All the world is a salon

Men and women are gathered around a table. Open books are spread across the table. Speakers take turns sharing their ideas. Occasionally arguments break out and no one’s ideas can be clearly heard. These people learned from what they’ve read, but they have gained far more knowledge from what they have heard from one another.

The era is the eighteenth century. Gathered in a salon, intellectuals debate literature, politics, and philosophy. The salon, an important gathering place for conversation and amusement, was not only a space for the communication of intellectual ideas—it also helped spread the ideals of the Enlightenment. Though these gatherings may not take place in fashionable living rooms today, they exist nonetheless and have in fact become an important part of the Columbia experience.

The place is Hamilton Hall. Gathered around a table, students discuss and debate Dante in Literature Humanities. Next door, a CC class is talking about Marx’s theories. Many of the Core classes feature debates similar to those that took place in the eighteenth century. Were it not for the papers and exams, these discussion-based classes would be analogous to salons. But the influence of salons on Columbia is not limited to the classroom. Remnants of salons pervade the campus. They materialize in the group of friends discussing a class or texts at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. They exist in the corny Lit Hum jokes posted on friends’ Facebook walls. They are found in their more classical interpretation—French Cultural Society’s Thursday night conversations at Max Caffé, where students from all levels of French converse and discuss various ideas. They can also be found at the “Symposium” hosted by my Lit Hum professor last semester. They are everywhere.

The age of the salons has been called the “age of conversation.” Today’s “information age” allows these conversations to continue on many new levels and contributes to an important exchange of ideas essential to the smooth functioning of a university. Technology allows students and teachers to communicate constantly and immediately. Courseworks postings, for instance, are an example of the kind of online intellectual discussion that was never possible back in the eighteenth century. Whether they are lounging in cushy chairs in a Butler or sitting at dorm room desks, students are able to converse and debate with their professors. These online salons are a vital part of our Columbia education. Learning does not merely occur by listening to lectures or reading a textbooks. Rather, learning is most successful when it becomes an interactive experience—an experience that allows people from different backgrounds and perspectives to share ideas and offer feedback and to create a continual learning process.

When signing up for classes next week, students should keep in mind that though smaller classes may have the unfortunate side effect of giving more work, they also have more discussions. This allows students to gain valuable knowledge from each other, an experience that many large lecture classes do not foster.
In between classes, papers, and exams, I try to remind myself that—despite the workload associated with the Core—having rigorous academic discussions is one of the reasons I came to Columbia. What I didn’t realize when I filled out my application over a year ago is that the Core is not just the study of ideas and works from the past few centuries—is are also the application of these ideas. It is one thing to learn about philosophers through texts. It is quite another to be able to live out the same kind of intellectual debates that we read about. Whether it is a conversation with oneself, taking a cue from Montaigne, or a conversation with others, after the company of the Decameron, such discussions still take place in the twenty-first century at Columbia. By selecting discussion-based classes and bringing learning outside the classroom, students can, in principle, create one giant salon.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.