Diverse Philosophy

Next time, do some research before you troll. Your post is too off-the-wall.

My point is that there is no demarcation that separates so-called western from so-called non-western philosophies. Where do you draw the line? I would honestly love to know.

What are the criteria by which a philosophical text is judged to be part of one tradition and not part of another? Logic? Falsifiability? If that's the case, then Confucius should be right at the top of any philosophy student's reading list, and Hegel is out for sure.

But that's not the case. The analytic apologists, who are basically arguing for the continued ghettoization of their already impoverished field, are saying that somehow everyone from Plato to Damascius, from Sextus Empiricus to Roger Bacon to Hegel to Sartre to Wittgenstein forms a sort of pristine monolith that shall not be touched by the filthy hands of Cheng Xuanying or Nagarjuna.

This whole thing is just the sublimated continuation of Christian polemics. We have the gospel and they don't. QED.

Holy shit, you're making it worse. Stop.

>My point is that there is no demarcation that separates so-called western from so-called non-western philosophies.

Geography would be the easiest demarcation. Special exceptions could be made for philosophers that heavily draw upon philosophies outside their geographical area. I don't see the problem here other disciplines organize themselves this way e.g. history, music, cultural studies.

You know what the problem is here? There is no criteria whatsoever, those people have this vague feeling that something is missing from their education, and that different cultures might have concepts and methods approaching questions of knowledge, metaphysics and what not that might fill that gap, so they try to 'diversificate', in an attempt to cover up the fact that the problem is not Philosophy or History or whatever but their own mediocrity.

That's sort of what the article is calling for. If you're going to just do European philosophy, then that's fine, but you should acknowledge that it is regional.

Whereas the general academic tenor these days - and I'm really only familiar with the anglophone analytic context - is that they aren't doing "European philosophy" as opposed to "Chinese philosophy," but that they are doing "real philosophy" as opposed to ______ (mysticism, obfuscation, fuzzy thinking, what have you).

So to draw a geographical border, as they do in history, would be to simultaneously legitimize world philosophy, to which our lettered friends here at Veeky Forums would react with cries of SJW and cuckery.

This is fucking stupid. I didn't expect any better from a Jew York Times piece.

And I'm Latin American.

>what are dialectics
>what is geography
>what is continuous discourse
You've made up a problem where there wasn't one. If the Chinese and Maya didn't write on a particular problem, that has nothing to do with the answer to said problem, and those Chinese and Maya who are alive today are free to read what's been written on that problem regardless of the race of the men who wrote it. If you think anyone but the most abject retards think there's such a thing as a gospel in philosophy, you simply don't know what you're talking about.

What a wonderful time to be alive, or so you'd think.

Hey Uncle Tom, catch any runaway slaves lately?

>jew york tymes

Actually, Uncle Tom was a pretty good guy who fought slavery. You just didn't read the book and fell for the meme created by the theatre piece.

And there's no such thing as "Latin American Philosophy". Remember, this guy is not arguing that in Academic philosophy people do not pay attention to what is being produced in LA (in logic this is particularly false). Rather, he is arguing that there is some kind of tradition rooted in this continent. He's doing nothing more than perpetrating 'good savage' thinking.

Any department of philosophy that has not been dominated by continentals would scoff at this article.

So you're saying that the categories relevant to contemporary philosophical discourse are simply absent from Chinese philosophy?

Dialectics, for example, are non-existent in Chinese philosophy? This is simply not true. It wasn't even true in the classical period of Chinese philosophy, and it certainly wasn't true after Buddhist fertilization.

The project of integrating a wider swath of world thinkers has already begun in other countries - it's been going on in China throughout the 20th century - look up Mou Zongsan for a great example of a mutually informative Hegel-Neoconfucianism. And in Japan the Kyoto school has been active since the 1940's, fusing existentialism, enlightenment and romantic discourses with zen and esoteric Buddhist philosophy.

The argument that Indian or Chinese philosophy don't have content germane to contemporary philosophical issues can only be made from a place of total ignorance.

Decolonize yr mind, ese

Alternative degree programs require both interested students and qualified faculty. For the latter, maybe both, you need alternative degree programs to be established. But oh no, if the discipline in the countries we're choosing to focus on doesn't change over night they're morally reprehensible.

Serious academic philosophy takes place with topics and concepts that have mostly only been advanced in the last 150 years. The kind of "philosophy" you and the article are talking about is basically a sideshow regardless of where it's from.

how's that juicy white cock taste in your mouth?

I think the students that go on to seriously study philosophy would be able to navigate the field. Those simply named 'philosophy' departments would be categorized as the anglophone analytic to everyone aware of the ambiguity.

