The New Philosophy
A hand-coloured engraving of an eighteenth-century Paris concert in an oval room with rose curtains: guests in silk lean in to listen around a harpsichord and harp

People have always gathered to look for wisdom together.

A salon brings that to your organization.

Inquire about salons

A great fit for

  • Leadership summits
  • Offsites
  • Team building
  • Advisory boards
  • Executive dinners

Benefits

  • Better decisions “It has pushed my understanding of… the fundamental challenges of life and business.”
  • Connection “Meaning making through connection.”
  • Innovation “You leave each Salon not just with new ideas, but with new ways of thinking.”
  • Better thinking “…dramatically improved my critical thinking, and reasoning abilities.”
  • Clarity “It helps us… find the questions that we ourselves need to ask.”
  • Insight “Some of the most thought-provoking… spaces in my recent professional career.”
An ancient Greek red-figure drinking cup showing friends reclining at a symposium
Athens, 416 BC The symposium: friends at dinner, arguing about the nature of love.
A painting of an eighteenth-century Paris salon: guests in silk gathered in a picture-lined room to hear a reading
Paris, 1755 Salons were the intellectual and cultural hubs of the Enlightenment.

How a salon works

90 minutes · 8–12 people · in person, hybrid or online

A salon is more than just a conversation – it is a philosophically facilitated exercise in thinking together. Each salon begins with what your organization wants to achieve and the questions that matter to your people. I choose a short text tailored to those needs. The innovative method of the salon means nobody has to read it beforehand, but the text still serves as the basis for the conversation.

  1. Arrive We take the time to arrive, to properly enter the space where we will think together.
  2. Listen First reading: the text is read aloud by a participant.
  3. Understand Together, we enter into the mind of the author: what is the text trying to say to us?
  4. Listen again Second reading: the text is read aloud again.
  5. Reply When we hear the words again, how do we respond? What do we want to say back?
  6. Apply How can we take the text and our discussions and our questions into our lives?
John Sloan's painting of a lively dinner table at Petitpas in New York, with the poet's father John Butler Yeats among the guests

Tell me about your gathering.

I’m Pranay Sanklecha, a philosopher, and I’ve been running salons for over twenty years.

Pranay Sanklecha

“If you’re looking for better answers, come for the peer discussions. If you’re looking for better questions, come for Pranay’s razor sharp ability to question what you thought you knew.”

Michael Olinger, Chapter Lead, Danske Bank

“Pranay is without a doubt one of the best, most authentic, and deepest teachers of thinking out there.”

Mike James Ross, Senior Advisor, Egon Zehnder

“How rare it is to be held fully present with a group of properly curious people humbly feeling their way into big questions.”

Nick Outlaw, Outlaw Consulting LLP

“I wish that every busy executive would take the time to participate in something like this.”

Nick Basannavar, Leadership adviser and author

pranay@thenewphilosophy.com