Christopher Phillips (born July 15, 1959) is a Greek-American author, educator, consultant, lecturer, and scholar of the Socratic method. He founded the global grassroots Socrates Cafe initiative.
At age 12, Phillips began immersing himself in Plato's dialogues featuring the Athenian philosopher Socrates, and the historian Xenophon's Socratic dialogues. This inspired him, he recounts in his book "Soul of Goodness," to hold his first dialogues a la Socrates during lunch time at Carver Intermediate School in Newport News, Virginia, during the height of the desegregation era. After graduating from Menchville High School, he obtained a BA in government from the College of William & Mary. In 1997, he earned an Master of Arts in Teaching from Montclair State University, studying under the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children. In 2000, he earned an M.A. in humanities, with an emphasis in philosophy, at California State University, Dominguez Hills; He has a Master of Science in Natural Sciences degree from Delta State University, the first of his master's degrees. With both a scholarship and a teaching fellowship, at the age of 50, Phillips received a PhD in communications from Edith Cowan University in Australia - the subject of his doctoral dissertation (or thesis as it is known in Australia) is "Socrates café: an effective mechanism for realising a more participatory democracy". He later received a three-semester appointment as senior writing and research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.
Phillips began his professional life in 1981 as a middle school literature teacher in a six-room schoolhouse in Casco, Maine. He held Socratic circle dialogues with his students. He was also a feature and hard-news newspaper reporter in Bridgton, Maine and Abingdon, Virginia.
Besides the Socrates Cafe, Phillips has launched related initiatives, including Democracy Cafe, Constitution Cafe, Spirit of '76 Cafe (part of his Declaration Project), and most recently, a Shakespeare Cafe. This latter project springs originally from the "tragically unexpected death" of his father.
Phillips was a 2012 recipient of the Distinguished American Leadership Award, alongside Adam Braun, founder of Pencils of Promise. Phillips has taught the graduate program Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania as a Senior Writing and Research Fellow. He has been Senior Education Fellow at the National Constitution Center and 2014âÂÂ15 Network Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. In 2024, he was named Philosopher-In-Residence for Humanity in Deep Space.
The books published by Phillips are (the ISBNs refer to paperback editions, where available):
Phillips wrote the following papers: