Le café philo — The Philosophy Café

Philosophy, in class and in cafés

France is one of the few countries where philosophy is a compulsory subject in the final year of the lycée, and the philosophy paper of the baccalauréat, traditionally the first written exam of the series, is a national event: its questions are published in the press and discussed on radio and television the same day. Questions such as "Must we always tell the truth?" or "Can we be happy without others?" are typical of the genre. Most French adults therefore have some memory of writing a philosophical dissertation, whether or not they enjoyed it. The café philo grew out of that culture. The format, a question chosen in advance, a facilitator, and a discussion open to anyone in a bar or café, became popular in Paris in the 1990s and has since spread to other French cities and abroad. It is deliberately informal: no reading is required, and the facilitator's job is to keep the exchange courteous and to stop a few voices from taking over. For a learner, it is an unusual opportunity: a group of strangers discussing abstract ideas slowly, in standard French, with an explicit expectation that people will disagree politely and qualify what they say. The vocabulary of abstract argument met in the dissertation lessons, the articles with abstract nouns, and connectors like dès lors que or ce n'est pas parce que all get a public workout there.