Philosophy has a problem. Here's why.

It's no secret that the philosophical canon has long had a problem of representation.

How do we make philosophy a discipline that takes seriously the thought of more than just dead white European men? Is broadening curricula enough? And how might thinking about monuments and history help us think about the philosophical canon?

In this video, we talk to two scholars who help us think through these questions: Dr. Ana Lucia Araujo, professor of history at Howard University, and Dr. Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr., professor of philosophy at Occidental College. We think about why adding new voices to the canon might not be enough with Professor Sanchez, drawing from his work with Mexican philosophy. We then think about what it might mean to reconsider the Western "tradition" of philosophy as an active and political history, rather than set in stone. Professor Araujo's work here helps us reconceptualize this history in the forms of official and public memory.

We're immensely grateful to Dr. Sanchez and Dr. Araujo for these interviews, and for allowing us to explore their ideas through the Overthink platform. There are links to their work to check out in the description of each full interview, including books and articles from both professors and much more.

Watch our full conversation with Professor Sanchez here:

And our conversation with Professor Araujo here:

Find Professor Sanchez's chapter on the philosophical canon here:

This video is part of a new Overthink interview series, History and Memory in the Americas. Check out the full series on the Overthink channel:

Support Overthink on Patreon!

Find us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at @overthink_pod

* Aaron and Emilio's views, glosses, and interpretations are their own, and do not reflect the opinions of Professor Sanchez or Professor Araujo.

[lungubogdan]

This discussion reminds me of Walter Mignolo's book Epistemic Disobedience (excuse me if I get the title wrong, I read it in my native language, in Romanian). There, in the book, Mignolo attacks colonialism and coloniality and advocates for liberating ourselves instead of emancipating ourselves. But, more importantly, he argues that the Western epistemological perspective is rooted in its geography, calling it an ethnic perspective on the world. This, in turn, is related to his more important notion that knowledge is localized, geographically speaking. Knowledge starts from somewhere on our map, on our home we call earth. The West thought of itself as universal; but they were only showing their geographic bias. Instead, Mignolo argues that we should aim at a pluriversal (plural + universal, in case it is not clear) understanding of epistemology, whilst also reading Kant and Hegel, but also, as you argued, Fanon and Avicenna or Guaman Poma de Ayala. There is a lot to unpack from this book. I loved it!

[yabyum]

I snook in a lecture on Bodhidharma when I taught Critical Thinking

[epicninjali]

I think this boils down to historical influence really. At the end of the day, regardless of the ethics involved, western cultural power has historically overpowered the memetic cultural forces foreign to it. It is for this reason that it seems more likely that European intellectual thought has impacted for instance, Gambian intellectual thought more than Gambian intellectual thought has impacted European intellectual thought. In this way, I think a strong argument can be made that the reason these figures are emphasized the most in academia is due to the global and historical presence of their works. This is especially relevant if we take philosophical education to primarily serve the purpose of preparing individuals for their future careers.

Another point, I think it should be said that in many respects, philosophy is not about the people who we call philosophers. Plato’s philosophy is not our philosophy of Plato. Our philosophy of Plato is a product of thousands of years of interpretation, debate, and translation. What we work with is not “Plato’s thoughts”, rather it’s a book. It is in this light that I think the problematization of our choice of author is largely in vain. We will never have the thought of anyone, only a book, of which we happen to record an author and their historical context.

This very problematization of “diversity within the individuals who shared the thought” is at the very least, only a topic of discourse because it is a largely modern, white/western issue. Should we value a critique from a queer philosopher more because they are queer? If such a philosophy did not fit the hegemonic cultural power of wokeness, I think it’s more likely that in spite of their queerness, said queer person would be ostracized for their dissent. But I’d argue that this shouldn’t be the case because again, philosophy is not a parading celebration of “smart people saying smart things”, rather, it is an academic discipline in which we philosophically investigate ideas on our own while also analyzing influential *works*.

In spite of my criticisms, I don’t actually think that including a larger pool of voices in philosophical education is a bad thing. In fact, even in the western canon, there have been many points of innovation which arose due to western philosophers exploring ideas outside the western dialogue. There is a kind of investigative contamination which I think can contribute to stagnation in philosophical progress (should such a thing exist). I do think there is a value that can come from the inclusion of more voices however I often worry that what we might hope to be an intellectual exercise is really devolving into a form of class conflict. One where the spirit of philosophy gives way to a war waged by the culture industry. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments since, after all, philosophy (atleast in its dignified form) only produces its effects as a public good : )

[pourquoipas]

Philosophy, in my opinion, is a method to think better and wisely, .. so many good philosophers in more than more than 2500 years … so many different perspectives! each human being who wants to improve himself has a enormous library at his disposal .. he can choose to start with Socrates or Aristotle… or with kant, Spinoza ( hard path!) … start with Frantz Fanon, , Averoes… Even begin with philosophers still alive as Byung Chul Han … if you are interested in Philosophy it means you are open minded and curious… 😊

[MrJoxxxi]

Buddhist philosophy has a start point of no self and no ontos, thus the logical deductions can't lead to anything since the truth can't be.

[alangivre]

I think one of the problems is that we abandoned universalism. Greek philosophers were trying to create universal knowledge, but the same were trying to do Islamic, or eastern philosophy.

