Department of European and American Philosophy
May 11, 2016 6:26 AM Subscribe
If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is "The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. [...]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. [...] We therefore suggest that any department that regularly offers courses only on Western philosophy should rename itself “Department of European and American Philosophy.”"
Department of What White Folks Think
posted by Thorzdad at 6:51 AM on May 11, 2016 [50 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:51 AM on May 11, 2016 [50 favorites]
Maybe it is because the teachers would have to master a broader set of skills, and have a very deep knowledge of the foreign culture they would be dealing with.
I mean, I guess that's probably the reason why you should learn Carnatic music in India, not at the Juilliard school.
posted by nicolin at 6:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
I mean, I guess that's probably the reason why you should learn Carnatic music in India, not at the Juilliard school.
posted by nicolin at 6:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
I took graduate courses in Chinese philosophy, and it became pretty clear that what was happening was anthropology or history, but not philosophy at all. To the extent that non-Western philosophical systems are included at all, are these being treated as serious ideas for engagement, or are they merely being categorized and catalogued?
posted by 1adam12 at 6:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [21 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 6:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [21 favorites]
Maybe it is because the teachers would have to master a broader set of skills, and have a very deep knowledge of the foreign culture they would be dealing with.I mean, these are things that top scholars are capable of doing. And US universities hire lots and lots of people who got their PhDs in other countries. They could do that if it were necessary.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:54 AM on May 11, 2016
Maybe it is because the teachers would have to master a broader set of skills, and have a very deep knowledge of the foreign culture they would be dealing with.
Or maybe philosophy departments could recruit people who already have those skills and knowledge. Pretty much every country has telephones these days.
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [26 favorites]
Or maybe philosophy departments could recruit people who already have those skills and knowledge. Pretty much every country has telephones these days.
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [26 favorites]
There are lots of things to say here. But let me just say this: We would love to diversify our faculty and the courses that we offer. Problem: The university has no money to let us do so. We don't have enough faculty to cover Western philosophy even to the (seriously inadequate) degree that it is ordinarily covered. If we were to attempt to cover non-Western philosophy with our current faculty, the results would be ... less than stellar.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 6:56 AM on May 11, 2016 [20 favorites]
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 6:56 AM on May 11, 2016 [20 favorites]
Doesn't most of the world's total expenditure on philosophical research, inside and outside the USA, go to places that could just as well call themselves 'Department of Postwar Anglo-American Analytical Philosophy' … but would never agree to do so because their institutional position has been achieved through denigrating other currents and traditions as (at best) unscientific and obsolete?
posted by ormon nekas at 6:58 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by ormon nekas at 6:58 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yeah, given the budgets, even a name change is probably asking for too much. Who's gonna pay for all the signage?
posted by notyou at 6:59 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by notyou at 6:59 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Etrigan: "Maybe it is because the teachers would have to master a broader set of skills, and have a very deep knowledge of the foreign culture they would be dealing with.
Or maybe philosophy departments could recruit people who already have those skills and knowledge. Pretty much every country has telephones these days."
I guess that those teachers would have to master both the American / European and the foreign frames of reference to be able to teach as the authors of the article wish they could, which is without treating the foreign tradition as an inert set of ideas, but as a breathing one. I'm not sure it's that easy to fill the bill.
posted by nicolin at 7:02 AM on May 11, 2016
Or maybe philosophy departments could recruit people who already have those skills and knowledge. Pretty much every country has telephones these days."
I guess that those teachers would have to master both the American / European and the foreign frames of reference to be able to teach as the authors of the article wish they could, which is without treating the foreign tradition as an inert set of ideas, but as a breathing one. I'm not sure it's that easy to fill the bill.
posted by nicolin at 7:02 AM on May 11, 2016
I would be willing to bet that there are people out there getting PhDs dealing with philosophy that is not rooted in a Western European tradition ... but that they're not getting hired for those infinitesimally few tenured positions in philosophy that are open right now.
posted by ChuraChura at 7:03 AM on May 11, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by ChuraChura at 7:03 AM on May 11, 2016 [16 favorites]
I mean, a lot of departments would have to expand their curricula for the name 'Department of Western Philosophy' to be accurate. There was a post earlier today where people had never heard of Henri Bergson.
posted by ormon nekas at 7:05 AM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by ormon nekas at 7:05 AM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Yeah, given the amount of Western identity that has been built on the foundation of the "canon", converting non-Western thought from "other" to "compatible with my brain and not just a curiousity from the savages" is actually a huge undertaking. It will happen gradually, I guess, but the more likely near-term outcome is philosophy depts are just going to close, along with philosophy-focused schools. So this argument may be.... (dad joke incoming).....
academic.
posted by selfnoise at 7:06 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
academic.
posted by selfnoise at 7:06 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Surely it should be the "Department of European and Europe-Derived Philosophy."
The Department of central Mediterranean, Italian, French, German, English, Scots, and USian philosophy.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:12 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
The Department of central Mediterranean, Italian, French, German, English, Scots, and USian philosophy.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:12 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Also—and this seems pertinent—when you say "call it what it really is," what do you mean, precisely by "real"?
posted by octobersurprise at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [14 favorites]
posted by octobersurprise at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [14 favorites]
White dudes making up shit.
posted by sexyrobot at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sexyrobot at 7:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
in college western civ was western civ. just call it western philo and eastern civ and eastern philo..
posted by judson at 7:22 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by judson at 7:22 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Surely it should be the "Department of European and Europe-Derived Philosophy."
The Department of central Mediterranean, Italian, French, German, English, Scots, and USian philosophy.
The Department of Euranglophallogocentrist Philosophy
posted by sapagan at 7:23 AM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
The Department of central Mediterranean, Italian, French, German, English, Scots, and USian philosophy.
The Department of Euranglophallogocentrist Philosophy
posted by sapagan at 7:23 AM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
I took graduate courses in Chinese philosophy, and it became pretty clear that what was happening was anthropology or history, but not philosophy at all.
My version of what 1adam12 states was having a 300-level class in, yes, Oriental Philosophy during my undergraduate studies. The class was taught by an alcoholic white Japanophile professor, and all that happened was reading The Tale Of Genji. I recall that there was more discussion about wardrobe than any analysis of thought, so yeah, weaksauce.
posted by stannate at 7:30 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
My version of what 1adam12 states was having a 300-level class in, yes, Oriental Philosophy during my undergraduate studies. The class was taught by an alcoholic white Japanophile professor, and all that happened was reading The Tale Of Genji. I recall that there was more discussion about wardrobe than any analysis of thought, so yeah, weaksauce.
posted by stannate at 7:30 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Kristie Dotson's How is this Paper Philosophy? is my go-to answer for this question. I think it's crucial, but it's hard to excerpt. Basically, philosophers are constantly engaged in a dual game of legitimating their work AS philosophy and working to reconstitute the borders of what COUNTS as philosophy. These practices, of forcing people to justify their projects and choices in terms of a shifting standard of legitimate philosophical research is how we end up with issues like treating Chinese or Native American philosophy as merely "inert ideas."
This has the effect of making philosophy a mostly white man's game, because what Dotson calls "diverse practitioners" usually find that philosophical borders are being continually redrawn to exclude them. Of course, she writes the essay in defense of Black American, feminist, and queer philosophy, but the point stands: Asians are excluded by the kind of discipline that philosophy has become.
So I think it's not enough to say philosophy has a budget problem. It does! But maybe it wouldn't have quite as bad a budget problem if there weren't so many well-paid professors working on the semantics of the left parenthesis. The discipline became scholastic to avoid the big ideological fights of the last half century, and now is paying the price.
Attending to other traditions could produce more majors and philosophy departments could then be doing better work. But it's still an open question which traditions to prioritize. This piece gestures towards African and Latin American philosophy, but it's part of a project to specifically increase attention to Chinese philosophy. That seems good, but I do follow Dotson a bit in wanting to see a continued emphasis on Black American philosophy and feminism. There are far more courses on Asian philosophy than on Black American philosophy.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:34 AM on May 11, 2016 [24 favorites]
This has the effect of making philosophy a mostly white man's game, because what Dotson calls "diverse practitioners" usually find that philosophical borders are being continually redrawn to exclude them. Of course, she writes the essay in defense of Black American, feminist, and queer philosophy, but the point stands: Asians are excluded by the kind of discipline that philosophy has become.
So I think it's not enough to say philosophy has a budget problem. It does! But maybe it wouldn't have quite as bad a budget problem if there weren't so many well-paid professors working on the semantics of the left parenthesis. The discipline became scholastic to avoid the big ideological fights of the last half century, and now is paying the price.
Attending to other traditions could produce more majors and philosophy departments could then be doing better work. But it's still an open question which traditions to prioritize. This piece gestures towards African and Latin American philosophy, but it's part of a project to specifically increase attention to Chinese philosophy. That seems good, but I do follow Dotson a bit in wanting to see a continued emphasis on Black American philosophy and feminism. There are far more courses on Asian philosophy than on Black American philosophy.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:34 AM on May 11, 2016 [24 favorites]
Doesn't most of the world's total expenditure on philosophical research, inside and outside the USA, go to places that could just as well call themselves 'Department of Postwar Anglo-American Analytical Philosophy' … but would never agree to do so because their institutional position has been achieved through denigrating other currents and traditions as (at best) unscientific and obsolete?
That is true. There are only a few departments left that focus on the History of Philosophy. And these are often lacking in the study of Asian and Indigenous figures. I know this, because I took 6 years of graduate course work in philosophy at two different institutions well known for the History of Phil and only once was Asian philosophy offered. African American representation in philosophy is improving, however, in some segments, at least.
posted by dis_integration at 7:37 AM on May 11, 2016
That is true. There are only a few departments left that focus on the History of Philosophy. And these are often lacking in the study of Asian and Indigenous figures. I know this, because I took 6 years of graduate course work in philosophy at two different institutions well known for the History of Phil and only once was Asian philosophy offered. African American representation in philosophy is improving, however, in some segments, at least.
posted by dis_integration at 7:37 AM on May 11, 2016
Further problem: even when we study the "philosophy"* of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mayan, etc., cultures, it doesn't always correspond in content, structure or effects to what the Greeks, Romans, and readers of the Greeks and Romans were doing under the rubric of "philosophy." "Philosophy" is not a native category to every culture, in other words. That is not to say that non-Western philosophies are not intensely interesting in themselves, but the case for their relevance has to be developed out of local presuppositions and values as well as out of Western presuppositions, which is, again, a big job that few people are trained to do.
*(quote marks here not as sign of sneering, but of the tentative character of the designation)
posted by homerica at 7:39 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
*(quote marks here not as sign of sneering, but of the tentative character of the designation)
posted by homerica at 7:39 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
Philosophy" is not a native category to every culture, in other words. That is not to say that non-Western philosophies are not intensely interesting in themselves, but the case for their relevance has to be developed out of local presuppositions and values as well as out of Western presuppositions, which is, again, a big job that few people are trained to do.
I dunno. There is an easy story about philosophy descending from the Greeks up until the 19th century. But around the 19th century you get a lot of Asian, especially Indian influence in thinkers like Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and then Japanese influence on the Heideggereans. So those histories need to be woven into the history of "Western" philosophy in the last 200 years. They are now part of the same stream.
posted by dis_integration at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I dunno. There is an easy story about philosophy descending from the Greeks up until the 19th century. But around the 19th century you get a lot of Asian, especially Indian influence in thinkers like Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and then Japanese influence on the Heideggereans. So those histories need to be woven into the history of "Western" philosophy in the last 200 years. They are now part of the same stream.
posted by dis_integration at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
No other humanities discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain.
Maybe the problem is with a single definition of humanities or philosophy. Most of the philosophic discourse in the part of the world I work in, majority Islamic, exists within and inseparable from religious discourse. Unless religious studies is included within philosophy program (is it, I have no idea?) then much is going to be left out.
posted by iamck at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Maybe the problem is with a single definition of humanities or philosophy. Most of the philosophic discourse in the part of the world I work in, majority Islamic, exists within and inseparable from religious discourse. Unless religious studies is included within philosophy program (is it, I have no idea?) then much is going to be left out.
posted by iamck at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Doesn't most of the world's total expenditure on philosophical research, inside and outside the USA, go to places that could just as well call themselves 'Department of Postwar Anglo-American Analytical Philosophy' … but would never agree to do so because their institutional position has been achieved through denigrating other currents and traditions as (at best) unscientific and obsolete?
There are still a few continental departments squirreled away around the country. SUNY Stony Brook, DePaul, Villanova, Notre Dame, Georgetown ...lots of Catholic schools, for some reason.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:50 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
There are still a few continental departments squirreled away around the country. SUNY Stony Brook, DePaul, Villanova, Notre Dame, Georgetown ...lots of Catholic schools, for some reason.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:50 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
In my department it was worse than this article describes. Being an "analytic" philosophy department, aside from the token existentialism class they allowed to exist, the only non Anglo-American philosopher whose work I was taught more recent than Kant was Kurt Gödel. I was an ignorant honky at the time, so I didn't really notice it beyond complaints from friends interested in Hegel and later German philosophers that their work was being dismissed by most of the faculty as "continentalism".
I realized too late that I should have chosen math as a major instead, and the only courses that weren't window dressing around a rigorous core were impossible to get a decent grade in because they were full of 4th year math and CS students who were looking for a course covering material they already learned for their program that would cover a humanities credit while boosting their GPA for grad school.
So I dropped out and moved to a ski town to work for minimum wage and just do what I actually wanted. Now my education comes in handy sometimes when I'm typing curly brackets for a living. Other than that, I've mostly managed after 12 years to shake a moral education that taught me everything of importance written about ethics in the last 200 years was written in English, and " the Continent " was full of men (and seemingly only men) that allowed their passions to overwhelm their reason. The rest of the world, I don't know. Presumably populated solely by beasts not endowed with the capacity for language or abstract thought.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
I realized too late that I should have chosen math as a major instead, and the only courses that weren't window dressing around a rigorous core were impossible to get a decent grade in because they were full of 4th year math and CS students who were looking for a course covering material they already learned for their program that would cover a humanities credit while boosting their GPA for grad school.