>our lettered friends here at Veeky Forums would react with cries of SJW and cuckery.

I doubt anyone engaged in restructuring Western philosophy sees any relevant content here.

>I doubt anyone engaged in restructuring Western philosophy sees any relevant content here.
And who the fuck is that? University administrators scrambling for SJW good boy points? The philosophy professors I know are basically autistic geniuses who work on logic and language problems all day. They don't care about restructuring shit because the way it is right now actually advances human knowledge. Keep the stuff you're talking about to like freshman seminars and the history department.

Your appeal to the authority of this imaginary construct "Serious academic philosophy" leaves me wanting.

Even in my own department you can't find two professors who agree what constitute "serious academic philosophy." I don't see how you could possibly presume such a thing exists beyond departmental, state, or national borders.

And this is sort of the crux. One user posted above that it's a crisis of criteria. There are no criteria anymore. The cat's out of the bag. And as much as contemporary analytic departments play at being science, they'll just be further and further relegated into the all-for-decoration underfunded realm of literary studies.

By saying "sure, we'll read Lacan, but Laozi? Please!" It's basically an attempt to hold on to the last shred of self respect that philosophy departments still have. But the self respect is illusory, and anyone outside of philosophy shed it years ago.

Your post is cringe-porn.

>the West wins
>the world tries to rematch us through guilt

Maybe you guys can try to become relevant, but it looks like only Asians want to do that while the rest want to be professional complainers.

Uh oh, did someone get a B on his freshman intro to philosophy class?

Serious academic philosophy is the set of things professors are working on. They have arrived at these problems and topics over generations of mentorship and collaboration, not some kneejerk decision to be as white as possible. It's not an "appeal to authority" to point out that this organic process doesn't have thousands of professors analyzing Laozi right this minute.

It's not a matter of having criteria that need working on. Our expanding knowledge of the world has raised new questions, and so people try to approach answers to those.

It's telling that you think academics all study old books and are having some sort of low-key blacklist at the library. Research rarely looks like that.

>By saying "sure, we'll read Lacan, but Laozi? Please!" It's basically an attempt to hold on to the last shred of self respect that philosophy departments still have.

You are clinically retarded. Neither Lacan nor Laozi is a philosopher and neither addresses philosophical issues, and this is why they are not cited by contemporary philosophers.

>Even in my own department you can't find two professors who agree what constitute "serious academic philosophy."

Where do you go to school - Arkansas community college?

Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden and probably others. I dunno google the article and see what comes up. This would be a nominal change for greater specificity, so it wouldn't impact current research or methodology. It wouldn't greatly impact pedagogy only adding context to students.

Is anyone here an actual philosophy student?

I've taken classes on Yoga and Buddhism and the Kyoto School and Muslim philosophers as well as analytic and continental and ancient greeks and romans and medievals and modernists. And that's just in undergrad. I could study under a specialist in any of these subjects in grad school. Maybe I go to a liberal school.

This. My US hist was just a whole semester of my teacher telling me how bad white people are.

Lol. Ad hominem aside, I'm enjoying this conversation. Thanks anons.

I really like your view of philosophy as this thing that is moving forward and searching after truth. I wish I could see the world through your eyes.

I was using Lacan as an example of how low the standards actually are in Western philosophy. If you read Lacan or Derrida (both of which are admittedly passe now - though Deleuze is still hot, and arguably equally obfuscating) then how can you make a case for keeping anything out of academia?

But you guys really shouldn't listen to me. I'm just a jaded grad student who is only now coming to a full understanding of the rapaciousness of contemporary neoliberal academia. Everyone's a fucking marxist, and it's all about filling the overflowing coffers of these ridiculous institutions.

Jay Garfield is the same dumbfuck who praised DFW's undergraduate philosophy work.

>I was using Lacan as an example of how low the standards actually are in Western philosophy.

Are you fucking trolling? Lacan is NOT studied in Western philosophy.

>If you read Lacan or Derrida (both of which are admittedly passe now - though Deleuze is still hot, and arguably equally obfuscating) then how can you make a case for keeping anything out of academia?

We DON'T read Lacan or Derrida or Deleuze in philosophy departments. That's the fucking point, retard. Maybe they are read in junk fields like "Cultural Studies" along with Laozi and whoever-the-fuck.

You seriously have no clue what you are talking about.

Funs, germs and steel. Cargo btfo

So who is read in philosophy departments? Rush Limbaugh?

Are you fucking retarded?

