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© Bernard R. Roy
Department of Philosophy
Baruch College, CUNY
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The latest issue of Le Vilain Petit Canard, a
French monthly devoted to philosophical debates in public places, gives a list of 130
cafés, which, throughout France, offer havens for philosophical debates. The list reads
like a newspaper theater listing: name and address of the café, day and time of the
debate, and name of the philosopher who moderates the debate. From all accounts, all are
doing very well; some, which turn away people each week, are doing extremely well. How can
the success be explained?
My initial response is that a lot of people benefit from the experience. To begin
with, the philosopher-animator, by accepting to submit his/her ideas to public scrutiny
may discover that they need greater support; he/she may also gain both by attracting
potential paying clients for private philosophical counseling, and by (sometime) getting
remunerated for leading the debate. Then, there is the public who naturally benefits,
otherwise it would not bother coming. It does not matter that the benefits are vicarious,
genuinely intellectual, or social; the activity, albeit occasionally intellectual, is of
an entertaining nature. Finally, I take it that the café owner must reap revenue and
exposure from the gathering, and that’s good for business. But if it seems fairly
obvious that all these people clearly benefit from the experience, what shall be said
about philosophy itself? Does it, or can it gain? If it does, what does it gain? If it
doesn’t, does it get damaged? In short, are the débats de cafés, as they are
called overseas, what philosophy is supposed to be about? In this paper, I want to argue
that there is a substantial gain for philosophy, and I’ll explain in what consists
the gain. Furthermore, I’ll attempt to show that the débat de café, like a
Phoenix, fuel and perpetuate the French café-culture out of which it was born. The café
is to the French the social equivalent of what the agora must have been to the Athenians,
or of what the baths must have been to the Romans, such that any culture interested in
bringing philosophy to the public must do so in its social equivalent of the French café
, the Athenian agora, or the Roman baths. I’ll finish by discussing some candidates
for that social equivalent in North America.
I think that it is fairly uncontroversial to trace the origin of the café-philo
to the late French philosopher, Marc Sautet. Marc Sautet was a Nietzsche scholar who was
inspired by the works of Gerd Aschenbach in practical philosophy. He left the Instituts
d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, where he taught from 1990 to 1997, and went on to
pioneer what he called a cabinet de philosophie. Weekly debates in the back room of
an average Café began what was to become a hearth of activities which defined the
cabinet. The Café is the Café des Phares, a small unpretentious and rundown café/bistro
that looks over the populist Place de la Bastille, one of Paris’ most motley
assemblage of social architecture. The famed Bastille prison once stood where now there is
a large and bustling odd-shaped plaza easily identified by the July Column. The Colonne
de Juillet is a 171 feet-tall bronze column that stands not quite in the center, and
that supports the gilded figure of liberty. It celebrates all the Parisians who died
toppling three monarchs of France, Louis XVI (1789), Charles X (1830) and Louis-Philippe
(1848). Scattered around the column, one finds a modern Opera House (one of François
Mitterrand’s Grand Projet), a marina in a canal that berths work and leisure
boats, a visible underground metro stop, a merry-go-round and other temporary
children’s rides, and both Hausmann-style and tenement-style buildings. When visiting
Paris, one cannot help but be struck by the opposition between the asymmetry of the Place
de la Bastille and the military symmetry of the Place du Général De Gaulle (formerly
Place de l’Etoile). Whether it was fortuitous or planned the choice was prophetic. It
(over)dramatically signaled the "freeing" of philosophy from its regulated
confines, and marked the beginning of a flurry of populist philosophical activities of a
practical nature. Marc Sautet developed his practice, which, at the time of his death,
included private counseling, hosting dinners with philosophical discussions, guiding tours
to places around the world that have philosophical interest, leading debates on the
Internet, holding seminars in businesses, and even authoring and marketing a philosophical
game. He wrote about the beginnings and the experiences of his cabinet in Un café pour Socrate, published by Robert Laffont in 1995,
and he edited a newsletter called Philos. He died a
young man in March 1998.
What Aschenbach and Sautet did for philosophy is good for philosophy. Why and how?
Philosophy is either a discourse restricted to professional philosophers or it is not. But
can I characterize philosophy without raising a philosophical issue? I’ll try by
giving a ultra-minimal characterization; doing philosophy consists in critically examining
the foundation of our common sense beliefs before they cause conflict. Doing philosophy is
a little bit like scratching where it does not itch; thus, whether one is a professional
philosopher or not, doing philosophy requires disinterested curiosity, and courage; and in
general, the more "knowledge" one has about a subject, the more courage it will
take to examine it. If ignorance breeds audacity, erudition brings about caution. Thus,
anyone who dares to look into, and challenge his or her system of beliefs is doing
philosophy. In this sense philosophy is a kind of therapy for a way of life, for our
common sense beliefs guide our lives. So understood, philosophy cannot be restricted to
professional philosophers. Of course, in that sense, and at worst, the practice is likely
to be wasteful, for the wheel may be reinvented many times; but no harm will ever be done,
and occasionally some insights will contribute to the growth of philosophy.
