
If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is - whack
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html
======
whatshisface
It feels like the author has missed the point of philosophy entirely. If some
Chinese philosophical paper is very good, it should be evaluated on its merits
and folded in to an appropriate course for that topic.

Philosophers _believe_ at least, that they are doing work more along the lines
of mathematics than underwater dance (that is, searching for truth). Nobody
would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in number theory - and the
concept of "cultural worth" would be equally out of place in any good
institution of philosophy.

If you think an idea is worth teaching _just because it came from a certain
culture_ , you must not care if it's right. That mindset works well in the
purely creative disciplines but should have no place outside.

~~~
whack
The author addresses your exact point in the article.

 _" Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to
single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics
or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical
traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European
and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the American
and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical
problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy. There are no
comparable differences in how mathematics or physics are practiced in other
contemporary cultures."_

 _" This is not to disparage the value of the works in the contemporary
philosophical canon: Clearly, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with
philosophy written by males of European descent; but philosophy has always
become richer as it becomes increasingly diverse and pluralistic. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274) recognized this when he followed his Muslim colleagues in
reading the work of the pagan philosopher Aristotle, thereby broadening the
philosophical curriculum of universities in his own era. We hope that American
philosophy departments will someday teach Confucius as routinely as they now
teach Kant, that philosophy students will eventually have as many
opportunities to study the “Bhagavad Gita” as they do the “Republic,” that the
Flying Man thought experiment of the Persian philosopher Avicenna (980-1037)
will be as well-known as the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment of the American
philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), that the ancient Indian scholar
Candrakirti’s critical examination of the concept of the self will be as well-
studied as David Hume’s, that Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Kwazi Wiredu (1931- ),
Lame Deer (1903-1976) and Maria Lugones will be as familiar to our students as
their equally profound colleagues in the contemporary philosophical canon."_

The point the article is making is that ancient Asian/MiddleEastern philosophy
contains numerous theories and teachings that are just as profound as those
found in ancient Greek philosophy. Hence why their diminished representation
is a problem worth fixing. Do you feel otherwise? Do you think that
philosophical theories such as Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gita are not
worthy of being taught alongside ancient Greek philosophy?

~~~
kolbe
No, the authors acknowledge this counterargument, but they do not offer a
substantial refutation of it. They try to confuse their readers by equating a
historical examination of philosophy with philosophy itself. id=whatshisface
is correctly addressing how this argument applies to philosophy.

~~~
Scarblac
History of philosophy is a major part of all philosophy programs, and the list
of topics that are discussed in the non-history topics are those that were
discussed by the old European philosophers.

~~~
jessriedel
> History of philosophy is a major part of all philosophy programs

Right or wrong, modern philosophers at top universities would claim that they
teach history of philosophy for the same modest reason that physicists learn
about Newton: so they can get some context about how various ideas developed
and the reason for conventions. Analytical philosophers generally _resist_
about having to teach history of philosophy.

> the list of topics that are discussed in the non-history topics are those
> that were discussed by the old European philosophers.

What topics discussed by non-European philosophers do you think are neglected?

Yes it's hard to imagine there isn't bias in topic selection, but then this
needs to be addressed by convincing modern researchers that whatever non-
European ideas are better on their merits, not by studying modern non-European
philosophy as a separate topic.

~~~
whack
> "Analytical philosophers generally resist about having to teach history of
> philosophy."

I actually agree with you on this. It's fine to draw inspiration from
historical theories, but I'd prefer if we could focus more on the ideas
themselves, and less on the history behind those ideas. That said, this is
orthogonal to what the article is about. Given that so much of philosophy
classes revolves around "History of Philosophy," it makes sense to cover the
full range of history, and not just one slice of it.

> "What topics discussed by non-European philosophers do you think are
> neglected? Yes it's hard to imagine there isn't bias in topic selection, but
> then this needs to be addressed by convincing modern researchers that
> whatever non-European ideas are better on their merits, not by studying
> modern non-European philosophy as a separate topic."

What you said is exactly what the author is arguing as well. He's expressly
arguing against the segmentation of western/eastern philosophy into different
topics, and in favor of integrating them into the mainstream of philosophy,
based on their individual merits. He's also given specific examples of non-
western philosophy that is unfairly neglected, and meriting integrated study.
So far in this thread, numerous people have disagreed with the author, but
I've yet to see any highly rated comment dispute the merit of the examples
he's given.

~~~
bobwaycott
I, for one, studied both history and philosophy in undergrad/grad school. I
find it very illuminating to anchor philosophy in a thorough understanding of
its historical context. In fact, I find this informative in other fields, as
well—economics, literature, textual analysis, science, etc.