(-380) Plato: "Republic"
(-340) Aristotle: "Nicomachean Ethics"
(400) Augustine: "Confessions"
(1274) Aquinas: "Summa Theologica"
(1620) Bacon: "Novum Organum"
(1641) Descartes: "Meditations on First Philosophy"
(1651) Hobbes: "Leviathan"
(1677) Spinoza: "Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order"
(1689) Locke: "Two Treatises of Government"
(1690) Locke: "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"
(1704) Leibniz: "New Essays on Human Understanding"
(1710) Berkeley: "A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge"
(1739) Hume: "A Treatise of Human Nature"
(1748) Hume: "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding"
(1762) Rousseau: "The Social Contract"
(1781) Kant: "Critique of Pure Reason"
(1785) Kant: "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals"
(1818) Schopenhauer: "The World as Will and Representation"
(1859) Mill: "On Liberty"
(1863) Mill: "Utilitarianism"
(1874) Sidgwick: "The Methods of Ethics"
(1884) Frege: "The Foundations of Arithmetic"
(1886) Nietzsche: "Beyond Good and Evil"
(1887) Nietzsche: "On the Genealogy of Morality"
(1890) James: "The Principles of Psychology"
(1892) Frege: "On Sense and Reference"
(1899) Peirce: "Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce"
(1903) Moore: "Principia Ethica"
(1907) James: "Pragmatism"
(1919) Russell: "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy"
(1922) Wittgenstein: "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
(1928) Carnap: "The Logical Structure of the World"
(1934) Popper: "The Logic of Scientific Discovery"
(1936) Ayer: "Language, Truth and Logic"
(1949) Ryle: "The Concept of Mind"
(1953) Wittgenstein: "Philosophical Investigations"
(1955) Goodman: "Fact, Fiction, and Forecast"
(1960) Quine: "Word and Object"
(1962) Kuhn: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"
(1962) Austin: "How to Do Things with Words"
(1963) Popper: "Conjectures and Refutations"
(1965) Hempel: "Aspects of Scientific Explanation"
(1971) Rawls: "A Theory of Justice"
(1972) Kripke: "Naming and Necessity"
(1974) Nozick: "Anarchy, State and Utopia"
(1975) Fodor: "The Language of Thought"
(1975) Putnam: "Mind, Language and Reality"
(1979) Nagel: "Mortal Questions"
(1979) Rorty: "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"
(1980) Davidson: "Essays on Actions and Events"
(1981) Putnam: "Reason, Truth, and History"
(1981) Dretske: "Knowledge and the Flow of Information"
(1981) Nozick: "Philosophical Explanations"
(1982) Evans: "Varieties of Reference"
(1983) Lewis: "Philosophical Papers"
(1983) Searle: "Intentionality"
(1984) Parfit: "Reasons and Persons"
(1984) MacIntyre: "After Virtue"
(1985) Williams: "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy"
(1986) Nagel: "The View From Nowhere"
(1986) Goldman: "Epistemology and Cognition"
(1993) Singer: "Practical Ethics"
(2000) Williamson: "Knowledge and Its Limits"
(2008) Quine: "Quintessence"

scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?category=1211

Wow, that's WAY too few Ancient and Medieval thinkers and WAY too many Enlightenment/Age of Reason ones.

Christ, nobody actually needs to read Berkley. Swap him out for Basil the Great or Duns Scotus.

>(400) Augustine: "Confessions"
Stopped reading right there, try picking something actually relevant to late ancient philosophy instead.

What they think is missing from their education isn't "vague", they just lack the balls to say it outright, so they defer to other cultures, not as examples to follow on, but as authorities to obey.

This is more like history of thought. A lot of these names are not engaged with anymore.

horrible

>Wow, that's WAY too few Ancient and Medieval thinkers

WRONG - precisely the opposite, in fact. I front-loaded the list with earlier philosophers since it is meant to be a historical survey. In reality, very few philosophers read anyone who published before around 1945. Even fewer read anyone born earlier than Gottlob Frege. Occasionally, someone will briefly cite Aristotle or Hume for historical context, but that's about it.

Nobody actually reads anyone before Frege. But they should be vaguely familiar with their positions.

This is why modern philosophy is a joke.

Philosophy major from earlier here.

Ya'll niggas be tripping.

I have had professors who wrote books and articles about eastern thinkers and continental figures (yes, Lacan) just as often as professors who wrote exclusively on analytic topics and shit's not rare.

