How a spat over PC culture in philosophy betrayed philosophy itself

2017/01/13 Leave a comment

Good and thoughtful commentary by Adrian Lee over the controversy University of London Student Union’s demand that the School of Oriental and African Studies remove philosophers like Plato, Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant “because they are white” in a mandate that sought to “decolonize” SOAS:

The whole thing is a missed opportunity: A missed opportunity for academics to give the story little credence and prove that philosophy was above the fray of the overly personal bickering that has infected the political climate. A missed opportunity from reporters to find out from the angriest of these academics why they think that teaching more diverse voices means teaching Western European voices less. (In fact, that’s the kind of defensive mentality—that addition must mean subtraction—that’s awful familiar from the most blinkered responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, or to any urge for equality that touches a frayed nerve.) Hell, it was even an opportunity to simply acknowledge that philosophers owe a lot to non-white thinkers. It would be hard, for instance, to imagine a legacy for Aristotle without the efforts of the Islamic scholar Averroes, whose work then inspired Thomas Aquinas. Plato’s legacy was continued and refined by Plotinus, who was born in Egypt. St. Augustine, best known for his Confessions, was an Algerian; Voltaire’s political writings were influenced by what he saw on visits to China.

And even if we were to take the story on its face value—that indeed, philosophy students from the University of London, rather than a specialized school like SOAS, wanted to learn more about philosophers outside of the Western canon and sought a critical take on hoary canonical icons. How is that so wrong? How could students taking an active and expansive interest in what they’re being taught scare teachers, when sparking thoughtful considerations like that is the very goal of education? Wanting to learn more about historical contexts and seeking to think critically and contextually about what they’re studying aren’t signs of a dismissible “snowflake” student. It’s actually the sign of a good one.

But mostly, the whole philosophy fracas is a depressing vision. How sad that academics—the high-minded thinkers who think they have themselves escaped the cave—thought defending philosophy meant parroting easy outrage and succumbing to overly simplistic falsehoods. How tragic that teachers appeared to so quickly abandon their students for the most bargain-bin of straw men. And that may be the saddest thing of all: if falsehoods and polarized politics and manufactured outrage and the leaping to simple fallacies can infect philosophy’s lofty rafters, then what hope do the rest of us have?

After all, if those philosophers had indeed re-read Plato, they would have known better. The characters in the imagined conversations in The Republic are more than mere fools built up to be knocked down. They challenge Socrates’ proofs, urge him on, and make them better. They wield ideas, not personal attacks. They are rhetorical dance partners, not useful idiots. Socrates, the book’s Platonic mouthpiece, even acknowledges that he is willing to be convinced otherwise on various points. Philosophy of the sort in The Republic is, in short, not a project of balkanization, where ideas are heroic or villainous. It’s a dialogue, the kind we need more of, from all of us—but especiallyour philosophers.

Source: How a spat over PC culture in philosophy betrayed philosophy itself – Macleans.ca

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If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is – The New York Times

2016/05/13 Leave a comment

Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden on the lack of diversity, in terms of both content and staff,  in philosophy departments in the US and Canada:

The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. For example, of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty. Most philosophy departments also offer no courses on Africana, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, Native American or other non-European traditions. Indeed, of the top 50 philosophy doctoral programs in the English-speaking world, only 15 percent have any regular faculty members who teach any non-Western philosophy.

Given the importance of non-European traditions in both the history of world philosophy and in the contemporary world, and given the increasing numbers of students in our colleges and universities from non-European backgrounds, this is astonishing. No other humanities discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain. The present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as good educational and research training practice.

We each — alongside many colleagues and students — have worked for decades to persuade American philosophy departments to broaden the canon of works they teach; we have urged our colleagues to look beyond the European canon in their own research and teaching. While a few philosophy departments have made their curriculums more diverse, and while the American Philosophical Association has slowly broadened the representation of the world’s philosophical traditions on its programs, progress has been minimal.

Many philosophers and many departments simply ignore arguments for greater diversity; others respond with arguments for Eurocentrism that we and many others have refuted elsewhere. The profession as a whole remains resolutely Eurocentric. It therefore seems futile to rehearse arguments for greater diversity one more time, however compelling we find them.

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.” This simple change would make the domain and mission of these departments clear, and would signal their true intellectual commitments to students and colleagues. We see no justification for resisting this minor rebranding (though we welcome opposing views in the comments section to this article), particularly for those who endorse, implicitly or explicitly, this Eurocentric orientation.

Some of our colleagues defend this orientation on the grounds that non-European philosophy belongs only in “area studies” departments, like Asian Studies, African Studies or Latin American Studies. We ask that those who hold this view be consistent, and locate their own departments in “area studies” as well, in this case, Anglo-European Philosophical Studies.

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.

Of course, we believe that renaming departments would not be nearly as valuable as actually broadening the philosophical curriculum and retaining the name “philosophy.” Philosophy as a discipline has a serious diversity problem, with women and minorities underrepresented at all levels among students and faculty, even while the percentage of these groups increases among college students. Part of the problem is the perception that philosophy departments are nothing but temples to the achievement of males of European descent. Our recommendation is straightforward: Those who are comfortable with that perception should confirm it in good faith and defend it honestly; if they cannot do so, we urge them to diversify their faculty and their curriculum.

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. But, until then, let’s be honest, face reality and call departments of European-American Philosophy what they really are.

We offer one last piece of advice to philosophy departments that have not already embraced curricular diversity. For demographic, political and historical reasons, the change to a more multicultural conception of philosophy in the United States seems inevitable. Heed the Stoic adage: “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.”

Source: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is – The New York Times

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Deeper Than God: Ronald Dworkin’s Religious Atheism

2013/09/26 Leave a comment

A good review and overview by Stanley Fish in the NYTimes of Ronald Dworkin’s last book, Religion without God. Some of the argumentation is complex, but treating belief and non-belief as equal rights (freedom of and freedom from religion), and how liberals recreate an ethnical framework, is of interest. Quote:

By “ethical independence” Dworkin means the individual’s independence to decide for himself or herself how to acknowledge the “felt conviction that the universe really does embody a sublime beauty.” One form of acknowledgment might be the practice of theism — traditional religion with its rituals, sacred texts, formal prayers, proscribed and prescribed activities; but the conviction of the universe’s beauty does not, says Dworkin, “suppose any god” as its ground. Once we see this, we are on the way to “decoupling religion from a god” and admitting into the ranks of the religious those who are possessed by that conviction but do not trace it back to any deity. They will be, Dworkin declares, “religious atheists.”

Deeper Than God: Ronald Dworkin’s Religious Atheism

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