Salons
Thinking together about things that matter.
Come to a salon
Next public salon
Love
Thursday 29 October · 2–3.30 pm CET · Online · Free
This is a free public salon: ninety minutes, a small group, thinking together, carefully and with love - and about love.
We'll read a short text on love together, try to understand what it might be saying to us, and then figure out what we want to say back to it.
This will not be a place to think clever thoughts or win arguments. Rather, it's a place for us to grapple with what love means in our daily lives, and how we might perhaps learn to love a little more wisely.
If you book a place and then can't make it, please tell me, so someone else can have it. And do pass this on to anyone who might be interested.
Ninety minutes of thinking together about love: what it is, and how to live it well.
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For organisations
The salon delivers a luxury that executives need and rarely get: time to think. It’s a space for slow thinking: 90 minutes of thinking together, no screens or phones, intellectually rigorous and deeply human.
Find out moreWhat people say
I enjoyed the depth of sharing and reflection. It's the sort of conversation I am nourished by.
I have had the immense pleasure of being a participant in one of Pranay’s salons for the past few years. Not only has this experience dramatically improved my critical thinking, and reasoning abilities, but it has also pushed my understanding of some of the fundamental challenges of life and business. I would recommend him unreservedly to anyone looking for a thought partner or a truly distinctive facilitator of learning. Pranay is without a doubt one of the best, most authentic, and deepest teachers of thinking out there.
Rich beyond words.
I feel some sense of loss now that it is over. That's a good thing. It means I enjoyed it and thought it was really positive.
The really alive moments were when we as a group moved towards a realisation or understanding. Someone said something and that led to a small insight for someone else and slowly we gained a better understanding together as a group.
What a salon is like
A New Philosophy Salon is a place to come together with goodwill: serious inquiry, conducted with lightness.
Slow thinking is celebrated here, and depth is not just encouraged but actively enabled.
The New Philosophy Salon is deeply human. It is a place to connect, to think together, to laugh together, and to search for wisdom together.
And in a world increasingly mediated by machines, I think The New Philosophy Salon is a place we very much need.
How it works
Each salon is a 90-minute session for 8 to 12 people, in person or online.
Some are one-offs, some run as a series; some follow a theme, others follow whatever emerges.
We use a variety of methods. One of the central ones is an adapted, explicitly non-religious version of lectio divina, an old monastic practice of slow reading. With this method, we read a short text slowly, let its meaning come rather than chasing it, think about it together, and then put it in conversation with our lives.
The tradition
Salons have existed for almost all of human history. Plato gathered people to drink wine and discuss the nature of love; scholars, artists and poets met in the courts of ancient China and India. In 18th-century Paris, the salon was the engine of intellectual life: Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau came, as did Adam Smith, David Hume and Benjamin Franklin.
The New Philosophy Salon stands proudly in that tradition, adapted for modern times.
Bring better thinking to your team
Salons and workshops to help leadership teams and executive groups think better about things that matter.