Western philosophy is racist + Should jail be worse than life outside at bottom?

[C C]

Why the Western philosophical canon is xenophobic and racist
https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-western-p...and-racist

EXCERPT: Mainstream philosophy in the so-called West is narrow-minded, unimaginative, and even xenophobic. I know I am levelling a serious charge. But how else can we explain the fact that the rich philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely ignored by almost all philosophy departments in both Europe and the English-speaking world?

Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan. [...] One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented, and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the Universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. [...] Leibniz also said that, while the West [...] is superior to China in the natural sciences, ‘certainly they surpass us [...] in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals’.

[...] One might argue that, while Kant’s racist premises are indefensible, his conclusion is correct, because the essence of philosophy is to be a part of one specific Western intellectual lineage. This is the position defended by D Kyle Peone [...] Peone [...] argued that, because ‘philosophy’ is a word of Greek origin, it refers only to the tradition that grows out of the ancient Greek thinkers. A similar line of argument was given here in Aeon by Nicholas Tampio, who pronounced that ‘Philosophy originates in Plato’s Republic.’

These are transparently bad arguments (as both Jay Garfield and Amy Olberding have pointed out). For one thing, if the etymology of a term determines which culture ‘owns’ that subject, then there is no algebra in Europe, since we got that term from Arabic. In addition, if philosophy starts with Plato’s Republic, then I guess the inventor of the Socratic method was not a philosopher. My colleagues who teach and write books on pre-Socratic ‘philosophers’ such as Heraclitus and Parmenides are also out of jobs.

Peone and Tampio are part of a long line of thinkers who have tried to simply define non-European philosophy out of existence. In What is Philosophy (1956), Martin Heidegger claimed that:

"The often-heard expression ‘Western-European philosophy’ is, in truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek in its nature; … the nature of philosophy is of such a kind that it first appropriated the Greek world, and only it, in order to unfold."

Similarly, on a visit to China in 2001, Jacques Derrida stunned his hosts (who teach in Chinese philosophy departments) by announcing that ‘China does not have any philosophy, only thought.’ In response to the obvious shock of his audience, Derrida insisted that ‘Philosophy is related to some sort of particular history, some languages, and some ancient Greek invention. … It is something of European form.’

The statements of Derrida and Heidegger might have the appearance of complimenting non-Western philosophy for avoiding the entanglements of Western metaphysics. In actuality, their comments are as condescending as talk of ‘noble savages’...

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-western-p...and-racist

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Should life in jail be worse than outside, on principle?
https://aeon.co/ideas/should-life-in-jai...-principle

EXCERPT: Approximately 2.3 million people in the United States are currently in prison or jail. (Prisons are run by federal or state authorities; jails are run locally.) China, a non-democratic regime with a population four times larger than the US, incarcerates fewer persons in per-capita and absolute terms. What’s more, most people in US jails today have not been convicted, meaning that they are being punished without trial. Since US jail admissions number approximately 11 million per year, pre-trial incarceration is, arguably, the real problem of ‘mass incarceration’.

The crucial concept governing carceral practices is something called ‘less eligibility’. [...]  the conditions in the workhouse should be awful: worse even than the poorest of the poor. [...] Other countries do not run their jails and prisons according to a principle of less eligibility. German prisons operate under an ‘approximation’ principle, wherein offenders’ rights to privacy, dignity and property are protected. Norwegian prisons use a similar ‘normality principle’, which holds that daily prison life should be, as far as possible, no different from ordinary life. Fellow Englishman and Bentham disciple James Mill embraced the normality principle in 1825 by arguing that inmates in pre-trial incarceration should be allowed to lead the same life that they enjoyed prior to arrest, including access to employment and freedom to make small purchases with their own money. Today, US jails and prisons have rejected these examples in thrall to ‘less eligibility’, and not just for the poorest of the poor.

Why are the carceral practices in the US so harsh? Part of the reason is the vestige of a Christian-inspired desire to reform the offender’s soul....

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/should-life-in-jai...-principle

[Syne]

There's nothing xenophobic or racist about the fact that Western philosophy has more secular roots while Eastern has more mystical roots. That's like assuming modern science is xenophobic for under-appreciating religion.

[Yazata]

Why the Western philosophical canon is xenophobic and racist

It isn't. Not even close. So why does this guy say it is?

Because he's some pseudo-Asian church lady (he's an American professor in Singapore) shaking his finger at everyone else's perceived sin.

