But how much people had read, and how easily they could find new things, were of course vastly different. They were still busy inventing newspapers, and wikipedia was some way off.
> London hit 90% literacy around 1750
Still though, if you look at today, there's plenty of people who can read, but don't. You'll find lots of modern people who don't know anything about what happened in history, what the political themes are, and so on.
In India, in the southern state of Kerala which has achieved a 100% literacy rate, you have this sort of lively discussion in small teashacks in both villages and cities. People group together, read the news, and discuss it together regardless of political affiliation. If certain people start causing issues and fights, they are usually thrown out at the first unwelcome instance, and barred from ever entering the place again. What's different between Kerala and the West today might be the lack of Twitter presence for most, a disdain for political discussion on Facebook (due to police/government monitoring) and the more frequent interactions between the wealthy and the poor (since human labor is still widely used in India). And unlike other states with lower literacy rates, people from Kerala tend to be exposed to a lot of news, hence they are politically more active.
It was the same in XX or in XIX century, philosophy goes back thousands of years and it makes sense to know what before you said. Maybe back in Socrates days everyone worked from a blank slate, but that time is long gone.
Nowadays, there's some subtantial differences. Intellectual authority changed. You can't have a credible intellectual discussion about anything without having heard of a certain set of old guys anymore. Their intellectual heirs sit at universities and tell everyone where the thinking went since those days. This is both good and bad. If you want a serious discussion, you need to have done some homework, and you won't find a bunch of people who understand your interest area in a pub. You might find them on various online forums, a relatively recent thing.