Leiter weighs in:

Anglophone departments aren't "Departments of European and American Philosophy"...and I'm sure at least Professor Van Norden knows that all too well. Huge stretches of European philosophy--from Hegel to the present, say, or in the 12th through 14th-centuries--are also neglected in many of the top 50 PhD programs. Most of the top 50 PhD programs do not have any faculty teaching American philosophy of the 19th-century. What unites the curricula at these programs is not a commitment to "European and American philosophy" but a commitment to a style of doing philosophy, that derives from some British philosophers, some Continental European ones, and some American ones (it's also a style that is increasingly popular in parts of Asia, by the way)--and it's a style whose leading practitioners now include Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and African-Americans. I empathize with the desires of Professors Garfield and van Norden to see their fields less neglected--I'd like to see my own fields less neglected too! But playing the "diversity card" in this context is a dangerous game to play, that will lead to changes in the field that I'm quite sure Prof. Van Norden won't welcome (I know Prof. Garfield less well, so can offer no opinion about how he might view the ramifications).

leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2016/05/anglophone-departments-arent-departments-of-european-and-american-philosophy.html

That article is mostly preening and posturing, but I will agree that Eastern philosophy ought to be taught more in philosophy departments, as its tradition is very rich and very relevant, not just to score diversity points.

You must go to a shitty community college.

Nice name calling, that's the logic you are learning?

>Leiter weighs in

Of course he does he always does.

>inb4 you get sued.

You're gonna hate STEM then.

You're a joke. They don't read Isaac Newton or Archimedes in the physics department, and they shouldn't read loads of historical philosophers in the philosophy department. The goal of philosophy education is to get people to engage in philosophical problem-solving, not to read the history of the field.

It's not name-calling, it's a rational assessment. Sorry, but nobody studies nonsense-peddlers like Lacan in top philosophy departments.

>The goal of philosophy education is to get people to engage in philosophical problem-solving, not to read the history of the field.

You can study under Zizek if you want to at EGS. I'm pretty sure Ecole Normale has similar programs.

Philosophy is not physics, is not an empirical science with a given 'object' before it. Jesus, this discussion is pointless, just fuck it.

European Graduate School isn't even *ranked* in philosophy. Try again.

Your posts are certainly pointless, given that you are utterly clueless about philosophy.

>modern physics
>valid

HAHAHAH I'm off to bed, you've won, congrats.

>"muh rankings"
And yet one most people think of contemporary philosophers they think of Slavoj Zizek and Thich Nhat Hanh instead of Graham Priest and Saul Kripke (or whoever the fuck you're circle-jerking). Funny how that works, eh? Maybe one day you'll see outside your insular clique.

You guys...

Yes, this article is SJW cuck bullshit but there is nothing wrong with working non-western philosophy into the curriculum, provided it is still good philosophy. I majored in philosophy and I think the only time I learned about non-western philosophy was a class I took on Nagarjuna. Really interesting class and it was enriching to see certain ideas tackled from a totally different perspective and philosophical tradition.

Why wouldn't you want your phil department to offer you access to a wider variety of content and ideas? That goes against the whole idea of what it is to be a philosopher and have an interest in philosophy, imo.

It's why I quit the field, yes.
>The goal of philosophy education is to get people to engage in philosophical problem-solving, not to read the history of the field.
No it's not, there you go projecting your own philosophy onto the whole of philosophy like the stupid teenager you are.

>They don't read Isaac Newton or Archimedes in the physics department
Because empiricism is one of the biggest jokes in the whole of philosophy.

STEM spergs would cease to exist if they had to take relevant history courses to get anywhere in the field.

In addition, it would teach the limitations of the field to the spergs and maybe show them how wonderful things like alchemy and astrology were before pop culture digested them.

The only 'good' physics course I've ever taken was an extended course taken in grade 11 and 12, taught by somebody with actual passion and experience, and is taught as a historical progression from Newtonian physics to Quantum Mechanics, relating modern theories to Newtonian and pre-Newtonian theories and recognizing the hubris of the field.

I double-majored in Physics and Engineering in university; you know what each and every course was?
>here's what you do, if you want it explained read the textbook, you have a test monday (and it was always monday)
And this is a Top 5 university, nationally; arguably the best for engineering.

And what did this lead to? Misery in university, misery working in the field and dealing with STEM spergs who only care about money.
>nobody reads 'thing i dont like' in 'thing i like'
This is what rationalists actually believe.
Stop posting already, you've done this before and aren't as subtle as you seem to think.
This kills the classist.

Making shit up isn't helping your case, son.

Ain't reading all those dead fuckers a philosophical problem on itself?

Maybe some day you will get your wish and every field will become a sub-branch of the history department. Until then, stop confusing your fantasy with reality. The reality is that the reading list I posted is an accurate representation of the field for those who want a historical survey. For those who just want to succeed in philosophy, you can pretty much skip anything written before 1945.

>>nobody reads 'thing i dont like' in 'thing i like'
>This is what rationalists actually believe.

