LETTER FROM PARIS:In Ireland a philosopher is as likely to appear on a current affairs show as an astrologist. Not in France, writes RUADHAN Mac CORMAIC
IT’S SUNDAY morning at the Café des Phares. More than 150 people have piled in and the place is abuzz with the rumble of the coffee machine and clatter of cups and the strained calls of the overworked waiters.
When the moderator, Gérard Tissier, takes the mic and calls for ideas for this week’s topic, a dozen hands are thrust in the air and the arguing can begin. Does modern man lack confidence in his own will, suggests a woman near the window.
“Why do we always arrive at the truth at the end of the discussion,” suggests Carlos Gravito, a wily veteran.
Most of the crowd are regulars who have been coming to this, the best-known café philo in Paris, since the weekly philosophical debate began here on Place de la Bastille, in 1992. “I’m interested in philosophy, but only as a dilettante,” says Marie-Sylvie Mugel, a middle-aged woman who has been coming since 1994.
“I always felt interested in metaphysical questions and the café philo is an opportunity to confront these sorts of ideas, to expand your thoughts, to develop a way of thinking.”
Nearly everyone has a prescribed role. There’s the man who likes to provoke, lobbing an incendiary claim into the debate and then slinking back in his chair to watch the ensuing melée. There’s the pedant who likes to break in with a “brief but very important” point about language and the woman who is convinced the gap between two arguments is always smaller than you might think. Others come along every week and never say a word, like the 50-something woman near the bar who grows tired of the discussion after five minutes, rolls her eyes at the stupidity of those around her and buries her head in a novel for the two hours.
Popular philosophy is booming in France. Scan the shelves of any well-stocked bookshop and you’ll find not only hundreds of classic titles from Descartes to Derrida but scores of the latest bestsellers and a thriving sub-genre of philosophy-as-self-help, where the discipline’s insights are applied to everything from relationships to gardening.
Some may lament the absence of a global superstar in the mould of Jean-Paul Sartre or Michel Foucault, but the publication of new books by the heavyweights of modern French philosophy are still major events. When Michel Onfray published his latest book – an attack on Freud – last week, Libération cleared its first three pages and Onfray was a fixture in TV studios for a fortnight. In Ireland and elsewhere, a philosopher is as likely to appear in a current affairs debate as an astrologist. Not in France, where professional thinkers are asked to weigh in on all major topics of the day.
The French appetite for la philo is remarkable. Philosophie Magazine, whose current issue includes an essay on the best philosophical writing on football and a conversation between the actor Isabelle Huppert and the cinephile Slovenian theorist Slavoj Zizek, increased its sales by 18 per cent in 2009.
Witness the huge success of the Studio Philo, where every month a philosopher hosts a screening – followed by a philosophical decoding – of popular films such as American Beauty and Fight Club, or the profusion of festivals and radio shows devoted to big ideas for the masses. Even explaining this surge in interest is itself a subject of protracted rumination.
What strikes the outsider is that in France, where school children can study philosophy, many people start off with a decent grasp of many of the analytical tools needed to hold their own when the going gets deep. Another explanation is surely the uncertainty of the age. The questions posed by globalisation, technology and the economic crisis are worldwide preoccupations, but they’re debated with particular passion in France. And whereas other cultures might turn to psychology for insights or venerate economists as the founts of all wisdom, the French have a long and proud philosophical tradition to fall back on. If it’s true that people are most receptive to big ideas in times of crisis, then it may be that philosophy is what the philosopher Ollivier Pourriol calls France’s “secular spiritualism”.
Back at the Café des Phares, meanwhile, the debate has grown more intense.
My eyes are drawn to the old man scribbling furiously in the corner. For two hours he fills sheet after sheet, never lifting his head or saying a word.
Then, just as the discussion is about to finish, he raises his hand and the room goes quiet. His name is Gilles, I’m told, and this is a weekly ritual.
He takes the mic and begins to chant a lyrical summary of the two-hour debate, in verse. The crowd listens in reverent silence; even the angry woman by the bar has put aside her novel. Then Gilles comes to the end of his poem, applause rings out and the coffee machine cranks up again.