Last year, Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden penned an op-ed in the New York Times that took academic philosophy departments in the US to task for failing to take seriously non-Western systems of thought. They suggested that, to better reflect the historical and cultural prejudices of their actual undertakings, philosophy departments in colleges and universities should change their names to “Department of European and American Philosophy.”
For those of us keeping track, Garfield and Van Norden's critique was hardly surprising. Among China specialists, the ingrained bias in academia against accepting Chinese philosophy as "philosophy" has been chronicled for years, most notably in the American Philosophical Association's Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, especially the Fall 2008 (pdf) and Spring 2016 (pdf) editions, and in Brian Bruya's 2015 analysis in the journal, Dao: "The Tacit Rejection of Multiculturalism in American Philosophy Ph.D. Programs: The Case of Chinese Philosophy."
But the op-ed sparked some outrage in its comments section (797 comments strong!) and initiated a sometimes pointed exchange of views among philosophers on the intertubes.
And now comes Van Norden with a more fully developed, yet no less punchy, polemic in the form of a concise and persuasive book: Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. And, indeed, he pulls no punches.
What is likely to attract the most attention is the assertion of racism, both in Garfield's foreword and Van Norden's opening chapter, as part of an explanation for the exclusion of non-Western philosophies from too many philosophy curricula in the US. Academic philosophers, the majority of whom likely identify politically as liberals or progressives, will no doubt recoil at the charge. Garfield, however, is careful to draw a distinction between structural racism and individual racism:
A social structure can be racist when it serves to establish or to perpetuate a set of practices that systematically denigrate - implicitly or explicitly - people of particular races.
Individual academic philosophers can be anti-racist but, through their participation in exclusionary intellectual activity, reproduce a kind of racism. Van Norden, in the first chapter, uses the term "essentialist ethnocentrism" to delve more deeply into the problem, and he provides more substance to it through citations of Kant and Hegel and other cornerstones of the Western philosophical canon. He goes on to argue that Kant and his followers, influenced no doubt by racist conceptions of the impossibility of "philosophy" in non-Western histories, are responsible for the ethnocentric view that "philosophy" encompasses only those texts and traditions, starting in ancient Greece, relevant to their own European intellectual projects. Drawing on Peter K.J. Park's book, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780-1830, Van Norden writes:
On the one hand, defenders of Immanuel Kant's philosophy consciously rewrote the history of philosophy to make it appear that his Critical Idealism was the culmination toward which all earlier philosophy was more or less groping, more or less successfully. On the other hand, European intellectuals increasingly accepted and systematized views of white racial superiority that entailed that no non-Caucasian group could develop philosophy.
The absence of non-Western philosophy from contemporary American academic philosophy departments is not an ahistorical accident. Van Norden's chief task is to confront his philosophy colleagues with this sad and sorry history and make the case that the time for correction, for the inclusion of non-Western systems of thought, is long past due.
In chapter 2, he turns to the affirmative case, a demonstration of the kinds of valuable insights and arguments non-Western sources bring to established philosophical issues and problems. For me, this is the most valuable and successful chapter in the book. In several tightly argued sections, Van Norden brings Cartesians into dialogue with Buddhists on matters of metaphysics; he contrasts Hobbes and Mencius on issues of political philosophy; and shows how Aristotelians and Neo-Confucians might debate questions of ethics. In each case, due attention is given to each tradition's basic premises and constructive comparisons are developed. If anyone is looking for a focused and clearly written chapter to demonstrate to a class, or a roomful of philosophers, or some other group of interested parties just how thought-provoking and refreshing comparative philosophy can be, this is it. I will likely use it in the classroom for precisely this purpose.
Chapters 3 and 4 take on broader problems in American politics and society that create obstacles to more open and inclusive ways of thinking. In Chapter 3, "Trump's Philosopher's," Van Norden presses back against the impulse to build symbolic and physical walls in efforts to construct fantasies of civilizational or nationalistic purity. Although the US is the focus, China and Xi Jinping's invocation of Confucianism and other classical philosophies does attract his attention. This statement applies as much to Xi as it does to Trump:
Political figures who invoke philosophical or spiritual works for nationalistic purposes have no interest in the actual content of the classics they claim to revere. What is important in each case is that the classics are symbols of what is distinctive and superior about us as opposed to them.
Van Norden then moves on, in chapter 4, to argue against the notion that philosophy is useless, the domain of egg-headed academics and impractical isolates. Taking Marco Rubio's infamous line from the deplorable 2016 Republican Presidential candidate debates - that "welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less [sic] philosophers" - he shows how the study of philosophy contributes to successful careers and, more importantly, enlightened citizenship. That these sorts of points have to be made demonstrates just how far down the anti-intellectual path the contemporary culture has strayed, but Van Norden is right to leave no baseless and boorish charge against philosophy unanswered.
The book concludes with a return to academic philosophers and the humanities. Here Van Norden stresses the dialogic practices of Socrates and Confucius, so highly esteemed in the higher education of their respective traditions, as a commonality that might bridge the unnecessary and unfounded divide that separates American and non-Western approaches to philosophy. He ends with an invitation to his academic colleagues:
I too desire to bask in the lunar glow of Plato's genius, and walk side by side with Aristotle through the sacred grounds of the Lyceum. But I also want to "follow the path of questioning and learning" with Zhu Xi, and discuss the "Middle Way" of the Buddha. I'm sure you and I will not agree about which is the best way for one to live.
Let's discuss it...
This is, ultimately, a generous book that reaches beyond the initial charges of racism and essentialist ethnocentrism to show constructively how non-Western philosophies can be brought into fruitful interaction with the Western philosophical canon. While some of it engages with social and political issues well beyond the academy, it should be taken seriously as both a diagnosis of a significant intellectual problem within American colleges and universities and as a concrete prescription for a better way.
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