Bestselling Author │ Founder, Socrates Café │ Journalist

“Like a Johnny Appleseed with a master’s degree, Phillips has gallivanted back and forth across America, to cafés and coffee shops, senior centers, assisted-living complexes, prisons, libraries, day-care centers, elementary and high schools, and churches, forming lasting communities of inquiry” (Utne Reader).
 
For Christopher Phillips philosophy is not academic discipline reserved for “the lecture hall or the faculty lounge,” it is a living thing—an essential way of approaching the world and puzzling out one’s place in it.  Philosophy is his passion and he has found his life's vocation in bringing the Socratic Method to ordinary people in ordinary places, challenging them to consider:  What is virtue? Good? Justice? Moderation? Piety? Courage?
 
He believes that, “Socrates’ example continues to teach us how to expand our own intellectual and imaginative horizons.”  Phillips’ goal is inspire people who are curious, perplexed and filled with an insatiable sense of wonder, so they can dialogue for discovery and democracy.
 
In the bestseller Socrates Café (W.W. Norton, 2001), Phillips describes his extensive travels across the U.S. starting philosophical discussion groups and recalls what led him to start his itinerant program to begin with.  Recounting some of the most invigorating sessions, he reveals sometimes surprising, often profound reflections on the meaning of love, friendship, work, growing old, and others among Life's Big Questions.
 
In his successful follow up, Six Questions of Socrates (W.W. Norton, 2004), Phillips continues this work, venturing to foreign lands and engaging in spirited and provocative discussions with people from many backgrounds: Japanese fifth-graders, Somalian refugees, a Mexican museum worker, an Israeli university student, Korean Buddists…The responses uncover surprising commonalities between cultures and reveal the deep connections between classical philosophy, modern life and the rich traditions and experiences of people far removed from the “canon” of Western academic philosophy.
 
“…Phillips induces his listeners to examine their assumptions rationally, in hopes they will see the way to improving the meaningfulness of their lives. These dialogues are intriguing, interesting, and often unexpected, as Phillips modestly considers himself a fellow inquirer, rather than a didactic instructor” (Booklist).
 
Phillips reminds us that we ought to ask questions—that the process of dialogue and the space of human interaction are good for us as individuals and are essential for us as a society.   At a time when American culture is perceived as isolationist and self-involved, Phillips’ inquiries provide us with a key to understanding ourselves and the people around us with greater openness and less fear.
 
Christopher Phillips travels around the world, facilitating hundreds of Socrates Cafés, in which ordinary people gather to ask questions—and questions about questions. He has been a teacher, a journalist, and is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI).  The distinguished scholar and professor of philosophy Matthew Lipman and Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Coles serve on the advisory board of SPI.  
 
Phillips and his wife Cecilia divide their time living in Mexico and in Virginia.

Books

• Socrates in Love: Philosophy for a Passionate Heart (W. W. Norton, 2007) 
• Six Questions of Socrates (W. W. Norton, 2004)
• Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy (W. W. Norton, 2001)
  

Children's Books

• Ceci Ann's Day of Why (forthcoming, Tricycle Press, September 2006)  
• The Philosophers' Club, illustrated by Kim Doner (Tricycle Press, 2001)

Selected Lecture Topics

• A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery Through World Philosophy
• Bowling Together: Building Social Capital and Civic-Mindedness
• Looking Within: A Socratic Symposium on Soul
• Socrates Café: Philosophical Communities In and Out of the Academy
• The Six Socratic Virtues: A Pathway to Human Excellence
• The Artful Life
• The Road to Reason

To listen to an interview with Christopher Phillips on NPR, click here.

For more information about Christopher Phillips, please go to www.christopherphillips.com or  www.philosopher.org.