Are you fucking retarded? It's not about "what I like" - it's about what is actually taught and studied in the top philosophy departments. The curriculum does NOT include Lacan or any of your obscurantist buddies.

All they talk about is the philosophy of diversity and post-colonialism. Half the articles are just politics, not even philosophy.

>For those who just want to succeed in philosophy, you can pretty much skip anything written before 1945.
Are you just a troll or severely ignorant and confusing 'modern philosophy' with 'good philosophy'?
Wow so rational.
>it's about what is actually taught and studied in the top philosophy departments.
Yes Mr. Logic and Reason this totally means that their curriculum is good. It's not a cash grab or anything.

Tumblr would be more appreciative of your mindset--I suggest migrating there.

>quit STEM because it wasn't dependent enough on muh Greeks
You're making us humanities students look pretty bad.

Yep, it's just a tool to promote Simon Critchley's political agenda. Zero philosophical content.

Where did I say this?
Like the so-called 'top philosophy departments'?

>Are you just a troll or severely ignorant and confusing 'modern philosophy' with 'good philosophy'?

What in the fuck are you talking about? First of all, modern philosophy = Descartes, Hume, etc. And you are the one droning on about "good philosophy" - not me. I am simply describing philosophy as it actually exists. It includes the figures mentioned in the list I posted. It does not include Lacan. What you personally think about that situation is irrelevant.

I'm not surprised that you think Tumblr represents the height of "logic and reason".

Moron.

You seem to have problems with being too literal. Are you perhaps autistic?

Says the dumbfuck who derailed the thread with his irrelevant personal musings about why philosophy isn't fun anymore.

>I am simply describing philosophy as it actually exists.
Except that isn't as it exists, that's how you envision it--as an intellectually-bankrupt liberal-analytic circlejerk.
>It does not include Lacan
I never mentioned Lacan.
Oh look, another illiterate on Veeky Forums.

I'm actually a different person but your inability to understand how anonymity works on Veeky Forums does seem to confirm my hypothesis.

Yeah, expertise at Veeky Forums means you can't be autistic. Good thinking.

>Except that isn't as it exists, that's how you envision it--as an intellectually-bankrupt liberal-analytic circlejerk.
Nope, that's how it exists in the top departments of philosophy internationally. Sorry if it's not to your taste.

Philosophy, and it's central study Epistemology, deal with the search for Truth and Wisdom.
There is no Diversity in Truth. Truth is singular.
What kind of magical thinking tools believe "Everyone should be allowed to say they're correct. Induction, Deduction, Reason, Empiricism and Axioms are interfering with people's feeeeelings!"

What a load of crap.
There is nothing wrong with "can you fucking prove it"... it's not racist or prejudice; it's fair and reasonable.

>Europeans came up with a good idea first
>Therefore it's prejudice
^ Philosophically, that doesn't work out.

>expertise
>top departments
You can stop lying, you know.

Nobody takes your egalitarian nonsense seriously.

What?

>The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world.
The vast majority of English philosophy departments descended from the European tradition deal with philosophy in the European tradition, especially the English stuff?

wow that is so surprising and problematic

>Given the importance of non-European traditions in both the history of world philosophy and in the contemporary world,
IE not in the European philosophic tradition

>and given the increasing numbers of students in our colleges and universities from non-European backgrounds,
they didn't have to come here and study our philosophy, thanks

>this is astonishing.
I can't see why

>Our expanding knowledge of the world
stopped reading there

Without the west, you would have no philosophy, and without philosophy, there would be no west. To try to poison one of the world's greatest intellectual traditions for the sake of a critical branch of that selfsame tradition (who invented multiculturalism? Who invented the very tools that failed peoples are using to try to disembowel the cultures and traditions of the world that they've been so graciously allowed to exist in?) that's been seized upon by resentful losers is fucking wretched.

"Native American Philosophy!" What a fucking joke. Keep the ossuary of the primitives in the domain of history, or in religious studies.

If real philosophers have things they want to take from other cultures, they will. Just like how 99% of the world wears T-shirts. I wonder why they do that? Hint: it's not because they passed fucking diversity initiatives.

>Without the west, you would have no philosophy

i hope you're kidding

Yeah, I was joking. I mean who can forget Ooga Booga, and his seminal oral classic: "My wife is infested with evil spirits and should be beaten to death?"

>hurr durr everything I need to know about the world I learned from the Bible and Aquinas
Advances in science and technology raise new problems in philosophy. Yes, advances in science means we have more knowledge than we did previously, or are at least nearer to acquiring or clarifying existing knowledge.

The West didn't invent philosophy. The 'Western' philosophical tradition starts in the Near East.