|
 |
A New York Philosopher teaches us
how to Converse
|
Bernard R. Roy
|
 |
by Guia K. Monti
|
He andado muchos caminos
he abierto muchas veredas;
he navegado en cien mares
y atracado en cien riberas.
Antonio Machado, Soledades, 1899-1907
|
|
I have worked for almost two years as a webmaster on the Internet with
Bernard Roy to create and develop his site, which has grown in size and interest thanks to
a particular section, the Café Philo Central,
dedicated exclusively to his famous philosophical meetings. This summer I finally had the
pleasure of meeting him on occasion of one of his trips to Europe. Due to the time
difference, being him in America and myself in Europe, we patiently cultivated a
friendship, getting to know each other exclusively from hundreds of e-mails.
This "anomalous" interview came about from the meeting of two people who,
without knowing each others' backgrounds, had till then communicated only through
cyberspace, sharing shreds of life which only old friends can share. It is a short resume
of his past which, he confessed to me, helps him to carry out a critical analysis and
maybe uncover something new about himself.
I found the substance of his life so human and interesting that I thought it couldbe an
example and an encouragement to anyone who wants to try alternative paths, often
considered too difficult, or even impossible, compared to those path considered to be
definitively traced and unchangeable. When I think of Bernard, some verses by Antonio
Machado, a great Spanish poet of little things, come to my mind: "I've followed many
roads / I have opened many paths; / I have navigated over hundred seas / and I have moored
at a hundred banks".
Born in Paris in 1944, Bernard Roy studied at first at the Lycée Hotelier in Thonon, in
France, then at the Cornell Hotel School in the United States. After having worked in the
hospitality industry in several European countries, he was the manager and owner of
various restaurants in New York. Currently he teaches philosophy at Sarah Lawrence- recently pointed out by TIME as the best
liberal arts college at a national level - and at Baruch College,
both in New York. For the third consecutive year he organizes and moderates twice a month,
a "café philo"- a philosophical
discussion in which a theme inherent to our society is proposed and in which the public
can freely participate. These meetings have had such a success that, apart from being
listed among the cultural events in New York, they have been mentioned in the New York
Times as well. In March the Encyclopaedia Britannica published
on its Internet site a detailed article on the "philosophy café" movement, in
which it also reports on an interview done with Bernard Roy on the subject.
After years of activity in the hospitality industry, how did the
decision of starting a new career as a philosopher come about ?
My life took a dramatic change of direction sixteen years ago. It was at that time that I
started to wean myself from the hospitality industry and to train as a philosopher. It was
clear that I wanted to change, and I felt, before I knew anything about the issue of
personal identity, that I could become a different person if I thoroughly understood a
discipline I did not then understand. Every time I ask myself what pushed me to this
change, I do not uncover profound motives, but prepared answers. I was bored and burnt out
by the industry, or maybe it was only that it changed and I was not willing to change with
it. Philosophy, which I knew little or nothing about - I had read and misinterpreted some
of Plato's dialogues - seemed to me to be an element so fundamental to life that to go
through life without experiencing it was like missing something out. In addition I sensed
that the label of philosopher would confer me a status the worth of which I seemed much in
need. All of these reasons sound pretty good, but none has the ring of truth. The irony of
philosophy is that one cannot always tell the real value of its reasons: it can only
supply more reasons for the reasons that don't feel real enough,but reasons don't acquire
value by having more reasons piled onto them. I believe, on the contrary, that the more
reasons there are the cheaper the argument is.
So you decided to go back to school...
Yes, "going back to school" meant a lot more to me than going back to the
education I abandoned at the age of fifteen to go to the Lycée Hotelier of Thonon, on the
French shore of the Lake of Geneva. Thonon, and later Cornell, were both professional
schools, and they represented a drastic change in my education giving up fields of studies
that I enjoyed very much; it was an act that deeply upset me at the time. (The choice was
imposed on me by my widowed mother who considered that when the next inevitable war broke
out I wouldn't go hungry as she did during the German occupation). To "return to
school" I quit working for two months and enrolled in a philosophy course at Columbia
University. Although the work seemed obscure and totally unrewarding, I decided to
persevere. Since I had to have an income I took a full time job as a dining room captain
in an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Although I had a reputation in the restaurant
world of New York, it did not extend to that microcosm of Little Italy. The place
was run with a lot of rigour and I felt at home. I continued there, alternating between
full and part-time, for a good seven years.