We are obsessed with power, and thus we are obsessed with particularism. In the past, thinkers saw themselves as universal, not particular,

[jedje]

This is an interesting discussion. I do research on the topic of representation, wrote an article about it Abstract : Reality [Shadowplay], look it up if you are interested. We try to appoint ideas to certain characters, although there is nothing to find in those characters themselves. It is instead the mechanism, the kind of interactions between them that should be studied more.

[felipegermano]

Outside of a judgement based on value, does philosophy apply to any kind of thought? I am a history student and in my discipline we tend to not call historical figures something they didn't identify as, meaning, if an important figure did not know the word "philosophy" we shouldn't call them philosophers. So we could attach the term to thinkers who did live in a world were this connection between "thinker" and "philosopher" does exist, but not to people who had no contact with western philosophy canon. This is not me saying non-western thought is less valuable than western philosophy, but me saying that, for an example, you can't understand someone as a marxist if they don't know who marx is, or if they died before he was born.

[thesophist]

Using the name "Avicenna" for somebody who never did, or never would, use that name is part of the problem too.

[OccupationalPhenomenology]

Irrelevance is philosophy’s biggest problem, I say that as someone who loves it. I suppose more diverse voices in philosophy might address the relevance problem. I stress “might”.

[Omulosi]

Why not do a course on living Bantu philosophers to compensate? Mindful not to use Latin script as European/white in origin. Naturally you will not employ the term Africa which originally named a Roman
province: its use to define the entire landmass a European naming convention as with the mapping of the continent itself. I’ve noticed some ‘Afrocentrists’ using the Teuton spelling Afrika - irony? Look forward to an authentically ‘Black’ /Bantu event assuming a viable textual key for those whose only text is that of the Roman or Dwem.

[nawzadjamal]

I think, we have to separate a philosophers origin from the philosophy as a discipline or faculty of reason and thinking . we could say this of that philosopher an European philosopher but philosophy itself is universal.

[Bruh-eljs]

Let's not give Spengler fuel. Philosophy is universal, any ethnic or regional philosophy has the same explanatory appeal as folklore. Avicenna was also explicitly an universalist.

[harrycornelius]

This was one of the most intellectually mushy episodes of overthink. Without a clear rigorous definition of the process of philosophy, it is hard to say what is philosophy and what is not — unless one defines it historically as work that is referential to an historical body of work and its set of issues. We can acknowledge that there are different traditions. I see no problem with relabeling what we call Philosophy a Western Philosophy on a rigorous basis. Each tradition would get its own label. As global communications and interchange make texts and conversations converge we get a more global culture which can expand the body of philosophy — if we define philosophy as whatever we call philosophy rather than by a process definition. In which case this is a political or aesthetic not a philosophical exercise. Much quasi-philosophical literature is well worth reading. But does that make it philosophy or something else?Certainly the canon needs expansion but the ChatGPT ploy was disingenuous because Fran’s Fanon and Wittgenstein and a host of feminist philosophers are all taught in philosophy courses. The problem with the canon is there are just too many philosophers worth reading so pruning / prioritizing the canon is a mater of taste and politics. The need to be “inclusive” of other voices is a social political requirement from a cultural historical perspective. For me St Anselm should be regulated to dustbin of philosophy because- although historically important- his whole project is merely a convoluted rationalization of his faith and so is false. Which points to a potential test of philosophy.

[obrotherwhereartliam]

I don’t think I know a single philosopher who defends this clichéd version of the canon. Nor I have I ever seen an argument made in defending an exclusive canon.

[TheGarudaman]

I get the sense that the theme here, in this particular presentation, is “inclusive-ness” of “other” culture’s general ideas and concepts and their interpretations with those few “original thinkers” in order to gain deeper understanding of this situation: this business of living and staying alive. Thankfully, imo, your conclusion is right on! The Past is always Present. Things that we take for granted as “wrong” today; lying and prejudices for instance, were as wrong then as they are wrong Now. Many things were NEVER the right things to do—anywhere on the planet at any period of time. As a great philosopher, Erik Fromm, once put “if you are alive, you knows what is allowed.

[morricane]

On ca. ~7:30: Well, that's why we have "history of philosophy" or, if you want to, we might call that attempt at understanding and interpreting someone else's thought also "philosophical research/study", not "doing philosophy". This is the position of a Japanese friend when prompted to describe his own activity. He also, incidentally, considers "philosophy" specifically meaning "Western philosophy" and not just any kind of theoretical-abstract-etc. thinking in general. In Japan, the latter is traditionally called *shisô* 思想 - literally: "thought" - and practically distinguished from *tetsugaku* 哲学 - "philosophy" - which specifically refers to thinking recurring to the European tradition. Personally, I see a problem with this, namely: how do you call what Latour might have called a hybrid, the amalgam of ideas that is either neither or both? P.S.: At least in an university context, maybe it would be good to just get rid of "canon" in the first place and just teach thought-provoking texts, no matter who wrote them. I don't see the purpose beyond an institutionalized pressure to legitimize one's curriculum, but the second you delegitimize the tracing of a historical connection (e.g., Kant replied to Hume, Schelling to Kant etc.), the "tradition" and the "canon" as being useful to understanding a specific lineage of texts, it becomes hard to argue for a specific canon:curriculum as necessary or self-evident.

[whitecrowXX]

No one invents philosophy, it just a name or patent we give to our process of thinking or confusion. Just as we catch the abstraction of the world start naming a tree as a tree. With or without name, it still exist anyway.

[TheOtherCaleb]

The definition and end of philosophy is very muddied in this video.

[elvinsruben]

Nietzsche giggles in his grave: history is will to power