Racist curricula and the challenge of multicultural philosophy

Abstract

This review essay discusses Bryan Van Norden’s book Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. Van Norden analyzes the situation in which the West deprives philosophies from other cultural traditions of their philosophical nature, as well as the cultural and political conditioning of this problem. Van Norden convincingly demonstrates implicit racism hidden behind philosophy curricula, which is supported by increasing nationalism in both Europe and the United States. Although his book is not radical enough in multiculturalizing philosophy, it successfully combines the approach of an academician with a practical response to the social demands of our times.

• Asian philosophy
• multiculturalism
• orientalism
• philosophy departments
• racism

Notes

1 http://www.bryanvannorden.com/suggestions-for-further-reading.

2 For discussion between Rorty and Chinese philosophers, see Huang (2009).

3 Herder (1800, 293) depicted the Chinese as a crude nation originating from the Mongols whose people are ugly (‘endowed by nature with small eyes, a short nose, a flat forehead, little beard, large ears, and a protuberant belly’) and stupid (‘want of invention,’ ‘little feeling of internal satisfaction, beauty and worth’).

4 ‘The power of logos, of defining and reasoning, has not been accessible to the Chinese’ (Weber 1951, 125).

5 One example of philosophical treatises in classical African philosophy is Zera Yacob’s Hatata (Inquiry) (1667), which deals with ethics and epistemology, posing the question of the existence of God and the reliability of knowledge in a manner comparable to Descartes. See Sumner (1985).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Centre [grant no. 2015/19/N/HS1/00977].