After getting a degree you continued to study for a doctorate in philosophy.
I registered at the Graduate school of the City University of New York and nine years
later I successfully defended my doctoral thesis under the supervision of Marx Wartofsky.
I give myself credit for managing to finish, especially because I was constantly
troubled by the thought that if my thesis was original then it was very probably
erroneous, and even if it was right, then it was possible that someone had already dealt
with this argument and had expressed it much better than me. I believe anyhow that I
wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of a young professor, Juliet Floyd, and
the help of Laura Hinton, who would become my second wife. My thesis was a very scholarly
work which showed how the logic of Port Royal in the seventeenth century placed the
emphasis on the quality of the perception of Ideas, revealing the shortcomings of a logic
based on form rather than content.
Was it easy to find work ?
I wouldn't say so. The market didn't seem receptive toward my work or my age. And here
again the reasons abound to justify my lack of success in getting a steady job. I had to
resign myself to teaching as an adjunct professor in five universities, often teaching 5
or 6 subjects each semester, in addition to summer courses.
When Wartofsky died in 1997 I was offered a full time place at Baruch College until they
found his successor; and it certainly couldn't be me since Marx was justifiably a
"Distinguished Professor". That year I was very happy, even if I knew that I
wouldn't be able to be appointed again. The following year I found out from Bob Zimmerman
that his department at Sarah Lawrence College needed a substitute teacher for a year. I
obtained the temporary teaching contract. I was extremely happy about this because Sarah
Lawrence College represented my teaching ideal. It was in fact a genuine exchange between
students and teachers (I believe that the student- teacher ratio is 8 students to a
teacher), and they don't use the typical authoritative teaching where one expects the
teacher to be a full container and the student to be willing to hand over his/her head so
it can be filled. The College is governed in an intelligent and democratic way, and by
democratic I mean a system where there isn't an obvious tyranny of the majority. When I
was reappointed to the job for another year I couldn't believe my luck, to the point where
I often almost mistake this two year contract for something definitive and it is the
little things like the title of "Guest Faculty" that bring me back to reality. I
have taught two year-long seminars, one on "History of
Ideas from Antiquity to the Present", and the other on Continental
Philosophy. The first, apart from the fact of having a reading list that was too
ambitious, it gave no problems, while the second was a real back breaker - but I deserved
the beating. In fact it was very audacious on my part to propose this course, since I had
been trained
philosophically in the American tradition which is analytic.
What is the basic element that differentiates American thinking from
European thinking ?
Being European I am attracted to continental philosophy, but having studied at an American
University I received an analytic training. What is the difference between the two
systems? For me it is a little like the difference between truth and sincerity. The
analytical tradition more or less follows a scientific model, searches and settles for
clear categories, and tends to take seriously only those things that can be counted,
divided or measured; the truths gain their values by being disassociated from a
particular human perception. The continental tradition, on the other hand, does not seek
to emulate scientific rigour, shies away from "-ism" labels, and takes the
notion of being seriously. In Europe, the human being is not so much the objective member
of a class whose relations are defined in terms of mathematical functions, as much as the
subjective dweller in a complex interconnected world of practical functions: truth is
close to sincerity. For the analytic, the universal takes its roots in the ideal, for the
continental the universal begins with the everyday.
Borrowing Nietzsche' s distinction, I will say that the former is Apollonian and the
latter is Dionysian. As a result, one is more likely to become a philosophe engagé with a
continental training, and I believe that this is what attracts me to the continentals. The
brilliance of an argument consists in its literal irresistibility.
What are some of the projects for this academic year ?
I will hold a seminar on the origins of modern European philosophy which will centre on
the notions of freedom and innatism in the seventeenth century and on the moral and
political philosophies of the eighteenth century. As far as the issue of freedom is
concerned, I like to talk about Descartes' "compatibilism" in the
"Méditation IV" and of Hobbes' determinism. The positions each philosopher
defends appear clear to me.
