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Reflections on Lao Sze-Kwang 23

In our times, the inclusive and deferential position that Lao staked out for
himself early on still has profound implications within the professional disci-
pline of philosophy itself. Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden published a
wonderful, provocative piece in the New York Times suggesting that de-
partments of philosophy can certainly continue to ignore non-Western philo-
sophical traditions and philosophical diversity generally—no problem—but in
the interests of truth in advertising, Garfield and Van Norden recommend that
such departments have the courtesy of renaming themselves as Departments of
European and American Philosophy. Excerpting from their op-ed piece entitled
“If Philosophy Will not Diversify, Let’sCallItWhat ItReally Is,” they observe
that:

The vast majority of philosophy departments in the United States offer courses only on
philosophy derived from Europe and the English-speaking world. … Given the importance of
non-European traditions in both the history of world philosophy and in the contemporary
world, and given the increasing numbers of students in our colleges and universities from
non-European backgrounds, this is astonishing. … The present situation is hard to justify
morally, politically, epistemically or as good educational and research training practice. …
We therefore suggest that any department that regularly offers courses only on Western
philosophy should rename itself “Department of European and American Philosophy.” This
simple change would make the domain and mission of these departments clear, and would
signal their true intellectual commitments to students and colleagues. 5
John E. Drabinski quickly posted a response to Garfield and Van Norden. He
certainly embraced their motivation in this call for a “rectification of names,” but
wanted to further refine their argument and take it a step or two further. Indeed, he
insists that these same programs are better off acknowledging that they are in fact
Departments of White European and White American Philosophy. If Drabinski
himself is going to offer courses on “Black Existentialism” as a corrective, those
who teach just “Existentialism” ought to acknowledge the pernicious invisibility of
“white” when philosophy courses are taught to our increasingly diverse student
bodies. Indeed, Drabinski argues the contemporary philosophical canon is pre-
cisely that—a particular canon that reproduces a particular history and more
worrisome, a particular way of thinking and living that perpetuates the violence of
ignoring:

What happens in those canonical texts is more than just pursuits of truth and the like. They
are also texts that reproduce base ideological forms—or revolutionize them—that are key to
reproducing certain kinds of societies. In the case of white Western societies, this means
slaving, conquering, and subjugating societies. This is why Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, etc. all

5 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-
it-really-is.html.