That said, philosophy courses in university include a lot of historical survey
because there's value in historically positioning schools of thoughts and
their development across many philosophers who could be separated by culture
and time, but nonetheless engage the same topic. Particularly in the Western
tradition, it is fairly trivial to chronologically trace ideas through
teachers and students, from one pivotal thinker to another, to the current
state of Western thought. This at least helps students understand how we
arrived to the present day, which I think is valuable.

Incorporating non-western philosophy would certainly make for a very positive
increased coverage of human ideas, and could offer some interesting and
challenging opportunities for philosophy students. There still needs to be a
way to situate the information for students to grasp. Without including
historical and cultural context, you could invite students to directly engage
the texts and ideas alone, absent context, and produce their own comparative
analysis of complementary and opposing arguments/conclusions. It could be
interesting to present texts in a blind fashion, omitting identifying
information about a philosopher, and see what students make of the texts
without the bias of knowing where it came from historically and culturally.

While I agree it is beneficial to approach and study ideas based on their
merits, and integrate non-western thought into philosophy courses that are
centered on specific ideas, I think there is still value in some amount of
segmentation to avoid overwhelming students. A survey of Middle Eastern and
Eastern philosophy is just as valuable and informative as a survey of Western.
They could all be required of philosophy majors, I think. We already have
segmentation by topic, and could more easily integrate non-western thought
that way.

Somewhat related, my own graduate experience led me to realize that professors
and departments are very resistant to teaching, incorporating, or even
approving research into anything that is outside their identified areas of
expertise. This is, I think, a likely additive reason for why any given topic
X doesn't make it into an academic department that is ostensibly focused on
the field topic X fits into.

------
jnbiche
This push toward "multicultural" philosophy feels oddly out of place in a time
when most philosophy departments are moving/have moved firmly toward logic,
philosophy of science, and/or cognitive science.

At my undergrad university, the philosophy department, in terms of courses
taught and faculty research, was basically a cognitive science department in
all but name. I know there are other programs that lean similarly toward
math/logic, philosophy of science or epistemology.

In such programs, the Western philosophers the article is complaining about
warrant at most a course of two in the history of philosophy (ironically
called "History of Western Philosophy" in many universities for many years).

This sounds more like some kind of ideological/political battle that the
authors may be fighting in their departments more than any kind of overriding
statement about how philosophy is taught in most schools.

~~~
jmagoon
Both India and China have extremely rich philosophical logic traditions, along
with extremely well developed philosophies of mind and epistemology.

Attributing philosophy of mind as "western" is the problem the article is
speaking to--our Philosophy departments are so ignorant of thousands of years
of work that they often duplicate already solved problems or ignore
perspective changing constructs.

If people are actually curious, even beginning to engage with Nagarjuna or
Candrakirti is fascinating.

~~~
jessriedel
What do you think prevents people from engaging is modern philosophy-of-mind
research by building on Nagarjuna or Candrakirti?

~~~
jmagoon
There are many neuroscience departments that actively perform meditation
research (UCSB, Yale, UW-Madison), but my personal experience is that eastern
philosophers who were experts in meditation, logic, or observation are sorely
understudied in Philosophy departments, despite the extraordinarily clear
parallels between modern neuroscience research and their philosophical
propositions.

~~~
jessriedel
I don't necessarily dispute this, but it's a hard sell if you can't identify
some sort of _institutional_ reason these ideas are ignored. There are
thousands of young philosophy researchers, and they could make a name for
themselves applying this stuff if it was well received. And it's not clear to
why it would be unjustly discriminated against.

------
aroman
Coincidentally, I recently had lunch with the department chair of CMU's
Philosophy department. Like many people, I assumed philosophy was all about
(in his words) "the dead white men". What I was calling philosophy was really
the "history of philosophy".

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that what CMU's philosophy department
_actually_ teaches is logic, and philosophy of scientific research and math,
and that the majority of professors in the department are jointly appointed at
other departments within the university.

I told him I think we just need to ditch the name "philosophy", and he said
"you know, my department offers five majors... only one of them is called
philosophy."

~~~
thomasahle
At my university philosophy was only offered joint with another topic, such as
Maths and Philosophy or Politics and Philosophy. The idea being, I think, to
make sure the thinking had an object to study.

What surprised me was, as it seems for you, that they basically only studied
philosophy from the last fifty or hundred years. It's not really about Plato
or Aristotle.

~~~
bmj
I went to a small liberal arts school. The philosophy department was tiny
(only two professors, one of which also taught history and sociology), and
only one other person in my graduating class earned a degree in philosophy.
While the much of my advanced work (400-level classes) focused on dead white
guys (Ayer, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), I had several classes on
various flavors of non-western philosophy, reading, among other things,
Confucius, Laozi, the Koran, and various Hindi texts.