So I dropped out and moved to a ski town to work for minimum wage and just do what I actually wanted. Now my education comes in handy sometimes when I'm typing curly brackets for a living. Other than that, I've mostly managed after 12 years to shake a moral education that taught me everything of importance written about ethics in the last 200 years was written in English, and " the Continent " was full of men (and seemingly only men) that allowed their passions to overwhelm their reason. The rest of the world, I don't know. Presumably populated solely by beasts not endowed with the capacity for language or abstract thought.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
There's an important distinction that's being left out of the discussion here, as well as the article in The Stone, which is per usual.
Yes, non-European philosophy is poorly represented to non-existent in history of philosophy. Yes, we can use more diversity in typical, contemporary analytic philosophy.
That said, much of this sort of work isn't going to be illuminated by Chinese philosophy or even European philosophy.
It's similar to science. There's a lot of interesting historical work to be done on European and Chinese science, but today's scientific work isn't going to be informed much by historical work.
posted by Dalby at 7:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yes, non-European philosophy is poorly represented to non-existent in history of philosophy. Yes, we can use more diversity in typical, contemporary analytic philosophy.
That said, much of this sort of work isn't going to be illuminated by Chinese philosophy or even European philosophy.
It's similar to science. There's a lot of interesting historical work to be done on European and Chinese science, but today's scientific work isn't going to be informed much by historical work.
posted by Dalby at 7:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
There is an easy story about philosophy descending from the Greeks up until the 19th century.
And most of that "easy story" ignores Jewish, Arabic, and Persian influences, doesn't it? (Because the Inquisition forced Western scholars to hide unacceptable sources of ideas, I'd guess?)
posted by clawsoon at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
And most of that "easy story" ignores Jewish, Arabic, and Persian influences, doesn't it? (Because the Inquisition forced Western scholars to hide unacceptable sources of ideas, I'd guess?)
posted by clawsoon at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
The class was taught by an alcoholic white Japanophile professor, and all that happened was reading The Tale Of Genji. I recall that there was more discussion about wardrobe than any analysis of thought, so yeah, weaksauce.
I am sorry you paid for such poor instruction. I am also sorry the school didn't have the sophistication to hire someone with good mental health, and actual knowledge of the Philosophies of Asia.
We have covered the holes in western Philosophy's bucket at Metafilter, including the innate sexism, classism, broism, and general problems associated with flightless birds. The other part of this is religionism, as well. Since most of this thinking regardless of origin, exits out of the Christian chute here in the mild west.
posted by Oyéah at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I am sorry you paid for such poor instruction. I am also sorry the school didn't have the sophistication to hire someone with good mental health, and actual knowledge of the Philosophies of Asia.
We have covered the holes in western Philosophy's bucket at Metafilter, including the innate sexism, classism, broism, and general problems associated with flightless birds. The other part of this is religionism, as well. Since most of this thinking regardless of origin, exits out of the Christian chute here in the mild west.
posted by Oyéah at 7:53 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's similar to science. There's a lot of interesting historical work to be done on European and Chinese science, but today's scientific work isn't going to be informed much by historical work.
Philosophy is not science. Period. Even if we express it symbolically. Philosophy depends on and is subtly influenced by its history in ways that many philosophers refuse to acknowledge. It cannot exist in a bottle called the Next Volume By Kit Fine. The study of the history of philosophy is one of the very best ways to gain new insight and perspectives on contemporary problems. It most definitely will inform contemporary work if it is taken seriously, even if you're just a logician. Just look at Graham Priest's work as an example.
posted by dis_integration at 7:56 AM on May 11, 2016 [12 favorites]
Philosophy is not science. Period. Even if we express it symbolically. Philosophy depends on and is subtly influenced by its history in ways that many philosophers refuse to acknowledge. It cannot exist in a bottle called the Next Volume By Kit Fine. The study of the history of philosophy is one of the very best ways to gain new insight and perspectives on contemporary problems. It most definitely will inform contemporary work if it is taken seriously, even if you're just a logician. Just look at Graham Priest's work as an example.
posted by dis_integration at 7:56 AM on May 11, 2016 [12 favorites]
Philosophy is not science.
I don't actually disagree that much with the idea of renaming academic philosophy, because clearly there are different conceptions of philosophy out there, even from those in the field. But in my experience, and as someone who teaches philosophy professionally - I and those that I know do treat philosophy closer to a science (in the vein of mathematics) than anything else.
posted by Dalby at 8:00 AM on May 11, 2016
I don't actually disagree that much with the idea of renaming academic philosophy, because clearly there are different conceptions of philosophy out there, even from those in the field. But in my experience, and as someone who teaches philosophy professionally - I and those that I know do treat philosophy closer to a science (in the vein of mathematics) than anything else.
posted by Dalby at 8:00 AM on May 11, 2016
I read a really cool article that said that there is currently also a great interest among Chinese philosophy students in studying the tradition of modern Western philosophy, but I haven't been able to find it. I think that it's very interesting to try to imagine encountering that tradition from the outside, as it were.
posted by thelonius at 8:11 AM on May 11, 2016
posted by thelonius at 8:11 AM on May 11, 2016
I and those that I know do treat philosophy closer to a science (in the vein of mathematics) than anything else.
The science of what? The omphaloskeptic intuitions of priveleged white Professors, and their rigid designators? (yeah, that's a philosophy dick joke).
In all seriousness I don't know what the subject of philosophy qua science would be. I take philosophy to be the creation of concepts. It needs its own history of concepts to do the work well, and to do it without the dumbfounding repetition of old, well-worn ideas that the academy takes as brilliant because they all neglected to study their own history.
posted by dis_integration at 8:14 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
The science of what? The omphaloskeptic intuitions of priveleged white Professors, and their rigid designators? (yeah, that's a philosophy dick joke).
In all seriousness I don't know what the subject of philosophy qua science would be. I take philosophy to be the creation of concepts. It needs its own history of concepts to do the work well, and to do it without the dumbfounding repetition of old, well-worn ideas that the academy takes as brilliant because they all neglected to study their own history.
posted by dis_integration at 8:14 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'd be interested to know what philosophy faculties in Asian countries teach. My impression, based on very limited information, is that they teach the western tradition with just a couple of local modules (I don't think you'll find Chinese philosophy in Delhi, nor Indian in Beijing - I imagine in Beijing you still don't get much non-Marxist philosophy?).
My impression is that all the serious new academic work is being done in the Western tradition, wherever it may be based. I don't think there's a particularly big objection to calling it Western, although that might seem a little as if we were trying to keep the rest of the world out of the main game.
posted by Segundus at 8:15 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
My impression is that all the serious new academic work is being done in the Western tradition, wherever it may be based. I don't think there's a particularly big objection to calling it Western, although that might seem a little as if we were trying to keep the rest of the world out of the main game.
posted by Segundus at 8:15 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Department of What White Folks Think
“Oh hey, you're new here, no worries. It's easy to get lost. So you're looking for the Department of What White Folks Think. Easy, just walk past the Department of English Literature Written by Old White Men. If you reach the Anthropology Department of Things Plundered from Other Nations, you've gone too far.”
posted by Fizz at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [14 favorites]
“Oh hey, you're new here, no worries. It's easy to get lost. So you're looking for the Department of What White Folks Think. Easy, just walk past the Department of English Literature Written by Old White Men. If you reach the Anthropology Department of Things Plundered from Other Nations, you've gone too far.”
posted by Fizz at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2016 [14 favorites]
Buried lede alert: There are *50* doctoral-awarding Phil programs in the 'English-speaking world'??
posted by scolbath at 8:19 AM on May 11, 2016
posted by scolbath at 8:19 AM on May 11, 2016
There are 118 or thereabouts. The 50 referred to are the top 50 as defined by Leiter's PGR
posted by dis_integration at 8:26 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by dis_integration at 8:26 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I took graduate courses in Chinese philosophy, and it became pretty clear that what was happening was anthropology or history, but not philosophy at all
In the way it was being taught or in the way it was practiced? Because part of the bias discussed here is that there has developed a particular discourse around philosophy (as an academic discipline, rather than the colloquial meaning) which is firmly rooted in the sort of Anglo-American analytical practice we are all having yuks about. Philosophical practices outside that delineated field gets looked askance as not "real" philosophy, particularly if it stems from brown people and has roots in the pre-modern era (Greeks always excepted).
James Maffie, who wrote Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, said something in an interview which seems uncannily apropos to this thread:
posted by Panjandrum at 8:29 AM on May 11, 2016 [20 favorites]
In the way it was being taught or in the way it was practiced? Because part of the bias discussed here is that there has developed a particular discourse around philosophy (as an academic discipline, rather than the colloquial meaning) which is firmly rooted in the sort of Anglo-American analytical practice we are all having yuks about. Philosophical practices outside that delineated field gets looked askance as not "real" philosophy, particularly if it stems from brown people and has roots in the pre-modern era (Greeks always excepted).
James Maffie, who wrote Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, said something in an interview which seems uncannily apropos to this thread:
The hegemonic perspective you mention hopes first to deny the existence of non-western philosophies. Whatever non-westerners do, it is certainly not philosophy. It is religion, mythology, storytelling, poetry, or “dancing” (as Levinas once so generously declared). However, if philosophy turns out to be present, the perspective’s second move is to characterize the philosophy as unconscious or implicit. The folks in question “have a philosophy” but no one there actually “does philosophy.” There are no philosophers. The folks in question are mere philosophical sleepwalkers. At the same time the perspective tries to explain scientifically the philosophy in terms set out by structuralism, functionalism, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, cultural materialism, or ecological determinism. In so doing it seeks to subsume non-western philosophies within an overarching, western scientific understanding of the world that omits western philosophy from such explanation and that leaves western philosophy intact since such explanations privilege western epistemological, moral, and metaphysical assumptions and categories.For anyone with an interest in this topic, I highly encourage reading the rest of the interview as well as the book review I linked. Maffie is a "real" philosopher, in that he is fully trained and educated in the Western canon of philosophy, but the subject of Nahua philosophy is about as non-"Western" as could be. By approaching the latter with the tools and language of the former, Maffie seems like he is trying to bridge the gap at the root of the linked article. After all, white guys studying non-Western things and then explaining it back to other white guys using Western language has a long pedigree.
If the foregoing strategies lose their cogency (as they now seem to be doing), the hegemonic perspective places non-western philosophies in the colonizing category of ethnophilosophy. Non-western thinkers are begrudgingly recognized as philosophers and their work begrudgingly recognized as (inchoate) philosophy, but neither are worthy of serious or equal consideration. Ethnophilosophy contrasts with philosophy simpliciter, “real” philosophy, “serious” philosophy, i.e. western philosophy. Philosophy proper dominates the teaching curriculum, while non-western philosophies are ghettoized, being taught under courses with titles such as “world philosophy” or “multicultural philosophy.” There they serve as entertaining sidelines to the main curriculum.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:29 AM on May 11, 2016 [20 favorites]
According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 2,500 4-year universities in the US. If you take 'English Speaking' to be 'US', 118 programs means roughly 5% of all schools offer a PhD in this field.
I guess I'm surprised at that. Not sure why tho.
posted by scolbath at 8:29 AM on May 11, 2016
I guess I'm surprised at that. Not sure why tho.
posted by scolbath at 8:29 AM on May 11, 2016
Isn't there a certain assumption here of universal coverage by universities that just isn't possible, even at the very highest levels? I mean, having done a grad degree in the history of a country not my own, I would expect a Chinese university to offer fifteen courses on Chinese history and one or two on American. There is a question of demand by the students and there is a question of cultural competence on the part of instructors. One hopes to avoid blinkered provincialism but really even Harvard or Yale is not going to be able to offer Full Coverage of the History, Literature, Arts, Religion, and Philosophy of the Known World. Nor is student demand for these courses distributed evenly, so that you can be sure of getting decent numbers in all those classes. The best scholars of Chinese history, literature, art, religion, and philosophy are most likely to be Chinese, and so they're likely to want to teach in their own systems. You can reject the notion that West is Best (and Sufficient Unto Itself) without necessarily thinking it's inappropriate that universities in the West focus more on Western culture.
posted by praemunire at 8:36 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 8:36 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
According to Wikipedia, there are approximately 2,500 4-year universities in the US. If you take 'English Speaking' to be 'US', 118 programs means roughly 5% of all schools offer a PhD in this field.
Universities, or 4-year Title-IV eligible degree granting institutions? Take out the community colleges, the SLACs, the vocational-focused schools, and you've got PhD granting institutions. Now remove all those that don't offer a Philosophy Phd (many offer MAs but not PhDs). I don't know where that 118 number comes from exactly but it's one I've seen before.
posted by dis_integration at 8:42 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Universities, or 4-year Title-IV eligible degree granting institutions? Take out the community colleges, the SLACs, the vocational-focused schools, and you've got PhD granting institutions. Now remove all those that don't offer a Philosophy Phd (many offer MAs but not PhDs). I don't know where that 118 number comes from exactly but it's one I've seen before.
posted by dis_integration at 8:42 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
So here's a quick example.
There's a position in philosophy (expressivism) that considers ethical claims to be representing attitudes and not truths about the world. So the claim, "murder is wrong," isn't true or false depending on the truth of the matter, but rather it's a rephrasing of the attitude, "I disapprove of murder."
This position however encounters issues that have proved difficult to solve.
For instance, here are four semantically distinct claims:
1. Jon thinks that murdering is wrong.
2. Jon does not think that murdering is wrong.
3. Jon thinks that murdering is not wrong.
4. Jon thinks that not murdering is wrong.
The expressivist position cannot represent these for semantically distinct claims.
1. Jon disapproves of murdering.
2. Jon does not disapprove of murdering.
3. ??
4. Jon disapproves of not murdering.
Expressivists have for a long time tried to find a satisfactory solution, but to no general avail.
Or, take another example.
There was an early 20th century philosophical position that stated that we do not directly perceive objects. A quick demonstration would be something like this: What are you seeing when you are hallucinating? It's nothing out there in the world. It's a sense-datum. What are you seeing when you are seeing a stick in water that appears bent? Well, the stick isn't actually bent. Clearly you must be seeing a sense-datum. How is it that a white wall can appear white with the lights on, blue with blue lights on, and black with no lights on? The wall's color doesn't actually change, so you're never actually seeing the wall itself, but a sense-datum of the wall.
In any case, the position had some attraction because it could serve as a foundation for knowledge. What do we *know* about the world? Probably very little. The only knowledge I can be guaranteed to have is that I am now perceiving this color, or that I am now perceiving this pain. I can't be mistaken about that. Though I can be mistaken about whether or not the object in front of me actually exists, or actually has the color I am perceiving it to have.