Some professional philosophers may object to this lack of efficiency and insist that
anyone pretending to do philosophy ought to be familiar with the corpus of
philosophy. To this I respond that first of all it is unlikely that two philosophers will
agree as to what constitutes the corpus of philosophy, and, supposing they do, they
risk, by so restricting the discourse, to constrain it. The Scylla of reinventing the
wheel makes way for the Charibnis of suffocating philosophy. Philosophy, as the historians
of the discipline are apt to remind us, is carved into schools which perished under the
weight of their own arguments; the most dramatic example is furnished by the Scholastics
ensnared in minute disputes until the Humanists came and liberated philosophy by taking a
look at it from a different angle. That liberation paved the way for a revolution in the
sciences. Every once in a while a great school needs to liberate itself from the
constraints it imposes on itself, and generally this liberation comes from the outside.
Furthermore, it is good to bear in mind that philosophy, like other arts and sciences, has
no method of discovery. So that discoveries are as likely to be the result of assiduous
and focused research as they are to bob from the stream of consciousness of a public
debate. Great schools of cuisine and music came about as a result of the creativity of
common people and would die if they did not remain open to the creation of untrained cooks
and musicians. The greatest composers owe the melodies they are so good at developing to
folklore; the greatest chefs owe the basic combination of ingredients to families of
farmers, fishermen and hunters. The same has to be true of philosophy; the insightful
questions of philosophy are as likely to come from outsiders than insiders. Einstein
himself thought that he could learn more from a child’s question than from a
colloquium assembling the best minds in physics. As the practice strives outsiders and
insiders face each other, and either is bound to deliver the other of some potted belief. Honi
soit qui mal y pense! Shame on the one who shouts sacrilege when an insider’s
debate is fueled by an outsider’s insight ! I do not see how philosophy could not
benefit from, or be damaged by public debates.
Naturally the role of the animator is crucial. If he or she is a professional
philosopher, he or she has to be able and willing to recognize the value of the
outsider’s insights. Not only ought the animator to stay clear of condescension, but
he or she also must be able to step outside the dominant professional discourse, and be
willing to put his or her "professional" beliefs to a series of severe
Popper-style tests. The philosophical value of the débats de cafés rests on the
ability of the animator to integrate the popular discourse into the professional one, even
at the risk of displacing the latter. Furthermore, a conscientious animator, as Marc
Sautet was, will, after each debate, write about the issues raised during the debate;
issues and responses are now crafted into sentences and paragraphs by the philosopher.
Isn’t this the way philosophy gains?
Finally, there is another value to submitting the professional discourse to public
scrutiny, and that is that it is likely to "sting" several participants and
motivate them to become professional philosophers. Too many cooks may spoil a particular
broth, but there can never be too many cooks working to improve the broth.
So, why is it that in France many professional philosophers, for the most part
denizens of academic institutions, are reported to snub the practice? The same issue of The Vilain Petit Canard contains an editorial that
attributes the success of café-philos to the failure of the mode of teaching
philosophy in French schools, where philosophy classes mostly consist of authoritarian
scholarly monologues, with nary an effort to open a dialogue with the students. Although
the explanation is a bit strong, for not all participants in public debates are frustrated
French students, and public debates are increasingly becoming popular outside of France
where teaching methods are less aloof and authoritarian than they are in France, it does
reinforce my earlier point that doing philosophy requires courage, and it suggests the
non- philosophical point that French teachers of philosophy are cowardly and avid of
control. Professional philosophers, the editorialist suggests, react to an invitation to a
café-philo the same way virgins react to an invitation out, "avec orgueil
et effarouchement" (with pride and fright); and that if they condescend to attend
they either remain silent or speak to correct or to give a name to what someone else has
just belabored describing. The suggestion is misleading and the condemnation reads too
much like a satiric echo of what conservative newspapers have said of the practice; they
have denounced it as pseudo-intellectual mostly because it ignores the division between
"high" and "low" art, a division to which cultural elitists are
sensitive. Obviously, if there is an intellectual elite, it is going to object to the
popularization of philosophy; this is the principal activity of the elitist. However, that
there is a successful movement making popular an institutionalized discipline attests to
the minority status of the elite. It also attests to the end of the tyranny of the elite.
