Western philosophy is racist | Hacker News Reader

Western philosophy is racist

aeon.co

6 pointsaryehof9 comments

I like how the author manages to slip in a completely irrelevant snide remark about "white males".

These sorts of essays would be easier to take seriously if their authors weren't always such stereotypical ideological puppets.

Do Chinese and African philosophers take into account Western thought? And if they don't, is that still ok, or are they racist as well?

It is only in the West that the idea developed that there is objective truth and moral value that can be determined by natural reason available to all people in all cultures. The other civilizations held that truth and morality were confined to their own religion and own ethnic groups. The very idea of saying some set of ideas is bad because it is racist is a modern Western invention.

I think this would be more accurately titled "Kant was racist, and so are several other modern philosophers and their readers" but that wouldn't be as good clickbait. The whole first quarter or so of the article is about the pre-Kantian western traditions of acknowledging and responding to non-western philosophy.

We think Africa was excluded from Western thought because Augustine gets painted to look like an Italian. Who's Augustine? Oh yeah, just one of the most influential patristics of all time, revered in the entire western church, both Roman and Protestant.

That was a really bizarre statement anyway - north Africans are often very light in skin tone. The author appears to equate "African" with "black", which isn't at all the case. It's a big continent with a ton of diversity and always has been. For example, look up images of the Berber ethnic group.

When the author is getting basic claims wrong and accusing people of racism based on things he clearly has no idea about, it's hard to take the rest of his argument seriously.

Indiano philosophy have influenced indirectly greek philosoohy. Pitagora has ben in India. Vegetarianism and trasmigration waa influenced from India philosophy.

Im not white but i can tell you that these articles are racist. Not western philosophy or whites etc...

I haven't done a proper criticism in a while but I actually like this piece so the only right thing to in order to show it respect is tear into it. Addressed to the author.

> But how else can we explain the fact...

This doesn't really follow. If you're making this your thesis you should at least phrase it in a way that conveys that this is the statement the article is attempting to show. Otherwise it looks like you're assuming the conclusion -- or worse asking the reader to make such a huge leap.

> Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan ...

> As Park convincingly argues

That's not really up to you, the author, to decide.

> defenders of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) consciously rewrote ...

This is an even greater charge than the title. It deserves its own article or at least a small inline summary. A story about philosophical corruption that runs so deep they were purposely rewriting history isn't something you just mention. I want to read that article more than this one.

> So the exclusion of non-European philosophy from the canon was a decision ...

> On the other hand, European intellectuals increasingly accepted and systematised ...

Show me. I'm genuinely interested.

> Kant himself was notoriously racist. He treated race as a scientific category

Certainly by today's standards but it's weird to hang a person by adhering to the scientific consensus at the time. The man lived in the 1700s and race was still considered biological through the 1930s.

> If this is a coincidence, it is a stunning one.

You're supposed to be connecting the dots with evidence, not showing the dots and insinuating the evidence. Even if it's 'obvious' show me excerpts of philosophers that were influenced by Kant parroting his beliefs -- if it's so pervasive it can't be hard. Extra super bonus points for putting together a graph of influence.

Also, why did Kant start thinking this way? It's not like he was born racist. You don't really touch on the other half of the timeline.

> This is the position defended by D Kyle Peone

It doesn't bolster your argument that you found some nobody to argue for a position poorly -- even if it's a rhetorical device. You can cut this and go straight to Heidegger with no loss of strength.

> When the Indian philosopher Surendra Nath

This really just weakens your argument by giving an easy foothold to push back on. Yes, people frequently hide behind jokes like this but it's because the trick works. You will waste time arguing to a wall unless you have concrete evidence on his intent. The best you can say is that he was rude.

> The case of Eugene Sun Park illustrates how Moore’s intellectual descendants are equally narrow-minded

This is a single example of a single person and you, the author, are asking us to generalize to a huge population of philosophers. If you want to make statements about an entire population then you need data.

> Some philosophers will grant

Who? Examples!

> To anyone who asserts that there is no philosophy outside

This is a very long paragraph that could be summed up by "Non-Western philosophy does have valuable insights but nobody is looking." Name dropping like this is really condescending for what could have been a really positive paragraph showing how different cultures approach the same problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com