The Economist, February 8, 1997, p. 92:
Philosophy cafes: Categorical aperitif
Descartes did it by a stove. Diderot did it in the garden
of the Palais Royal. But there really is nowhere like a
Paris cafe to think about the world. In the 1940s and
1950s Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals
preached to small knots of disciples at the Lipp, the
Flore and the Deux Magots. In the 1960s students argued
about anarchism and the different brands of Marxism in
smoke-filled cafes around the Sorbonne. The hot topics
after that -- grand theories of culture known as
structuralism and deconstruction -- are now in turn as
stale as yesterday's croissants. But speculative cafe
talk has never died. The earnestness is still there, even
if the mood has changed: "isms" are out, Socrates is in.
Philosophy is respected in France. For many teenagers,
the baccalaureat kicks off with the much-dreaded *epreuve
de philo*, which receives wide coverage in the media each
year. The best answers are even published in newspapers.
About four years ago a teacher, Marc Sautet, decided to
take Plato out of the classroom and back to the agora --
a cafe on the Place de la Bastille. The (non-paying)
Sunday-morning rendezvous has proved hugely popular, and,
though Mr Sautet hotly denies being a guru, he has become
a paid consultant to businessmen and politicians.
Encouraged by his success, philosophy buffs have set up
shop in other cafes. France currently has about 50
*cafes-philos*, half of them in Paris. Geneva has two.
Others are being launched in New York, Tokyo, Cambridge
(England) and Athens. Cafe owners are delighted. It
brings a regular, peaceful clientele and it gives their
premises a touch of intellectual class.
The person in the chair may have a training in
philosophy, like Mr Sautet, or be self-taught. Those
taking part in the debate non-paying, and open to all --
vary from place to place, especially in Paris: earnest
young students on the Place de la Sorbonne; trendy
middle-class, middle-aged housewives and office workers
on the Boulevard Saint Michel and at the Bastille;
down-and-outs near the Halles. But the groups are not
watertight, and there can be a mix of cultural and social
backgrounds.
To those who remember the heated atmosphere of the late
1960s and early 1970s, the tolerance of these debates is
impressive. Speakers using abstruse language are invited
to rephrase their thoughts more simply, and generally do
so with good grace. There is no lecturing, and little
talking down. Novices who stray from the subject or get
tied up in knots are politely heard out and helped to
unravel their thoughts. "The idea", says Mr Sautet, "is
to encourage people to think for themselves and to
question ready-made assumptions." The person in the chair
intervenes discreetly to guide the discussion, to ensure
that everyone gets a chance to talk, to utter a gentle
reprimand if politics rears its ugly head.
For although discussion can be set off by news stories,
the idea is to avoid getting bogged down in political
bickering. Speakers grapple with subjects such as
eternity, the use of paradox in philosophy, and light and
darkness; try to peer beyond good and evil; and ask
themselves whether to be free is to accept what happens
to us, whether one should give up trying to search for
answers, whether man should adapt to nature or the other
way round.
In the Paris cafes there is a strong interest in Seneca
and the Stoics, linked to a recurrent feeling that the
world is in a mess, that western civilisation may be on
the verge of dramatic change, that one should reflect on
man's place in the universe. Not exactly novel, but not
the over-ambitious stuff of the 1960s, either. As one
participant puts it, "Most of us would like to change the
world, but unlike the 1968 generation we have no
ready-made answers."
Some attribute these cafes' success to urban loneliness,
to an urge to make one's voice heard in the modern void,
to a need to reach out across apparently empty space.
Each *cafe-philo* produces its own blend of camaraderie.
Good meals regularly round off the debates. Socrates's
new French disciples are all attached to the one
categorical imperative Kant forgot: conviviality.
[End]
Philosophy cafes: Categorical aperitif
Descartes did it by a stove. Diderot did it in the garden
of the Palais Royal. But there really is nowhere like a
Paris cafe to think about the world. In the 1940s and
1950s Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals
preached to small knots of disciples at the Lipp, the
Flore and the Deux Magots. In the 1960s students argued
about anarchism and the different brands of Marxism in
smoke-filled cafes around the Sorbonne. The hot topics
after that -- grand theories of culture known as
structuralism and deconstruction -- are now in turn as
stale as yesterday's croissants. But speculative cafe
talk has never died. The earnestness is still there, even
if the mood has changed: "isms" are out, Socrates is in.
Philosophy is respected in France. For many teenagers,
the baccalaureat kicks off with the much-dreaded *epreuve
de philo*, which receives wide coverage in the media each
year. The best answers are even published in newspapers.
About four years ago a teacher, Marc Sautet, decided to
take Plato out of the classroom and back to the agora --
a cafe on the Place de la Bastille. The (non-paying)
Sunday-morning rendezvous has proved hugely popular, and,
though Mr Sautet hotly denies being a guru, he has become
a paid consultant to businessmen and politicians.
Encouraged by his success, philosophy buffs have set up
shop in other cafes. France currently has about 50
*cafes-philos*, half of them in Paris. Geneva has two.
Others are being launched in New York, Tokyo, Cambridge
(England) and Athens. Cafe owners are delighted. It
brings a regular, peaceful clientele and it gives their
premises a touch of intellectual class.
The person in the chair may have a training in
philosophy, like Mr Sautet, or be self-taught. Those
taking part in the debate non-paying, and open to all --
vary from place to place, especially in Paris: earnest
young students on the Place de la Sorbonne; trendy
middle-class, middle-aged housewives and office workers
on the Boulevard Saint Michel and at the Bastille;
down-and-outs near the Halles. But the groups are not
watertight, and there can be a mix of cultural and social
backgrounds.
To those who remember the heated atmosphere of the late
1960s and early 1970s, the tolerance of these debates is
impressive. Speakers using abstruse language are invited
to rephrase their thoughts more simply, and generally do
so with good grace. There is no lecturing, and little
talking down. Novices who stray from the subject or get
tied up in knots are politely heard out and helped to
unravel their thoughts. "The idea", says Mr Sautet, "is
to encourage people to think for themselves and to
question ready-made assumptions." The person in the chair
intervenes discreetly to guide the discussion, to ensure
that everyone gets a chance to talk, to utter a gentle
reprimand if politics rears its ugly head.
For although discussion can be set off by news stories,
the idea is to avoid getting bogged down in political
bickering. Speakers grapple with subjects such as
eternity, the use of paradox in philosophy, and light and
darkness; try to peer beyond good and evil; and ask
themselves whether to be free is to accept what happens
to us, whether one should give up trying to search for
answers, whether man should adapt to nature or the other
way round.
In the Paris cafes there is a strong interest in Seneca
and the Stoics, linked to a recurrent feeling that the
world is in a mess, that western civilisation may be on
the verge of dramatic change, that one should reflect on
man's place in the universe. Not exactly novel, but not
the over-ambitious stuff of the 1960s, either. As one
participant puts it, "Most of us would like to change the
world, but unlike the 1968 generation we have no
ready-made answers."
Some attribute these cafes' success to urban loneliness,
to an urge to make one's voice heard in the modern void,
to a need to reach out across apparently empty space.
Each *cafe-philo* produces its own blend of camaraderie.
Good meals regularly round off the debates. Socrates's
new French disciples are all attached to the one
categorical imperative Kant forgot: conviviality.
[End]