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If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

106 points by whack 11y ago

aroman 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
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  - bmj 11y ago
    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?
- programmer1234 11y ago
  That said, David enthusiastically taught us about 100% white dude based approaches to forming a foundation for cognitive science. He's a good politician but I think he ultimately believes deep down that modern western science > zen BS for explaining the world, although he claims he basically will draw from anything if it seems consistent enough with his foundation.
abhi3 11y ago
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.
physicalist 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    > 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? That would be very nice, actually. If your philosophizing requires the supernatural to make sense, it's not very good.
  - Malarkey73 11y ago
    And forget Plato and ~half of Greek Philosophy.
  - tomp 11y ago
    Admittedly I only studied philosophy in high school, but according to the version of Categorical Imperative that I was taught, Kant's philosophy was highly rational and almost perfectly logical.
  - skwirl 11y ago
    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.
retox 11y ago
Daily 'kill whitey' post.
- reader5000 11y ago
  Pretty sure it's the only thing that gets clicks.
AlgorithmicTime 11y ago
This seems quite ridiculous. The Bhagavad Gita is not a philosophical treatise like the Republic, it's a narrative scripture. Why would it be treated like the Republic for philosophical purposes.
bnegreve 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
  - 11y ago
whatshisface 11y ago
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.
- Kristine1975 11y ago
  How do I know if an idea in philosophy is "right"?
  - tremon 11y ago
    That's one of the major topics of philosophy.
- Coincoin 11y ago
  The author clearly thinks philosophy is some kind of school of esoterism and after life.
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  - sageikosa 11y ago
    What became Philosophy was first delineated by the Hellenic Greeks. It was a pursuit of the literate as an alternative to the waning gods of the masses. There are certainly other schools of thought on what things are, how they should be considered, how being should act, how societies should organize and what people should admire and strive for; but not all of those are philosophical.
qaq 11y ago
Isn't it demand driven to an extent?
luso_brazilian 11y ago
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.
cousin_it 11y ago
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- applecore 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
- Wintamute 11y ago
  Hah! Well said sir.
kolbe 11y ago
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.
imgabe 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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.
  - methehack 11y ago
    “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.” That's the quote the article ends with. Seems like a threat and, frankly, out of place -- and, stronger, than 'advocacy'.
jnbiche 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - wyager 11y ago
    Most of those thousands of years of work are not even remotely based on the scientific method. Such work is of historical relevance, and not much else.
    - jmagoon 11y ago
      This statement is, to me, demonstrative of a lack of understanding of the source material and an unwillingness to engage with 'new' ideas purely out of bias. The scientific method is a way of approaching reality that has lead to extremely useful discoveries--but, in my opinion, the hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved via the scientific method because consciousness, the experience of qualia, is not externally observable. Nagarjuna and Candrakirti were both experts in the observation of qualia, and their philosophies stem from that expertise. It's possible to even call their philosophical method 'scientific' if that is the materialist's sole judgement of the value of an idea.
twoodfin 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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-Intellectuals-Science/dp/0312204078 http://www.amazon.com/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-Intell...
noise_ramones 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Disproportionate to what? What is the expected proportioning that you think the make-up of grad students in the west violates?
vlehto 11y ago
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."
- vixen99 11y ago
  Well, who doesn't float their boat?
  - vlehto 11y ago
    Good point. But if you are expert of your own field and wish to promote it, you should be able to present extremely well thought out argument in favor. The article is such hand waving that I would forgive it to independent reporter, not these guys. It's possible that the argument is so long you practically would have to write a book about it. Just like Jay L. Garfield did. But now I have no chance of knowing if his argument is good without giving him money. Except trusting some other source rating his book. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22826414-engaging-buddhism http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22826414-engaging-buddhis... Now I'm intrigued. Sounds like it might be worth reading.
- cholantesh 11y ago
  This is akin to saying that when E.O. Wilson argues fervently that natural selection is real, he is not to be trusted because he is employed as a biologist.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    E.O. Wilson might be right despite having wested interest. I just felt it might be appropriate to hilight such interest.
- sundarurfriend 11y ago
  Or "We put our work where our mouth is", proof that they follow their own advice and have relevant expertise.
programmer1234 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
lr4444lr 11y ago
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.
andrewclunn 11y ago
Well if philosophy weren't complete bullshit I might be more upset...
- igravious 11y ago
  “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/
kriro 11y ago
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.
twoarray 11y ago
There are cultural, linguistic and historic reasons and limitations for being "Eurocentric".
- vixen99 11y ago
  Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World by Daniel Hannan No comparable offer has emerged elsewhere.
keiferski 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > a philosophy startup. That sounds like a very different kind of startup.
  - keiferski 11y ago
    I'm hoping to deduce myself into YC. :) I'll be launching it this July. Stay tuned.
timwaagh 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
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.
orkoden 11y ago
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
ececconi 11y ago
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.
notagainsdsfdsf 11y ago
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.
jimmytidey 11y ago
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-buddhism.html http://philosophybites.com/2013/09/alison-gopnik-on-hume-and...) 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.
jmh1 11y ago
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.
facepalm 11y ago
It's not religion, which they seem to mistake it for.
return0 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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?
hackeyed 11y ago
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 11y ago
  Wouldn't that be called Anthropology?
  - 11y ago
cmdrfred 11y ago
If it can't make a prediction, it's not science.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
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. ;)
chillingeffect 11y ago
"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" ?
methehack 11y ago
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.
TearsInTheRain 11y ago
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?
Kinnard 11y ago
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.
jkobuthi 11y ago
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)
henriquemaia 11y ago
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.

