Inside, the atmosphere was chaotic, by design. “It’s a sort of tribute to the New York art scene of the 1950s and 1960s — John Cage, happenings, the whole freedom of this,” said Mériam Korichi, the philosopher, stage designer and Warhol biographer who organized the event, as well as predecessors in Paris, London and Berlin over the last five years. “From the beginning, I had in mind a multistage event, where you could not possibly attend everything.”

Randomness seemed to play well. Paul Bloomfield, a philosopher at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, mingled with the crowd on the second floor of the embassy, awaiting his opportunity, hours hence, to explain why morality is a precondition of happiness. “Just bringing philosophy to the public is a great thing, and the all-night feature is a gas,” he said. “Who knows what might happen at 2:30 in the morning?”

By 9 p.m. John Cage had given way to pounding disco classics from the 1970s in the embassy’s bookstore, Albertine. Over at the Ukrainian Institute, the coffee machine broke down. On the plus side, free charcuterie from D’Artagnan appeared. Speaking in the Ukrainian Institute’s concert hall, Susan Schneider, of the University of Connecticut, speculated about the nature of alien consciousness and cast doubt on whether extraterrestrial beings might be as interested in communicating with us as we are with them. “You don’t spend time reading a book to your goldfish,” she said.

Outside, the lines grew longer. Inside, attendees crowded the impromptu lecture rooms, clustered to engage in postlecture disputation or sprawled on the floor to gather strength.

“I came here thinking I might find an oasis,” said Katarzyna Endler, a sophomore studying anthropology at Fordham University. “When you take a philosophy course, it’s all PowerPoint presentations, but this is more like a community, where people are here because they care.”