I wonder about the difference between the history of philosophy and
philosophy. Few philosophers operate in a complete vacuum, so it isn't useful
to have an overview of philosophical thought that had an impact on your
particular area of study?

------
keiferski
The underlying problem (which wasn't mentioned at all in this essay) is that
contemporary philosophical education is a confusing mix of two things:

1\. Ideas on particular "universal" topics, like _politics, ethics,
metaphysics, and so on._ We can call this "philosophy."

2\. What certain people thought about said ideas. We can call this "history of
thought."

Should there be a wider variety of cultures in #2? Of course. But it's also
very important to realize that philosophy, that is, the activity of ruminating
on ideas, is largely a process that happens within specific culture in
reaction and in conversation to other members of a culture. So while Confucian
thought on the family is no doubt very robust and worth exploring, it is
simply out-of-place and lacking context when placed next to 20th-century
Anglo-American philosophy, for example. Wittgenstein was writing in response
to western philosophers that came before him. One cannot really understand W.
without understanding the centuries of western thought that led to him.

Personally, I'd like to see more of a clear distinction between "philosophy"
and "history of thought". This would allow for more inclusion of non-western
thought while also recognizing that viewpoints on certain subjects are not
equally as valid simply because they are from a different culture.

 _Source: philosophy-degree-holder currently working on a philosophy startup._

~~~
return0
> a philosophy startup.

That sounds like a very different kind of startup.

~~~
keiferski
I'm hoping to deduce myself into YC. :)

I'll be launching it this July. Stay tuned.

------
imgabe
Why do people feel the need to dictate to others what they should do? The
authors of this piece are professors of philosophy. If they feel that teaching
non-Western philosophy is crucially important and offers substantial
advantages that cannot be obtained by studying only Western philosophy, then
why don't they just simply _teach non-Western philosophy_.

All the advantages they presume to exist by doing so will surely accrue to
them, and others will follow suit in time.

~~~
shadowfox
> Why do people feel the need to dictate to others what they should do?

I rather see this as advocacy. If you strongly feel the need for change, you
have to do that _in addition_ to simply doing what they themselves can do.

People do it all the time. Take a look at open source advocacy for example.

~~~
borkxs
Then I can understand why people seem to be finding what you call advocacy a
bit grating. Because if it isn't a dictate, what exactly is the desired
outcome?

Imagine this piece does its job and convinces a lot of people. "Indeed! We
need more multicultural philosophy departments!" Now it's a policy debate.
Which departments? Which coursework? Do we need to hire and fire to make this
change? The question becomes: HOW WILL WE ALLOCATE RESOURCES DIFFERENTLY TO
MAKE THIS CHANGE HAPPEN? Do we need to cut government funding from public
schools that don't meet some percentage curriculum requirement?

