Christopher Phillips


Christopher Phillips is an American author, educator, consultant, lecturer, and pro-democracy advocate. He is best known for his 2001 book Socrates Café. Public Radio International called Phillips the "Johnny Appleseed of Philosophy."
Phillips's latest book A Child at Heart: Unlocking Your Creativity, Curiosity and Reason at Every Age and Stage of Life was published in March 2018. Foreword Reviews and Adam Braun both praised it.

Early life and education

According to Phillips, he read Plato's Socratic dialogues when he was about 12. After graduating from Menchville High School, he received a BA in Government from the College of William & Mary; In 1997, he earned an M.A.T. in Teaching from Montclair State University, and studied in the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children. In 2000, he earned an M.A. external degree in Humanities, with an emphasis in philosophy, at California State University, Dominguez Hills; He also has a Master of Science in natural sciences degree from Delta State University, which was the first of his master's degrees. Phillips received a PhD in communications from Edith Cowan University in Australia.

Cafés

Phillips was a school teacher and newspaper reporter, then editorial consultant and freelancer for national magazines, before starting Socrates cafés, Socratic discussion meetings in a variety of venues such as cafés, nursing homes, churches, schools, and prisons. Phillips' idea of having open-invitation meetings in cafes to discuss philosophy was inspired in part by Matthew Lipman, the founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children who advocated introducing philosophy into schools and under whom Phillips studied, as well as by Marc Sautet, whose Café Philosophique Phillips became aware of after reading an article about Sautet while teaching in the Mississippi Delta.
In his penultimate book "Constitution Café", Phillips details a journey across the US promoting discussions with a version of the Socratic Method that he developed for the Socrates Cafés, combined with the Jeffersonian idea of democratic freedom and inclusiveness. He has since worked on the Declaration Project, a comprehensive collection of declarations of independence, causes, rights, and principles from across the ages and continents, as well as the Constitutional Cafe and the Democracy Cafe initiatives that discuss constitutional changes in the United States. Phillips also founded a for-profit consulting service, Socrates Group.

Academic career

Phillips was a 2012 recipient of the Distinguished American Leadership Award, along with Adam Braun, founder of Pencils of Promise. Phillips has also taught in the graduate program Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, and at the University of Pennsylvania as a Senior Writing Fellow. He has been Senior Education Fellow at the National Constitution Center and 2014–15 Network Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He also blogs the SocratesCafe.com site and writes occasionally for the Zocalo Public Square.

Published works

Books

The books published by Phillips are :
Phillips wrote, among many others, the following papers: