Preface, page2 The story of the café needs to be traced back through history, and the17th and18th centuries play the leading roles. Since the first café appeared in London, over the course of this hundred years, the café has become an omnipresent feature of urban life, a necessary venue for social intercourse, gossip, discussion, and debate. It was the café that taught men a new way of building a hybrid kind of friendship, into which they poured business ventures, severe criticism, scientific discussion, political clubs, and all sorts of other contents. As the chapters of this book’s main text will explain, the early cafés were by no means limited to Starbucks and other modern coffee retailers; their presence could also be found in securities markets, insurance companies, party meeting places, literary criticism institutions, the Internet, and the research culture of modern science. As many commentators have said, for all kinds of like-minded intellectuals, cafés were tantamount to all sorts of websites.////—But today’s online forums have not yet become a stage for ideas like cafés, because although forums also seem to be equal for everyone, they seem to be a little “too equal,” and “cultural aristocrats” and famous scholars hardly participate in them. In a certain sense, the academic environment of the contemporary world has regressed to what existed before café culture; like medieval scholastic philosophy, the vast gulf between the academic world and civic life has reappeared. I pin my hopes on a new generation of scholars, typified by myself, who grew up in the Internet age, being able truly to tap the immense potential of the Internet as a platform for academic exchange. Just as in the age of cafés and salons, the age of cafés, the age of salons, is destined to recede helplessly from us, but we will have the age of forums, the age of BBS. But perhaps I am being too hasty, or perhaps I am merely a prophet and do not have time to witness that new philosophical age myself… In any case, I do not want to keep waiting idly any longer; I want to do something—first, this year, let us pay tribute to the distant culture of cafés. I will establish a real Café Philosophy Club in a café. (Sorry, my emotions are too complicated today, and I’m a bit incoherent.)
Page66 In the first decade after the Restoration, cafés were a topic for detailed literary study (editor’s note: I suspect there is a translation problem… here “literary” probably means its original sense, that is, various academic fields); they were places for seeking understanding and control of one’s thought, and the birthplace of a new culture. The first book to study cafés, Coffee and the Characteristics of Coffeehouses, was probably written in1661. Its author, John Sturgis, was a bookseller and also a Baptist; his bookshop stood by Temple Bar on Fleet Street, with the sign of the Mitre. Several coffeehouses, as well as taverns and bookshops, opened one after another in that area. In his book, in addition to mocking the strange properties of coffee, he also described cafés. Sturgis first declared that “every corner in the coffeehouse is free,” and, in a tone of irony, examined how their unrestrained and open nature determined the characteristics of cafés. He went on to analyze that “there is no distinction here between noble and base; anyone may come, and whoever comes may sit down for coffee, because no one here will give up a seat for anyone else. This is the only place in the golden age that treats people equally, and that is the café’s greatest feature.”
When customers come to the café, they may sit in any vacant seat, or sit beside the person who arrived before them. No seat is reserved for anyone, and no one will refuse to let you sit beside them. This seating policy made all customers feel that everyone in the café was equal. Although perhaps only a secondary matter, the principle of equality embodied in this policy had far-reaching effects in the decade that followed. Through this seating arrangement, cafés made it possible for strangers to sit together in a friendly way and communicate. In a city where many people do not know one another, this social mode of being able to strike up a conversation at any time was astonishing. In addition, the principle of equality established by the seating arrangement also advocated conversation as governed by equality and openness. As another book on the characteristics of cafés, published in1664, put it:
Entering the café,
Whether you come first or last,
Whether of high or low birth,
You may sit anywhere,
And need not concern yourself with anyone.
Page130 For many Englishmen in the1660s, this new drink was denounced as a “novel, detestable, heretical beverage.” This black, murky, bitter liquid, from who-knows-where, was ugly to look at, and drinking it made people frown and smack their lips. Satirical writers and sages expressed this irritation in various ways, showing that for many people—for some important yet vaguely defined feeling—coffee was a drink “as thick as mud,” that tasted like “boiled coal,” “with the flavor of old bread crusts and burnt leather reduced to ash.” Others said coffee was “a foul and bitter black liquid,” “the dregs of coal ash, stale scraps/drunk while reading the newspaper, or watching the news,” “a foreign sediment/a mixture of excrement and stench/blended into the devil’s strong liquor, like something from the sewer.” Others described coffee as a “liquid from the stable,” believing that “judging from the color of this liquid alone, even if it were not like the devil, its taste was still the breath of hell, and its stench was enough to suffocate virtue and all that is good.” One writer summed it up by calling coffee a “lukewarm hell stew concocted by witches,” “the drink of Pluto, the liquor witches drink from human skulls, becoming their sacrament on the road to evil.”////—These adjectives are truly marvelous… “A devil’s strong liquor blended from excrement and stench; even if not like the devil, its taste is still the breath of hell; a lukewarm hell stew concocted by witches; the drink of Pluto, the liquor witches drink from human skulls, their sacrament on the road to evil.”
