Philosophy - Edward Skidelsky has his soul comforted by the ruminations of a Berlin discussion group

I am walking down Kastanienallee, centre of hip Berlin. It is already dark; candles flicker through cafe windows. Inside the cafes, young people sip coffees and listen to strange electronic music. I suppress a pang of envy. My destination is the freezing annex of an art-house cinema, where every fortnight I and other votaries meet to pursue what Kant called the "adventure of reason". This is Philosophie Direkt, a noble attempt to thrust philosophy upon an indifferent world. Tonight, the theme for discussion is "Being and Having" and the speaker is Gudrun, foun-der and convener of our circle.

Gudrun is remarkably beautiful for her 66 years. Her soulful, haggard face and roll-up cigarettes suggest a life of dedicated bohemianism. In another age she might have been a priestess, like the wise old woman Diotima, who taught Socrates the secret of love. Certainly her talk has something of a sermon about it. Most people, she proclaims, judge others solely according to what they have - their material or spiritual possessions. But philosophers lay the emphasis on what we are. Each of us has an inviolable core of Being, invoked every time we say "I" or "thou" - the intimate German "du". Only this matters; everything else is external and disposable. Gudrun does not talk of the soul, but that is clearly what she has in mind. Yes, she is a priestess, a strayed priestess, and we are her congregation.

Unlike in a church, however, this congregation is allowed to answer back. The attack is led by my friend Marco, who has just come in from the office. Marco is a corporate lawyer, so perhaps inevitably views "having" with more sympathy than Gudrun. However, he practises law only after lunch. Mornings he reserves for his real passion, the philosophy of Hegel. And it is Hegel's worldly wisdom that he offers us now. "How can you say that my possessions are 'merely external'? If I build a house for myself, then this house becomes an expression, an extension of my personality. I embody myself in it; I can't lose it without losing something of myself." The example is too folksy for the general taste. "What about your portfolio?" asks a cynical man to my right. "Is that an 'expression of your personality'?" Everyone laughs. Marco is on the defensive. "Well, I'm only talking about the institution of private property in general; the particular form it takes is another matter." I notice that Marco is wearing, as usual, a beautifully tailored suit of herringbone cloth. In a moment of clairvoyance, I see it as an embodiment of his personality, spirit objectified. Marco would not be Marco without his suit.

At this point, a young man with flushed, hectic cheeks and a strange accent enters the discussion, developing Marco's Hege-lian musings in a very un-Hegelian direction. "This whole distinction between 'Being' and 'Having' is just a load of sentimental, petit-bourgeois bullshit. It's how the propertied classes have always fobbed off the poor: 'Don't worry, it doesn't matter if you don't have anything. At least you are something - a soul, a legal personality, whatever.' But if you don't have anything, you're nothing." There is a murmur of assent. The discussion turns to the inhabitants of Wedding, a poor district of Berlin, and their obsession with BMWs. It is agreed that such people are in thrall to Having at the expense of Being. Marco springs to their defence. "Why does everyone regard material goods as a mere 'status symbol'? What people aspire to in a BMW is recognition, a standing in society. Is that so contemptible?"

From now on, the debate loses its firm contours. I have drunk too much of the cheap red wine on offer to be able to keep up with the increasingly colloquial German. Besides, I am preoccupied with formulating a German sentence of my own, something that will capture the richness and subtlety of my thoughts. Marco's comments make me think of Jane Austen, and the frankness with which her characters discuss dowries and prospects. Clearly, the question of Being and Having wasn't such a big deal back then. Why have we become so coy? It's not as if money and class are any less important. But for some reason, we can't acknowledge their impor-tance; we have to pretend that only the "soul" or "personality" matters. We've become misfits in our own society.

Then my thoughts stray to a short story by Tolstoy that I have been reading, about a drunken, impoverished musician called Albert. As he lies freezing in the street, Albert dreams he is playing a violin of glass, enticing from it the most delicate, beautiful music in the world. A voice sounds from heaven: "He seems to you pitiful, you despise him, yet he is the best and happiest of men. No one will ever play that instrument again." Maybe that is what Gudrun means by the soul. It is that fabulous instrument only I can play and hear, compared to which all my outward ventures are nothing but clumsy scraping. Perhaps Gudrun is right after all. But how does that tie in with Jane Austen and dowries?

It's no good. My German is hopelessly inadequate to render this internal dialogue externally. I finally stutter out a single, far from subtle sentence: "There . . . is . . . no . . . relation . . . between . . . the . . . 'I' . . . and . . . the . . . 'thou' . . . in . . . which . . . money . . . does . . . not . . . play . . . a . . . role." Silence. "Not even love!" I add with sour emphasis. Gudrun is shocked. "Nein! Nein!" she cries and stamps her foot. We carry on for a while, but now it is almost midnight and everyone is tired. Besides, the conversation has descended from its former Teutonic heights to more familiar English territory. Gudrun is discussing the delicate problem of whether to address one's cleaning lady as "du". This is more Posy Simmonds than Martin Buber. I make a speedy exit. I do not want to be reminded that my bohemian priestess is in reality a member of the much-reviled bourgeoisie - as, indeed, is everyone in the room.

Walking home, it occurs to me what a successful discussion this has been. It was everything philosophy should be: fierce, serious, passionate, without any academic pedantry or point-scoring. Nothing was resolved, but something fundamental was brought to a head, made precise. I no longer feel envious of the young Berliners, still sipping coffee. But when I try to transpose the scene to a typical London pub, my mind goes blank. English society is so solid, so all-of-a-piece; there's not so much as a chink through which the spectre of philosophy might slip. The subject can be tackled only in terms of cleverness, logic puzzles and an Oxbridge education - which is to say, not at all. Even Marco, for all his Anglophilia, is really very German. In England, you don't need Hegel to justify owning a BMW. A large salary will do. Only here, in this land of long cold winters and generous benefits, can anyone over 21 treat such stuff as more than a parlour game. And that, perhaps, is just as well.

Edward Skidelsky is writing a study of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer

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