Many of those who criticize elitism were once part of the elite. Most café-philos and
cabinets were started by academic philosophers who remained academics. I suspect that a
number of professional philosophers have adopted a wait-and-see attitude, or are too busy
doing their professional duties, or just wait for the right opportunity to present itself.
Public debates are still very young and there is no telling how many members of the
academic establishment snubs them and how many support the idea.
Of course, a profession remains a profession by exercising caution in its endorsement
of new practices. This does not imply an outright condemnation. There will always be
professionals who will feel threatened by the practice the way some physicians are
offended when patients argue their diagnosis, but neither the profession nor the practice
need be concerned about their cries to sacrilege and their invocations to "high"
art. I attended a few café-philos in France, and although the participants were
for the most part non-professional, they were by no means exclusively non-professional. I
also saw Marc Sautet debate Jean-Luc Marion, one of France’s foremost philosopher and
member of the Sorbonne faculty, on the value of public debates in a television show hosted
by the TV guru of French popular culture, Bernard Pivot. I sensed no outrage, neither orgueil
nor effarouchement, in Professor Marion’s response to an invitation to debate.
He may not be ready for the café-debate, but he certainly was present and an active
participant in a popular TV debate. The editorial’s concerns are not real concerns
and I fear that its author is creating a straw-man in the hope of raising the status of
public debates. He is looking for a monarch to topple, but the monarch is long dead. Café-philos
and academic philosophy need each other and can complement each other; neither one ought
to either destroy or outdo the other.
Marc Sautet reflects this mutual dependence by explaining that in his debates, he
tries to strike a happy balance between two undesirable extremes: on the one hand wild
therapy session (séance de thérapie sauvage), and on the other something that
would look like a professional colloquium (une cercle d’initiés).
Professionals and non-professionals are both welcome provided neither mistakes the floor
for a dais or for an analyst’s sofa. The debates are structured and moderated so as
to give as many participants as is possible a chance to air his or her beliefs. Topics of
discussions are picked within a five-minute period at the beginning of the debate so that
no one is tempted to brush up on the literature before hand and either crush the debates
with rubbles of encyclopedic lore or smother it with impersonal psittacisms.
The influence of Gerd Aschenbach and Marc Sautet’s has reached America, thanks,
in great part, to the efforts of the ASPCP (American
Society for Philosophical Counseling and Psychotherapy). More and more devoted and
courageous American philosophers try launching a counterpart to the French café-philos in
their community. However, the success of café-philos in France is directly connected to
the existing success of a café culture. America has many Cafés, but it does not have a
Café culture in the sense the French have one. Now that I have argued that Café-philos
are good for philosophy, I need ask what is the social equivalent of the French Café in
America, for I seriously doubt that the movement can strive without the support of an
established social institution such as the Athenian agora, the Roman baths, or the French
Café ? The practice presupposes some social support.
It cannot be the French Cafés because although their designs can be imported the
experiences cannot. French Cafés are socio-cultural events; they bring an entire
community out in the open. Thus, they are places to see and be seen, and places to hide;
places to read, to eavesdrop on other people’s conversation, comment of their
clothes, their dogs or their partners; they are places to discuss politics, the arts,
television and the pedestrian who just passed by; they are places to display your
indigenous status or conceal your strangeness; places to show off your originality in
sartorial orchestration, in your choice of partner, or in your choice of consommation.
It is the quintessential rendez-vous point. There is a long history of cultural movements
taking shape in the openness of the Café. La Coupole and Le Dôme attracted artists in
the 20’s and 30’s; the Café‚ de Flore and Les Deux Magots attracted the
existentialist writers of the 40’s and 50’s; Brasserie Lipp continues to attract
politicians. What makes those cafés what they are is not so much their designs, but the
group dynamics of their devotees. Their designs, in fact, are fairly uniform: an outside
terrace that faces the sun, but that is heated in the winter and shaded in the summer. Its
tables have small round marble tops girded by a wide brass rim; the tops rest on a single
heavy cast iron leg with flowery motifs. The chairs are made of woven rattan, generally
with a dominant beige color and accents of green, brown or red. A large bar with a top
made out of some metal (brass or zinc) dominates the inside; it is both a coffee bar and a
liquor bar. Seating consists in facsimile leather banquettes with high backs whose tops
form a ridge for the handy temporary storage of bags, books, newspapers, and whatever
else. The floor is tiled and often has a wavy surface from the constant foot traffic of
the wait staff. The bright lighting is assured by ceiling fixtures and wall sconces. There
are wall mirrors hiding partitions. If culture has a favorite meeting place, the favorite
meeting place of the French is the Café. In large part, it is the status of favorite
meeting place that allowed the public debates to grow so rapidly. What is America’s
favorite meeting place? I came up with four candidates: the shopping mall, the
coffee-house (individually-owned or chain-owned), the bookstore, or the Internet.
The Internet is a special phenomenon. It definitely contributes to the popularity of
philosophy, but it does so without competing with the Cafés. There are numerous
specialized lists to which anyone can subscribe at no cost. Any subscriber can join in the
discussion. I am presently engaged in a world wide discussion of Descartes’ Regulae with a list managed by Fred Wilson of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, but
the discussion is not like a Café debate. They are text rather than issue oriented, and
non-philosophers rapidly drop out. I do not see how they can replace the Café; after all,
part of Marc Sautet’s cabinet includes a "chat" page on the Internet. The
Internet strengthens the Café debates.
Bookstores seem to be ideal spots. They provide an atmosphere that encourages
intellectual activities. Moreover, large chains of bookstores are turning the traditional
bookstore into multi-storied friendly libraries where comfortable lounge chairs and
carpeted floors beckon potential buyers. The mega-stores generally include a coffee-house
and a small isolated lecture area where authors discuss their work. This is the context
that Professor Louis Marinoff of The City College
of The City University of New York has chosen. Once a
month he animates debates on a topic selected at the beginning of the encounter.
Participants sit on folding chairs forming an ellipse with Professor Marinoff as one of
the foci. Although the arrangement is conducive to a lively and focused debate, its
formality and its separateness robs the gathering of its voyeuristic social component; the
lack of a social component inhibits the levity of the occasion. The participants are not
caught in familiar surroundings; they force themselves into the ellipse. Once in the
ellipse it is difficult to hide. It feels more like attending an informal seminar than
socializing amid a formal discussion. Within this context, it will be hard for the
movement to reach the kind of serendipitous popularity it needs in order to free and open
up the philosophical debate.
I have unjustified cultural prejudices toward shopping malls. However, last summer, at
the Third International Conference of the ASPCP, I heard Professor Peter March, of Halifax Saint Mary’s University, enthusiastically
describe his experiences animating philosophical debates at malls, terminals and parks.
This led me to confront my prejudices, and I am glad I did. Why not the mall? It is an
agora for non-Mediterranean climes. It has public meeting areas, and not every mall
visitor is a shopper; some come to see and be seen, and to meet other people. Many come to
have a drink, a meal or just a cup of coffee. Clearly, I must concede that the mall is a
fit candidate, but what about odd cities, such as New York’s Manhattan or San
Francisco where the mall, if it exists, does not play the same social role as it does in
the average American city? Will we, Manhattanites, have to wait for the malls to come?
Hardly! I answer. Manhattan is a mosaic of gigantic open malls; they are called
neighborhoods. Going to a Gramercy Park, East village or West Village coffee-house, bar or
diner is like going to a coffee-house, bar or restaurant of the XYZ mall.
I favor coffee-houses because of what they achieved in the 60’s and 70’s for
folk music, jazz, poetry and political debates. Coffee-houses belong to American culture,
and I see philosophical debates as contributing to this tradition, as well as I see the
tradition benefiting from being identified with philosophical debates. The mark of the
American coffee-house is informal hospitality; it is the place to "hang out,"
and strike a conversation with strangers or habitu‚ s, to put your feet up on a
chair. They have no uniform designs by which they can be recognized. Professor Martine
Lindquist of Stuyvesant High School has held at least
one debate at such a coffee-house, the Northside Café in Brooklyn. All kinds of
coffee-houses are opening everywhere in America. Their potential further growth has not
escaped the attention of corporate America. Today, individual units of large chains of
coffee-houses occupy every other block of neighborhoods and malls.
Whether a preference can be given to a chain-owned coffee-house or to an
individually-owned one is not so evident. The former are inevitably more impersonal than
the latter; one feels more "at home" in a place that is identifiable with a
person who has permanence in the establishment. The rest is a matter of socio-cultural
bias. The point is that coffee-houses, individually-owned or chain-owned, provide the
basic social environment necessary to house the kinds of debates philosophy generates.
Even if one goes to a mall for social entertainment, he or she will end up sitting down at
a coffee-house. Public philosophical debates must continue to fuel the philosophical
debates, and the American coffee-house provides the environment most conducive to the
activity. I hope more philosophers (including myself) will find the courage to contact
their favorite neighborhood coffee-house in order to persuade its owner or manager to host
regular philosophical debates.
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