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 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
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
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
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