Socrates - Socrates in love: philosophy for a die-hard romantic

When I read the words Where Is the Love? in the introduction to this book, I immediately heard the singing voices of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. That kept me going, despite my fear of being confused once more by Socrates. I discovered an important mosaic of ancient tales and current opinions, and that Socrates in Love breathed compassion, curiosity, and intrigue into the dusty world of empirical philosophy. And I can still hear the song.

Bob Kerrey, president, The New School

Its clear that Phillips is on to something. [ Socrates in Love ]is a response to our greatest societal need: the need to connect with one another in meaningful discourse and to find, in that process, our common humanity. For this, Phillips should be applauded.

Portfolio Weekly

[We] are left hoping that Phillips, by returning to the methods of the first Western philosopher, has created a template for philosophical exploration that many others will emulate.

Christian Science Monitor

Socrates Caf beautifullytells you how and why the questioning style of Socrates works with children and adults.

Washington Post

Christopher Phillips has the genius to raise the dead philosophers society to life. [ Socrates in Love ] is a pleasure to read and touches on the crucial issues of love that inspired Plato. Whoever hasnt read Plato is probably dead to his soul, and whoever hasnt read Phillips probably doesnt know how alive Plato is.

Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Dark Nights of the Soul

[ Socrates Caf is] a bracing, rollicking read about the spark that ignites when people start asking meaningful questions.

O, The Oprah Magazine

Here is ancient wisdom in all its complexity brought vividly to liferendered accessible to readers today. Here is a traveling, inquiring teacher become a wonderfully engaging writer, whose reflecting mind becomes a companion for us needy readers.

Robert Coles, Harvard University

These timely seminars provide many welcome insights into the controversial problems of our daily lives and induce further reflection about who we are and where we are going.

San Antonio Express News

Like a Johnny Appleseed with a masters degree, Phillips has gallivanted back and forth across America, to cafes 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

I am excited about Christopher Phillipss effort to bring philosophy out of the ivory tower and back into the lives of ordinary people, where it belongs.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

Phillips presentation is skillful in his ability to weave threads of references to Socrates society and his own opinions into the fabric of each question. He is artful in his choices of which cultures best illustrate an original perspective on the question at hand.

Charlotte Observer

A modern-day Socrateswhos chosen the world, not just the agora, for his stage[with] a model discourse that elevates working lives and reduces intellectualisms pretensions.

Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia)

[Phillips] winningly showcases a tantalizing method for getting philosophy to thrive more widely.

Publishers Weekly

Socrates Caf is a testament to Phillipss conviction that Americans are hungry to start probing questions the way Socrates did more than two millennia ago in Athens.

Arizona Republic

Highly accessible. Alive with the passions of ordinary people from a dozen cultures, these colloquies dramatize the universality of Socrates deeply humanizing concerns. Readers will applaud Phillips for once again making philosophy a living enterprise beyond the lecture hall and the faculty lounge.

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