However, Sellars attempted to show that this position was inherently inconsistent, because it rests on the following three claims:
A. x senses red sense content s entails x non-inferentially knows that s is red.
B. The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired.
C. The ability to know facts of the form x is ø is acquired.
You can choose any two of those claims, but the remaining third will make the set inconsistent.
This too, of course, has sparked discussion.
In any case, there's nothing about these arguments that seem to be subjective or dependent on culture or willy nilly concept creation. And there's a harsher distinction between contemporary philosophy and historical philosophy than you're trying to posit. Philosophy has gained much in terms of sophistication in terms of methodologies and terminology and such. That's not to say that past philosophers weren't incredibly bright and sophisticated themselves. We certainly have much to learn from them, both European and non-European. But our conversations and debates are much different than the ones they had, and so one can be perfectly competent in modern philosophy without having any historical knowledge, which many people are.
Disclaimer: Yes, this is a simplified picture of things, but I think it serves its purposes in motivating a particular picture of philosophy that many people aren't aware of since people are more familiar with Zizek and Plato than they are with P. F. Strawson and Mark Schroeder.
posted by Dalby at 8:43 AM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
There's a position in philosophy (expressivism) that considers ethical claims to be representing attitudes and not truths about the world. So the claim, "murder is wrong," isn't true or false depending on the truth of the matter, but rather it's a rephrasing of the attitude, "I disapprove of murder."
This position however encounters issues that have proved difficult to solve.
For instance, here are four semantically distinct claims:
1. Jon thinks that murdering is wrong.
2. Jon does not think that murdering is wrong.
3. Jon thinks that murdering is not wrong.
4. Jon thinks that not murdering is wrong.
The expressivist position cannot represent these for semantically distinct claims.
1. Jon disapproves of murdering.
2. Jon does not disapprove of murdering.
3. ??
4. Jon disapproves of not murdering.
Expressivists have for a long time tried to find a satisfactory solution, but to no general avail.
Or, take another example.
There was an early 20th century philosophical position that stated that we do not directly perceive objects. A quick demonstration would be something like this: What are you seeing when you are hallucinating? It's nothing out there in the world. It's a sense-datum. What are you seeing when you are seeing a stick in water that appears bent? Well, the stick isn't actually bent. Clearly you must be seeing a sense-datum. How is it that a white wall can appear white with the lights on, blue with blue lights on, and black with no lights on? The wall's color doesn't actually change, so you're never actually seeing the wall itself, but a sense-datum of the wall.
In any case, the position had some attraction because it could serve as a foundation for knowledge. What do we *know* about the world? Probably very little. The only knowledge I can be guaranteed to have is that I am now perceiving this color, or that I am now perceiving this pain. I can't be mistaken about that. Though I can be mistaken about whether or not the object in front of me actually exists, or actually has the color I am perceiving it to have.
However, Sellars attempted to show that this position was inherently inconsistent, because it rests on the following three claims:
A. x senses red sense content s entails x non-inferentially knows that s is red.
B. The ability to sense sense contents is unacquired.
C. The ability to know facts of the form x is ø is acquired.
You can choose any two of those claims, but the remaining third will make the set inconsistent.
This too, of course, has sparked discussion.
In any case, there's nothing about these arguments that seem to be subjective or dependent on culture or willy nilly concept creation. And there's a harsher distinction between contemporary philosophy and historical philosophy than you're trying to posit. Philosophy has gained much in terms of sophistication in terms of methodologies and terminology and such. That's not to say that past philosophers weren't incredibly bright and sophisticated themselves. We certainly have much to learn from them, both European and non-European. But our conversations and debates are much different than the ones they had, and so one can be perfectly competent in modern philosophy without having any historical knowledge, which many people are.
Disclaimer: Yes, this is a simplified picture of things, but I think it serves its purposes in motivating a particular picture of philosophy that many people aren't aware of since people are more familiar with Zizek and Plato than they are with P. F. Strawson and Mark Schroeder.
posted by Dalby at 8:43 AM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
> I took graduate courses in Chinese philosophy, and it became pretty clear that what was happening was anthropology or history, but not philosophy at all.
What you were taught was probably bullshit. There's a devastating article by Tonio Andrade about this phenomenon in history: turns out virtually everything that's ever been said by Western historians about the role of armaments and warfare in Chinese history is utterly wrong. Now that China is rich, powerful, and unignorable and Chinese historians are doing huge amounts of research, it's all going to have to be rewritten. I imagine the same thing will happen in philosophy.
posted by languagehat at 8:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [16 favorites]
What you were taught was probably bullshit. There's a devastating article by Tonio Andrade about this phenomenon in history: turns out virtually everything that's ever been said by Western historians about the role of armaments and warfare in Chinese history is utterly wrong. Now that China is rich, powerful, and unignorable and Chinese historians are doing huge amounts of research, it's all going to have to be rewritten. I imagine the same thing will happen in philosophy.
posted by languagehat at 8:44 AM on May 11, 2016 [16 favorites]
Sorry, it was some bogus site called 'infoplease.com' - Google usually draws from Wiki when it regurgitates a fact. Nevertheless, the page claims '4-year public' and '4-year private' schools sum to roughly 2500. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908742.html
I'm not trying to be elitist here - more sensitive to a problem that is true of *many* PhD programs -- but where does a Philosophy PhD go to work other than one of these 118 institutions? You might have, say, an Ethics job at some major institution or corporation, but THOSE certainly seem few and far between. This would naturally lead to the kind of insularism described by the OP.
posted by scolbath at 8:48 AM on May 11, 2016
I'm not trying to be elitist here - more sensitive to a problem that is true of *many* PhD programs -- but where does a Philosophy PhD go to work other than one of these 118 institutions? You might have, say, an Ethics job at some major institution or corporation, but THOSE certainly seem few and far between. This would naturally lead to the kind of insularism described by the OP.
posted by scolbath at 8:48 AM on May 11, 2016
. But our conversations and debates are much different than the ones they had, and so one can be perfectly competent in modern philosophy without having any historical knowledge, which many people are.
They really aren't that much different, as any study of the history of philosophy would show. (Indeed, the bent stick in water is an ancient example). If you mean that philosophy is a science insofar as it relies on "demonstration" in the logical sense, you'd be wrong (it doesn't rely on demonstration, although it does use demonstration to further its arguments). If it relied on demonstration, then Sellarsian epistemic inferentialism would be settled as The Truth, and then maybe you'd regard Brandom as the Feynman to Sellars' Planck or something. But epistemic inferentialism is not settled, and there are counter-examples in favor of sense-data. Etc. Philosophy leaves no ideas behind, excises nothing on account of its wrongness, and every new idea, including those in Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind have their precursors, and benefit from their study (as Brandom himself shows in Tales of the Mighty Dead.
posted by dis_integration at 8:50 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
They really aren't that much different, as any study of the history of philosophy would show. (Indeed, the bent stick in water is an ancient example). If you mean that philosophy is a science insofar as it relies on "demonstration" in the logical sense, you'd be wrong (it doesn't rely on demonstration, although it does use demonstration to further its arguments). If it relied on demonstration, then Sellarsian epistemic inferentialism would be settled as The Truth, and then maybe you'd regard Brandom as the Feynman to Sellars' Planck or something. But epistemic inferentialism is not settled, and there are counter-examples in favor of sense-data. Etc. Philosophy leaves no ideas behind, excises nothing on account of its wrongness, and every new idea, including those in Empiricism and Philosophy of Mind have their precursors, and benefit from their study (as Brandom himself shows in Tales of the Mighty Dead.
posted by dis_integration at 8:50 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
where does a Philosophy PhD go to work other than one of these 118 institutions
Those 118 institutions supply the philosophy faculty for the 2400 institutions you first mentioned, as well as a few other jobs (like hospital ethicists or whatnot).
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Those 118 institutions supply the philosophy faculty for the 2400 institutions you first mentioned, as well as a few other jobs (like hospital ethicists or whatnot).
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
The funny thing about Sellars and Brandom is that they are exceptions to the general rule in taking a particularly active interest in the history of philosophy, though the majority of philosophy marches on without as active of an engagement and is none the worse off. That's partly because of their own inclinations but certainly because of the content of their work.
That's not to say I support how ignorant people tend to be of the history of philosophy, I think there's much value in it. Just that one can be exceedingly competent in general philosophical work without any historical awareness because so much of it has little to no relation as to what came before.
posted by Dalby at 8:57 AM on May 11, 2016
That's not to say I support how ignorant people tend to be of the history of philosophy, I think there's much value in it. Just that one can be exceedingly competent in general philosophical work without any historical awareness because so much of it has little to no relation as to what came before.
posted by Dalby at 8:57 AM on May 11, 2016
Just that one can be exceedingly competent in general philosophical work without any historical awareness because so much of it has little to no relation as to what came before.
But the current state of philosophy as it's studied in these programs didn't just flit into existence out of nowhere. It was built on a bedrock of previous assumptions and values that came out of specifically Western philosophy. (One can be an extremely competent economist without having much understanding of the history of economics worldwide, but one probably shouldn't.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
But the current state of philosophy as it's studied in these programs didn't just flit into existence out of nowhere. It was built on a bedrock of previous assumptions and values that came out of specifically Western philosophy. (One can be an extremely competent economist without having much understanding of the history of economics worldwide, but one probably shouldn't.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I take it that people think:
1. Philosophy is a science.
2. Science works from contemporary results, and does not need to study its own history.
3. So there's no need to study the history of philosophy
And thus, as a corollary to (3), no need to study the history of non-Western philosophy.
But (1) and (2) are wrong. Philosophy is not a science, and science itself is an historical project and benefits from the study of its own history.
But let's take (1). If (1) were true, there would be philosophical facts. Here's a challenge: name a philosophical fact that is not also a theorem of logic. Do it in less than the length of a dissertation.
posted by dis_integration at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
1. Philosophy is a science.
2. Science works from contemporary results, and does not need to study its own history.
3. So there's no need to study the history of philosophy
And thus, as a corollary to (3), no need to study the history of non-Western philosophy.
But (1) and (2) are wrong. Philosophy is not a science, and science itself is an historical project and benefits from the study of its own history.
But let's take (1). If (1) were true, there would be philosophical facts. Here's a challenge: name a philosophical fact that is not also a theorem of logic. Do it in less than the length of a dissertation.
posted by dis_integration at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
There are lots of things to say here. But let me just say this: We would love to diversify our faculty and the courses that we offer. Problem: The university has no money to let us do so. We don't have enough faculty to cover Western philosophy even to the (seriously inadequate) degree that it is ordinarily covered. If we were to attempt to cover non-Western philosophy with our current faculty, the results would be ... less than stellar.
The authors seem to have anticipated this (and many other similar responses here) by taking the position that the best case would be to widen the canon of what is taught as philosophy at US colleges, but failing that schools should name their programs more accurately: "Department of European and American Philosophy."
Many of the replies here seem to assume that suggestion was just offered as an excuse to argue for a change in what is actually taught, but I don't think that's the case. I think they are just as serious about changing the name if the canon isn't made more inclusive as they are about the desirability of teaching philosophy in a way that embraces non-Western schools of thought.
My only objection to the name change is that it will make it harder than ever to convince people that Augustine was an African.
posted by layceepee at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
The authors seem to have anticipated this (and many other similar responses here) by taking the position that the best case would be to widen the canon of what is taught as philosophy at US colleges, but failing that schools should name their programs more accurately: "Department of European and American Philosophy."
Many of the replies here seem to assume that suggestion was just offered as an excuse to argue for a change in what is actually taught, but I don't think that's the case. I think they are just as serious about changing the name if the canon isn't made more inclusive as they are about the desirability of teaching philosophy in a way that embraces non-Western schools of thought.
My only objection to the name change is that it will make it harder than ever to convince people that Augustine was an African.
posted by layceepee at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
For instance, here are four semantically distinct claims:
1. Jon thinks that murdering is wrong.
2. Jon does not think that murdering is wrong.
3. Jon thinks that murdering is not wrong.
4. Jon thinks that not murdering is wrong.
The expressivist position cannot represent these for semantically distinct claims.
1. Jon disapproves of murdering.
2. Jon does not disapprove of murdering.
3. ??
4. Jon disapproves of not murdering
Can't 3. just be parsed as "Jon thinks there is no need to disapprove of murdering"?. That does not seem too baroque. I could say, I see no need to disapprove of private space programs, and that is coherent enough of a thought.
posted by thelonius at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
1. Jon thinks that murdering is wrong.
2. Jon does not think that murdering is wrong.
3. Jon thinks that murdering is not wrong.
4. Jon thinks that not murdering is wrong.
The expressivist position cannot represent these for semantically distinct claims.
1. Jon disapproves of murdering.
2. Jon does not disapprove of murdering.
3. ??
4. Jon disapproves of not murdering
Can't 3. just be parsed as "Jon thinks there is no need to disapprove of murdering"?. That does not seem too baroque. I could say, I see no need to disapprove of private space programs, and that is coherent enough of a thought.
posted by thelonius at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
This reminds me of the earlier philosophy thread, where philosophy students were arguing at the universality of Philosophy, in spite of the fact that anyone who wanted a white male was pretty much excluded. Their arguments didn't seem very convincing, given they they boiled down to "I don't see how more diversity in the field world make a difference in these universal future."
posted by happyroach at 9:10 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by happyroach at 9:10 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Can't 3. just be parsed as "Jon thinks there is no need to disapprove of murdering"?. That does not seem too baroque. I could say, I see no need to disapprove of private space programs, and that is coherent enough of a thought.
I'm not sure why it's not "Jon does not disapprove of not murdering", but I'm also unsure why this represents a counterexample to expressivism except insofar as it expressed in a narrow language-philosophical form.
posted by dis_integration at 9:13 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure why it's not "Jon does not disapprove of not murdering", but I'm also unsure why this represents a counterexample to expressivism except insofar as it expressed in a narrow language-philosophical form.
posted by dis_integration at 9:13 AM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm more ok with this emphasis on European philosophy than most here, or than would seem to be warranted by broad-mindedness and the perspective that Europeans have been set so much cultural context just through force. I've enjoyed and found useful and fruitful my philosophical education while knowing it left a lot out.