People like this hated it when fundies did it to atheists and homosexuals and when Joe McCarthy did it to commies and pinkos. Now they're the ones doing it to everyone else: "Racist! Xenophobe!" It's the same emotional attitude.

But how else can we explain the fact that the rich philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely ignored by almost all philosophy departments in both Europe and the English-speaking world?

Indian and Chinese philosophy are getting a lot of attention. I was just reading an epistemology introduction yesterday that pointed out that Indian Buddhist philosophers had been discussing Gettier-like examples in the 8th century and how they have remained a topic of philosophical discussion in Tibet.

I'm not convinced that Africa or the indigenous Americas ever produced distinct traditions of philosophical argument or ever really addressed the more abstract problems of interest to contemporary analytical philosophy. Philosophical-style (ontological and epistemological) assumptions and presuppositions have to be kind of teased out of things they say about other matters in other contexts. (Reconstructing the history of ideas for preliterate cultures is an additional problem.)

Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan. [...] One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented, and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the Universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. [...] Leibniz also said that, while the West [...] is superior to China in the natural sciences, ‘certainly they surpass us [...] in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals’.

Leibniz's views aren't universally shared. The I Ching never invented binary arithmetic, it had entirely different purposes and goals. It needs to be understood in its intellectual context and not forced into an ill-fitting Western conceptual box. And while the Chinese Confucian tradition is obviously hugely sophisticated and very advanced in its own terms, it never gave rise to ideas of democracy and individual freedoms and liberties. The Chinese tradition, from the imperial period to today's communists, has always been extremely top-down and hierarchical. It's all about everyone knowing their place and behaving appropriately.

[...] One might argue that, while Kant’s racist premises are indefensible, his conclusion is correct, because the essence of philosophy is to be a part of one specific Western intellectual lineage. This is the position defended by D Kyle Peone [...] Peone [...] argued that, because ‘philosophy’ is a word of Greek origin, it refers only to the tradition that grows out of the ancient Greek thinkers. A similar line of argument was given here in Aeon by Nicholas Tampio, who pronounced that ‘Philosophy originates in Plato’s Republic.’

The fact remains that the 'analytic' tradition in Western philosophy is a tradition. It's a whole host of philosophical questions about metaphysics, epistemology, language, ethics or whatever that have arisen over the centuries and that are widely discussed today.

It's true that Indian philosophy in particular has addressed many of the same problems and did so very early and in very sophisticated ways. It would do contemporary Western academic philosophy no end of good to take more cognizance of that and to incorporate more of those non-Western insights, provided that they are relevant and that they contribute to the discussion. I think that the idea of many of these philosophical discussions going more global is a good thing.

But none of this is really an occasion for condemning everyone else's perceived evil and sin.

These are transparently bad arguments (as both Jay Garfield and Amy Olberding have pointed out). For one thing, if the etymology of a term determines which culture ‘owns’ that subject, then there is no algebra in Europe, since we got that term from Arabic.

If we could somehow get rid of algebra, millions of high-school students would be eternally grateful.

In addition, if philosophy starts with Plato’s Republic, then I guess the inventor of the Socratic method was not a philosopher. My colleagues who teach and write books on pre-Socratic ‘philosophers’ such as Heraclitus and Parmenides are also out of jobs.

Who is this guy arguing against? The entire Western philosophical tradition? Or some article in some magazine where some author wrote something that seemed kind of ridiculous? The essay seems to be losing its focus.

Then there's a condemnation of something Heidegger supposedly wrote in 1956. Then a condemnation of Derrida. Whatever the target is, it's constantly moving.

This guy probably should be doing something himself to bring Asian philosophical ideas to bear on traditional Western philosophical topics. And not only that, perhaps there are traditionally Asian philosophical concerns that the Western traditions haven't really addressed, that need to be brought to Western philosophers' attention.

Eastern and Western philosophical traditions can obviously learn from each other and cross-fertilize. That needs to be encouraged. But it's only going to be possible if we can somehow lose all the angry moral posturing and condemnations.

[C C]

Why the Western philosophical canon is xenophobic and racist

It isn't. Not even close. So why does this guy say it is?

He's not the only one. There's been a wave of papers / articles in recent years trying to undermine the institutions of the West (their objective authority status) via the cultural equality angle and its racism / sexism / greed type weapons of arousing public animosity. As the ancestral forebear of those institutions, philosophy is an early target on the agenda, since its rationality has to be compromised to permit better backdoor invasion of science.

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