| Socrates makes a comeback
By Patrick Gerard Healy GLOBE CORRESPONDENT About 50 people are seated in a tight circle in the middle of McIntyre and Moore Booksellers in Somerville, talking about whether or not humans have higher morals than animals and other species. This sort of discussion doesn't happen every day at the Davis Square bookstore but it does happen once a month. On every third Tuesday for the past year, Tom Clark has been moderating the Davis Square Philosophy Cafe, an "informal relaxed philosophical discussion" on topics ranging from the importance of science in our lives to the very core of existence. The crowd is as diverse as the topics are universal, with participants ranging in age from 20-somethings to 70-somethings, spanning a multitude of ethnicities and, most importantly, welcoming all perspectives. Chins rest in hands, brows furrow, eyes dart from speaker to speaker, and as the group searches for answers, things can get pretty heated. "I think complexity gives you capacity to do more and achieve more," says 38-year-old Somerville resident Ted Saad in the discussion, suggesting that since humans are more complex than other animals, they may have more moral rights. Clark cannot resist the challenge. "If you're more complex than a dog, the dog obviously doesn't have the same rights you do," he reasons, "but the question is if the dog can suffer the way you do, doesn't that introduce another dimension of moral concern?" An answer often unfolds into another question in this type of gathering, and the intensity only increases as each new dilemma is introduced. "Morality is a human construct," says 31-year old Heather Snow of Somerville. "We invented it through our language, it's not a natural concept. It's just a luxury of self-actualization." Eric Blumenson, a professor at Suffolk University Law School who presented the night's topic, counters that there is a difference between dismantling a table and torturing a cat. "In some cultures," responds Snow. Clark, who serves as moderator for the discussions, sometimes steps in when participants clash too harshly. "If someone has a point they want to make and it becomes personalized, then tempers tend to flare a bit, and at that point I have to lay down the law," he says. "It's a good thing we don't serve beer." Instead, the Philosophy Cafe offers coffee, for a recommended donation of $1.25. Although the arguments can fluster the participants, most seem to agree there is a value to this sort of discussion. "For me, it's not really the topic so much as you find yourself in a cubicle for eight hours a day and your brain gets tired, so it's nice to have a philosophy venue," says Snow later. Saad agrees. "I like the intellectual discourse, and getting different perspectives from different people in the community," he says. "It's just an enjoyable evening out." The range of participants' experience runs from untainted personal philosophies to those who can quote the greats verbatim. At one point Mitch Hampton, a 37-year-old writer and musician clad in a blazer with monogrammed cuffs poking out of its sleeves, says that, when it came to philosophy, Jesus was wrong and George Bernard Shaw right. "Jesus says `do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' and George Bernard Shaw in `Man and Superman' says never do unto others as you would have them do unto you, `their tastes may not be the same,' " he muses. "Someone reflects to themselves that they have all this feeling of compassion, but there could be a million psychopaths inside the human community. I think the difference in capacities outweighs commonality." Clark says no particular expertise is required to participate in these discussions, "only a desire to explore philosophy and its real-world applications." At 57, he views himself as a middleman between academic philosophy and personal philosophy. He studied philosophy at Tufts but never received a degree, and he has been published in several journals. He also runs the Center for Naturalism, the local nonprofit that co-sponsors the Davis Square events, and he just loves to talk about philosophy. He says he modeled the monthly Davis Square session on similar events underway in other cities in Europe and the United States. The Davis Square Philosophy Cafe is not the only modern-day salon in town. Every Wednesday a smaller group with some of the same participants meets upstairs at Harvard Square's Algiers Coffee House in what they call the Socrates Cafe. This organization, also founded a little over a year ago, is based on a volume of the same name by author Christopher Phillips. On a book tour last year Phillips spoke at the Brookline Booksmith, where he encouraged listeners to set up a local organization for philosophical discourse, something he'd been promoting at almost every stop he made for the past eight years. "We now have about 300 ongoing groups around the world, from Kabul to Las Vegas," says Phillips, speaking from Manhattan on a cellphone with a Virginia area code. He says when he started the first Socrates Cafe, his goal was more modest and seemed even less achievable. "My grandiose ambition was just to start one of these," he says, "and even friends who were sympathetic to what I was trying to do were telling me that it wouldn't work because Americans just aren't inured to trying things like that." His friends were half right: Americans weren't accustomed to this sort of discussion. But that's hardly stopped them from trying. Scott Brewer, a Harvard professor of law, frequents the Socrates Cafe and attends the Davis Square event when he can. He was at Phillips's Brookline chat. "I was aware of the books by Christopher Phillips, and I was intrigued by this idea of making philosophy something that's accessible to people who aren't professional philosophers," he says. "The tradition of philosophy as a way of life and people getting together and pondering, not in a technical academic way, but out of concerns of everyday life, was a tradition of the ancient world that has gotten lost in the way philosophy is done in the modern world." Diane Hendrix, a freelance filmmaker and a Socrates Cafe regular, says modern life has become such that this sort of get-together is almost inevitable. "Our culture has lost a lot of community," she says. "In America today we seek voluntary communities instead of the ones that have traditionally centered around family, neighborhood, or religious groups, and so we now have these cyber neighborhoods and find each other via interests." What these gatherings offer participants is more than respite from the text-based communication of e-mail and chat rooms. "I think it's something to take me out of everyday life to consider larger questions," says Anna Socrates, a 45-year-old book production editor at the Somerville session who doesn't think she's related to her famous philosophical namesake. "People are at a point now where they want to know about this stuff," agrees Haskel Straus, 54, of Lincoln. "The world is so crazy that we have to try to make sense of it." There is something magnetic about the meetings. Mary Moran, a 62-year-old counselor who claims to be clairvoyant, was just walking by McIntyre and Moore after a session with a client, and decided to stop in and browse their selection of used books. She heard discussion that seemed out of place. Pretty soon she had wandered over and began participating. She enjoyed it so much she says she will definitely try to make it to the next one. Brewer says the appeal of any philosophical get-together goes back thousands of years. "There just seems to be a hunger for this kind of conversation," he says. "People believe what Socrates said, that the unexamined life is not worth living." Patrick Gerard Healy can be reached at PGH@globe.comBack |
|