What about this point of view: I'm Ashkenazi Jewish and although that's a European culture (the Yiddish speaking world), basically none of for example, Talmudic reasoning makes it into the philosophy curriculum. That's more considered religion, as is much thought from the Islamic world. Of course Spinoza is taught, and he had influences from the Sephardic culture. Maimonides may get some mentions from a period of philosophy that's considered more of a philosophical bywater.
Maybe there isn't such a good analogy between non-European thought and what's considered philosophy, and this isn't just a Western blindness. Continuing the analogy of the last paragraph, Hannukah isn't just the Jewish equivalent of Christmas, it's a much more minor festival, but is held up misleadingly to present both religions with a symmetric public face.
I generally get turned off by those who are also Jewish and argue, "We're a minority too, so X which other minorities [who might often be more visible as minorities in their culture] care about but we don't, is not a real concern.
In about a week I'm having a public debate with a pastor and psychologist on the meaning of life, and in preparation to entering the debate as a scientist, I'm thinking of bringing in views of philosophers whose thinking seems relevant, such as Spinoza and Leibniz. I've been aware that I'm missing out on a huge amount of "non-Western" philosophy. My friend has been pushing Nagarjuna's 70 stanzas at me for years but I haven't had time to really study it.
But among scientists I think there's more a danger of denigrating ALL philosophy (recent statements by Laurence Krauss or Stephen Hawking for example). The "Western" philosophical traditions I think are very useful in making sense of science and the secular world partly created through those philosophical traditions.
posted by Schmucko at 9:14 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
What about this point of view: I'm Ashkenazi Jewish and although that's a European culture (the Yiddish speaking world), basically none of for example, Talmudic reasoning makes it into the philosophy curriculum. That's more considered religion, as is much thought from the Islamic world. Of course Spinoza is taught, and he had influences from the Sephardic culture. Maimonides may get some mentions from a period of philosophy that's considered more of a philosophical bywater.
Maybe there isn't such a good analogy between non-European thought and what's considered philosophy, and this isn't just a Western blindness. Continuing the analogy of the last paragraph, Hannukah isn't just the Jewish equivalent of Christmas, it's a much more minor festival, but is held up misleadingly to present both religions with a symmetric public face.
I generally get turned off by those who are also Jewish and argue, "We're a minority too, so X which other minorities [who might often be more visible as minorities in their culture] care about but we don't, is not a real concern.
In about a week I'm having a public debate with a pastor and psychologist on the meaning of life, and in preparation to entering the debate as a scientist, I'm thinking of bringing in views of philosophers whose thinking seems relevant, such as Spinoza and Leibniz. I've been aware that I'm missing out on a huge amount of "non-Western" philosophy. My friend has been pushing Nagarjuna's 70 stanzas at me for years but I haven't had time to really study it.
But among scientists I think there's more a danger of denigrating ALL philosophy (recent statements by Laurence Krauss or Stephen Hawking for example). The "Western" philosophical traditions I think are very useful in making sense of science and the secular world partly created through those philosophical traditions.
posted by Schmucko at 9:14 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Dalby: Just that one can be exceedingly competent in general philosophical work without any historical awareness because so much of it has little to no relation as to what came before.
You could say the same thing about biology, and it would be true. But every once in a while someone digs deep into the history of biological thought and comes up with ideas that change the course of research in the field.
posted by clawsoon at 9:22 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
You could say the same thing about biology, and it would be true. But every once in a while someone digs deep into the history of biological thought and comes up with ideas that change the course of research in the field.
posted by clawsoon at 9:22 AM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
If (1) were true, there would be philosophical facts. Here's a challenge: name a philosophical fact that is not also a theorem of logic.
The point is that there's no historical knowledge required in order to analyze whether a series of claims are consistent or not. The philosophical position that states moral claims are claims of attitudes? Falls into a series of problems. The philosophical position that states we perceive sense-datum? Falls into a series of problems.
No background knowledge is necessary in order to come to these conclusions other than the conceptual ability to make inferences from their claims and see how they stand up.
posted by Dalby at 9:44 AM on May 11, 2016
The point is that there's no historical knowledge required in order to analyze whether a series of claims are consistent or not. The philosophical position that states moral claims are claims of attitudes? Falls into a series of problems. The philosophical position that states we perceive sense-datum? Falls into a series of problems.
No background knowledge is necessary in order to come to these conclusions other than the conceptual ability to make inferences from their claims and see how they stand up.
posted by Dalby at 9:44 AM on May 11, 2016
I feel very lucky to have had even ONE graduate level course in ancient Chinese thought.
That said, much of this sort of work isn't going to be illuminated by Chinese philosophy or even European philosophy.
It's similar to science. There's a lot of interesting historical work to be done on European and Chinese science, but today's scientific work isn't going to be informed much by historical work.
This is not at all true in ethics. Neo-Aristotelian philosophy is one of the most important branches of 21st century ethics. Good historical work informs the cutting edge.
I think this is why ancient Greek specialists tend to be somewhat less out of touch with non-Western philosophy. Talks contrasting Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics are very common at conferences, and with good reason. By comparing assumptions and contrasting emphases we can learn something about both. The very fact that they are not in the same tradition makes the conversation valuable.
It's not as though Chinese philosophy is obscure. Many of our students have read the Daodejing; it's shameful if the faculty cannot say the same.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:57 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
That said, much of this sort of work isn't going to be illuminated by Chinese philosophy or even European philosophy.
It's similar to science. There's a lot of interesting historical work to be done on European and Chinese science, but today's scientific work isn't going to be informed much by historical work.
This is not at all true in ethics. Neo-Aristotelian philosophy is one of the most important branches of 21st century ethics. Good historical work informs the cutting edge.
I think this is why ancient Greek specialists tend to be somewhat less out of touch with non-Western philosophy. Talks contrasting Aristotelian and Confucian virtue ethics are very common at conferences, and with good reason. By comparing assumptions and contrasting emphases we can learn something about both. The very fact that they are not in the same tradition makes the conversation valuable.
It's not as though Chinese philosophy is obscure. Many of our students have read the Daodejing; it's shameful if the faculty cannot say the same.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:57 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
The point is that there's no historical knowledge required in order to analyze whether a series of claims are consistent or not.
I guess my point is that examining claims for consistency is only one very small part of philosophy. And it's secondary to a much larger part: interpreting the meaning of claims (unfortunately, a lot of philosophers think that the interpretation part is easy and neglect it, and of course think that they are so clear as to not require interpretive effort, as I learned quickly when I got my first reviewer comments for a publication submission). And it's tertiary to the even more important part: inventing the claims themselves.
If a philosopher's work is just the evaluation of claims for consistency, that philosopher is falling far short of greatness in philosophy (which, hey, puts him in good company, since most of us are mediocre).
All three of them benefit from the study of the history of philosophy and the history of non-western thought, which is a treasury of alternative perspectives, even when evaluating the consistency of claims, an action that requires insight, and is not merely a mechanical operation.
posted by dis_integration at 10:03 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
I guess my point is that examining claims for consistency is only one very small part of philosophy. And it's secondary to a much larger part: interpreting the meaning of claims (unfortunately, a lot of philosophers think that the interpretation part is easy and neglect it, and of course think that they are so clear as to not require interpretive effort, as I learned quickly when I got my first reviewer comments for a publication submission). And it's tertiary to the even more important part: inventing the claims themselves.
If a philosopher's work is just the evaluation of claims for consistency, that philosopher is falling far short of greatness in philosophy (which, hey, puts him in good company, since most of us are mediocre).
All three of them benefit from the study of the history of philosophy and the history of non-western thought, which is a treasury of alternative perspectives, even when evaluating the consistency of claims, an action that requires insight, and is not merely a mechanical operation.
posted by dis_integration at 10:03 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Dalby: No background knowledge is necessary in order to come to these conclusions other than the conceptual ability to make inferences from their claims and see how they stand up.
I'm no philosopher, but I've noticed that my answers to philosophical questions have become much more complex and nuanced as I've gained more background knowledge. You can only determine if inferences and claims match up if you have perfectly defined words and ideas. Eager young philosophers seem to believe that this is possible; do old philosophers believe it, too? Do experienced philosophers actually think that the messiness that's characteristic of all ideas and words can be usefully boxed up in a way that allows for testing claims of consistency? And that when they're done testing, they'll be as convincing to other philosophers as mathematicians who have completed a proof are to other mathematicians and scientists who have completed a series of experiments are to other scientists? What happens to claims of consistency when new background knowledge is brought into play that subtly changes the meaning of, say, a "sense-datum", or an "attitude"?
posted by clawsoon at 10:06 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm no philosopher, but I've noticed that my answers to philosophical questions have become much more complex and nuanced as I've gained more background knowledge. You can only determine if inferences and claims match up if you have perfectly defined words and ideas. Eager young philosophers seem to believe that this is possible; do old philosophers believe it, too? Do experienced philosophers actually think that the messiness that's characteristic of all ideas and words can be usefully boxed up in a way that allows for testing claims of consistency? And that when they're done testing, they'll be as convincing to other philosophers as mathematicians who have completed a proof are to other mathematicians and scientists who have completed a series of experiments are to other scientists? What happens to claims of consistency when new background knowledge is brought into play that subtly changes the meaning of, say, a "sense-datum", or an "attitude"?
posted by clawsoon at 10:06 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
The point is that there's no historical knowledge required in order to analyze whether a series of claims are consistent or not.
Yes, but to ignore history is to blind yourself to a variety of interesting claims. Utilitarians should be interested in Mozi, not for historical reasons but because he might be right where the descendants of Bentham and Mill are wrong.
(Mozi is a recognizably utilitarian philosopher, a critic of Confucius. He reaches conclusions similar to Singer - spending on luxuries and culture is obscene when people are starving - but his arguments are weirdly nationalist-urilitarian in a way that has no exact parallels in Western ethics, historical or 21st century.)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:09 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
Yes, but to ignore history is to blind yourself to a variety of interesting claims. Utilitarians should be interested in Mozi, not for historical reasons but because he might be right where the descendants of Bentham and Mill are wrong.
(Mozi is a recognizably utilitarian philosopher, a critic of Confucius. He reaches conclusions similar to Singer - spending on luxuries and culture is obscene when people are starving - but his arguments are weirdly nationalist-urilitarian in a way that has no exact parallels in Western ethics, historical or 21st century.)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:09 AM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow, would you happen to have a short reading list for those who might be interested?
posted by clawsoon at 10:12 AM on May 11, 2016
posted by clawsoon at 10:12 AM on May 11, 2016
I'm not disagreeing with these points.
Yes, you blind yourself to a lot of other claims. Yes, there's relevance if you're doing work in something like virtue ethics. Yes, there's a lot to be learned from older texts, both in terms of creating philosophers out of students but also in approaching modern topics. And hell, there's a lot of sophisticated work in history of philosophy, that is on par if not exceeding that which you find elsewhere.
I'm just trying to clarify why there's general apathy to teach non-Western philosophy, and not just in descriptive, but normative terms. It's not just that people are apathetic, and sure, given unlimited funding, it'd happen. But given finite resources, departments are going to focus on what's of foremost importance. Which isn't history non-European philosophy. And for a number of departments isn't even history of European philosophy.
posted by Dalby at 10:43 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes, you blind yourself to a lot of other claims. Yes, there's relevance if you're doing work in something like virtue ethics. Yes, there's a lot to be learned from older texts, both in terms of creating philosophers out of students but also in approaching modern topics. And hell, there's a lot of sophisticated work in history of philosophy, that is on par if not exceeding that which you find elsewhere.
I'm just trying to clarify why there's general apathy to teach non-Western philosophy, and not just in descriptive, but normative terms. It's not just that people are apathetic, and sure, given unlimited funding, it'd happen. But given finite resources, departments are going to focus on what's of foremost importance. Which isn't history non-European philosophy. And for a number of departments isn't even history of European philosophy.
posted by Dalby at 10:43 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
But given finite resources, departments are going to focus on what's of foremost importance. Which isn't history non-European philosophy.
I'm sorry, are you saying that you think the semantic program of expressivism and sense-data arguments from fifty years ago are of foremost importance? And that these research areas should take precedence over the entirety of non-Anglo-American philosophy?
That doesn't seem right to me.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry, are you saying that you think the semantic program of expressivism and sense-data arguments from fifty years ago are of foremost importance? And that these research areas should take precedence over the entirety of non-Anglo-American philosophy?
That doesn't seem right to me.
posted by anotherpanacea at 10:52 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'm sorry, are you saying that you think the semantic program of expressivism and sense-data arguments from fifty years ago are of foremost importance?
Mark Schroeder's Being For was published in 2008, and considering how monumental it was to the debate, yes.
Sense-data isn't actually, as far as I'm aware, an active research area, so no it's not of foremost importance, other than for whatever relevancy it has to Sellars/Brandom/McDowell tradition given Sellars' critique.
And that these research areas should take precedence over the entirety of non-Anglo-American philosophy?
Yes, if by "these" you mean the whole host of contemporary research fields done in analytic philosophy today, like expressivist semantics, and so on.
posted by Dalby at 11:23 AM on May 11, 2016
Mark Schroeder's Being For was published in 2008, and considering how monumental it was to the debate, yes.
Sense-data isn't actually, as far as I'm aware, an active research area, so no it's not of foremost importance, other than for whatever relevancy it has to Sellars/Brandom/McDowell tradition given Sellars' critique.
And that these research areas should take precedence over the entirety of non-Anglo-American philosophy?
Yes, if by "these" you mean the whole host of contemporary research fields done in analytic philosophy today, like expressivist semantics, and so on.
posted by Dalby at 11:23 AM on May 11, 2016
Forgive me if this has already been dealt with but in all my years of studying music at the university level never once was mentioned anything outside of the Western European Academic Tradition with the rare exception of Pop Music in the Western European Tradition. Classical Indian music has its own very complicated and advanced music theory that is vastly different from what we study in the West.
So if this criticism is valid then it seems like a lot of departments would need to change their names. Maybe they should.
But then I also think about the term "American". It's what we use in the US and generally how we are referred to outside of the US. Yes, "America" does include a lot more people than just the US but we know it's just a short cut for "Citizen of the Country Officially Known as the United States of America".
Is "American" then reasonable? Does that same argument apply to Philosophy departments and Music departments?
