There is a popular dictum on the children's program Sesame Street that "asking questions is a great way to find things out." Whenever one of public broadcasting's flagship Muppets or moppets faces a seemingly insoluble conundrum, one of the older, wiser characters invariably exhorts them to question their way to enlightenment. Sure enough, a few questions later the concepts of near and far, or the letter Q or how many sides a triangle has no longer seem quite so daunting.

Christopher Phillips, the author of Socrates Café, deals with questions of a less concrete, more conceptual sort. In the book, Phillips and his Socratic cohorts tackle such lofty questions as: What is home? Why question? What is wisdom? What is a friend? What is silence? What is love? Ultimately, however, he seeks to provoke the same childlike senses of wonder, discovery and enlightenment that come with the revelation of the inherent mystery of the letter Q.

Phillips is a contemporary disciple of Socrates and the Socratic method, and the book is the story of his experiences as an itinerant philosophical facilitator. He travels the country establishing philosophical salons — the titular Socrates Cafés. In this capacity, Phillips is the preacher-teacher at a self-described "church service for heretics," the chief sacrament of which centers around a "passion for challenging even our most cherished assumptions."

Of course, challenging the "cherished assumptions" of his era, and teaching his students to be equally suspicious of wisdom so conventional as to be deemed unassailable, ultimately cost Socrates his life. While it is doubtful that the fruits of Phillips' labors will be seasoned with hemlock, Socrates Café does suggest that there is more than one way to cook a sacred cow, with Phillips being the guy who brought the matches. Although he presents himself as a facilitator or a guide rather than as a teacher or guru — the latter label being one he emphatically eschews — there is a Promethean subtext to his endeavors. Phillips brings a radical spark — specifically, the fire of Socratic discourse — to the coffee houses, schools, churches, senior centers and prisons where he engages his fellow interlocutors.

The Socrates Café isn't simply about challenging assumptions in order to be contrary. Phillips sees a need for Socrates' methods in the twenty-first century. He presents the Cafes as an alternative to the "facile responses of know-it-all gurus or of psychologists who cubbyhole their existential angst into demeaning paradigms of psychological behavior." However, it is important to remember that such a distinction is calculated to enhance Phillips' position. While not a self-help book per se, Socrates Café offers a prescription for a different way of looking at the world, one which has the potential to not only change the way one sees life, but also how one lives it. It is therefore to Phillips' advantage to convince readers that his "fresh taste of philosophy" is both different from and superior to the facile and demeaning alternatives.