The challenge comes instead from Spinoza and Locke. I have taught the two several times,
but I can't yet sense that I have a good grasp of their arguments or of what they want to
prove. This is perhaps a reason why at times I may appear obstinate or fascinated by
Spinoza. There will also be seminars on love and friendship among philosophers, and others
on early modern European philosophy (from Descartes to Kant). The first seminar is
original and promising. Not only will we read canonical writings on friendship and love:
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, but also autobiographical accounts of friendship and love,
Augustine, Montaigne, Rousseau, Kirkegaard, Mill and Feyerabend, as well as the
correspondence between philosophers who were lovers or friends. Among these are the
correspondence between Heloïse and Abelard, Descartes and princess Elizabeth, Heidegger
and Arendt, Sartre and de Beauvoir. Finally each semester I will lead a Socratic dialogue
on friendship.
Friendship and Love are recurrent themes in Socratic dialogues.
A modern Socratic dialogue critically examines concepts
which we often praise without really knowing why. Take friendship, for example: we all
believe that it is a good thing to have friends because our culture makes heroes of
friends. Why? And what does it mean to be a friend? One can know about it by reading
Plato's "Lysis" or parts of Aristotle's " Nichomachean Ethics" or
Cicero's "On friendship", but these accounts may be too abstract and rational.
There is another dimension of friendship that is personal and emotional (Cicero, to his
credit, makes an emotion the origin of friendship). Of course, some will argue that if
this dimension isn't rationally justifiable then it doesn't belong to philosophy.
Well, part of the job of a modern Socratic dialogue is to include the personal and
emotional in the rational. Participants in such dialogues traditionally begin by
recounting personal experiences of friendship.
These experiences are discussed among everyone until one in particular is considered
really good by all. The consensus is crucial and it is reached through successive stages
of dissent and assent. These stages are what give the dialogue its Socratic character, and
it is modern in the sense that it uses of ‘this-life' experiences rather than
‘other-life' experiences. The particular experience is then anatomized and examined
until a part of it is identified as best representing the spirit of friendship. That part
is then expanded into a generalization.
How are the Socratic dialogues integrated into the hotel business ?
All those who have taken part in one of my Socratic dialogues have commented that the
dialogue had afforded them a genuine sense of friendship.
One could argue that the more one understands of a particular concept, the more one is
likely to experience it, if this is possible, in its authenticity. The results encouraged
me to extend the dialogues to the hospitality industry, and
here I seem to have made a complete circle. Have I, so to speak, come home to roost ? The
hospitality industry was an integral part of my life for over 26 years, but it remained
part of my life after I left it. As a matter of fact, for the next fifteen years I learned
to see it from the guest's point of view. I started to appreciate the complexity of the
relation of hospitality and noted how the leaders of the industry took it for granted. I
began to think of it as a reciprocal relationship, but it had to differ from the other
social relations that culminate in reciprocity, like friendship or love. One cannot simply
say that hospitality and friendship differ insofar as the latter only requires an
emotional involvement, because hospitality does also require an emotional involvement.
It may be of a different nature than friendship, but nevertheless, without it there would
be no genuine hospitality. I would like to think of it both as a personal relation and an
art.
Is it possible to teach hospitality, then ?
Certainly, but not the way one teaches economics or cooking. I believe that the art part
can be best understood by means of a Socratic dialogue.
Imagine a group of about ten adults, some who work in the hospitality industry, some who
do not, but often travel and dine out, and some who prefer to entertain or be entertained
at home. Imagine them telling each other their most memorable experience of hospitality.
Wouldn't it be an experience that everyone would be interested in sharing, because it
"feels" the most like hospitality? And wouldn't a group dynamics, together with
a critical analysis of the experience, contribute to a solid understanding of hospitality?
And finally, wouldn't a better understanding make us more hospitable? Even if, as with
Socrates and his interlocutors, one is more perplexed than enlightened by the process,
would one not feel more qualified to strive for hospitality than before? Even though
friendship is a more complex relationship, if for no other reason the latter is assisted
by props, the conundrum of friendship may equally apply to hospitality, but one cannot
know it until one has reflected and understood a little about it.