I don't have an answer or a strong opinion yet. Language does matter. And we need to be aware that how we name things does affect how people perceive us and themselves (eg: Ours is the real Music and yours is just, well, something Else). I don't think it's so much an issue of accuracy (all languages make use of short cuts: abbreviations, elided material, etc) but making sure we are keeping things in proper perspective.
So if my former schools changed the names of their Music departments to Department of Music in the Western European Academic Tradition I wouldn't have a problem. Of course in speech and casual communication it would still just be the Music Department (likewise the Philosophy Department, etc).
posted by bfootdav at 11:29 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
So if this criticism is valid then it seems like a lot of departments would need to change their names. Maybe they should.
But then I also think about the term "American". It's what we use in the US and generally how we are referred to outside of the US. Yes, "America" does include a lot more people than just the US but we know it's just a short cut for "Citizen of the Country Officially Known as the United States of America".
Is "American" then reasonable? Does that same argument apply to Philosophy departments and Music departments?
I don't have an answer or a strong opinion yet. Language does matter. And we need to be aware that how we name things does affect how people perceive us and themselves (eg: Ours is the real Music and yours is just, well, something Else). I don't think it's so much an issue of accuracy (all languages make use of short cuts: abbreviations, elided material, etc) but making sure we are keeping things in proper perspective.
So if my former schools changed the names of their Music departments to Department of Music in the Western European Academic Tradition I wouldn't have a problem. Of course in speech and casual communication it would still just be the Music Department (likewise the Philosophy Department, etc).
posted by bfootdav at 11:29 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
> Maybe there isn't such a good analogy between non-European thought and what's considered philosophy, and this isn't just a Western blindness.
Considering the history of Western blindness, I'd say this isn't such a good approach. Your suggestion is the automatic fallback of everyone who's confronted with a challenge to a comfortable status quo; the sort-of-good-faith version is Saul Bellow's "Where is the Zulu Tolstoy?" and the bad-faith one "There are no blacks in the major leagues because they just can't play baseball well enough." I would say the default assumption should be that once you remove the Western blinders (which let the wearer state confidently that all real philosophy is Western, because "real philosophy" has been defined so that only Western thought need apply) you are likely to find that thinkers from all around the world, in many languages and traditions, have thought thoughts that combine to form a much more interesting and wide-ranging field which might as well be called "philosophy" even if it goes way beyond what Plato would have recognized.
posted by languagehat at 11:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Considering the history of Western blindness, I'd say this isn't such a good approach. Your suggestion is the automatic fallback of everyone who's confronted with a challenge to a comfortable status quo; the sort-of-good-faith version is Saul Bellow's "Where is the Zulu Tolstoy?" and the bad-faith one "There are no blacks in the major leagues because they just can't play baseball well enough." I would say the default assumption should be that once you remove the Western blinders (which let the wearer state confidently that all real philosophy is Western, because "real philosophy" has been defined so that only Western thought need apply) you are likely to find that thinkers from all around the world, in many languages and traditions, have thought thoughts that combine to form a much more interesting and wide-ranging field which might as well be called "philosophy" even if it goes way beyond what Plato would have recognized.
posted by languagehat at 11:54 AM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
I think a better title would be "Xtreme Footnoting: the Greco-Romans (100 Years War Losers Edition)".
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 11:55 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 11:55 AM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
So I think it's not enough to say philosophy has a budget problem. It does! But maybe it wouldn't have quite as bad a budget problem if there weren't so many well-paid professors working on the semantics of the left parenthesis. The discipline became scholastic to avoid the big ideological fights of the last half century, and now is paying the price.
I meant my remarks very locally. My actual department would like to hire one or more experts on Chinese philosophy. We have actually put in hiring requests for such lines. None has been approved. I would like to hire an expert on Indian philosophy -- and especially Indian logic -- though I'm not sure that desire is as widely spread. I know much less about African philosophy (aside from Augustine) or Native American philosophy, though I would be open to adding experts in those areas as well. But as of next year, we won't have an epistemologist (since our resident epistemologist is leaving for warmer climes) or a philosopher of mind (since our philosopher of mind left last year for someplace with woods and hills and streams). And owing to the dire circumstances at the state level, it is unlikely that we will be able to hire anyone for the next three years or more. Maybe I should revise my priorities. I'm happy to have a discussion about what our priorities should be! But right now, I don't think it makes sense to take the limited resources we have and invest in an expert in Chinese philosophy when we don't have an epistemologist or a philosopher of mind. Do you disagree? Do you think the authors disagree? If we are building a department from the ground up, what should it look like? Which positions would you fill first?
I agree that there are bad feedback loops here. I would like for my university to dump a bunch of cash on my department. But they don't want to do it until we look like a good place to invest. Unfortunately, we won't look like a good place to invest until they dump a bunch of cash on us. And as a result, people leave, so we look like an even worse place to invest. And on and on ... And specifically with respect to non-Western philosophy, my impression is that we would need to be a pretty healthy department along more traditional lines before we could take the risk to hire in non-Western philosophy. Maybe I'm over-estimating the risk. Do you think so?
I think we seriously disagree with respect to "semantics of the left parenthesis." I suspect that the parts of philosophy that I take to be vitally important and to have had the most serious impact on the human condition are the parts you would dismiss as "scholastic": overly technical and alienated from human affairs. I'm not entirely sure I would dismiss the parts of philosophy that you especially like. But I know that I'm not interested in working in those areas. And that's a kind of dismissiveness, I suppose. In any event, I think that if philosophy as a discipline had done more to hold onto the work birthed by the technicians, we would be in a much better place financially and socially. Just to take one example: In the 19th century, probability and statistics were as much part of philosophical education as mathematical, and there were no departments of statistics as such. If history had taken a very slightly different course, statistics could have been housed in philosophy in the same way that logic is. This last year at my university, something like 3,000 students took introduction to statistics. I don't think we had that many students in all of our philosophy courses altogether. We certainly wouldn't increase our enrollments by that amount by focusing more on non-Western philosophy. A similar story could be told (I think) with respect to computer science.
The authors seem to have anticipated this (and many other similar responses here) by taking the position that the best case would be to widen the canon of what is taught as philosophy at US colleges, but failing that schools should name their programs more accurately: "Department of European and American Philosophy."
My point is that since those of us now employed in philosophy departments by and large do not have adequate training to competently teach non-Western philosophy, it doesn't make sense to expand the canon. I mean, we could put a veneer on a bad situation by adding non-Western philosophers to introductory courses. (I don't teach introduction to philosophy. I mostly teach introduction to logic and upper-division courses in philosophy of science and in metaphysics. So I'm not sure what I am actually in a position to do differently for my own part with respect to non-Western philosophy.) But the result would be badly-taught introductions to non-Western philosophy that was not followed up with any more advanced courses. That strikes me as a bad idea for many reasons. It's one thing if you teach some topic and do a barely passable job at it when there is a domain expert who will teach a dedicated course on that material later on. It's another thing altogether to teach something in a barely passable way without any follow-up. (And even this assumes something like an historical introduction to philosophy, as opposed to an arguments-first approach.)
Many of the replies here seem to assume that suggestion was just offered as an excuse to argue for a change in what is actually taught, but I don't think that's the case. I think they are just as serious about changing the name if the canon isn't made more inclusive as they are about the desirability of teaching philosophy in a way that embraces non-Western schools of thought.
Yeah ... I don't think the suggestion is serious. At best, it's a good rhetorical move. At worst, it's an unfortunate distraction from an important point that is better made without the rhetoric.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:10 PM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
I meant my remarks very locally. My actual department would like to hire one or more experts on Chinese philosophy. We have actually put in hiring requests for such lines. None has been approved. I would like to hire an expert on Indian philosophy -- and especially Indian logic -- though I'm not sure that desire is as widely spread. I know much less about African philosophy (aside from Augustine) or Native American philosophy, though I would be open to adding experts in those areas as well. But as of next year, we won't have an epistemologist (since our resident epistemologist is leaving for warmer climes) or a philosopher of mind (since our philosopher of mind left last year for someplace with woods and hills and streams). And owing to the dire circumstances at the state level, it is unlikely that we will be able to hire anyone for the next three years or more. Maybe I should revise my priorities. I'm happy to have a discussion about what our priorities should be! But right now, I don't think it makes sense to take the limited resources we have and invest in an expert in Chinese philosophy when we don't have an epistemologist or a philosopher of mind. Do you disagree? Do you think the authors disagree? If we are building a department from the ground up, what should it look like? Which positions would you fill first?
I agree that there are bad feedback loops here. I would like for my university to dump a bunch of cash on my department. But they don't want to do it until we look like a good place to invest. Unfortunately, we won't look like a good place to invest until they dump a bunch of cash on us. And as a result, people leave, so we look like an even worse place to invest. And on and on ... And specifically with respect to non-Western philosophy, my impression is that we would need to be a pretty healthy department along more traditional lines before we could take the risk to hire in non-Western philosophy. Maybe I'm over-estimating the risk. Do you think so?
I think we seriously disagree with respect to "semantics of the left parenthesis." I suspect that the parts of philosophy that I take to be vitally important and to have had the most serious impact on the human condition are the parts you would dismiss as "scholastic": overly technical and alienated from human affairs. I'm not entirely sure I would dismiss the parts of philosophy that you especially like. But I know that I'm not interested in working in those areas. And that's a kind of dismissiveness, I suppose. In any event, I think that if philosophy as a discipline had done more to hold onto the work birthed by the technicians, we would be in a much better place financially and socially. Just to take one example: In the 19th century, probability and statistics were as much part of philosophical education as mathematical, and there were no departments of statistics as such. If history had taken a very slightly different course, statistics could have been housed in philosophy in the same way that logic is. This last year at my university, something like 3,000 students took introduction to statistics. I don't think we had that many students in all of our philosophy courses altogether. We certainly wouldn't increase our enrollments by that amount by focusing more on non-Western philosophy. A similar story could be told (I think) with respect to computer science.
The authors seem to have anticipated this (and many other similar responses here) by taking the position that the best case would be to widen the canon of what is taught as philosophy at US colleges, but failing that schools should name their programs more accurately: "Department of European and American Philosophy."
My point is that since those of us now employed in philosophy departments by and large do not have adequate training to competently teach non-Western philosophy, it doesn't make sense to expand the canon. I mean, we could put a veneer on a bad situation by adding non-Western philosophers to introductory courses. (I don't teach introduction to philosophy. I mostly teach introduction to logic and upper-division courses in philosophy of science and in metaphysics. So I'm not sure what I am actually in a position to do differently for my own part with respect to non-Western philosophy.) But the result would be badly-taught introductions to non-Western philosophy that was not followed up with any more advanced courses. That strikes me as a bad idea for many reasons. It's one thing if you teach some topic and do a barely passable job at it when there is a domain expert who will teach a dedicated course on that material later on. It's another thing altogether to teach something in a barely passable way without any follow-up. (And even this assumes something like an historical introduction to philosophy, as opposed to an arguments-first approach.)
Many of the replies here seem to assume that suggestion was just offered as an excuse to argue for a change in what is actually taught, but I don't think that's the case. I think they are just as serious about changing the name if the canon isn't made more inclusive as they are about the desirability of teaching philosophy in a way that embraces non-Western schools of thought.
Yeah ... I don't think the suggestion is serious. At best, it's a good rhetorical move. At worst, it's an unfortunate distraction from an important point that is better made without the rhetoric.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 12:10 PM on May 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
Yes, if by "these" you mean the whole host of contemporary research fields done in analytic philosophy today, like expressivist semantics, and so on.
Err.... okay, but why? Why are those the most important questions? You seem to be saying nothing more than "me and mine say Hooray! semantics and Boo! social critique." Are you simply performing the Frege-Geach problem, here? Do you have a reason why we should care and fund those issues rather than others? I mean, I'm all for long digressions into difficulty topics. But can you see how this kind of deliberate obscurantism looks to outsiders?
Any account of philosophy that starts by defining it as questions that other people don't care about is a bad one. (Fodor calls it the masochistic metatheory.) Just as bad to say: "philosophy just is whatever the folks who currently work in philosophy departments care about." This is like saying "Art is whatever artists do:" it ignores the way that that has changed radically over time, that philosophers are constantly policing the boundaries of the discipline to keep out interlopers while constantly shifting the terrain they claim.
All this policing has worked to keep certain obviously philosophical topics out of the discipline because of the identities of the people who do those things. (Most obviously feminist philosophy, even when it is directly relevant to contemporary research fields done in analytic philosophy today.) Worse, there are lots of philosophers who disagree; so built into this normative account is the idea that philosophy isn't what philosophers do, but rather what certain philosophers do.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:11 PM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Err.... okay, but why? Why are those the most important questions? You seem to be saying nothing more than "me and mine say Hooray! semantics and Boo! social critique." Are you simply performing the Frege-Geach problem, here? Do you have a reason why we should care and fund those issues rather than others? I mean, I'm all for long digressions into difficulty topics. But can you see how this kind of deliberate obscurantism looks to outsiders?
Any account of philosophy that starts by defining it as questions that other people don't care about is a bad one. (Fodor calls it the masochistic metatheory.) Just as bad to say: "philosophy just is whatever the folks who currently work in philosophy departments care about." This is like saying "Art is whatever artists do:" it ignores the way that that has changed radically over time, that philosophers are constantly policing the boundaries of the discipline to keep out interlopers while constantly shifting the terrain they claim.
All this policing has worked to keep certain obviously philosophical topics out of the discipline because of the identities of the people who do those things. (Most obviously feminist philosophy, even when it is directly relevant to contemporary research fields done in analytic philosophy today.) Worse, there are lots of philosophers who disagree; so built into this normative account is the idea that philosophy isn't what philosophers do, but rather what certain philosophers do.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:11 PM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Some people might be interested in the corresponding discussion on Leiter's blog: Anglophone departments aren't "Departments of European and American Philosophy"...
posted by Vidamond at 12:20 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Vidamond at 12:20 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think the "Where is the Zulu Tolstoy?" counter-argument by Coates applies here too, that Tolstoy's work is part of all human heritage including the heritage of Zulus. By suggesting non-Western traditions might not best be thought of as other versions of Western philosophy but different traditions overall I am not trying to suggest superiority, nor lack of potential or actual cross-fertilization.
"Where is the Nagarjuna of the Western Enlightenment?" might not have an answer either, other than Nagarjuna.