The logical endpoint WOULD BE a dictate even if the op-ed is "just advocacy"
right now.

~~~
hsod
I'd be very interested in reading a philosophical examination of the ethics of
advocacy/activism. It's not even something I've ever really seen discussed.

------
lr4444lr
I admit I'm not a philosopher, but this sounds like claiming that we're
inappropriately teaching a narrowed perspective of math because we don't teach
Vedic multiplication algorithms or Mayan counting bases. These are interesting
topics in their own right, but they do not constitute the (relatively)
unbroken chain of mathematics as a _discipline in and of itself_ in a
progressional manner with a working epistemology, namely, the formal proof.
The Greeks gets that prize, by virtue of Euclid (and a few others
tangentially, e.g. Eudoxus or Nicomedes or Hero), not by virtue of being
Greek, e.g. Eratosthenes or Aristarchus, who gave us good results and
application, but did not build on or advance the process of _how_ we do math
(as far as we have record).

Similarly, Plato is the father of a philosophical tradition that to this day
is recognizable as the foundation of how we develop questions about
philosophical problems and analyze them. There were schools of thinking that
came to various _conclusions_ with some similarity to Greek (and some later
Roman) traditions, and there were certainly Greek philosophers who were
steeped in mythical, religious, or simply very time and place specific
thinking and no longer considered of much interest today, but as per the
article's example, the "Bhagavad Gita" is a deeply religious text - its wisdom
is received from a god figure, not puzzled out or reasoned by man.

------
nickpsecurity
I agree with the author given the author has cited specific works that
sometimes predate the European works and some that they themselves probably
discussed.

The Confucius one got to me in college as I learned about him in a world
religion class instead of philosophy. I mean, here's a guy or group whose
writings were so profound that they can lead you to business success or
happiness in 2016. Gets almost no attention outside of jokes that make him
look like an idiot. I like messing with people in the South by talking about
how the "Good Book" says (insert Confucius quote). They'll correct me about
what Jesus really said only to have me point out I was talking about a
different author that came before him and was doing it for non-religious
reasons. Blows their minds. Instead of him, my philosophy class taught me a
mix of stuff that's practical (eg Empiricism, Skepticism) and stuff I'd have
to use PCP to benefit from. Hmmm.

I find the Flying Man experiment interesting, too, given I've done _the same
one_. At least the initial thoughts. I did it after I had fallen from a high
place. It felt so peaceful as if I was suspended in air with a light breeze
with the world moving past me. The ground interrupted the peace. Aside from
_that_ , I do recall introspecting on how it looked and felt from my
perspective vs what actually happened. I knew there were psychological lessons
or something to learn from the experience. Turns out, a Persian my philosophy
class didn't know about thought up the same thing before 1,000AD. Probably
fell off a building or something, too. ;)

------
luso_brazilian
The article's quote that explain the title cliffhanger is:

 _> Instead, we ask those who sincerely believe that it does make sense to
organize our discipline entirely around European and American figures and
texts to pursue this agenda with honesty and openness. _

_> We therefore suggest that any department that regularly offers courses only
on Western philosophy should rename itself “Department of European and
American Philosophy.”_

In my view, up until this point, a very rational proposal, in line with the
change from "Computer Science" to (for instance) "Information Technology" in
courses that skip the whole mathematical foundation to focus exclusively on
the applied technological disciplines.

However, the follow up of the reasoning sounded too judgmental with an
unnecessary passive aggressive tone:

 _> This simple change would make the domain and mission of these departments
clear, and would signal their true intellectual commitments to students and
colleagues._

------
vlehto
They wish to include non-European traditions of philosophy into academic
philosophy.

"Jay L. Garfield is - - the author of “Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to
Philosophy.” Bryan W. Van Norden is -- the author of “Introduction to
Classical Chinese Philosophy.”"

"Give us more money. We like money."

~~~
sundarurfriend
Or "We put our work where our mouth is", proof that they follow their own
advice and have relevant expertise.

~~~
Chris2048
How does "European and American Philosophy" differ from "Western Philosophy"
versus "Eastern Philosophy", the latter of which they seem to specialise.

------
jimmytidey
I'm inclined to think that university departments are really sets of social
norms: agreements about what the canonical texts are, ideas about what methods
and tools should be used, and, of course, the kinds of phenomena they study.
Among other things.

So it's hard turn up at the philosophy department and insist they start
teaching Indian philosophy because no one there will really know about it.
It's not the intellectual project the staff at the department have elected to
study. You could, and I think should, nudge them to broaden their cultural
horizons where possible. Links with other cultures should absolutely be
explored. (This is a lovely short podcast on Hume and this possibility he was
responding to Buddhist thought - [http://philosophybites.com/2013/09/alison-
gopnik-on-hume-and...](http://philosophybites.com/2013/09/alison-gopnik-on-
hume-and-buddhism.html))

At the same time, philosophy departments have a problem because - at least for
analytic philosophy - it's a huge hierarchy of interlocking thoughts that you
can only access by learning a large body of fundamentals. So any attempt to
broaden the curriculum will necessarily prevent students getting to many of
the most interesting ideas within the discipline. Especially because such a
wide variety of though is colloquially designated philosophy. What is the
connection between the Bhagavad Gita and Russell and Whitehead? Students would
end up knowing virtually nothing about everything.

As for gender equality in philosophy departments - that's a whole other issue.
Of course they should strive for gender equality. But they can't stop teaching
the thoughts of dead white men to achieve it any more than the physics
department ought to stop teaching Newton to increase diversity. You can't ask
a whole subject area to radically shift it's focus to ensure balanced
demographics in the students taking it. That's not fair to anyone.

------
bnegreve
I'm not sure this logic makes any sense.

Science is also very euro-centric, yet most of us here would argue that
science is among the most objective disciplines out there.

~~~
hyperpape
It's addressed in the article. They specifically address this point, and argue
that philosophy is different, because there are distinctive traditions and
approaches in non-western philosophy that nonetheless are recognizably doing
philosophy in the same sense as European and American philosophers.

In contract, there are Chinese physicists and Chinese mathematicians, but
they're doing math and physics the same way that Europeans and Americans do
it.

