History
The idea behind the Socrates Café is that we learn more when we question and question with others. It all started a decade ago when Christopher Phillips, then a freelance writer, asked himself what he could do that would in some modest way further the deeds of those noble souls who had come before him and, as William James put it, “suffered and laid down their lives” to better the lot of humankind? The epiphany and also the answer for him was to be a philosopher in the mold of Socrates, and to hold Socratic dialogues with anyone and everyone who’d like to engage in a common quest to gain a better understanding of human nature - who shared with him the aspiration of becoming more empathetic people and more objectively critical and creative philosophical inquirers. Phillips' idea of having open-invitation meetings in a cafe to discuss philosophy was inspired by Marc Sautet, whose Café Philosophique Phillips joined after reading an article about Sautet in 1992.
A typical group meets in a public place, is open to anyone who wishes to attend, and uses the Socratic method to discuss a question which is chosen by vote or which is announced shortly in advance. Typically there are no prerequisites, and no reading or other preparation is required.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)