Christopher Phillips

"The United States needs constitutional change, but how to get it done? Christopher Phillips has the right answer. Get Americans talking to Americans about how we can improve our nation. Phillips has combined the approach of Socrates and the wisdom of Jefferson to show us the way." -- Dr. Larry J. Sabato, author of "A More Perfect Constitution" and Director, University of Virginia Center for Politics.

A person on a mission, Christopher Phillips draws on our nation's rebellious past to incite meaningful change today. Thomas Jefferson is his iconoclastic and visionary guide as he taps into a broad cross-section of Americans' timely (and timeless) concerns about the need to give our country's democratic framework a makeover.

After the American Revolution was won, Jefferson maintained that our Constitution should be a rallying post for building common cause among motley Americans. To that end, he proposed that we revised the Constitution every so often, not just to reflect the changing times, but to revive and perpetuate our original revolutionary spirit.

Enter Constitution Café, an offbeat and innovative project in which Phillips engages Americans of all stripes as they grapple with how they would sculpt the United States Constitution if they could start from scratch. If Phillips has his way, Constitution Café will be the launching pad for a new Constitutional Convention.

His latest book, Constitution Cafe: Jefferson's Brew for a True Revolution (W.W. Norton, August 2011), offers a rollicking and spirited account of his efforts to date to realize Jefferson's great expectations for our democracy. Publishers Weekly praises his book: "Taking his cue from our third president, Phillips embarks on a mission to engage Americans in conversations about how they would rewrite the Constitution...An engaging and informative narrator, Phillips intersperses the modern-day conversations with Jefferson's thoughts about the issues under discussion and the founding fathers' own disagreements as they framed the Constitution. In an era of hyper-partisanship, it's refreshing to read instances of Americans from all political persuasions holding rational, respectful and thought-provoking conversations with one another." Kirkus Reviews extols Phillips's new book as "a provocative extension of Jefferson’s original plan." According to Kirkus Reviews, "The author skillfully interweaves a history of the early days of the Republic and the disputes at that time with a discussion of Jefferson's involvement with constitutional issues in the state of Virginia as well as for the country as a whole, and he offers useful insight to Jefferson's thoughts over his long career."

Constitution Café "represents the best of American democracy," according to the eminent historian Thaddeus Russell, author of "A Renegade History of the United States.

Sparking social change of a sort that makes ours a more thoughtful, inclusive and connected world is nothing new to Phillips, a foremost specialist in the Socratic Method and a seasoned pro-democracy entrepreneur. As the originator in 1996 of the Socrates Café dialogue groups, Phillips touched a chord across America, and eventually the world over. Socrates Café is a space for friends and foes, intimates and strangers alike, to explore — thoughtfully and reasonably — their existential conundrums, an exploration that itself makes people feel more bound to one another. At last count, more than 500 Socrates Café groups have formed across the globe.

In his first bestseller, Socrates Café (2001), Phillips recounts his travels across America, launching philosophical discussion groups designed to stimulate inquiry and debate. In his follow-on bestseller, Six Questions of Socrates (2004), and then in Socrates in Love (2007), he expands the scope of his explorations, engaging in spirited and provocative discussions with Japanese fifth-graders, Somali refugees, a Mexican museum worker, an Israeli university student, and Korean Buddhists, among others. These conversations reveal surprising points of intersection between classical philosophy, modern life, and the intellectual richness of societies far removed from Western philosophical tradition.

In the words of Time magazine, Phillips's dialogue projects "have found a surprisingly large and diverse following.” As the Los Angeles Times elaborates, "To date, Phillips has orchestrated discussions on … Solomonic topics at nursing homes, maximum-security prisons, churches, homeless shelters, bookstores and coffeehouses across the country, gently prodding students, urban professionals, unreconstructed slackers, street people and others to share their worldviews and scrutinize their most basic assumptions.”

Whether he is immersed in a Constitution Café dialogue, or presiding over a Socrates Café or some other form of dialogue, Phillips believes that the process of dialogue and the space of human interaction are good for us as individuals and essential for us as a society. At a time when there are widening rifts between Americans, and when American culture is frequently perceived as exclusionary and self-involved, Phillips encourages us to approach others with greater openness and less fear. His goal is to inspire curiosity and wonder, to nurture not just self-discovery, but a "democracy without borders" that realizes more and more, on local and global scales, the Jeffersonian notion of freedom -- of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Phillips — who earned his PhD in Communications, has masters degrees in the humanities, the natural sciences, and in education, and a bachelors degree in government from the College of William & Mary — is an educator and author as well as a societal mover and shaker. His most recent teaching appointment was with the graduate program in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has founded an ambitious new not-for-profit to support a number of timely pro-democracy initiatives that are in the throes of being launched. He is actively seeking a more permanent 'home' with a university or other institution as a base for his dialogue initiatives, as well as a place to teach and to build on the form of multidisciplinary scholarship he practices, in which learning and action are entwined and are immeasurably enhanced by inquiring continually with people who have a wide range of experiences.

Phillips has been invited to speak and also to hold dialogues by an array of professional associations, by all sorts of schools and universities and civic outreach groups. He discourses on an array of topics, including “Leading Change,” “Deliberative Traditions and Democracy,” "Why Constitution Café?,"and "Socratic Questioning and Civic Engagement.” Whether invoking the spirit of Jefferson or of Socrates, or a bit of both, his presentations are sure to inspire and exhilarate.


Books

Constitution Café: Jefferson's Brew for a True Revolution (forthcoming from W.W. Norton, August 22, 2011)
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 (Tricycle Press, September 2006)
The Philosophers' Club, illustrated by Kim Doner (Tricycle Press, 2001)

“Christopher Phillips leads audiences in dialogues with patience and a ready intelligence of the Socratic Method. Simultaneously engaging and accessible, his approach to an ancient tradition is seemingly effortless and refreshing. He truly inspires people as he leads them on a questioning search for their own ultimate truth.”
“It was Christopher Phillips--as well as the philosophical underpinning and accessibility of his approach--that brought Socratic thought to Roger Williams University. We have had Mr. Phillips back sharing with us his world tour and mission of bringing dialogue and civil discourse and rhetoric to the planet. The students, faculty and community members, from provosts to custodians, all joined in responding to his mission and message.”


“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