Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SOCRATES CAFE: What's It All About?

Informal meetings at Mandalay Bay enable people to discuss the meaning of life

Author Christopher Phillips is the man behind the Socrates Cafe movement. His latest book is "Six Questions of Socrates." Tali Arik, a cardiologist, is among the people who attend the Socrates Cafe meetings outside the Chocolate Swan at Mandalay Place. The Socrates Cafe attracts people such as Pam Martin to the meetings outside the Chocolate Swan at Mandalay Place. Geologist Tom Reynolds offers his opinion during a Socrates Cafe meeting. Photos by Craig L. Moran.

People don't usually go into a casino seeking the meaning of life.

But on a recent Tuesday night, seven locals did just that when they met at Mandalay Bay.

For 90 minutes, the eclectic group of mostly strangers sat at a cluster of cafe tables outside the Chocolate Swan shop in Mandalay Place and engaged in an open dialogue about some of the loftier issues faced by the human race: What are we here for? What is happiness? What is justice? Which religion is right? What is religion? What is "right"?

Welcome to Socrates Café, Las Vegas. It's not so much a place as it is a state of mind.

This profound discussion, every Tuesday night at 7, was inspired by two men: Socrates, long dead, and Christopher Phillips, a writer on a quest to keep the great philosopher's teachings alive. Phillips, the author of "Socrates Café," has been traveling the world since 1996, bringing philosophy to the masses by engaging them in Socratic dialogues.

He has left more than 150 Socrates Cafés in his wake. Scores of people meet in bookstores, libraries, coffee shops, prisons and now a casino, and, keeping in mind Socrates' advice, "The unexamined life is not worth living," they ask the hard questions and debate them in the way the philosopher intended.

Last month, on a tour to promote his most recent book, "Six Questions of Socrates," Phillips stopped in Las Vegas and planted the seed for one of the newest Socrates Cafés. The group's fourth meeting is scheduled for for 7 p.m. today in Mandalay Bay, 3950 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

All are welcome and no one needs to be invited, says group facilitator Ron Filardi. The idea is to maintain the spirit of Socrates' practice of going to places where people congregate.

"Part of the theory is to have people just drop by. It's kind of an open forum," he explains.

And even though they talk philosophy, one need not be an academic or an expert. In fact, attendees are from all walks of life. At a recent meeting, a hotel employee sat next to a bookstore manager, while both sat across the table from a geologist, a billing coordinator and a cardiologist.

Their attendance proves, as the cardiologist, Tali Arik, points out, that you don't have to have a long beard and unpronounceable name to talk about philosophy.

In cargo shorts, sandals and a T-shirt, Filardi looks like the stereotypical philosophy student. He speaks fluent Chinese and quotes Buddhist philosophy.

Arik was raised in a Turkish Muslim home and learned at an early age that disagreements often involved fists.

Ask him how he came to be at the meeting and he touches on high school memories, nuclear weapons, Christianity, medicine and paganism before explaining the lack of opportunities to philosophize about the nature of man and existence.

"You ask someone, `Do you do philosophy?' and they may look at you like you're crazy. If you ask, `Do you believe in gay marriage?' Their answer is predicated on a philosophy," Arik explains. "I'm always asking myself, `Who am I? Why am I here?' Why should I keep having this conversation in my head when I can find a place and group of people to talk about it with?"

This group is eager to do just that. After a short period of feeling each other out, the Socratic dialogue begins in earnest when Arik shares a brief anecdote about a visit to a pop art exhibition. Arik remarks that, before his visit, he never considered pop art to be real art, which sparks the question "What is art?"

"Andy Warhol was asking a philosophical question," Tom Reynolds, the geologist, says. "What is art? Can it be a Campbell's can of soup?"

"If a lot of people can do it, it's not art," offers Rio Bininger, the hotel employee.

That observance led to a discussion of the part art plays in life, which led to a discussion of truth and the observation that Socratic dialogue can move in a spiral, going around and touching on topics that aren't obvious at first.

This is what Socrates Café and philosophy is about, Filardi says, not to answer the questions but to make people think.

"It's like everyone is looking for a final answer," notes Kelly McCarty, a biller. "What we're talking about is, what if it is this way, or what if it's that way?"