We often separate philosophy from theology, for example, and we are often used to thinking of religion as theistic, but there are also non-theistic religions. Does Talmudic reasoning (or Kabbalah) fit primarily into a philosophy curriculum--or Judaic studies? or theology? In a sense they are Western, in a sense they are *my* ancestral cultural heritage. I don't think philosophy has to encompass "all ideas worth taking seriously". There's also usually a separation say in bookstores between philosophy and occult/mystical/new age, which isn't to say there can't be overlap.
I remain open but I don't feel that revulsion to academic philosophy departments having a focus on this one tradition. Being ignorant probably I haven't had the chance to assess what I don't know from other traditions. But it makes me sad to make secondary the value of the particular works and practices of "Western philosophy" to a battle for cultural supremacy.
posted by Schmucko at 12:29 PM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
"Where is the Nagarjuna of the Western Enlightenment?" might not have an answer either, other than Nagarjuna.
We often separate philosophy from theology, for example, and we are often used to thinking of religion as theistic, but there are also non-theistic religions. Does Talmudic reasoning (or Kabbalah) fit primarily into a philosophy curriculum--or Judaic studies? or theology? In a sense they are Western, in a sense they are *my* ancestral cultural heritage. I don't think philosophy has to encompass "all ideas worth taking seriously". There's also usually a separation say in bookstores between philosophy and occult/mystical/new age, which isn't to say there can't be overlap.
I remain open but I don't feel that revulsion to academic philosophy departments having a focus on this one tradition. Being ignorant probably I haven't had the chance to assess what I don't know from other traditions. But it makes me sad to make secondary the value of the particular works and practices of "Western philosophy" to a battle for cultural supremacy.
posted by Schmucko at 12:29 PM on May 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
This might be a stupid question, but: If philosophy departments at Western universities magically got loads more funding and hired the top philosophical minds in non-Western traditions away from their current posts in China/India/etc., would that be a good thing?
posted by clawsoon at 12:41 PM on May 11, 2016
posted by clawsoon at 12:41 PM on May 11, 2016
I guess that things could be very different in China/India/ etc., but in general, there isn't a problem with there being too few excellent philosophy PhDs for the available jobs. At some point, there could be a philosopher shortage, but right now, you could probably quadruple the number of available tenure-track philosophy jobs without having to worry about poaching scholars from other institutions.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:45 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I suspect that the parts of philosophy that I take to be vitally important and to have had the most serious impact on the human condition are the parts you would dismiss as "scholastic": overly technical and alienated from human affairs. I'm not entirely sure I would dismiss the parts of philosophy that you especially like. But I know that I'm not interested in working in those areas. And that's a kind of dismissiveness, I suppose.
Well, I'm not holding myself out as the solution. We are all individuals, we participate in one or two or three research programs and almost certainly we owe it to those programs to develop the technical mastery required to do them well. Sometimes this mastery will be "alienated" from human affairs: I say that's okay, so long as we don't celebrate it as some in the discipline do and work to bring that work home to relevance.
But as a discipline, we have a problem when some research areas get too much emphasis, if only because we alienate the students and the grant-makers. It's already happened to Classics departments, and philosophy is likely to follow. I like the way you ask the question in practical terms, of how to deal with shrinking budgets and who to hire next. But I don't think I quite understand your fear; do you really think a specialist in Chinese philosophy would be bad for your department? Do you really think you'll convert more majors, attract more graduate students, or bring in more grants with another epistemologist?
I bet if you could afford to hire a team of philosophers to do a consultation, they wouldn't recommend you try to compete with the Leiter 50 in Metaphysics, Mind, Logic, or Epistemology. They'd recommend you build on your area strengths and find an alternate path to grow, something orthogonal to the specialties where you'll always be outcompeted by better-funded and better-located programs. They'd precisely suggest you aim to improve in these "non-core" areas like Chinese philosophy, moral psychology, or Latin American philosophy. Build on local industry and demographics. Be the biggest fish in a smaller pond.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:46 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Well, I'm not holding myself out as the solution. We are all individuals, we participate in one or two or three research programs and almost certainly we owe it to those programs to develop the technical mastery required to do them well. Sometimes this mastery will be "alienated" from human affairs: I say that's okay, so long as we don't celebrate it as some in the discipline do and work to bring that work home to relevance.
But as a discipline, we have a problem when some research areas get too much emphasis, if only because we alienate the students and the grant-makers. It's already happened to Classics departments, and philosophy is likely to follow. I like the way you ask the question in practical terms, of how to deal with shrinking budgets and who to hire next. But I don't think I quite understand your fear; do you really think a specialist in Chinese philosophy would be bad for your department? Do you really think you'll convert more majors, attract more graduate students, or bring in more grants with another epistemologist?
I bet if you could afford to hire a team of philosophers to do a consultation, they wouldn't recommend you try to compete with the Leiter 50 in Metaphysics, Mind, Logic, or Epistemology. They'd recommend you build on your area strengths and find an alternate path to grow, something orthogonal to the specialties where you'll always be outcompeted by better-funded and better-located programs. They'd precisely suggest you aim to improve in these "non-core" areas like Chinese philosophy, moral psychology, or Latin American philosophy. Build on local industry and demographics. Be the biggest fish in a smaller pond.
posted by anotherpanacea at 12:46 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
I suppose, having looked up a bit more about Nagarjuna who my friend implores me to study---I'd have a different reaction if I read this framed more as, "WOW, look at all this great thinking being done in other cultures which isn't getting through to us! Wouldn't it be awesome to study this too?" Instead I get defensive about the worth of all the awesome stuff we DO have available in our philosophy departments when it is framed as if it's all culpable in and the product of colonialism.
posted by Schmucko at 12:57 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Schmucko at 12:57 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Instead I get defensive about the worth of all the awesome stuff we DO have available in our philosophy departments when it is framed as if it's all culpable in and the product of colonialism.
I'm not sure your characterization of culpability is accurate, but to the extent that I accept it, isn't yours just a variation of the "not all men" defense?
I've honestly never understood this kind of abject insecurity. It's ok to like what you like without naturalizing it.
posted by OmieWise at 1:15 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure your characterization of culpability is accurate, but to the extent that I accept it, isn't yours just a variation of the "not all men" defense?
I've honestly never understood this kind of abject insecurity. It's ok to like what you like without naturalizing it.
posted by OmieWise at 1:15 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm sorry, I think calling the defensive response insecure was unkind. Maybe you can characterize it better?
posted by OmieWise at 1:19 PM on May 11, 2016
posted by OmieWise at 1:19 PM on May 11, 2016
I like this post
... but it must be really annoying if you finally get a shot at hiring someone non-insular (maybe you get a more sympathetic dean, or a shot at a spousal hire, or someone wants to endow a chair) and then you have to convince the provost to let you hire Fabulous South Asian Specialist, even though you're supposed to be the 'Department of European and American Philosophy.'
posted by feral_goldfish at 1:20 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
... but it must be really annoying if you finally get a shot at hiring someone non-insular (maybe you get a more sympathetic dean, or a shot at a spousal hire, or someone wants to endow a chair) and then you have to convince the provost to let you hire Fabulous South Asian Specialist, even though you're supposed to be the 'Department of European and American Philosophy.'
posted by feral_goldfish at 1:20 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
(Because irony is kind of ironic that way.)
posted by feral_goldfish at 1:21 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by feral_goldfish at 1:21 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
OmieWise, I haven't followed that hashtag in so much detail so I also may not be sure about what you're addressing.
posted by Schmucko at 1:28 PM on May 11, 2016
posted by Schmucko at 1:28 PM on May 11, 2016
I bet if you could afford to hire a team of philosophers to do a consultation, they wouldn't recommend you try to compete with the Leiter 50 in Metaphysics, Mind, Logic, or Epistemology. They'd recommend you build on your area strengths and find an alternate path to grow, something orthogonal to the specialties where you'll always be outcompeted by better-funded and better-located programs. They'd precisely suggest you aim to improve in these "non-core" areas like Chinese philosophy, moral psychology, or Latin American philosophy. Build on local industry and demographics. Be the biggest fish in a smaller pond.
Actually, we had an external review three or four years ago, and one thing that we heard was: You need an epistemologist. (Partly this is because without an epistemologist, it is unclear that we can do an adequate job of teaching our graduate students.) We did not hear anything about building to non-Western philosophy or to any other niche area. I'm not even sure that we have niche areas in our department at this point. And the local demographics -- in terms of the university -- would have us building toward the tradition (at least as long as that includes philosophy of science), since we are much, much stronger in STEM disciplines than we are in humanities disciplines campus-wide. The one exception -- which is why we have asked for someone doing Chinese philosophy -- is that we have a large and growing Chinese student population. But I don't know if adding a Chinese philosophy course would attract more Chinese students to philosophy. I do, however, see lots of Chinese students in my introductory logic course. (Since we don't have a Chinese philosophy course, I don't have a contrast class to compare with logic.)
Again, I think there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg feedback problem here (as I suggested earlier): It's hard to build a reputation as a good place to do philosophy by building in non-Western philosophy unless and until the discipline as a whole thinks that non-Western philosophy is really worth doing; and the discipline probably won't think that unless and until we have lots more philosophers working on non-Western philosophy. Maybe this isn't as worrying for undergraduate programs, but I worry a lot about how and where and whether we'll place our graduate students. Do you think that concern is unfounded? Maybe I just don't have a good handle on job prospects for people with a PhD with an AOS in non-Western philosophy.
Assuming that things change over the next fifty years, do you think that the change will be gradual -- as more and more departments take initiative and risk hiring non-Western philosophers -- or do you think there will be a very fast transition -- where lots of departments make similar moves all at once or where there is a concerted push by the APA (seems unlikely) or some such external influence (maybe a wealthy donor or the Chinese government)?
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 2:38 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Actually, we had an external review three or four years ago, and one thing that we heard was: You need an epistemologist. (Partly this is because without an epistemologist, it is unclear that we can do an adequate job of teaching our graduate students.) We did not hear anything about building to non-Western philosophy or to any other niche area. I'm not even sure that we have niche areas in our department at this point. And the local demographics -- in terms of the university -- would have us building toward the tradition (at least as long as that includes philosophy of science), since we are much, much stronger in STEM disciplines than we are in humanities disciplines campus-wide. The one exception -- which is why we have asked for someone doing Chinese philosophy -- is that we have a large and growing Chinese student population. But I don't know if adding a Chinese philosophy course would attract more Chinese students to philosophy. I do, however, see lots of Chinese students in my introductory logic course. (Since we don't have a Chinese philosophy course, I don't have a contrast class to compare with logic.)
Again, I think there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg feedback problem here (as I suggested earlier): It's hard to build a reputation as a good place to do philosophy by building in non-Western philosophy unless and until the discipline as a whole thinks that non-Western philosophy is really worth doing; and the discipline probably won't think that unless and until we have lots more philosophers working on non-Western philosophy. Maybe this isn't as worrying for undergraduate programs, but I worry a lot about how and where and whether we'll place our graduate students. Do you think that concern is unfounded? Maybe I just don't have a good handle on job prospects for people with a PhD with an AOS in non-Western philosophy.
Assuming that things change over the next fifty years, do you think that the change will be gradual -- as more and more departments take initiative and risk hiring non-Western philosophers -- or do you think there will be a very fast transition -- where lots of departments make similar moves all at once or where there is a concerted push by the APA (seems unlikely) or some such external influence (maybe a wealthy donor or the Chinese government)?
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 2:38 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
I know at least two excellent Chinese philosophy graduate students who gave up in despair because of both the state of academic non-western philosophy and the knowledge that there would never be faculty positions for them. The people are out there.
posted by 1adam12 at 2:53 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 2:53 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
> I guess that things could be very different in China/India/ etc., but in general, there isn't a problem with there being too few excellent philosophy PhDs for the available jobs. At some point, there could be a philosopher shortage, but right now, you could probably quadruple the number of available tenure-track philosophy jobs without having to worry about poaching scholars from other institutions.
I don't think the point was "OMG we'll have to go to China to get philosophers!" but "Maybe we could address the parochialism of our departments by adding philosophers from China."
posted by languagehat at 3:03 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
I don't think the point was "OMG we'll have to go to China to get philosophers!" but "Maybe we could address the parochialism of our departments by adding philosophers from China."
posted by languagehat at 3:03 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Interesting, languagehat. I read it as suggesting that hiring more philosophers from China might somehow be contributing to a philosophy brain-drain in China, but that may not be what clawsoon meant!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:07 PM on May 11, 2016
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:07 PM on May 11, 2016
File under serendipity: I just picked up an almost-year-old copy (I have quite a stack to work through) of the TLS and found a review of John Barton's Ethics in Ancient Israel that reads in part:
posted by languagehat at 3:23 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Barton observes that the laws themselves often include motive clauses appealing to human reason. In fact, he shows that many prophetic and Wisdom passages presume an ethic of moral order, more like the Western tradition of natural law. He demonstrates that, despite various developments over a number of centuries, some common principles remain, often shared with other ancient cultures such as the Egyptian and Mesopotamian. For instance, universal moral principles applicable to all nations are implied in Amos's condemnation of the war crimes committed by the Moabites against the Edomites (Amos 2:1-2).Regardless of the specifics of that particular example, this is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to come out of bringing together very different traditions and examining them under lenses they have not been traditionally seen through. Cross-fertilization can't help but be a good thing.
posted by languagehat at 3:23 PM on May 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Maybe this isn't as worrying for undergraduate programs, but I worry a lot about how and where and whether we'll place our graduate students. Do you think that concern is unfounded? Maybe I just don't have a good handle on job prospects for people with a PhD with an AOS in non-Western philosophy.
No, that concern is absolutely well-founded. But I'm not sure I buy that an epistemologist would improve your school's placement. The idea, I gather, is that somehow without a dedicated epistemologist, you're not giving students whose own work is in something else (philosophy of law, say) a proper grounding. But that seems to me to be the wrong concern: assuming you're placing people well at all, you're not placing them based on the fact that they took a good course on interest-relative invariantism with a well-published scholar. You're placing them because they can do some other thing well enough to publish on it, and that thing isn't epistemology.
Now, I think you're right that you can't expect to churn out PhDs with an AOS in Chinese Philosophy and have a good placement rate for them either. But what Garfield and Van Norden are trying to accomplish is a shift in the discipline. There's pretty deep pockets backing this at well, at the Berggruen Institute. So I kind of bet that this change will come; our own national fascination with a rising China, plus a growing pool of Chinese students, will bring it about. Exactly how quickly it happens somewhat depends on the decisions that departments like yours make.
I think it would be a little easier for you to be placing folks with an AOS in Philosophy of Science or Philosophy of Law who were also well-qualified to teach Asian Philosophy. I think it'll probably attract more undergraduates. And if you were able to solve the PhD pipeline problem for Chinese Philosophy specialists by being in the right place at the right time, then it'd make a very big impact indeed.
On the other hand, I somewhat suspect that the West Coast schools will capture the market for Chinese Philosophy AOS first. So maybe Indian? The point is that there are more opportunities to diversify our discipline than ever before, and the market is changing pretty rapidly. It almost seems silly to focus on the tradition if the tradition isn't serving you well.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:30 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
No, that concern is absolutely well-founded. But I'm not sure I buy that an epistemologist would improve your school's placement. The idea, I gather, is that somehow without a dedicated epistemologist, you're not giving students whose own work is in something else (philosophy of law, say) a proper grounding. But that seems to me to be the wrong concern: assuming you're placing people well at all, you're not placing them based on the fact that they took a good course on interest-relative invariantism with a well-published scholar. You're placing them because they can do some other thing well enough to publish on it, and that thing isn't epistemology.
Now, I think you're right that you can't expect to churn out PhDs with an AOS in Chinese Philosophy and have a good placement rate for them either. But what Garfield and Van Norden are trying to accomplish is a shift in the discipline. There's pretty deep pockets backing this at well, at the Berggruen Institute. So I kind of bet that this change will come; our own national fascination with a rising China, plus a growing pool of Chinese students, will bring it about. Exactly how quickly it happens somewhat depends on the decisions that departments like yours make.
I think it would be a little easier for you to be placing folks with an AOS in Philosophy of Science or Philosophy of Law who were also well-qualified to teach Asian Philosophy. I think it'll probably attract more undergraduates. And if you were able to solve the PhD pipeline problem for Chinese Philosophy specialists by being in the right place at the right time, then it'd make a very big impact indeed.
On the other hand, I somewhat suspect that the West Coast schools will capture the market for Chinese Philosophy AOS first. So maybe Indian? The point is that there are more opportunities to diversify our discipline than ever before, and the market is changing pretty rapidly. It almost seems silly to focus on the tradition if the tradition isn't serving you well.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:30 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
What you were taught was probably bullshit.
That's an interesting article, but it's not at all what I learned in my program, not even in our history courses, way back in 2001. My grad history professor made it pretty clear that China was the world's dominant military and economic power for most of human recorded history, and that the Romans came close-ish (but probably didn't surpass them).
The problem was not wrong information, the problem was wrong mind-set. The teaching of Chinese/Indian/Japanese philosophy as something that only happened in the past, as a dead letter that has nothing to do with lives lived today, is categorically wrong. In many ways, these philosophical traditions are more alive than modern Western academic philosophy, which exists nowhere except in university departments, is published in journals that few understand and even fewer read, and touches on none of the relevant questions that philosophers of earlier ages ask themselves. It is from my experience a bunch of people patting themselves on the back for answering extremely abstract questions that no one seems to have actually asked.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:22 PM on May 11, 2016 [7 favorites]
That's an interesting article, but it's not at all what I learned in my program, not even in our history courses, way back in 2001. My grad history professor made it pretty clear that China was the world's dominant military and economic power for most of human recorded history, and that the Romans came close-ish (but probably didn't surpass them).
The problem was not wrong information, the problem was wrong mind-set. The teaching of Chinese/Indian/Japanese philosophy as something that only happened in the past, as a dead letter that has nothing to do with lives lived today, is categorically wrong. In many ways, these philosophical traditions are more alive than modern Western academic philosophy, which exists nowhere except in university departments, is published in journals that few understand and even fewer read, and touches on none of the relevant questions that philosophers of earlier ages ask themselves. It is from my experience a bunch of people patting themselves on the back for answering extremely abstract questions that no one seems to have actually asked.
posted by 1adam12 at 4:22 PM on May 11, 2016 [7 favorites]
justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow, would you happen to have a short reading list for those who might be interested?
I only know the Warring States period, but that is the place to get into Chinese philosophy. In this period, China was broken up into many rival kingdoms. Philosophy had immediate practical importance: philosophical theories were actually implemented in law, ethics, education, military theory, etc. Rival scholars were wandering around looking for state sponsorship, and unlike Plato, many actually received it. The Confucian tradition starts here, and that tradition and its enemies are the foundation of most subsequent Chinese thought.
I'd recommend starting reading with primary texts. They're cheaply and easily available (~$20 to buy new, many of them easy to find even in a non-university library), and for the most part they're beautifully written.
If you have any background in Western philosophy I'd idiosyncratically suggest starting with Mozi, a critic of Confucius. He's a utilitarian, so his concerns will be familiar. Also, he writes like an analytic philosopher: direct, boring and nearly devoid of metaphor.
After that, try Mencius (Mengzi). He's the most important Confucian philosopher (other than Confucius himself, but on a bad day Confucius writes like a presocratic and it might be hard to follow what he's doing without a guide). Mencius will give you a good grounding in the Confucian virtue ethics tradition, and he's a pleasure to read.
After that, how about my personal favorite Xunzi. He's another philosopher in the Confucian tradition. I suggest him to point out that there's a split in the early Confucian tradition. One thing Warring States virtue ethics does better than Ancient Greek philosophy is moral development, the question of what program of education will turn you into a virtuous person. Crudely, Mencus thinks that we become virtuous by cultivating human nature; Xunzi thinks that it takes outside pressure to become good. Mencius uses gardening metaphors; Xunzi wants you to chip away at your own soul with a chisel.
(Xunzi also has a great refutation of Sun Tsu's the Art of War. Many of the major philosophers in this period were also military theorists, and saw military theory and applied ethics as being closely connected. Moists - followers of Mozi - thought that wars cause suffering, so they tried to prevent wars by becoming pacifist green berets and advising small states on the tactics and technology of defensive warfare. Warring States philosophy is weird and I find it fascinating)
After that, how about the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching). One reason why we need to teach this text in philosophy departments is that reading it only as literature overlooks it's arguments. It's building a case against Confucius, and there really is no parallel in Western thought. If you like that, try Zhuangzi, who's even weirder.
The Hobbesian totalitarian Han Feizi (spit) is a good place to end a read-through of the period. We have him to thank for the "burning books and killing scholars" Chin emperor.
If you get confused, try skimming an overview of the period, something like A.C. Graham's "Disputers of the Tao." That's out of date, but it will give you a good summary of who the major players are, what their concerns are and how they relate.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:32 PM on May 11, 2016 [15 favorites]
I only know the Warring States period, but that is the place to get into Chinese philosophy. In this period, China was broken up into many rival kingdoms. Philosophy had immediate practical importance: philosophical theories were actually implemented in law, ethics, education, military theory, etc. Rival scholars were wandering around looking for state sponsorship, and unlike Plato, many actually received it. The Confucian tradition starts here, and that tradition and its enemies are the foundation of most subsequent Chinese thought.
I'd recommend starting reading with primary texts. They're cheaply and easily available (~$20 to buy new, many of them easy to find even in a non-university library), and for the most part they're beautifully written.
If you have any background in Western philosophy I'd idiosyncratically suggest starting with Mozi, a critic of Confucius. He's a utilitarian, so his concerns will be familiar. Also, he writes like an analytic philosopher: direct, boring and nearly devoid of metaphor.
After that, try Mencius (Mengzi). He's the most important Confucian philosopher (other than Confucius himself, but on a bad day Confucius writes like a presocratic and it might be hard to follow what he's doing without a guide). Mencius will give you a good grounding in the Confucian virtue ethics tradition, and he's a pleasure to read.
After that, how about my personal favorite Xunzi. He's another philosopher in the Confucian tradition. I suggest him to point out that there's a split in the early Confucian tradition. One thing Warring States virtue ethics does better than Ancient Greek philosophy is moral development, the question of what program of education will turn you into a virtuous person. Crudely, Mencus thinks that we become virtuous by cultivating human nature; Xunzi thinks that it takes outside pressure to become good. Mencius uses gardening metaphors; Xunzi wants you to chip away at your own soul with a chisel.
(Xunzi also has a great refutation of Sun Tsu's the Art of War. Many of the major philosophers in this period were also military theorists, and saw military theory and applied ethics as being closely connected. Moists - followers of Mozi - thought that wars cause suffering, so they tried to prevent wars by becoming pacifist green berets and advising small states on the tactics and technology of defensive warfare. Warring States philosophy is weird and I find it fascinating)
After that, how about the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching). One reason why we need to teach this text in philosophy departments is that reading it only as literature overlooks it's arguments. It's building a case against Confucius, and there really is no parallel in Western thought. If you like that, try Zhuangzi, who's even weirder.
The Hobbesian totalitarian Han Feizi (spit) is a good place to end a read-through of the period. We have him to thank for the "burning books and killing scholars" Chin emperor.
If you get confused, try skimming an overview of the period, something like A.C. Graham's "Disputers of the Tao." That's out of date, but it will give you a good summary of who the major players are, what their concerns are and how they relate.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 5:32 PM on May 11, 2016 [15 favorites]
There's a problem hidden in all this, too, that I see as a woman teaching philosophy at the Community College level. There's a dearth of teaching even the scope of european philosophy, in that I have consistently been the only person in my departments studying and teaching female identified philosophers...and usually end up getting typecast due to this. The presumption is that I can teach a 101 class because I have the "right" background to present philosophical concepts, but I'm kinda the weirdo who uses a variety of texts, literature, film, etc to present the concepts ("what is epistemology" vs "Descartes is a super dude") to move interested students forward; or at the barest minimum (because, lol, who wants a philosophy degree,) give them some critical thinking skills.
I've been trying to integrate non Western philosophical texts into my classes, but I find myself falling short on two levels: first, I'm always concerned I'm making an utter hash of the rich contexts these ideas come from. I tend to present philosophical concerns as if they're first and foremost human questions, but there's something creepy about doing that with Zhao Zhang vs Socrates. Second, I have exactly 10 weeks to crash through the primary concerns of philosophical thought. I literally barely have time to give them enough context for Wittgenstein, for the entire field of Ethics, for feminism, let alone the global history of ideas. There's a big pressure to balkanize, specialize, segregate in philosophy (which is why I'm now teaching phil of feminism) and to do so with the barest of resources, with the added recognition that students are simply profoundly unlikely to enter the field...which means we will probably die before we reform.
Given this, teaching particular traditions seems redundant at this point, particularly at the (extremely important!) intro level. I believe in the student's ability to synthesize the concepts with outside information and I try to empower them to see philosophy as something humans have always done, rather than as something Dead White Dudes did. They have the whole world of the internet, of other aspects of their education, of their own backgrounds to relate the ideas to. I get 10 weeks and my own paltry masters degree (during which I mostly read Kant and DeBeauvoir and dealt with sexism from all angles) to give them something to think about. Hiring another person who is even more specialized than I am won't fix this, shitty as that is. Our job is mostly now to encourage students to be citizen agents of their education, not to be the scope itself.
Ugh, I'm writing this instead of grading midterms. About 15% of which are written as fiction instead of "traditional philosophical essay", so that's something.
posted by zinful at 6:09 PM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
I've been trying to integrate non Western philosophical texts into my classes, but I find myself falling short on two levels: first, I'm always concerned I'm making an utter hash of the rich contexts these ideas come from. I tend to present philosophical concerns as if they're first and foremost human questions, but there's something creepy about doing that with Zhao Zhang vs Socrates. Second, I have exactly 10 weeks to crash through the primary concerns of philosophical thought. I literally barely have time to give them enough context for Wittgenstein, for the entire field of Ethics, for feminism, let alone the global history of ideas. There's a big pressure to balkanize, specialize, segregate in philosophy (which is why I'm now teaching phil of feminism) and to do so with the barest of resources, with the added recognition that students are simply profoundly unlikely to enter the field...which means we will probably die before we reform.
Given this, teaching particular traditions seems redundant at this point, particularly at the (extremely important!) intro level. I believe in the student's ability to synthesize the concepts with outside information and I try to empower them to see philosophy as something humans have always done, rather than as something Dead White Dudes did. They have the whole world of the internet, of other aspects of their education, of their own backgrounds to relate the ideas to. I get 10 weeks and my own paltry masters degree (during which I mostly read Kant and DeBeauvoir and dealt with sexism from all angles) to give them something to think about. Hiring another person who is even more specialized than I am won't fix this, shitty as that is. Our job is mostly now to encourage students to be citizen agents of their education, not to be the scope itself.
Ugh, I'm writing this instead of grading midterms. About 15% of which are written as fiction instead of "traditional philosophical essay", so that's something.
posted by zinful at 6:09 PM on May 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Also, moving interested students to the next level up usually means that if they only know who Iriguray and Wollenscraft and Focault are they're gonna have a bad time when everyone assumes in Phil 304 or whatever that they have basic familiarity with the canon.
Sure, call our departments Western Philosophy. But that zinger doesn't give us any more time or resources, it just kills our departments even faster than the old white dudes pontificating and the fedora kids gobbling it all up.
posted by zinful at 6:14 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sure, call our departments Western Philosophy. But that zinger doesn't give us any more time or resources, it just kills our departments even faster than the old white dudes pontificating and the fedora kids gobbling it all up.
posted by zinful at 6:14 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Reading languagehat's history article led me to another possibly stupid question: How do you even keep up with philosophy that's actively being done in another language? Unless you're fluent enough to read journals and participate in conferences, at best you'd be reporting on old news rather than actively contributing, and is that what you want your philosophy grad students (as opposed to your history-of-philosophy grad students) doing?
(Is that part of why "Continental" philosophy isn't done in the Anglosphere anymore, once the WWII refugee effect wore off? Not enough bilingual students and professors to allow active participation in French or German or Italian or whatever philosophy discussions?)
posted by clawsoon at 6:31 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
(Is that part of why "Continental" philosophy isn't done in the Anglosphere anymore, once the WWII refugee effect wore off? Not enough bilingual students and professors to allow active participation in French or German or Italian or whatever philosophy discussions?)
posted by clawsoon at 6:31 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Mencius uses gardening metaphors; Xunzi wants you to chip away at your own soul with a chisel.