The philosophical discussions held during cafés philo under the
form of
a Socratic dialogue are very successful of late. Is it just a trend ?
I believe that the cafés are now in a phase that is beyond the level of trend, they
are a school. That is because there are scholarships for it and there are programmes
intended to train prospective café philo moderators.
How did the café philo movement start ?
It all started with Marc Sautet, the French philosopher who abandoned his teaching career
to devote himself entirely to practical philosophy. He traces the origin of his new
vocation to a spontaneous philosophical discussion that took place in the Café des
Phares, Place de la Bastille, in Paris on a Sunday morning.
This kind of non- academic philosophical conversation soon became a national phenomena;
today there are a good 200 active cafés philo in France. Some publish newsletters,
dedicating entire columns to the cafés philo and to the associations of ‘animators',
that is, moderators.
What activities are there on the international level ?
On the last weekend of November in Castres, France there will
be an international conference of the cafés philo - the third of its kind - to which I
have been invited as a representative for the United States. The title of my talk comes
from a famous Sartre sentence, "Le café précède la philosophie"[the café
precedes philosophy], and I will be arguing that the French café captures the spirit of
the Athenian agora and that the atmosphere generated by thesecultural venues is what
encouraged philosophy to become practical, praxis.
Twice a month a Café Philo is organized and moderated in New York.
How did you come to this decision?
In 1996 I met Lou Marinoff, then my
colleague and now the President of the American Philosophical Practitioner Association (APPA) at the City College of New York. He introduced me to
the field of practical philosophy, that is to philosophical counselling, Socratic
dialogues and cafés philo. I was then trained by Dries Boyle, a well-known member of the
Dutch school. At first this new world was a second choice for me: I enjoyed teaching and
doing research and I wanted to be rooted in a university system. Practical philosophy
seemed perhaps a continuation of my nomadic life. It was then that I took part in my first
café philo in an enormous New York bookstore, part of a chain of bookstores who try hard
to make their stores seem like libraries or salons. The next year I attended several
cafés philo in France. They all were very distinct experiences, maybe due to the physical
layout of the place, of the personality of the moderator or of the structure of the café
philo itself.
Why is it that the type of place so important ?
It deals with a café Philo and so the spaces that are most similar to a French café are
those which according to me are the most likely to stimulate a casual and informal
conversation. The entire space of a small café would be ideal, but because of commercial
considerations, the typical angle or the back room of a brasserie or a French café would
also work well. Philosophy possesses plenty of formal venues in Academe. I guess that what
a café philo wants to promote is casualness and informality. Thus, normal background
noise, the latecomers, early leavers, the va-et-vient of wait staff, food and drinks, are
part of the informality. Finding the right place in New York is difficult, because
although New York has many cafés it does not have a café culture, the kind that was
present and waiting for Marc Sautet when he had his first serendipitous exchange. This is
also due in part to the fact that commercial space is very expensive and many cafes that
could be suitable require a guaranteed minimum profit; I fear that these financial
limitations would put a damper on the informality of the event. Most of our participants
order food and drinks, but I can't require that everyone spend a minimum amount. In
a sense, we are making a statement that even though a kind of capitalism effronté rules,
it is not to tyrannize. During the first year we met at Le
Poème, a charming small French restaurant in an up and coming neighbourhood of
Manhattan, Nolita, to the north of Little Italy. The place had a front room with around 40
seats, with tables and chairs of different design. Had we been able to occupy on a
regular basis this part of the café I think that we would have stayed there. At the
beginning of our second year we moved to an Afghan restaurant, whose owner, Shah - for 23
years an employee of my restaurant - let us have his back room at no minimum. The room
does not have the personality of the front room at Le Poème, but is working out fairly
well. I have not ruled out the possibility of shopping around for a more authentic café.
What influence does the personality of the moderator have ?
Personalities are very subjective factors and in time they tend to attract similar
personalities. I can only say what I try to project , but I can't say for sure how it is
received. I want to be a presence that does not dominate; one that gives as generously as
it receives. Those who receive can be ungenerous in the way they accept gifts, money or
information, for example.
