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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 t
by jimmytidey 10y 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.