Edit: made this non-snarky. Sorry for that.

~~~
bnegreve
You're right, here's the quote:

 _Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to
single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics
or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical
traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European
and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the American
and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical
problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy. There are no
comparable differences in how mathematics or physics are practiced in other
contemporary cultures._

~~~
Kalium
Their response is nothing but shabby sophistry. The search for philosphical
truth is not remotely comparable to the ad-hoc as-needed approach used to
develop mathematics and physics. Non-European mathematical traditions have
developed distinctly to serve their own particular needs in relation to
problems not raised, framed, or addressed in the American or European
tradition.

\-----

Point being, their argument is not a very strong response to the critique it
purports to address.

------
return0
Childish article. Should the Confucians also be forced to read plato?
Philosophy (itself a greek word) is being taught as a certain tradition that
builds upon its past. People from all races have contributed, but it will
always remain a western-born tradition. To say that other disciplines should
be included uncritically is childish. I realize the authors may be frustrated
that their subfields don't gain more tractions, but even the fact that they
both work in western philosophy departments, kind of nullifies their point.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I highly doubt that philosophy and thinking logically is a western-born
tradition. What is Confucianism if not a philosophy? Or is this rhetoric
implying that philosophy is inherently exclusive to western cultures?

------
twoodfin
I'm trying to struggle through the linked discussion of Kwasi Wiredu, and it's
not encouraging.

[http://www.iep.utm.edu/wiredu/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/wiredu/)

 _Indeed, terms such as reflective integration and due reflection offer the
critical spaces for the theoretical articulation of something whose existence
has not yet been concretely conceived._

...

 _This reading gives an entirely different perspective on acts and themes of
resistance as panoptical surveillance in the age of global neoliberalism
becomes more totalitarian in nature at specific moments._

...

 _Another crucial, if distressing, feature of decolonization as advanced by
Wiredu is that it always has to measure itself up with the colonizing Other,
that is, it finds it almost impossible to create its own image so to speak by
the employment of autochthonous strategies._

I know there are Western philosophical traditions that embrace this kind of
language (Derrida is mentioned frequently in the above-linked piece, and I
also think of Foucault and Baudrillard), but I didn't study those in my MIT
philosophy program either! Conversely, there are plenty of non-Western
philosophers who embrace a clarifying analytical style over this kind of
semiotic obscurity. Not that the latter isn't potentially insightful and fun:
We're humans, after all, not computers.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I totally object to this deliberately obscure style of academic writing.
Having to re-read a sentence five times to decipher it doesn't make the author
sound intelligent, it makes me suspect the author has nothing substantial to
say.

I'm working on my PhD now, and deliberately avoid citing papers with this
style. I haven't got the time or energy to wade through pages of bullshit
obscurity searching for nuggets of insight.

I realise it's a fashion amongst academics, designed to separate them from the
ignorant masses. It's working, but I don't think that's a good thing.

~~~
jnbiche
Obviously, not all academics write like this. Not by far. It's the hallmark of
various followers of postmodernists like Derrida and Lacan. Particularly
favored by far-left academics in departments of gender studies, multicultural
studies, women's studies, etc.

Multiculturalism is a wonderful thing, but not the brand that these frauds
sell.

You can read a pretty devastating critique of these pseudo-scholars in the
book Fashionable Nonsense, which describes how two physicists made up a
completely bullshit paper, full of utter nonsense, had it accepted for
publication in one of the leading postmodernist journals of the time, and
confronted a fierce but intellectually empty counterattack by postmodernism's
supporters(this was in the 90s) [1].

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-
Intell...](http://www.amazon.com/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-
Intellectuals-Science/dp/0312204078)

~~~
Chris2048
The leftist thing seems to be an attempt to ad academic legitimacy, borrowing
the tradition of philosophy, while also making use of / abusing the tradition
of ambiguity. The political advantage of this is never having to commit to
saying anything concrete - a boon for practitioners of 'Motte and Bailey'
rhetoric - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-
bric...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-
motte/) .

That said, I find this is more the case with _lit crit_ , than philosophy.
Perhaps in Academic Feminism?

------
physicalist
Let's replace philosophy with medicine and the BS becomes apparent. So called
Non-western philosophy is often a misnomer - it's actually religion.

~~~
relaxatorium
So by this logic are we also removing Augustine, Aquinus, Decartes, Kant and
the dozens of other canonical western philosophers whose arguments were
substantially religious in nature?

I suppose we could, but this leaves a pretty thin curriculum.

~~~
skwirl
The big difference is the method. The people you cite made arguments based on
premises and those arguments taken together (to their belief) were consistent.
When people attacked the arguments and premises, they defended them. When the
arguments or premises were eventually found to be indefensible, they were
abandoned. Their premises, when based on religious texts, were bad - but the
very method that they championed is what exposed that.