I find that some moderators emulate the abrasive style of some popular TV or radio
figures; they are hostile and selfish and look for approval from the public, putting down
individuals' views that are at odds with theirs, or by explaining to candid and
defenceless interlocutors what their problems are (as if they knew).
How are your philosophical encounters structured ?
Two possible structures exist for the café philo. One consists in deciding for the topic
on the very the café philo takes place; the other selects a topic ahead of time,
generally at the end of the previous café. Marc Sautet used the first approach, but I
opted for the second. Sautet justified his choice saying that the café philo was to
strike a golden middle road between the extremes of a professional colloquium and that of
group therapy. By deciding a topic on the same day he thought he would avoid the first
extreme, not allowing the participants to read up beforehand for the discussion. I feel
that, on the contrary, it is good that at least some people prepare for the topic. In
fact, I give them some quotations that encourage them to reflect, though few have the time
to read them, taken up as they are by work or studies. As a result, I have considerably
cut down the number of these quotes; at one time they took up around two pages, now I
propose one or two, and each one represents a different approach to the issue. The
discussion, which unfolds according to the scheme of the Socratic dialogue already
illustrated, is conducted in the informal ambience of the café, and everyone is
encouraged to participate.
A unique feature of our meetings is that they give rise to summaries. At first they were around a page and half
long and I used to write them from memory, rarely identifying the speaker by name.
Now I take notes during the discussion, as a result the summaries sometimes exceed four
pages. I also identify the speakers by name and I encourage them to comment on or discuss
what I report in my summaries. All this is made possible thanks to modern technology and
to your scrupulous work, Guia.
The summaries are published on our site, classified
and organized according to links. The site also includes information about my university courses and on my research,
and it is a veritable living curriculum vitae.
We have a list of many addresses of people interested in our discussions, and everyone
receives by e-mail an announcement and then the summary of the café. This happens by way
of the list serve that you created and
manage, in which subscription is free and where people can send e-mails with comments and
clarification on their own comments at the café, or can indicate topics they would like
to see discussed. A lot of important work takes place outside the venue of the café.
Thus, even after the meetings the participants continue to think about what they said, at
how it was received by others, and what the others said. This work is constructive: anyone
who wants to add something to the discussion can do so via e-mail without waiting for the
next meeting. Naturally none of this would be possible without electronics.
How does teaching compaginate with the spirit of the café philo ?
Teaching and the café philo complement each other. The café is a class over which I have
no authority, and this is comforting. The participants say whatever interests them rather
than what I think is a correct response. This has made me much more aware of the original
contribution students can make than I was before. I no longer feel that student's answer
must necessarily match mine: I don't want to advocate some kind of wildly relative
teaching; I try instead to become a better listener.
I believe that the inclusion of a Socratic dialogue in a university course will be a first
in America and that the dynamics that permeates such dialogues are quite consistent with
the teaching spirit at Sarah Lawrence College.
What are your plans for the immediate future ?
I'd like to stay at Sarah Lawrence and continue to work at a personal level with the
students, as the college encourages. Unfortunately there are specific academic
constraints. Academic positions are like Senate seats: one needs to be available to apply
for the job. At the same time I would like to continue to promote and to practice Socratic
dialogues. Even if I like working both within the university and outside it, given that
these two worlds complement each other - this also happens in science, between our
theories and the real world - I can also envisage a world that might develop a social
conscience towards practical philosophy. Indeed, many philosophers, practical or
otherwise, like myself, are currently working at the community level to forge a
sensitivity that will bring this new consciousness.
In the long run I want to be able to write more I do now: for example to continue my
current work for the scholarship on the history of philosophy. I have planned two books,
one that will deal with my experiences with the café philo, and another, much more
ambitious, that proposes to replace the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, which is clearly
an aspect of our humanity, by a dialect based on hospitality, for hospitality does mirror
another aspect of our humanity.
Who wants to know more about Bernard Roy and his philo cafes can consult his website
http://www.gksdesign.com/bernardroy
If you desire to enroll in the list fo discussion you can do it form this web page:
http://click.to/cafephiloforum
|
|
|
|
 |
|
