Philosophy has spent a surprising amount of its history at the dinner table. One of Plato's most beloved dialogues, the Symposium, is set at a drinking party, where the guests agree early on to go easy on the wine, send away the flute girl and take turns delivering speeches in praise of love. The evening ends with most of the company asleep and Socrates heading off at dawn to spend the day as usual. As a model for entertaining, it is ambitious. As a model for conversation, it has rarely been bettered.
Epicurus, whose name has become shorthand for fine food, cared rather more about the company than the menu. Seneca reports his advice that we should consider whom we eat and drink with before we consider what we eat and drink, because dining without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf. It is a principle that modern hosts, anxious about sourdough and seasonal vegetables, might usefully pin to the fridge. Nobody remembers the risotto. Everybody remembers who made them laugh.
Immanuel Kant, often caricatured as a joyless creature of routine, was in fact a devoted and sociable host. In his later years he held a long lunch almost every day, and in his lectures on anthropology he set out rules for a good dinner party. The number of guests, he suggested, should be no fewer than the Graces and no more than the Muses, somewhere between three and nine. Conversation should move naturally through three phases: telling news, arguing and finally jesting, so that everyone leaves in good spirits.
Rules for a good table
Put these thinkers together and a surprisingly practical guide emerges. Invite for chemistry, not status, and keep the number small enough for a single conversation. Serve food that allows people to look at each other rather than at their plates. Let the evening begin with stories, move toward genuine disagreement and end in laughter. Discourage phones gently but firmly. And accept, as Plato evidently did, that the best part of the night may happen after most of the guests have gone home.
Delphine Harker, who hosts a monthly supper club for amateur philosophers in Bath, adds a rule of her own: every evening needs a single question, announced with dessert, that no one is allowed to answer quickly. Recent examples include whether it is possible to owe a debt to a stranger, and whether a lie told to spare someone's feelings is a kindness. The rule, she says, turns a pleasant dinner into something people are still discussing on the walk home.
A good host doesn't manage the conversation. She sets the table so that the conversation can manage itself.
What all these thinkers understood is that the shared table is a small school of civility. Around it we practise listening, disagreeing without rancour, yielding the floor and noticing the quiet guest at the end. None of this requires a grand house or expensive wine. It requires attention to people, a little generosity and a willingness to let the evening take its own course. The dinner party, in this light, is not an indulgence. It is one of the oldest philosophical institutions we still have.