Page183 According to the record in Hooke’s Diary written in the17th century70s, he went to cafés almost every day, including Christmas Day, and often went to two or three cafés in a single day; on one occasion he actually went back and forth among five cafés, spending the whole day at it. He did not particularly like coffee; he once complained, “Coffee makes me indigest.” Even so, between1672 and1680 he visited more than60 cafés in London, because chatting with like-minded people and hearing the information they offered was an irresistible temptation for him.////—This is probably equivalent, in contemporary terms, to hanging around online forums… But if a serious scholar likes to loiter in forums, moving back and forth among three or five forums in a single day, even if the time and energy consumed are certainly far less than Hooke’s, wouldn’t he or she definitely be regarded as neglecting proper business? Yet precisely because scholars are too proper in their business, thought lacks vitality!
Page188 1686… A friend pointed out to him that in any café in the city it would be impossible not to run into other scientists, and explained that “at Child’s Coffeehouse you are sure to encounter opposing groups in society, because many of them spend almost every day here.”
Page189 Time has shown that cafés are a good habitat for the new science. In the cheerful and relaxed atmosphere of the café, a relationship of exchange and dialogue can be maintained among people of different interests and different identities. Cafés can provide meeting places for all sorts of “private, unofficial, unpublicized groups, clubs, and certain voluntary societies,” who “devote themselves to some field of scientific study, merely out of interest or amusement, or both.” The Temple Coffeehouse Botanical Club was just such an organization, composed of some core members of the Royal Society. The purpose for which they formed this club was precisely to have the opportunity to meet and discuss with the untrained members of the “Amateur Botanical Society”; these people were not only amateur botanists, but also gardeners and horticultural workers.
Pages190~191 By the18th century, cafés had unquestionably changed the way scholars and scientists lived; they no longer had to shut themselves away like astrologers and alchemists to carry out their research, but had to join friendly exchanges and then carry out collaborative research activities together. Going to cafés was not a way to avoid work or seek entertainment; it was part of scholarly work itself. John Houghton summed it up in an article titled “Philosophical Transactions” in1699: “Cafés make it possible for all kinds of people to communicate with one another, enabling them to gain knowledge of the arts, commerce, and other matters; an outstanding Fellow of the Royal Society once thought that cafés promoted the development of useful learning.” After diligent and careful observation of the discussions in cafés, Houghton believed that a prepared person could discover from them the “essence and substance” of current research and the frontier of intellectual development. Cafés could serve as a shortcut to learning and wisdom.////—But now scholars have once again shut themselves away.
Page234 In1780, The London Magazine published an article proposing a series of “rules of conduct commonly neglected by the urban public,” and advised readers: “In a coffeehouse, do not have more than one sheet of paper in your hands at a time; for one person to monopolize too much paper is an extremely unfair and annoying act, because it is a naked infringement of the shared rights of all present.”////—My salon will likewise cast contempt upon those erudite people who cite widely: speak in a public language; if you need to base your point on some particular specialized resources, or if you require the other participants in the discussion to understand certain specialized “common knowledge,” then please limit all that to the equivalent of no more than one page of paper!
Page240 During the American Revolution in the18th century70s, cafés were closely linked with American revolutionary activity throughout. In May1774, a meeting on the riots was held at the Merchant’s Coffee House, where a Committee of Correspondence was established to ensure the free exchange of views and information with the rebels in Boston and Philadelphia… At the meetings held in these cafés, the rebels of New York ultimately decided to oppose British policy and agreed to form the Continental Congress. For these Sons of Liberty, the egalitarian café seemed to be a particularly welcome place; in such a relatively neutral setting, wealthy merchants and diligent mechanics could gather together. But during the American Revolution, until1783, New York remained the headquarters of the British forces, and British troops were stationed there throughout. In those years, the Merchant’s Coffee House was the main place frequented by British officers, who gathered there to drink coffee and read newspapers, just as they had once done in London.////—Not only the American Revolution, but also the Scientific Revolution of17th-century England, the French Revolution at the end of the18th century, the academic flourishing of Vienna at the end of the19th century, and so on: almost every new era was gestated in cafés, and the intellectual center of the world seems to have shifted precisely along with the spread of café culture. English café culture began to decline in the18th century, and England’s glorious age likewise faded; the “spirit of the age,” along with cafés, turned toward Paris, America, and Vienna…
Page266 Speier… He believed that cafés “have always been the center of information gathering, information dissemination, political discussion, and literary criticism,” and therefore “the British middle class gradually completed its self-education here.”
This view of cafés received a response in the second half of the20th century from a large number of renowned and highly influential philosophers, sociologists, and critics, many of whom belonged, in a broad sense, to the left: Jürgen Habermas, Richard Sennett, Terry Eagleton, and Peter Stallybrass.
Latest comments
- Xiaoyue
2009-03-11 20:16:53 Anonymous 58.31.78.153
I think a cultural exchange platform like the café must be impossible to replicate… but I still hope for a new platform and to meet a prophet in the present tense
- Xiaoyue
2009-03-11 20:31:28 Anonymous 58.31.78.153
Maybe it’s because I don’t know much about café culture, but at least, I don’t want to be confined to cafés…
I’m the sort of person who is interested neither in coffee nor in tea (so please don’t bring up teahouses either…), but simply in thinking and other people’s thinking. As for the external setting of the exchange, I don’t care about it at all (so if you keep holding court at Xindao, one day I might come too). - Gu Chi
2009-03-11 20:57:14
Of course it’s not limited to cafés; there is also this place, Suixuan.
The environment of exchange is very closely related to the content of exchange. At least for me.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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