The scientific method itself is a product of Western Philosophy. The very fact
that you know these philosophers were wrong about many things is thanks to the
very tradition they were upholding.

My brief exposure to "Eastern Philosophy" in college was interesting as it did
not really feel like philosophy. It seemed to be nuggets of so-called wisdom
presented without argument. It very much reminded me of some books in the old
testament and even some pre-Socratic philosophy. It came across basically as
religious/mystic dogma.

~~~
ricksplat
> Augustine, Aquinus

> nuggets of so-called wisdom presented without argument

I think P-1 is half right in that Augustine and Aquinas are similar to the
Eastern philosophy described by P.

These great catholic philosophers were of a scholastic [0] tradition, relying
on syllogistic reasoning alone - deriving from certain axioms similar to the
"nuggets" of eastern wisdom.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to lump Descartes and Kant into this
category as they were far more of the inductive tradition. The former was
writing at a time when to write about such a thing could be considered heresy,
so he had to work around some of these "axioms". The latter wasn't so much
religious as informed by his cultural context.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism)

------
orkoden
There isn't even one kind of Western philosophy. There are vast differences
between continental european and anglo(-american) philosophy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy)

------
kolbe
Law, ethics, language, &c.

These authors conveniently cite a stat that says how many professors are not
teachers of "non-Western philosophy" (i.e. the History of Philosophy, a
subject that students should know quite well before they even enter college,
and very few professors should have to waste their time with). Unfortunately
for any semblance of an argument worth publishing, that stat is horribly
misleading in the context of knowing all of the other philosophical
specialties that exist, which could be called not-non-Western. I wish the NYT
would stop giving conservatives such effective fuel with which to characterize
progressives as illogical shills.

------
henriquemaia
By reading the comments, I had the feeling (maybe I am wrong, my apologies if
I am) that most don't get the gist of the argument here.

If you are already in the mindset of the Western Philosophical tradition, I
have to concur that this article seems silly, as many have already pointed
out. However, for those of us that while studying philosophy don't live on
Europe or North America (the Anglo-European Philosophical Studies perspective
mentioned on the article) and who already feel like second class citizens of
the philosophical world, the article is spot-on.

Living in South America and studying philosophy (I am a graduate student in
Brazil), the whole notion that the only true philosophical tradition is the
Eurocentric one has other and more profound meanings and implications (even
though, as I believe, most are unintentional side-effects of history). It is
as if the old view of 'we enlightened [Christian] Europeans' vs. 'you poor
wretched uneducated savages' comes back to haunts us once again (this is just
a rough sketch just to give an idea — things are far more complex than this,
obviously). That being said, the authors' point, from this perspective, seems
much more valid — and even liberating.

------
methehack
There is an interesting conundrum here actually. So-called 'Western
Philosophy' through most of its history has been largely concerned with the
discovery of (perhaps just the discussion of) so-called 'transcendental' or
'absolute' truth -- truths that by definition are supposed to transcend
culture. From a certain perspective, this is just a bias of this particular
tradition of philosophy. However, to call it anything else but 'philosophy'
\-- say 'western philosophy' \-- would be to, in an important sense, admit
defeat.

To respect diversity, I think you really do have to respect each tradition as
distinct. I think mixing different philosophical traditions would end up
failing to respect any of them. It'd be like having a dinner party meant to
celebrate cultural diversity but throwing all the chinese, indian, and thai
food together with burgers and ketchup and calling it 'diverse'. Western
philosophy is it's own thing, as are other traditions. It doesn't need to let
everyone in to respect them -- perhaps the contrary.

Also I really don't like the way this article ends: “The Fates lead those who
come willingly, and drag those who do not.”. The tone is threatening and has
no place in a discussion of this nature.

------
hackeyed
Having gone through an undergraduate philosophy major and taken many classes
on non-western thought, all offered by other departments, I strongly support
the article's position. To have a class called "Ethics" that covers only the
historical Western positions deprives students of the majority of the world's
thinking on the topic.

What many of the comments here are missing by trying to separate "history of
thought" from a more abstract conception of "philosophy" is that people do not
develop their views of the world in a vacuum. Philosophy classes are not
meditation sessions where students try and summon knowledge from the void,
they involve reading the works of great thinkers in the field, analyzing their
reasoning and engaging with their ideas.

The philosophers you read provide both the content and the tools you learn for
use in your own thinking. As such, only presenting philosophers from a
particular tradition biases the experiences of your students whether that bias
is cultural as the article points out or even towards a particular school of
thought within a culture, like the shift from pragmatics to highly analytic
philosophy that took place in American schools during the second half of the
twentieth century.

When I asked my department head why we did not, for instance, mention
Confucius in our Moral Philosophy class, she explained that it is at least
partially a bootstrapping issue. Because none of the faculty at my university
had training in non-western traditions or spoke any non-western languages,
they did not teach them nor did they feel comfortable advising graduate
students doing their research on those traditions and in those languages.

Take a look at the graduate program requirements for the Ivy League philosophy
programs and you will see that they all require students to know a second
language, but the languages they are told to choose from are: French, German,
Latin, Ancient Greek, or Dutch if you are really into Kierkegaard. You might
also be able to get approval for Russian. The result is an echo chamber where
we only teach western so we only hire western so we only teach western.

I doubt the article's suggestion of renaming departments will do much to
change this situation but I agree that it would be a more honest
representation of the materials taught and sympathize with the frustration
behind their argument.

