Who Is Canceling Aristotle?
The Panic over the Imaginary Threat to the Canon
Agnes Callard’s “Should We Cancel Aristotle?” appears to be a brave defense of keeping Aristotle in the canon. But who is for kicking him out?
Professor Callard writes, “I would defend Aristotle, and his place on philosophy syllabuses, by pointing to the benefits of engaging with him.” Defend Aristotle from whom? Aristotle continues to be one of the most widely taught and researched thinkers in philosophical history. (By one reckoning, his Nicomachean Ethics is one of the top 10 most widely assigned texts in US colleges and universities, and his Politics and Poetics are also in the top 100.)
Published in The Stone, the philosophy column of The New York Times, Callard’s article notes that Aristotle defended the institution of slavery and the innate inferiority of women. Everyone who teaches Aristotle is aware of this, including those (like me and Martha Nussbaum) who consider ourselves simultaneously Aristotelians and political progressives.
The article continues, “If cancellation is removal from a position of prominence on the basis of an ideological crime, it might appear that there is a case to be made for canceling Aristotle.” This has the formal appearance of giving a definition of “cancellation,” but Socrates would tear it to bits in a moment for its lack of clarity. What would it mean for Aristotle to be “removed from a position of prominence” that he currently has?
Here are some possible meanings of the “cancellation” that the author might oppose: (1) Aristotle should be banned from the curriculum; no one should teach him, except in the context of condemning him. (2) Aristotle should play a less central role in the philosophy curriculum.
If (1) is what the author means by “cancellation,” then she is arguing against a silly straw man.
Position (2) is in fact quite plausible, if we mean by it that we should make room in the curriculum for other voices, including critics of Aristotle’s sexism like Christine de Pizan and Lucrezia Marinella and critics of slavery like Bartolomé de las Casas and Frederick Douglass. While we’re at it, let’s make room in the curriculum for Mengzi and Zhuangzi, for the Bhagavad Gita and the Nyāya Sutras. (For responses to the tedious and fallacious arguments against diversifying the curriculum, see my book, “Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto.”)
Since interpretation (1) is fatuous, and the op-ed fails to present even a prima facie argument against (2), perhaps it is uncharitable to attribute either interpretation of “cancellation” to it. Perhaps the author is actually arguing against the claim that (3): we should not discuss ideas in a vacuum, but should instead discuss the actual political consequences of what philosophers teach. Again, if this is “cancellation,” then I am all for it.
Every time I teach Aristotle, I discuss his sexism and his defense of slavery, and the considerable historical impact his arguments have had and continue to have. I consider it irresponsible to teach Aristotle and not at least mention these things (although I would leave it up to the discretion of the individual instructor how much they want to focus on them). But I never thought for one minute that this makes Aristotle “our enemy” (as Callard accuses some unnamed group of thinking).
Some of what Callard says suggests that this third position is her target. We are told that we should read Aristotle “literally — which is to say, read his words purely as vehicles for the contents of his beliefs.” Trying to understand the content and the putative justifications of a thinker’s beliefs is certainly an important part of what we as philosophers should do and teach our students to do. But are other questions and issues off limits?
We are informed that Aristotle’s “approach to ethics was empirical — that is, it was based on observation.” Well, not just observation. Plato observed the same world and arrived at very different conclusions about the intellectual and moral capacities of women, for example. (Are W. V. O. Quine and Thomas Kuhn among the grandfathers of “cancel culture” for warning us that observations under-determine theory choice?)
Callard continues, “When I read [Aristotle], I see that view of the world — and that’s all. I do not read an evil intent or ulterior motive behind his words; I do not interpret them as a mark of his bad character, or as attempting to convey a dangerous message that I might need to combat or silence in order to protect the vulnerable.” But as responsible philosophers we cannot pretend that the view that some people are natural slaves, or that women are incapable of excelling at certain intellectual activities are innocent empirical claims without practical — and sadly contemporary — significance.
We also need to remember that among our students are people who have felt firsthand the continuing practical consequences of Aristotle’s more heinous views. To primly insist that we (and they) treat his views as merely “empirical” hypotheses or focus only on the “literal content” of what he says is to leave out too many important — and philosophically interesting! — issues.
Near the end of the essay, Callard laments that in our current political climate, “…even the cry for ‘free speech’ invites a nonliteral interpretation, as being nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power.” But, as we saw with the recent “Harper Letter,” sometimes “the cry for ‘free speech’ ” is “nothing but the most efficient way for its advocates to acquire or consolidate power” — and (as others have pointed out) it is irresponsible to ignore this.
The day Callard’s essay was published, I tweeted a warning:
Sure enough, two days later the conservative opinion journal National Review published “Why Are We Even Contemplating Canceling Aristotle?” There’s not much new content in this essay. It does claim that Callard’s argument is inadequate because it is “vertical,” whereas a really good defense of Aristotle would be “horizontal.” The article also complains that contemporary Americans are insufficiently respectful of medieval French royalty. (Really.)
Whatever else it fails to do, the National Review essay leaves readers with the mistaken impression that there is a campaign to “cancel” Aristotle. In fact, the article solemnly explains, “Cancelation, after all, is total. There’d be no exception for [Aristotle’s] Poetics if cancelation occurred.” Note that we are so deep into a hysterical fantasy that we are being told what the rules are of the imaginary campaign to cancel Aristotle.
One of my criticisms of Callard’s essay is that it is indefensibly vague at key points, particularly about what “cancellation” is and about what the supposed threat to Aristotle is. (Interestingly, Aristotle has a discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics of whether anything bad can happen to you if, like Aristotle, you have been dead for over two millennia.) Philosophers like Russell, Carnap, and Orwell knew that vagueness is not just a theoretical defect. Vagueness can be the tool of oppression. It allows one to influence others in a way that evades rational critique by being impossible to pin down. (Trump is a master of this technique, as are the authors of the “Harper Letter.”)
However, in my closing summation, I will follow the author’s advice and merely respond to the “literal content” of the essay: it is poorly written and poorly argued because it is vague.
[Afterword: Professor Callard’s essay and my response were recently translated into Chinese, and may be found via the following links: