Philosophy, Dreams, and Coffee: Interview with Maria João Neves

Philosophy, Dreams, and Coffee: Interview with Maria João Neves. By Sarah Virgi.
Nowadays, academic articles have become the stage where the development of philosophical research takes place. But publishing is a serious business. It requires a long (and often painful) process of research, redaction, review, and corrections until the articles attain their final printed form and can be shared with others. “But then who reads them?”, asks Maria João Neves, “perhaps only one or two doctoral students, who are interested in those very specific topics.” They rarely reach the larger public, even though knowledge is lacking outside of academia. This is one of the reasons that led Maria João Neves, Doctor in Philosophy and specialist in the work of María Zambrano, to recover the living power of philosophy and bring it out to the public. In her own words, philosophy is not there to “overfeed points of view” (engordar os pontos de vista). In that case, “it is preferable to cumulate less knowledge.”
For some years now, she has been writing a philosophical column for a regional newspaper - Cultura Sul, Jornal Postal do Algarve -, which reaches a wide variety of people in southern Portugal. In addition, Maria João Neves also organizes a monthly philosophical café in Tavira, where people from various backgrounds and professions come together to discuss philosophy over coffee or wine. The hotel AP Maria Nova Lounge, which hosts these sessions, gives a wonderful setting for this purpose. It provides an open and relaxing atmosphere where anyone can enter and participate in the discussion, as she tells us during our interview. Soon some of the conversations and arguments that developed in this space will also appear in print.
With these initiatives, Neves seeks not only to bridge between what she describes as the closed academic environment and the common people but also to rescue the vital energy of the spoken word. For her, it is crucial that words do not lose their sound and timber, for this also contributes to their meaning and, therefore, to their transformative power. This approach to the importance of orality and sound in the practice of philosophy is partly informed by her philosophical research on musical aesthetics and the way in which music and sound are vehicles of meaning and human experience.