~~~
return0
Wouldn't that be called Anthropology?

~~~
hackeyed
They share some areas of focus but philosophy also overlaps with history,
religion, literature, and logic. All ideas are human ideas and it is important
to understand the historical and cultural assumptions that are baked into
those ideas if you are going to really engage with them.

------
abhi3
SOAS one of the few elite colleges that offered a large and diverse range of
such courses was forced to end quite a few of them due budget cuts.

------
ececconi
I very much disagree with this article. I was able to take some courses in
Eastern thought, but I think the major problem of this article is how the
authors define philosophy.

It seems like the authors are confusing the terms theology, culture, and
philosophy. Yes, there are major problems with the way that philosophy is
taught in the modern university. This attack, however, is unwarranted.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is terrible.

Ye gods, there's a whole section of philosophy devoted to pragmatism, which by
it's very definition could care less where stuff came from.

I know that there's no way somebody received an advanced degree in philosophy
and is now making a case that the historical roots of one thought system or
another is more important than how useful it is. This has to be a troll.

You measure systems, whatever they are, by how well they achieve the goals you
have set them up to address. Philosophy, especially, is a field of endeavor
where you move between toolsets depending on the situation and context. That's
because philosophy is not a science, it's a set of tools.

It's also not a preschool art project, and observing the field from a distance
and noting that there's not enough blue, or too many mountains, is the height
of reductionist idiocy.

I'm sorry for the vehemence. This article makes me sad. These folks should
know better.

I am reminded of the old saying: if you do not know why you are doing
something, stop doing it.

------
cousin_it
(deleted)

~~~
applecore
_> I wholeheartedly support the noble desire to give things their proper
names._

It's ironic that the Rectification of Names is central to the philosophy of
Confucius.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names)

~~~
laretluval
This is commonly misunderstood. The Confucian Rectification of Names is not
about altering the names we use to better conform with reality, but rather
about altering reality to better conform to the names we use. A very different
approach than Western linguistic and political philosophy.

~~~
danharaj
And it should be considered in the context of how other competing philosophies
of the day treated names, like the Daoist, Mohist, and Legalist positions.

------
notagainsdsfdsf
Oh, come on. "Eurocentric" philosophy is one of the foundations of modern
civilization. The same can't be said of any of the listed traditions. The
author complains that departments are resolutely "Eurocentric" when the whole
world is scrambling to become more European, and with good reason.

------
kriro
Logic is an interesting example. I've always wondered if someone who had more
natural access to Eastern philosophy (Zen?) has a more natural feeling for
some of the non-classical logics (paraconsistent, many-valued) and maybe
quantum states.

------
timwaagh
is it really that weird if a philosophy department located in say, belgium,
emphasizes belgian philosophers and philosophers from surrounding areas (like
france and germany). philosophy is not really a science and is subjective.
thus, a comparison to math (or physics) does not make sense. given the tribal
nature of humanity, it just makes sense that departments emphasize those
famous philosophers from their tribes. if you look at russian and chinese
institutions, no doubt one would see a different picture. The whole argument
of 'evaluation on merit' is not a good argument because 'merit' is subjective.
it would be roughly equivalent to 'what the people in the department like'.
the argument against their idea of renaming to a 'philosophy of america and
europe department' would be that a certain amount of (regional)bias is
implicit in the discipline of philosophy. we could consider anyone who denies
this to be 'dumb' and hence it does not need naming to make it explicit. on
the contrary, this kind of 'self naming & shaming' could damage the brand of
'philosophy' as a whole.

~~~
reader5000
This is correct but if you want people to pay attention to you and e.g. buy
your book the current dominant marketing/political strategy is claiming some
ineffable moral inferiority of western culture or western people ("dead white
guys") and afterwards apparently people give you cash or at least web traffic.

------
facepalm
It's not religion, which they seem to mistake it for.

------
TearsInTheRain
What they are suggesting, offering non-western philo courses in philosophy
departments, just moves the divide within the department but doesn't remove
it. Philosophy courses are centered around problems and should be independent
of culture. Are there philosophical problems that exist in the east but not
the west?

------
noise_ramones
There is no denying that, both in the authors assigned in standard curricula
and in the make-up of graduate students and faculty, white males are
disproportionately represented in philosophy departments in the U.S. and
Europe.

I would simply like to register the fact that, among current graduate students
and (typically young) professors at the departments with which I am familiar
(basically the Leiter top 30), this is generally an issue of grave concern. I
know many people who work very hard to combat this. There are many
collaborative efforts to construct alternative syllabi for mainstay classes
(e.g. epistemology, ethics), to open real lines of dialogue with scholars who
have historically been seen as "peripheral" to the enterprise of analytic
philosophy (e.g. people who work on Buddhist philosophy, or Islamic
philosophy), and to identify and redress the reasons that philosophy tends to
overwhelmingly draw white males.

I don't mean to excuse the status quo. There is a lot of work still to be
done. I simply want to point out that the advice of the authors of this
article has not gone totally unheeded.