106 points by whack 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
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- bmj 11y ago
  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?
programmer1234 11y ago
That said, David enthusiastically taught us about 100% white dude based approaches to forming a foundation for cognitive science. He's a good politician but I think he ultimately believes deep down that modern western science > zen BS for explaining the world, although he claims he basically will draw from anything if it seems consistent enough with his foundation.

abhi3 11y ago

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.

physicalist 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  > 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? That would be very nice, actually. If your philosophizing requires the supernatural to make sense, it's not very good.
- Malarkey73 11y ago
  And forget Plato and ~half of Greek Philosophy.
- tomp 11y ago
  Admittedly I only studied philosophy in high school, but according to the version of Categorical Imperative that I was taught, Kant's philosophy was highly rational and almost perfectly logical.
- skwirl 11y ago
  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.

retox 11y ago

Daily 'kill whitey' post.

reader5000 11y ago
Pretty sure it's the only thing that gets clicks.

AlgorithmicTime 11y ago

This seems quite ridiculous. The Bhagavad Gita is not a philosophical treatise like the Republic, it's a narrative scripture. Why would it be treated like the Republic for philosophical purposes.

bnegreve 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
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whatshisface 11y ago

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.

Kristine1975 11y ago
How do I know if an idea in philosophy is "right"?
- tremon 11y ago
  That's one of the major topics of philosophy.
Coincoin 11y ago
The author clearly thinks philosophy is some kind of school of esoterism and after life.
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- sageikosa 11y ago
  What became Philosophy was first delineated by the Hellenic Greeks. It was a pursuit of the literate as an alternative to the waning gods of the masses. There are certainly other schools of thought on what things are, how they should be considered, how being should act, how societies should organize and what people should admire and strive for; but not all of those are philosophical.

qaq 11y ago

Isn't it demand driven to an extent?

luso_brazilian 11y ago

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.

cousin_it 11y ago

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applecore 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
Wintamute 11y ago
Hah! Well said sir.

kolbe 11y ago

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.

imgabe 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
- methehack 11y ago
  “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.” That's the quote the article ends with. Seems like a threat and, frankly, out of place -- and, stronger, than 'advocacy'.

jnbiche 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- wyager 11y ago
  Most of those thousands of years of work are not even remotely based on the scientific method. Such work is of historical relevance, and not much else.
  - jmagoon 11y ago
    This statement is, to me, demonstrative of a lack of understanding of the source material and an unwillingness to engage with 'new' ideas purely out of bias. The scientific method is a way of approaching reality that has lead to extremely useful discoveries--but, in my opinion, the hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved via the scientific method because consciousness, the experience of qualia, is not externally observable. Nagarjuna and Candrakirti were both experts in the observation of qualia, and their philosophies stem from that expertise. It's possible to even call their philosophical method 'scientific' if that is the materialist's sole judgement of the value of an idea.

twoodfin 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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-Intellectuals-Science/dp/0312204078 http://www.amazon.com/Fashionable-Nonsense-Postmodern-Intell...

noise_ramones 11y ago

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 11y ago
Disproportionate to what? What is the expected proportioning that you think the make-up of grad students in the west violates?

vlehto 11y ago

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."

vixen99 11y ago
Well, who doesn't float their boat?
- vlehto 11y ago
  Good point. But if you are expert of your own field and wish to promote it, you should be able to present extremely well thought out argument in favor. The article is such hand waving that I would forgive it to independent reporter, not these guys. It's possible that the argument is so long you practically would have to write a book about it. Just like Jay L. Garfield did. But now I have no chance of knowing if his argument is good without giving him money. Except trusting some other source rating his book. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22826414-engaging-buddhism http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22826414-engaging-buddhis... Now I'm intrigued. Sounds like it might be worth reading.
cholantesh 11y ago
This is akin to saying that when E.O. Wilson argues fervently that natural selection is real, he is not to be trusted because he is employed as a biologist.
- vlehto 11y ago
  E.O. Wilson might be right despite having wested interest. I just felt it might be appropriate to hilight such interest.
sundarurfriend 11y ago
Or "We put our work where our mouth is", proof that they follow their own advice and have relevant expertise.

programmer1234 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

lr4444lr 11y ago

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.

andrewclunn 11y ago

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

igravious 11y ago
“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/

kriro 11y ago

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.

twoarray 11y ago

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

vixen99 11y ago
Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World by Daniel Hannan No comparable offer has emerged elsewhere.

keiferski 11y ago

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 11y ago
> a philosophy startup. That sounds like a very different kind of startup.
- keiferski 11y ago
  I'm hoping to deduce myself into YC. :) I'll be launching it this July. Stay tuned.

timwaagh 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

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.

orkoden 11y ago

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

ececconi 11y ago

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.

notagainsdsfdsf 11y ago

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.

jimmytidey 11y ago

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-buddhism.html http://philosophybites.com/2013/09/alison-gopnik-on-hume-and...) 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.

jmh1 11y ago

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.

facepalm 11y ago

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

return0 11y ago

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 11y ago
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?

hackeyed 11y ago

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 11y ago
Wouldn't that be called Anthropology?
- 11y ago

cmdrfred 11y ago

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

nickpsecurity 11y ago

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. ;)

chillingeffect 11y ago

"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" ?

methehack 11y ago

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.

TearsInTheRain 11y ago

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?

Kinnard 11y ago

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.

jkobuthi 11y ago

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)

henriquemaia 11y ago

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.