WASHINGTON (voa) – Christopher Phillips has spent much of the past decade as a roving philosopher. The former school teacher travels from bookstores and coffee houses to schools, prisons and homeless shelters holding what he calls “Socrates Cafes.” Taking his inspiration from the fifth century Greek philosopher, he poses a question, then lets the group gathered around him puzzle over the answers.
In an earlier book called Socrates Café (W.W. Norton), Mr. Phillips described his experiences leading philosophical discussions around the United States. Now he’s written a more far reaching book, called Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery Through World Philosophy.
Christopher Phillips believes many societies are struggling to redefine themselves in the face of war, political repression and civil strife. And he says that makes it an ideal time to have the kinds of open-ended debates he describes in his book, Six Questions of Socrates. “It isn’t to say that the six questions – what is virtue, justice, courage, moderation, piety, or good – that any of those are the only six questions one should ask, but that maybe by engaging in a reflective dialogue with a group of thoughtful souls, maybe they help us further fine-tune our own ideas of how to become more excellent. I certainly found that by being exposed to people from such disparate ways of world-viewing, it opened up my intellectual and imaginative horizons to possibilities I otherwise never would have been privy to,” he says.
Posing the same questions in diverse cultures means the answers can vary dramatically. Christopher Phillips was asked about that when he appeared recently at a Washington, D.C., bookstore to talk about his travels.
“I was wondering how you deal with discussions that involve many definitions of virtue. For instance, suicide bombers probably think they’re very virtuous. They’re sacrificing themselves for a higher purpose,” said one woman. “Absolutely,” he replied, “I wish we could have a dialogue right here and now, because that’s a good springboard for it.”
While the dialogues Mr. Phillips describes in his book show that politics, religion and history can lead to wide differences in peoples’ outlooks, he says there are also many points of agreement among disparate cultures. At a university in the north central United States, he spoke with a group of students, most from the Middle East, about how to define what is good. “People from the Jewish traditions spoke about this idea of ‘lev tov’ – a person with a good heart is somebody who is always thinking about others and always recognizing that everybody has hopes and fears and dreams, even if we see them as our enemy. And it was interesting because the young Muslim students said, ‘Gosh, that’s remarkably similar to our perspective.’ They have a word ‘tayyeb,’ which is also a person with a good heart. And that’s what I found so fascinating, that much more often than not you discover the universals in these particulars,” he says.
Christopher Phillips also found that answers can change as countries evolve. He discussed the question of justice with a group gathered at the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico City. In the late 1960s that same plaza had been the scene of pro-democracy demonstrations, where hundreds of people were killed or injured.
“Several of the participants were people who had lost family members. So at first they said justice is those who have the power, those who determine the rules, which mirrored the second part of ‘Plato’s Republic,’ where one of the characters in that dialogue said justice is whatever the rich decide is justice. It was also interesting to have this dialogue at this particular point because Mexico finally had a new President,” he says. “So there was this great hope and optimism that now that society was becoming more open, maybe they could sculpt a type of justice that could and should be applied to everybody.”
Christopher Phillips says a highlight of his travels came in Athens, Greece, where he went to the same agora, or gathering place, where Socrates once held his debates. Those debates were considered subversive by officials in ancient Athens, and Socrates was ultimately tried and condemned to death. Mr. Phillips says that when he asked a group of modern-day Greeks about the meaning of virtue, they looked back on their national legacy.
“They talked about the fact that here we are, the cradle of democracy in Greece, and yet we’re having a dialogue in this ruin. And they complained about the fact that Greeks no longer have these types of dialogues any more. Some said when Socrates died, virtue died too. But I think it ended with this pervasive air of optimism, because the idea was that maybe Socrates died so that virtue could live on. And they agreed that in order to reascend and become a thriving democracy once again, one of the things you need to do is ask yourself from time to time, what is virtue, what is it made of, what is its function,” he says.
You might say Christopher Phillips was born to lead Socratic dialogues. “My dad’s family immigrated from Athens in the 1930s. They came through Ellis Island and their last name was changed from Philipou to Phillips. But I also get it a great deal from my mom who’s Scotch Irish. My mom was born and raised in a coal mining camp in West Virginia. She always had this great social conscience, and she always mirrored to me this person who genuinely loved to hear what other people had to say. So this great combination of Greek-Scotch-Irish I think has set me on this wonderful quest, indeed,” he says.
Christopher Phillips’ efforts have taken on a life of their own. There are now some 150 permanent Socrates Cafes around the world, located everywhere from the United States, to Japan, Syria and Spain. Those groups meet on a regular basis to engage in the same kind of lively debate that inspired Six Questions of Socrates.
