Welcome to the Philosophy Dinners at Fez & Co. Café, hosted by Suzanne Elchoufi and moderated by Tibor Molnar (Honorary Research Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney).

What is it all about?

These Philosophy Dinners are unique in two ways:

1. The Dinner is unique – a fabulous Lebanese banquet catering for all tastes, including vegans.

2. The Philosophy is unique – rather than rehearse the thoughts of ‘dead white male’

philosophers, we explore philosophy as the ‘art of critical thinking’:

i.e., we’re not about debating what other philosophers thought/think, we’re about developing the insights and skills that enable us to think for ourselves.

In other words, these evenings are not casual light-hearted discourses about ancient and contemporary philosophical thought – these are readily available at other philosophy cafés – rather they are an informal but rigorous and systematic inquiry into analytical philosophy. There’s no fantasy or magic here; only tedious, detailed, pedantic hard work... the kind that makes your head hurt. Sounds terrible, I know, but Tibor’s students assure him that it’s well worth the effort: embracing/practising critical thinking changes the way you see the world!

How we’re going about it:

To live a ‘Philosophical Life’ we require 3 things:

1. Knowing how to think (clearly and deeply)

2. Actually doing the thinking

3. Putting these thoughts into action

 Without the first, there is only confusion,

 Without the second, there is no direction,

 Without the third, life is a complete waste of time.

We begin with exploring a set of foundational assumptions, in the following broad categories:

Spoiler alert: They are assumptions, and there are no absolute ‘correct’ answers. You can choose what view/s you hold, just as long as you are coherent and consistent.

There’s over 100 of these foundational assumptions (!), and we need them all – without them it is not possible to think ‘critically’, or perhaps even to think at all.

It’s a long continuous journey – it’ll take us 25 or so Philosophy Dinners (over 2-3 years) to get through them all – but at the end (if there is one...) we can build on these assumptions with confidence and live a more fulfilling “philosophical” Life.

NOTE: This series of philosophy evenings started in early 2024, so to prepare yourself for the evening you need to do 2 important things.

1. Watch the video of the first Philosophy Dinner (February, 2024):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O8fv8eVmNU

2. Familiarise yourself with the summary document (email Suzanne for this ) “What kind of Disease is ‘Philosophy’?“, that (among other things) lists the 100-or-so questions that we are addressing.

See you soon at the Fez & Co. Café, 4 Booth Street, Annandale, 2038.

Suzanne and Tibor

Suzanne : info@fezandco.com

Tibor : info@brainwaves.com.au

Tibor Molnar and Fez: PHILOSOPHY DINNERS