F E A T U R E S

What is it about Paris?
By Don George, Editor
The seductive heart of the City of Light

Philosophy au lait
By David Downie
I pose, therefore I am. "Philocafes" conquer Paris.
- Books on Paris
- Philocafes schedule

D E P A R T M E N T S

The Surreal Gourmet
By Bob Blumer
Asparagus with attitude

Passages:
"Anatomy of Restlessness"
Gone to Timbuctoo
By Bruce Chatwin
- Getting there

Postmark: Los Angeles
Lost in Los Feliz
By Dawn MacKeen
What happens when Madonna, Gwyneth and Brad take over your old neighborhood?
- Books on Los Angeles

Readers' Tips and Tales
Your favorite city in the whole wide world!

- - - - - - - -

Your virtual travel agency

- - - - - - - -

L A S T + W E E K

Tuesday, May 6

Riding high
By Cintra Wilson
Our resident enfant terrible does the Kentucky Derby

A full list of all
Wanderlust articles

philosophy au lait | 2

- - - - - - - -

the concept -- an open-mike, improvised public debate on philosophical quandaries -- is the brainchild of 50-year-old Marc Sautet, a would-be professor alienated by the French university system. His goal: to make philosophy accessible to everyone, highlight its cathartic and therapeutic value -- and earn a living. Looking like a Club Med gentil organisateur, the perma-tanned, blue-eyed Philosopher King took the Bastille by storm in late 1992. Predictably, he was savaged by the press and mainstream philosophers ("nonsense propagated by a sophist ..."), few of whom could be troubled to participate in his one and only 11 a.m. Sunday salon. The dogged Parisian Plato, undaunted, published "Un Café Pour Socrate" and, perhaps inspired by Lucy and Snoopy, hung his shingle on a philosopher's office at a chic Marais address (300 francs for a personalized philosophizing session). Soon dozens of philo-moderators across the country, some with impressive academic credentials, were leading enthusiastic, if motley, groups of apprentice philosophers.

Sautet's apotheosis is recent, however, dating from December 1996, when he and bestselling philosophy writers Jean-Luc Marion, André Comte-Sponville and Luc Ferry were guests on Bernard Pivot's TV show "Bouillon de Culture" -- an unbelievably influential program that can establish trends overnight. While philosophy has always been a favored subject in France -- high school students study it and Baccalaureate graduation exam questions make front page news -- it suddenly became all the rage, even spawning a movement of radical-chic, telegenic Nouveaux Philosophes like Bernard Henri-Levy -- BHL for short -- who has begun making philo-movies (including the recent "Le Jour et la Nuit," widely considered one of cinema history's all-time dogs).

To academics, though, philocafes remain suspect, a plebian College de France (where distinguished professors lecture, free, to the rapt and reverent, most of them retirees). Instead of welcoming the maverick Sautet, France's legions of savants are busy lacerating themselves over the succès de scandale of the philocafe phenomenon. Is it, they ask earnestly, because the Age of Ideology died in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall? Or could it be a manifestation of "collective despair" linked to globalization, waning family values and unemployment? Or a fin-de-siècle crisis of the spirit, the conjugation of lost religiosity and the approaching Third Millennium? Or a revolution against the Anglo-Saxon values embodied in commercial TV, the movies and the Internet? Ah, the Internet!

Strangely, no one seems to be asking whether they are popular primarily because they offer good, ribald fun, in keeping with the best Parisian cafe tradition. But that is exactly what you're in for on a Sunday afternoon at the Café des Phares, the city's liveliest philocafe. The ritual pecking of cheeks and passing of cigarette packs start at 10 a.m., when several dozen regulars show up to make sure they'll find a spot inside, near the bar, where the action is. A hundred or more casual participants ebb and flow between them and the sidewalk terrace, where they hear the debate through loudspeakers. Walkman headsets disappear as notepads and books are flourished -- Plato's "Republic," Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit," Sartre, Foucault, Camus, the Larousse Dictionary of Writers, even the Bible.

At the appointed hour, Sautet rises to his feet, tests the mike and, in consultation with a round-table of regulars, sets about finding the theme of the day. It's like a college-town literature workshop and a Quaker meeting rolled into one, with a pinch of karaoke and a splash of pop-psych.