I'm coming at this from the outside (thanks for the resources!) but this seems a lot like the positive reinforcement/punishment divides often found in functional psychology (where we actively try to change the behavior of other humans). Positive reinforcement encourages cultivation of strengths, a focus on what someone does well, and support for areas of deficit. Punishment encourages focus on ineffective or inaccurate behavior for the purpose of correction. I didn't expect that, somehow, but I suppose this contrast is pretty fundamentally human.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:52 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm coming at this from the outside (thanks for the resources!) but this seems a lot like the positive reinforcement/punishment divides often found in functional psychology (where we actively try to change the behavior of other humans). Positive reinforcement encourages cultivation of strengths, a focus on what someone does well, and support for areas of deficit. Punishment encourages focus on ineffective or inaccurate behavior for the purpose of correction. I didn't expect that, somehow, but I suppose this contrast is pretty fundamentally human.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:52 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Is that part of why "Continental" philosophy isn't done in the Anglosphere anymore, once the WWII refugee effect wore off?
There's a lot to this question, but one quick remark: many of the drivers behind analytic philosophy, which is the dominant philosophical style (though maybe not substance) in professional philosophy today, were Germans and Austrians fleeing Nazi Germany. Carnap and Reichenbach being two big, big examples. (The philosophical views of the Vienna Circle were labeled as "Jewish philosophy" by Hitler. And many of the logical empiricists and logical positivists were socialists -- and not of the nationalist variety.) The label "Continental" is misleading in that many philosophers from continental Europe have been (and are) "analytic" philosophers.
With respect to the broader question, lots of first-rate philosophy done in other countries is now done in English. English has become the lingua franca -- for good or for ill. So, for example, I've read a bunch of the work of Wolfgang Spohn on causation and on decision theory. He's German, but his work is (mostly) in English. And this isn't really unusual: Jan Sprenger, Stephan Hartmann, and Hannes Leitgeb are all prominent examples (but really just the well-known tip of an enormous iceberg). And it's not just Germans, Austrians, and the Dutch. One of my biggest influences in graduate school was my professor, Edouard Machery. He's French, but he teaches in a U.S. department and most of his published work is in English. There is a very strong contingent of analytic philosophers in Hungary, including my good friend Balazs Gyenis. And on and on.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:56 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
There's a lot to this question, but one quick remark: many of the drivers behind analytic philosophy, which is the dominant philosophical style (though maybe not substance) in professional philosophy today, were Germans and Austrians fleeing Nazi Germany. Carnap and Reichenbach being two big, big examples. (The philosophical views of the Vienna Circle were labeled as "Jewish philosophy" by Hitler. And many of the logical empiricists and logical positivists were socialists -- and not of the nationalist variety.) The label "Continental" is misleading in that many philosophers from continental Europe have been (and are) "analytic" philosophers.
With respect to the broader question, lots of first-rate philosophy done in other countries is now done in English. English has become the lingua franca -- for good or for ill. So, for example, I've read a bunch of the work of Wolfgang Spohn on causation and on decision theory. He's German, but his work is (mostly) in English. And this isn't really unusual: Jan Sprenger, Stephan Hartmann, and Hannes Leitgeb are all prominent examples (but really just the well-known tip of an enormous iceberg). And it's not just Germans, Austrians, and the Dutch. One of my biggest influences in graduate school was my professor, Edouard Machery. He's French, but he teaches in a U.S. department and most of his published work is in English. There is a very strong contingent of analytic philosophers in Hungary, including my good friend Balazs Gyenis. And on and on.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 7:56 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Interesting, and thanks for the reminder that so many analytical philosophers came from the Continent! And forgive my ignorance, but are the German/Austrian/Dutch philosophers you mention doing analytic philosophy, or do they work in other streams? (I don't know where causation and decision theory fit, for example.) Are there any major streams of philosophy that you're cut off from because of language?
(I'm reminded of work in other disciplines where the English world fell behind because journals primarily published in other languages - organic chemistry in German before 1914, and phage therapy in Russian from the 1940s onward, to pick two random examples.)
posted by clawsoon at 8:15 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
(I'm reminded of work in other disciplines where the English world fell behind because journals primarily published in other languages - organic chemistry in German before 1914, and phage therapy in Russian from the 1940s onward, to pick two random examples.)
posted by clawsoon at 8:15 PM on May 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm mostly cut off from streams of philosophy because of time. Just not enough time to keep up with everything. There is probably interesting philosophical work being done today that I couldn't easily read. But there is so much that is done in English that it's hard to be bothered to go looking for what you're missing. Especially when you don't know that you're missing it. In saying that I'm really not trying to be dismissive of philosophical work written in languages other than English. This is mostly a confession of ignorance: I know lots of non-U.S. philosophers, lots of philosophers whose first language is not English, and some (though admittedly fewer) philosophers whose first language is Japanese or Chinese; but I don't know of any philosophical work that I really want to engage but cannot because it's in a language other than English.
All of the people I mentioned are working in the analytic tradition. I'm sure it's possible to work on causation outside of the analytic tradition. (I hope that sounds obviously true. I think it's obviously true.) I don't know of any contemporary non-analytic philosophers working on causation. But I'm not sure that's a limitation due to language. I think it's just that I haven't run across non-analytic work on causation that struck me as important to my own projects. Decision theory is a harder case because usually "decision theory" refers to a body of mathematical tools and results applied to fundamental questions about rationality, choice, and inference, and (today, at least) using lots of formal tools is a mark of being in the analytic tradition. That said, I'm sure there are non-analytic philosophers working on rationality, how to make decisions, and so on.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:31 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
All of the people I mentioned are working in the analytic tradition. I'm sure it's possible to work on causation outside of the analytic tradition. (I hope that sounds obviously true. I think it's obviously true.) I don't know of any contemporary non-analytic philosophers working on causation. But I'm not sure that's a limitation due to language. I think it's just that I haven't run across non-analytic work on causation that struck me as important to my own projects. Decision theory is a harder case because usually "decision theory" refers to a body of mathematical tools and results applied to fundamental questions about rationality, choice, and inference, and (today, at least) using lots of formal tools is a mark of being in the analytic tradition. That said, I'm sure there are non-analytic philosophers working on rationality, how to make decisions, and so on.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:31 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
My uni did offer an undergrad course in Chinese Philosophy, which I took, but found rather dull. Confucius is just a social conservative, and Lao Tsu was a mystic similar to the Pythagoras etc. (and Pythagoras you only ready becuase he influenced Plato).
The Author is also rather wrong about Islamic, Jewish philosophers being left out. Averroes and Mainmondes and a few others are both part of the "western" canon to some extent, and you might look into them if you are looking at Spinoza.
These articles always seem to gloss over the fact that the main reason you read say Leibniz is to understand his impact on later philosophy and to get understand the terms, and the legacy of his problems in contemporary philosophy.
Confucious though has had almost no significant impact on later philosophy. Reading that stuff is kind of a dead end.
posted by mary8nne at 11:23 PM on May 11, 2016
The Author is also rather wrong about Islamic, Jewish philosophers being left out. Averroes and Mainmondes and a few others are both part of the "western" canon to some extent, and you might look into them if you are looking at Spinoza.
These articles always seem to gloss over the fact that the main reason you read say Leibniz is to understand his impact on later philosophy and to get understand the terms, and the legacy of his problems in contemporary philosophy.
Confucious though has had almost no significant impact on later philosophy. Reading that stuff is kind of a dead end.
posted by mary8nne at 11:23 PM on May 11, 2016
@mar8nne: Um, Confucius had plenty of influence on later Chinese Philosophy. After the ebbing of Buddhism in China, for instance, from the Song dynasty onwards, Neo-Confucianism was the dominant philosophical school. The regard for Confucius was such that one could not be taken seriously with any philosophical argument or position that was not cast as a commentary on what were taken to be the writings of Confucius.
Also, if what you got out of a course in Chinese philosophy was that Confucius was a social conservative, it was not taught in a very insightful way. He's really an exponent of a singularly demanding form of virtue ethics with a crucial difference from Western versions, like Aristotle, that he foregrounds the importance of ritual in the social realm and treats the ability to act correctly as in some good part having ritual competence.
Confucianism as a philosophy (or a religion) should be separated conceptually from Confucianism as a species of cultural norms found in the Far East. (There the 'conservative' label might stick.)
posted by bertran at 2:17 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
Also, if what you got out of a course in Chinese philosophy was that Confucius was a social conservative, it was not taught in a very insightful way. He's really an exponent of a singularly demanding form of virtue ethics with a crucial difference from Western versions, like Aristotle, that he foregrounds the importance of ritual in the social realm and treats the ability to act correctly as in some good part having ritual competence.
Confucianism as a philosophy (or a religion) should be separated conceptually from Confucianism as a species of cultural norms found in the Far East. (There the 'conservative' label might stick.)
posted by bertran at 2:17 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
Some other responses to this article:
On the Very Idea of Non-Western Philosophy
Diversity, Neutrality, Philosophy
Also, Daily Nous has largely supplanted Leiter as the space where professional philosophers publicly discuss news items like this one. Check out the discussion here.
A FB friend also shared a useful comment:
"A lot of the material backdrop to this is the claim of American universities to be *global* centers of knowledge that set the agenda for the *entire world*. This is part of what generates the urgency for American universities to represent everything under the sun in a totally inclusive manner, yet it is has a clear imperialist component. Egalitarian ideologies that value 'diversity' play a complex and often two-sided role in globalist thinking."
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:06 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
On the Very Idea of Non-Western Philosophy
Diversity, Neutrality, Philosophy
Also, Daily Nous has largely supplanted Leiter as the space where professional philosophers publicly discuss news items like this one. Check out the discussion here.
A FB friend also shared a useful comment:
"A lot of the material backdrop to this is the claim of American universities to be *global* centers of knowledge that set the agenda for the *entire world*. This is part of what generates the urgency for American universities to represent everything under the sun in a totally inclusive manner, yet it is has a clear imperialist component. Egalitarian ideologies that value 'diversity' play a complex and often two-sided role in globalist thinking."
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:06 AM on May 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
There are still a few continental departments squirreled away around the country. SUNY Stony Brook, DePaul, Villanova, Notre Dame, Georgetown ...lots of Catholic schools, for some reason.
While there are certainly major exceptions (Harvard and Princeton are hardcore Anglo-American philosophy, for starters), I think that private and especially religious colleges are more likely to have a strong interest in either history of philosophy or Continental philosophy, than you will find in the public, land-grant type Universities. That may be because a boom of expansion in philosophy programs at public schools happened at the high water mark of analytic philosophy, in the mid-20th century, I don't know. It's not surprising to me that Catholic universities have strong programs in phenomenology or other Continental philosophy areas since they are often more in contact with theological themes than analytic work is.
posted by thelonius at 11:30 AM on May 12, 2016
While there are certainly major exceptions (Harvard and Princeton are hardcore Anglo-American philosophy, for starters), I think that private and especially religious colleges are more likely to have a strong interest in either history of philosophy or Continental philosophy, than you will find in the public, land-grant type Universities. That may be because a boom of expansion in philosophy programs at public schools happened at the high water mark of analytic philosophy, in the mid-20th century, I don't know. It's not surprising to me that Catholic universities have strong programs in phenomenology or other Continental philosophy areas since they are often more in contact with theological themes than analytic work is.
posted by thelonius at 11:30 AM on May 12, 2016
@thelonius, I read a really cool article that said that there is currently also a great interest among Chinese philosophy students in studying the tradition of modern Western philosophy, but I haven't been able to find it. I think that it's very interesting to try to imagine encountering that tradition from the outside, as it were.
I think I understand what you are getting at here but, to be fair, mainland China has been steeped in Marxism for almost a century. In some way, these students are already inside in the so-called Western philosophical tradition even as they are in other ways outside it.
You are right of course. Maybe they are now able to study Hume or Spinoza or whatever without fear of that being seen as reactionary? I'm sorry I still don't find the cite.
posted by thelonius at 5:21 PM on May 12, 2016
I think I understand what you are getting at here but, to be fair, mainland China has been steeped in Marxism for almost a century. In some way, these students are already inside in the so-called Western philosophical tradition even as they are in other ways outside it.
You are right of course. Maybe they are now able to study Hume or Spinoza or whatever without fear of that being seen as reactionary? I'm sorry I still don't find the cite.
posted by thelonius at 5:21 PM on May 12, 2016
I am sorry you paid for such poor instruction. I am also sorry the school didn't have the sophistication to hire someone with good mental health, and actual knowledge of the Philosophies of Asia.
This professor, who has since passed on, was tenured and by all accounts on a long downslope by the time I had his class. We all smirked that Dobby** couldn't teach a morning class because he wasn't able to be sober, but in hindsight, that wasn't really funny--and in fact, when he was clear-minded and relatively sober, his only morning class, Philosophy Of Law, was one of the my favorites during my undergraduate studies. Sadly, those days were few and far between, as he was slowly reaching toward his publicly-stated goal of passing out drunk on a bench during wintertime and freezing to death.
Also worth noting was that Dobby was married to a Japanese woman he met during the US Occupation, and somehow his appreciation of Japanese art and culture became translated to his offering up The Tale Of Genji.
**A pseudonym.
posted by stannate at 12:40 PM on May 13, 2016
This professor, who has since passed on, was tenured and by all accounts on a long downslope by the time I had his class. We all smirked that Dobby** couldn't teach a morning class because he wasn't able to be sober, but in hindsight, that wasn't really funny--and in fact, when he was clear-minded and relatively sober, his only morning class, Philosophy Of Law, was one of the my favorites during my undergraduate studies. Sadly, those days were few and far between, as he was slowly reaching toward his publicly-stated goal of passing out drunk on a bench during wintertime and freezing to death.
Also worth noting was that Dobby was married to a Japanese woman he met during the US Occupation, and somehow his appreciation of Japanese art and culture became translated to his offering up The Tale Of Genji.
**A pseudonym.
posted by stannate at 12:40 PM on May 13, 2016
« Older Apparently we're putting pierogies on sandwiches... | "This was an act of unity amongst sisters and a... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:43 AM on May 11, 2016 [14 favorites]