How an imbalance of cultural perspectives robs the next generation of thinkers
In their New York Times opinion piece, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” Jay L. Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden made a strong argument illustrating the current lack of cultural diversity in academic philosophy curricula.
The two professors provide a troubling piece of evidence:
“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.”
This issue alone seems big enough to be cause for alarm, but the authors also raise several others, like the facts that “of the 118 doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States and Canada, only 10 percent have a specialist in Chinese philosophy as part of their regular faculty,” and that “no other humanities discipline demonstrates this systematic neglect of most of the civilizations in its domain.”
Garfield and Van Norden proceed to exhaustedly declare that it would be “futile to rehearse arguments for greater diversity one more time,” because of the apparent commitment of the academic philosophy community to its Eurocentric perspective.
They continue with an ad absurdum argument, suggesting that any philosophy department offering courses in only Western philosophy declare its true intentions by renaming itself “Department of European and American Philosophy.” While amusing, this argument is not particularly compelling.
I disagree with Garfield and Van Norden in their assertion that it is the “intention” of the philosophy community to teach a curriculum heavily weighted towards Western thought. Instead, I believe this situation to be a lingering side effect of broader and more complex systemic issues.
Everything in our world needs constant updating as our cultural and global values evolve. While other academic disciplines do appear to be leaving philosophy in the dust in their pursuit of diversity, this is not intentional, but is rather due to the common nature of those who choose a life of contemplation: we often consider it to be superior to a life of action.
This trait is often disappointingly revealed in our all-too-frequent unwillingness to act. It’s not that a majority of us within the discipline stubbornly refuse to change, it’s that we are often paralyzed by own analysis and that we are prone to make excuses for ourselves on that basis.
I also disagree with Garfield and Van Norden’s claim that to continue to argue for diversity is “futile.” Not only is it worthwhile to argue this point, but it is also our specific responsibility as philosophers to argue such points.
As John Stuart Mill explains in On Liberty:
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
We in philosophy must hold ourselves justly accountable for the injuries brought about by our inaction. As philosophers, we cannot condone this kind of intellectual or moral laziness, as this is the antithesis of every goal at which philosophy has aimed throughout history.
Garfield and Van Norden conclude their case with a Stoic adage: “The Fates lead those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.” It is true that those sticks still stuck in the mud are likely to find themselves “dragged” forward into a more diverse future; but what about those of us who would come along willingly?
There are some obvious consequences of keeping things the way they are, like supporting an overall cultural narrative rooted in xenophobia, and further marginalizing the groups whose ideas have been left out of the discourse. However, there’s another group being cheated by this paradigm: philosophy students.
When an LA Times op-ed asked why it was that “Like the Oscars, #PhilosophySoWhite,” it wasn’t just a question of “political correctness,” but a cry for correctness in cognition. The authors of this article, Myisha Cherry and Eric Schwitzgebel, cite troubling statistics regarding the lack of diversity in philosophy departments, like the fact that only 28% of philosophy PhDs are women, and only 2% are African-Americans. They go on to explain a possible reason for why this is:
“It’s not that white men are innately better philosophers than women and people of color. It’s that white men have better command of the cultural apparatus of seeming smart.”
In a culture with many conditions that favor white men, it’s much easier for white men to appear wise and insightful. Illogical as it obviously is, this appearance is key when it comes to getting recognition in academic philosophy circles. The fact that our archetypal image of a philosopher is a white, Western man hurts the credibility of anyone who doesn’t fit that mold before they ever speak.
We are committing a collective ad hominem fallacy by poisoning our own well of ideas. This must certainly discourage women and minorities from entering any debate. While this is bad news for these groups in both the context of the philosophy community and the world at large, it’s also bad for everyone else in philosophy, and as a result, bad for society.
We are ironically sabotaging our own community and culture with our own bad logic. “Before you listen to her, let me remind you that she’s been in jail…”
Even if we completely ignore the race and gender-based political implications of what is happening here, we are still left with other ethical issues, as well as practical ones.
We shouldn’t change the academic philosophy narrative just because refusing to do so is racist, misogynistic, archaic, and wrong; we should do it because there is an undeniable intrinsic value to cultivating broader views of life in our society’s future thinkers, as well as to cultivating diversity in the pool of said thinkers.
Without politicizing the issue at all, in maintaining the status quo we are still guilty of failing to do our jobs as seekers of truth. The motto of my university is, “Let knowledge serve the city.” We are failing to facilitate this, though ours is the department that is perhaps most concerned with how knowledge serves us.
I, myself, serve as an example of someone who was frustrated with the lack of cultural diversity in my department’s curriculum even before I started reading the opinions of others on the subject. There are many parallel ideas across cultures, and exploring their similarities and differences can help us to better understand the nature of human thought.
Excluding non-European thought from the academic philosophy narrative doesn’t just hurt the interests of non-Europeans overall, it also hurts the ability of students like me to learn the thinking skills which we are studying philosophy in order to obtain, and narrows our perspectives of the world. These are serious consequences when it comes to nurturing our minds, because our minds will be responsible for passing on the legacy of humanity’s centuries-old pursuit of wisdom.
The ancient Aztecs believed that a good life is a life spent doing what is worthwhile. It was a common aphorism in their culture to say that the earth was “slippery.” They thought it was unrealistic to live a life in which we are expected not to make mistakes.
According to philosophy professor Sebastian Purcell:
“The Aztecs held, in short, that it’s unrealistic to think that anyone can lead a perfectly good life, one in which you never slip up. A better goal, then, is to try to lead a rooted life, which they called neltiliztli: literally, rootedness. In this kind of life, one is able to manage the mistakes and slip-ups well, rather than avoid them altogether. The reward is not happiness necessarily, but the promise of a worthwhile life.”
Purcell goes on to mention that public drunkenness was severely punished in the Aztec capital. Nobles could even be put to death for such careless behavior. Among my own friends, when someone behaves carelessly like that, we say that they are “slippin’.”
According to Urban Dictionary, this colloquialism is defined as, “Off guard, not paying attention to your surroundings and not putting in the right effort.”
Philosophy: You are slippin’.
Those of us who have chosen the contemplative life have a responsibility to ourselves and to the world to relentlessly pursue knowledge. In this worthwhile pursuit, we must learn to manage our mistakes.
Originally published on medium.com on December 9th, 2019.
Esoteric Epistemology 