Keynote Address

Organization or Institution

Georgia Southern University

Location

Russell Union, Georgia Southern University

Presentation Year

2015

Start Date

3-10-2015 12:30 PM

End Date

3-10-2015 1:30 PM

Document Type

Keynote

Presentation Description

Christopher Phillips has a passion for Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy and Constitution Café: Jefferson’s Brew for a True Revolution, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.” He encourages us to roll up our mental sleeves, turn on our childlike questioning lenses, and become our own best thinkers, askers, doers.

Dr. Phillips — who most recently has been named Network Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and a Senior Education Fellow at the National Constitution Center -- has traveled the world over holding thousands of dialogues with people of all walks of life. The founder of the nonprofit Democracy Cafe 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. His goal is to inspire curiosity and wonder of a transformative sort, one that nurtures self-discovery, openness, empathy. He inspires his fellow inquirers to discover their own unique stores of wisdom and chart, alone and together, their own prescriptive approaches for leaving meaningful lives. At the same time, participants forge stronger connections with one another, and become instilled with a keener social conscience, invariably driving societal development as well.

To date, Phillips has helped create more than 500 ongoing discussion groups around the world. In the words of Time magazine, his ‘café’ groups – from Socrates Café to Constitution Café, Democracy Café -- “have found a surprisingly large and diverse following.” As the Los Angeles Times puts it, 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.”

Phillips’ latest initiative, the Declaration Project, launched under the auspices of DemocracyCafe.org, is more activist in bent, and aims to reinstill the ‘Spirit of 76’ as a means to resuscitate our republic at a time when Americans across the political spectrum believe our government is woefully dysfunctional and unresponsive to the will of the people.

Presentation Learning Objectives

Presenter will provide.

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Oct 3rd, 12:30 PM Oct 3rd, 1:30 PM

Keynote Address

Russell Union, Georgia Southern University

Christopher Phillips has a passion for Socrates Café: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy and Constitution Café: Jefferson’s Brew for a True Revolution, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.” He encourages us to roll up our mental sleeves, turn on our childlike questioning lenses, and become our own best thinkers, askers, doers.

Dr. Phillips — who most recently has been named Network Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and a Senior Education Fellow at the National Constitution Center -- has traveled the world over holding thousands of dialogues with people of all walks of life. The founder of the nonprofit Democracy Cafe 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. His goal is to inspire curiosity and wonder of a transformative sort, one that nurtures self-discovery, openness, empathy. He inspires his fellow inquirers to discover their own unique stores of wisdom and chart, alone and together, their own prescriptive approaches for leaving meaningful lives. At the same time, participants forge stronger connections with one another, and become instilled with a keener social conscience, invariably driving societal development as well.

To date, Phillips has helped create more than 500 ongoing discussion groups around the world. In the words of Time magazine, his ‘café’ groups – from Socrates Café to Constitution Café, Democracy Café -- “have found a surprisingly large and diverse following.” As the Los Angeles Times puts it, 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.”

Phillips’ latest initiative, the Declaration Project, launched under the auspices of DemocracyCafe.org, is more activist in bent, and aims to reinstill the ‘Spirit of 76’ as a means to resuscitate our republic at a time when Americans across the political spectrum believe our government is woefully dysfunctional and unresponsive to the will of the people.