The students at the prestigious London university should learn how to think properly. Philosophy exists by its own merit, it is what all those philosophers said that counts. The individuals are only famous because they wrote/said maths, science, politics, logic reason and general philosophy. This isn’t the fucking X-factor, though I agree that African, oriental and indeed all philosophies should be included in the curriculum.
There has to be some manner of measure of importance e.g. knowledge or what do you not include? Don’t absolutely everyone have an equal amount to say, or be given that potential ~ ergo you would have to put EverythinG in the curriculum!
What is wrong with studying the Greeks, they are the founders of western philosophy, and so have at least equal merit to eastern’s. Except for the simple fact that Europe and Greece in particular, have simply contributed more, much much more! What the fuck has Africa contributed? The ancient Egyptian stuff has as much merit as the oriental I suppose, but that’s mostly not philosophy.
I like this debate… however the problem with the students “demands” is
they already teach this in Oriental philosophy… western philosophy by
definition is the study of old, white, dead guys… you can’t really escape that
fact…so let us follow the students demands, you want Plato out, so
who do you study in place of Plato? Or whom do you put in place when
you remove Descartes? the problem with colonialism is it is a recent historical
event… you can explain colonialism without reference to Plato because they
are two different things… colonialism is an historical fact, but what would
Plato have to do with that fact? Nothing as far as I can tell…
Now you can have someone like Camus and colonialism because
Camus actually has written about colonialism in regards to his country being
colonize by France… you can certainly discuss that but on the whole
philosophy doesn’t have anything to say in the least about colonization
of countries…you may as well write about Plato’s version of baseball
as you might about what he wrote about colonialization…
so the students are really just bitching about something they know nothing
about because if they actually understood it, they wouldn’t have demanded it…
Kropotkin
And I imagine that someday we may well have to contend with philosophers from other planets.
Unfortunately, none of us will be around to debate the “political correctness” of that.
Sir Roger Scruton
His name looks like Scrotum. Sir Roger Scrotum.
Betting he isn’t even a real philosopher, just a professor.
K: feel free to look up Scruton… he has written several very good books
on philosophy including biographies…
Kropotkin
I saw his wrote on Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”. Rest I don’t much care for, wouldn’t put much emphasis on aesthetics as a thing in itself, that’s far too simplified of a feedback loop, barely touched the subject/object interrelations of perception and psychological consequence. Would Sun Tzu’s Formlessness or Buddhist Emptiness or Christian Unknowing fall into such a statecraft as some boogyman range of concepts, for the sake of exhaulting impressionability of obvious beauty?
Secondly, your defending him, which makes me even more suspicious.
I’m hardly opposed to art, just the Nietzschean fascination with art over survival or ethical motivated pragmatism as the highest good. I would never trade a human life for a art work.
This is coming from someone who just ordered a blank medieval style scroll for writing down a short essay via a careful script. I do deeply cherish art and effort, think philosophy books should on the one hand be made dirt cheap and accessible financially, but the best made painfully inaccessible in terms of access, not necessarily by costs, but licenced requiring no photographs, only reproduction by hand. If you need a work that badly, it is free to track down and hand copy, in the tradition of the Vavarium. But I would never make that the essential focus of my philosophy, nor demand society to follow suit. Philosophy is for a earnest few, you can have the knowledge posted anywhere, but it isn’t the same as the painful endeavor of searching it out, really taking it serious as something precious.
That pen above the scroll, best pen sold on the planet. I always use red ink, it’s my signature.
I wasn’t going to go anywhere near this thread, but on this morning’s early morning news that University’s Philosophy professor was being interviewed… with another professor added to the mix to argue against the intended move… well there really was no sensationalism (like I suspected and knew, that it wasn’t about eliminating Western philosophy from their studies altogether) as it was simply a case of wanting less emphasis on an already heavily-based Western philosophy prospectus and more of an emphasis on an Eastern based one.
Oh the outrage!
The professor against the intended move to the more Eastern teachings, upon hearing the under-sensationalised real intention, proceeded to close his argument with the fact that he now wished that he had studied more Eastern philosophy during his studies as a young undergraduate… due to its rich and exciting offerings that he is only now just getting a chance to discover, but had begun his argument against by saying that all the best philosophical discoveries were Western… to which the university’s professor replied that many of those ‘discoveries’ were based on more ancient ones from the East, to which the other professor agreed.
Are only Western ideals and philosophical offerings the epitome of civilisation?
Name ONE “pre-colonial” african philosopher we should study in the stead of and of the same significance as one of the “White” philosophers specifically mentioned.
Oh, and do tell about all those African civilizations worth more than the dog turd stuck to the bottom of my shoe…Cue the wild claims about Blackcient Egypt.
There was an interview on Newsnight yesterday that echoed exactly what Mags was saying. It is not as the thread title implies that white European philosophers
should no longer be studied but instead that consideration should be given for non white non European philosophers. Now before the Enlightenment Europe was
in the Dark Ages [ fourteenth century ] and instead it was in the Middle East and Asia where advances in philosophy [ and science and maths ] were being made
The Granarian Civilization, they are what the ancient Greeks called Libyans. They gave a lot of ideas, such as mummification and chariot tactics, to the Egyptians.
Egyptian Civilization.
Nubian
Ethiopian, especially Axum, but also the Ethiopian Empire, with it’s preservation of Orthodox Christianity, as well as Second Temple Judiasm.
Berbers, both pagan and Jewish, but also Islamic have impressed upon history and philosophy.
Morocco since the 8th century.
Carthage, a philosopher if which even headed the philosophy school in Athens in ancient times.
The Cyrenaic Philosophers obviously named themselves after a area of Africa.
The largest library in the ancient world, center of philosophy, was in Alexandria, Egypt.
The bulk of Islamic Spain moved back to North Africa, the first Sociologist and Modern Historian Ibn Khaldun was of this stock. Africa likewise inspired explorers like Leo Africanus.
Islamic Spain, a colony of Moorish Africa, gave Europe it’s 12th Century Renaissance.
Saracens invaded Italy (both Sicily and southern Italy) during the dark ages.
Several civilizations, composed of city states, grew up in West Africa. Mali discovered the Americas long before we ever did. Richest man in history was from Mali in fact, $400 billion dollars. Timbuktu rose on the sub-saharan trade routes. Jewish civilization flourished till the 20th century in the Berber Sahara. The Atlas Mountains were amongst the most educated and evolved populations on earth till near recently, definitely during the muddle ages could go toe to toe with the west. I’m talking way up in the mountains.
Neo-Platonic philosophy originated in Egypt, it’s best Christian practioner was St. Augustine in Carthage.
St. Anthony developed Christian Monastacism in Egypt, the bulk of our scholastic achievements to this day in the west is dependent upon this very African institution.
Most of our trade with India left africa in ancient times. It helped spurred finding a way back after the Muslims decisively cut us off in terms of access.
Africa was a integrated and essential part of the Roman Empire. It even preserved Orthodox Latin Christianity till the 14th Century, before the last moved to Rome.
Islamic Africa developed the basic mathematical ideas behind Ramon Llyll’s early 12th century computers, and that’s where he first field tested them, in places like Tunis.
The Swahili language group evolved out of Arabic mixing with East African natives, they’ve been literate continuously linger than your ancestors likely have been, and have traded with China since the 14th century, as well as inspired local nation state building, both Pagan and Islamic.
South Africa built nuclear weapons, then decided it didn’t want them anymore, one of the few nations to ever denuclearize.
Significant to who?
You keep solely mentioning African.
Of just one, Ibn Khaldun.
That sounds very reasonable but there are several problems with the idea.
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Undergrads, who don’t know anything, are placing themselves in the position of deciding which philosophers are worth studying
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It institutionalizes racism and sexist by making race and gender a critical part of the selection process. (I throw ‘gender’ in there because feminists make or will make the same proposals.)
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There is a limited amount of time available for learning and teaching. Studying a large number of philosophers will dilute content. Preventing that dilution by elimination of philosophers is based on race and gender and not ‘merit’.
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Western thought is largely the result of these particular philosophers. It has a great deal of value to our society and culture. A western university is the result that particular thinking and it exists to pass it on. To reduce or to stop teaching those philosophers, goes directly against the purpose of the university.
To western students of philosophy.
I don’t doubt that Confucius is extremely important in Chinese culture, but should he be important in Western culture?
Yeah, that’s a bunch of bullshit. (Marxist anti-white assholes)
I personally find a lot of eastern philosophy to be non-interesting, boring, and trivial.
Western philosophy is where it is at.
I’ve always tried to learn as much as I can about philosophy bottom up, from the oldest to the modern, world round. I never understood the apathy between east and west, it isn’t obvious once you read either side’s philosophy in depth, we tend to produce mostly parallel schools of thought. Even Westerners, like Georg Feuerstein only got into western philosophy very late in life, it was a surprise to him discovering how closely it aligned to eastern thought.
I myself don’t draw such lined. It’s something I never did. Philosophy is Philosophy.
So we are conflating “North African” with the rest of that continent. That doesn’t work for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is that we aren’t talking about anything sub-saharan. Nor were most of those pre-colonial unless you are only talking “White” colonialism. Furthermore, we are almost exclusively NOT talking about actual philosophy or philosophers but vague references to unsettled bits of history regarding who had what and gave what to whom, and are trying to conflate questionable genetic origin and makeup against “White” philosophers (not questionable as in ‘poor quality’ but questionable as in there is a question of the makeup, or is evidence of admixtures. When you say African and Asian, you almost never are really meaning AFRICA or ASIA, but a small region in the middle of the developing world at that time. You can give very few examples that are “Asian” except for those that are likely ALREADY STUDIED.
Asian philosophy is too lyrical in that it almost resembles poetry. (Koans and such)
It also revolves around too much mysticism. Mysticism is alright but too much of it isn’t.
Western empiricism in contrast is all about clarity by comparison.