~~~
reader5000
Disproportionate to what? What is the expected proportioning that you think
the make-up of grad students in the west violates?

------
chillingeffect
"Only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their
regular faculty."

How important is it to have a specialist as part of "regular" faculty? Is
there no other way to teach the information that via a "regular," "specialist"
?

------
jkobuthi
Hello, I've just read the article above and I have a few thoughts concerning
the same: Foremost, In as much as I do agree that the majority of philosophers
are white male(s) who are fantastically -David Cameron has rubbed off-
eurocentric, having more women and other minority races shall not solve the
problem. Secondly, I do argue that universities must inculcate in their
curricular, reads/ units stating what other scholars outside of the American-
european tradition are philosophizing. Ie, a course on Philosophy in Africa
should be introduced in American schools etc. This would not only provide for
a rich diversity of ideas but also demistify the idea that only the species
"male caucasian" can think and thus create room for non euro- American minds
to partake of the delicacy that is Philosophy. P.S.( Im a grad student in
Philosophy from the University of Nairobi)

------
Kinnard
The problem is way bigger than philosophy departments. The entire University
System is the last vestige of the ancien régime. That's why degree are widely
in latin all over the world in places that have nothing to do with Rome.

------
jmh1
Good science makes good predictions and often leads to useful tech. There's an
obvious external arbiter of quality. Same goes for math, where more or less
everyone has agreed on ZFC.

Good philosophy... is whatever other philosophers decide is good. No external
arbiter of quality. Lots of disagreement about foundational assumptions
(certainly nothing like the agreement we have in math).

This looks like a very clear-cut case of rent-seeking by an insular cultural
institution.

------
qaq
Isn't it demand driven to an extent?

------
cmdrfred
If it can't make a prediction, it's not science.

------
programmer1234
If you strip away the appeals to emotion, their point seems flimsier in
isolation: "Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions
to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame
problems not addressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize
and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Anglo-
European philosophy."

This is on the surface, reasonable. But why don't we try reversing the names,
which should be allowed under their pretense of fairness and equality, like
so: "European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems
discussed within Non-European philosophy, raise or frame problems not
addressed in the Non-European traditions, or emphasize and discuss more deeply
philosophical problems that are marginalized in Non-European philosophy."

Now it sounds at best sloppy (Which non-European traditions?), and at worst
chauvinistic against the background noise that makes up the bulk of what
really drives their point, which is the "apologize for imperialism" theme. So
at one level below the surface, they are suggesting we abandon evaluating
ideas based on their relevance to us as westerners, and subordinate that
principle to saying sorry for imperialism. At two levels below, they are just
talking their own book, as white male professors of Chinese philosophy.

~~~
danharaj
Have you just discovered that when you permute the words in a sentence, you
can radically change it's meaning?

The point of the article is the primacy of Western philosophical traditions in
their departments. The context of the discussion in reality is what makes it
relevant. Your permutation is incongruous with the context they're making
their argument in.

------
twoarray
There are cultural, linguistic and historic reasons and limitations for being
"Eurocentric".

~~~
vixen99
Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World by
Daniel Hannan

No comparable offer has emerged elsewhere.

------
andrewclunn
Well if philosophy weren't complete bullshit I might be more upset...

~~~
igravious
“Look Mommy, … a crank!”

“And on the _internet_ too Jimmy, how unusual.”

By the way, Aristotle covered this type of discourse in "On Trolling":
[http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/07/aristotle-on-
trolling/](http://crookedtimber.org/2016/05/07/aristotle-on-trolling/)