"Yesterday it was 'Jurassic Park,'" suggests the first speaker, "tomorrow will it be 'Homo Sapiens Park'?" This is met by baffled groans.

"Nothing is to be hoped for, everything is to be lived," offers another speaker. More grumbling.

"Could it be that unemployment isn't a problem, but rather a solution?" This, too, is discarded. Too political.

Meanwhile coffee and beer are floating by, and a philocafe regular is squeezing between tables, hawking Philos, a monthly newsletter justly celebrated for its turgid, impenetrable prose. "All roads lead to Rome," warbles Sautet's disembodied voice through the mike. "How about considering the real meaning of this ancient saying?"

The question seems genial enough and is accepted as the theme of the day.

"Because of the Paris marathon," begins an eager woman, "it took me two hours to get here this morning, and I thought to myself, traveling toward an objective is sometimes difficult, so perhaps the hidden meaning in 'all roads lead to Rome' is that if you try hard enough you can reach your goal."

"Rome meaning the seat of all power?" asks someone.

"The Vatican? The church -- a symbol of oppression?" questions a second.

"The incarnation of totalitarian moralism, the first manifestation of religious globalism ..."

"This evokes the schism of the popes in Avignon, and is anti-papal ..."

"Nonsense! The quote is much older, it refers to Imperial Rome!"

Soon the debate is rolling along like a drunken steamroller, the mike passing from hand to hand -- a pipe-smoking prof with studiously wrinkled trousers, a bird-boned sophisticate with a Hermes scarf. "All roads lead to infinity," quips a youngster hidden by the cig and pipe fog, "Rome is finite, therefore the saying isn't valid!"

The permutations of this millennial cliché turn out to be manifold. Roads are about experience and all experience is valid; roads are the ways of the Lord, and they're unknowable. Rome is shorthand for beauty, love, art and death, and all roads lead to death, preferably via sex. The road to knowledge passes through sin, Rome is sin. A literate type quotes Montaigne ("by different means we arrive at the same end") while an irreverent wit paraphrases Borges ("if you put a monkey at a typewriter for eternity, sooner or later he'll write Shakespeare's entire oeuvre"). Things are beginning to get out of hand. Someone I can't see starts a convoluted philosophical argument, loses his train of thought, stutters and splutters like a noisy mobilette suddenly out of gas. Amid cruel clucking the mike is passed to the next apprentice philosopher.

"All roads lead to sex," says a Rabelaisian man in his 30s, picking up the libidinous subtext abandoned earlier.

"All roads, or just sex-tions of them," teases a voice from the peanut gallery. "Errance or Eros?"

"In the dark, all women are beautiful!"

"And all men are desirable!"

A handsome young fellow in a tweedy jacket makes eyes at the soulful-looking young woman across from him. She rewards him with a coy smile and a riffle of her notepad. Several other potential couples chat away, oblivious to the debate. Sautet, the voice of reason, intervenes to put things back on track. My neighbor leans over and says, "Isn't this silly and pretentious?"

Before I can answer, a gaunt intellectual leans over me from the other direction and sniffs, "It lacks rigor, it isn't philosophy at all." Just then a middle-aged woman with a blond bouffant bustles her way by, loaded with groceries from the Boulevard Richard Lenoir outdoor market 100 yards away. The smell of ripe cheese wafts up as she reaches for the mike. "She's been haggling over chickens and eggs," quips my jocular neighbor, suppressing hilarity. Suddenly a roller-skating teenager crashes into a table and is rescued by her philo-mom.

Finally, an authoritative voice with a distinctly Italian accent takes the mike and thunders, "The lesson so far seems to be that any sentence can lead us all anywhere!" A collective guffaw goes up, and by the time I slip out to do my shopping on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir several couples have been formed, people have laughed, argued, triumphed and failed, and lots of drinks have been sold. At their worst, philocafes are innocuous (a bit of posing and pretentious philo-babble never hurt anyone), at their best stimulating, fun and profitable. My waiter beams as I plonk down 20 francs for two coffees. The babble is good for business.
May 13, 1997

David Downie is a contributing editor for Departures and Appellation magazines. He has written for numerous publications, including Saveur, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country and the Observer. In July 1997, Rizzoli International will publish his latest book, "Enchanted Liguria -- A Celebration of the Culture, Lifestyle and Food of the Italian Riviera." He has lived in Paris since 1986.