[1] Sautet branched out from his normal academic career as a lecturer by giving philosophy consultation services to businessmen in the bourgeois district of Le Marais in Paris around 1990 to 1991.

He opened up his "cabinet de philosophie" charging consultation fees of some 200 Francs an hour, an amount similar to a professional psychoanalyst of the time.

This was not a successful enterprise for Sautet, however it did lead him to setting up informal philosophising for the ordinary citizen in Parisian cafes starting in 1992 (the Café Philosophique).

He wished his philosophy cafes to be for all people (parleurs de la taverne)) and to encourage freedom of expression regardless of academic background.

[4] Sautet, who has sometimes been labeled the "modern Socrates," wished to recreate the agora - the Athens marketplace where Athenian philosophers and the general public met for social gatherings and talks.