Today's marketplace is much vaster than the small Athenian Agora. In physical space, it spans the globe; it burgeons now into cyberspace.
But where in our marketplace is our Socrates? Where is the figure who seeks "to inspire graceful and unsettling conversation" around today's ideas.
One answer to this question arrived in 1994, during the first national broadcast of No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed on a small number of PBS affiliates in the United States and Canada. The television show sought "to carry on the work of Socrates: creating and sustaining rigorous, passionate discourse between philosophers and citizens across North America."
To quote from the show's credo: "There have been marketplaces without philosophers, and they have been the poorer for it. . . It is the mission of No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed to make sure that as the electronic marketplace of the 21st century emerges, there is a philosophical agent at its center, acting as the gadfly to the community swirling around it."
The brainchild of its host and producer, Ken Knisely (pictured at left), the program began as a live, call-in philosophy program on the Richmond, Virginia cable television system. By 1989 over forty shows had been cablecast, and Knisely brought the show to Arlington, Virginia, where, over the next four years, more than a hundred episodes were broadcast via cable, fueling a growing nationwide interest. In 1996, 26 new shows were produced for distribution by PBS affiliates throughout North America.
Each episode of the program opens with a quotation from Plato's Apology:
You are a citizen of a great and powerful nation. Are you not ashamed that you give so much time to the pursuit of money and reputation and honors, and care so little for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul?
Seeking "to incite the love of widsom by showing real philosophical discourse," the show then launches into what the Washington Post has called "usually spirited discussion on the burning philosophical issues of the day" in a format the Washinton Times characterizes as "startling in its premise" (but which is really the modern counterpart of the Socratic symposium). Topic covered have included "Time," "Numbers," "Minds & Bodies," "God," "Relativism," "Music & Morality," "Consciousness," and "Ethical Decision Making." Viewers are encouraged to a prepare for and follow-up each broadcast by reading materials posted to NDOPA WEBTEXT.
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