“If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is”
“Most philosophy departments also offer no courses on Africana, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, Native American or other non-European traditions. Indeed, of the top 50 philosophy doctoral programs in the English-speaking world, only 15 percent have any regular faculty members who teach any non-Western philosophy…
No other humanities discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain. The present situation is hard to justify morally, politically, epistemically or as good educational and research training practice…
Some of our colleagues defend this orientation on the grounds that non-European philosophy belongs only in “area studies” departments, like Asian Studies, African Studies or Latin American Studies. We ask that those who hold this view be consistent, and locate their own departments in “area studies” as well, in this case, Anglo-European Philosophical Studies.”
Yes. I really appreciate how they phrase it here — just asking for people to be honest about what they are doing.
I’m reflecting on this further and thinking about my perceptions of philosophy… which are honestly really negative. It always seemed like a game that isolated white men played with words. I have good friends who majored in philosophy, or really loved the tools they learned from philosophy classes, and so I feel bad saying it; I wanted to like it, because there is a part of neuroscience that fades into the philosophical, but I could never get into it.
I took a philosophy class in high school and I just remember from day one experiencing our readings as these individual men’s attempts to explain their world from their specific historical/cultural perspective. It never felt like a way to find “truth” or to arrive at true universals for how the world/universe works. It was just ‘huh, that’s an interesting way to describe reality… I guess a person could use this to explain their experiences’. But it was very evident that these books were not written for me and I doubted any of the authors could have imagined a black, female teenager engaging with their ideas.
And I can overlook that when I’m reading, like, biology research papers but I just can’t with philosophy — and maybe that dissonance would have been easier if my teachers and professors had been clear that we were going to engage with anglo-European thought.
Related: “Shitstorm In Academia As Professors Receive Packets Of Poop”; “When Philosophy Lost Its Way”
