks thinkin seriously about their lives. Somehow because it is not a task for profit and career, it is all the more genuine. Fripp once noted that the professional (musician) when confronted with an abyss will play what he knows, while the amateur will exceed what he knows because he doesn't know to stop. That's what is at work here. Phillips will draw historical analyses as points are made, but the references are really beside the point. He has done something remarkable, or perhaps the thinkers he has encountered have done something remarkable: they have reclaimed the Socratic dictum of an examined life for themselves, and as such, they have stood up, pointed the way out of the cave to the true light.
This is a book to cherish, and to be enjoyed by all ages. I've just finished it and have given it to my 11 year old niece in St Louis. I suspect we'll have much to talk about. Thank you, Chris.

Christopher Phillips has written an engaging, if somewhat over-simple book describing the project of his middle-age and, apparently, the dream of a lifetime in being a Socratic teacher.

The book describes how Phillips left his life as a free-lance writer for the even more unstable and risk-driven career of teaching people how to question and how to think -- about philosophy in short. And question Phillips does, in cafes, bookstores, prisons, schools for at risk children, old-age homes, and anywhere else he can find people who are willing to question and discuss.

It is only late in the book that we learn some of the "why" of Phillips' own quest- how he grew disatisfied with his professional, and apparently personal, life as well and come to the conclusion that he needed to devote himself to an activity he deemed worthwhile. He became a Socratic questioner, went back to school to earn several masters degrees in process, and found himself a wife from among his students. The chapter in which Phillips describes his quest and finds his wife to be is for me the best in the book.

The Socratic dialoges themselves are a mixed bag on subjects that range from trivial to serious with comments that range from insightful to trite. The dialogues are less than truly Socratic in that Socrates generally coversed with one interlocutor at a time and kept the discussion focused on the matter at hand as an aid to approximate the truth. The procedure and comments in the book are, alas, to undisciplined to stand with what Socrates had in mind and seem at times to degenerate into bull or rap sessions.

No terrible harm in that. Some people, old and young, appear to be genuinely moved and interested by their first attempt to think clearly about important matters. If only a few people learn to think and to study deeper than they might otherwise have done, Phillips's efforts will be amply repaid.

There is a too easy criticism of academic philosophy in the book which, however, is understandable given the nature of the author's goals. There is good discussion of contemporary American thinkers such as Walter Kaufmann and John Randall. Most importantly, of course there is the discussion of Socrates and his great student Plato, and on the influence they have exerted since their times on anybody who has grappled with their thought and learned to question and love the life of the mind -- which is the life of the heart and the soul when schooled.

This book is hardly the last word in philosophical thinking but it does not claim to be. May it awaken readers to a sense of wonder and reflection and thought.

I bought this book upon the suggestion of a friend so I'd have something relatively easy to read on a flight. It not only fulfilled its intended purpose but also proved to be intelectually stimulating and thought-provoking. The author cleverly worked in mini-lessons about a number of philosophers and explored a variety of philosophical subjects. My main criticism is that the book only skimmed the surface; it didn't go very deep into the issues. (For a book that does present the basic arguments and definitions regarding issues of philosophical contention, try Mortimer Adler's How to Think About the Great Ideas.) I do recommend this book, as long as you don't expect too much from it.

It's hard not to admire the enthusiasm of Christopher Phillips in his efforts to revive interest in philosophy among a wide variety of contemporary persons. Questions arise, however, as to just how socratic his modus operandi is. He declares he's no self-help guru, for instance. Yet is his readiness to descend to tears and therapy rather than ironic tough-mindedness, this is exactly what he ultimately most resembles. His repeated disinclination to answer questions put by an interlocutor and his preference instead for returning the question to its asker strikes me as even more guru-like and unsocratic. Finally, his eagerness to avoid extended one-on-one question and answer encounters in the presence of a group, preferring rather the role of the "facilitator" who gets everyone talking, reveals him more as the unwitting heir of the flattering John Dewey than of the "offensive" Socrates who claimed to know nothing, but was able to show smug others that they knew even less.

Where does "everyman" go in this world for reasoned, open, and enlightened conversation outside an academic setting? The filtered, abbreviated, and sanitized output of the media and Internet sites hardly serves as a replacement. Into this vacuum stepped the author, a former journalist, enamored of philosophers and philosophizing, who decided to facilitate Socratic discussions in all manner of locations, but mostly cafes and bookstores. Of course, Socrates, an Athenian of the 5th century BC, was known for his penetrating questioning of the assumptions of the leading citizens of Athens, a habit which little endeared him to them. This book consists of a rather meandering look at the author's hesitant start up of this enterprise, simplified re-creations of several actual question and answer sessions at a variety of locations, and various pertinent philosophical points from philosophers of the past and from the author.

The questioning process at these discussions is pretty much ad hoc with honesty being the only requirement for asking or answering. Among the questions asked were "What is here?"; "What is home?"; "What is silence?"; "What is a friend?"; or "Why is what?". It is simply assumed that a group of near strangers who meet for two hours once a week, or less, benefits from kicking around these various, often vague or obscure, subjects. He doesn't address the impact of the disparity in backgrounds that such an assemblage is likely to have. The discussions can deteriorate into an endless series of not necessarily connected questions with limited results.

It is striking that virtually none of the topics presented for discussion in the book are controversial. Does the author suggest that politics, religion, economics, media, justice, war, etc are of no interest to people who attend his cafes. If these subjects were broached, how would that affect the functioning of the groups? The author asks "What is a church?" in one group. What if he had asked, "What is the basis of religious belief"? One suspects that Socrates would have gone right to that. There is not the sense that the author is after the truth in quite the unrestrained manner as a Socrates.

The author notes that ideas and conversation are essential to a democracy, however, neighborhood gathering places located in the midst of our sterile, zoned housing tracts are virtually non existent. These Socratic cafes could easily be seen as inadequate, artificial alternatives to real community gathering places. It's hard to imagine the people in "The Great Good Places" by Ray Oldenburg devoting much time to "Why is what" when so many real world issues having community impacts need to be addressed.

The author disappoints in another way. Many authors have web sites, and he is no exception. In this case it is for his institution, the Society for Philosophical Inquiry, which supposedly supports 300 dialogue groups. But one can find no evidence of these groups anywhere on the entire web site - very strange. From reading his book, one would think they would be front and center on the site. Perhaps there are legal issues. Instead those who access the site are given several means of buying goods or joining the SPI for a fee. It's disheartening to find an emphasis on the Socratic Café name as a brand for sale. [Note: It turns out that the list of local cafes is for sale also. Socrates is rolling over in his grave.]

At first glance, Socratic cafes seem to be an unqualified good - and they are as far as they go. But there is a certain amount of doubt as to whether that model can play a relevant and important role in public discourse in this era of isolation and spin. The book is unwilling to address any shortcomings of the concept, which is rather ironic given the author's insistence that he is "seeking Socrates." The autobiographical elements of the book are interesting, but there is an element of self promotion that lingers.