[Buddha-l] The arrow: its removal and examination

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 25 June 2007 10:34, Tom Head wrote:

> Leave it to a Mississippian to propose what is in effect a
> segregationist argument, but doesn't this just go towards the view that
> if we distinguish between English and American and world history and
> literature, then we should do the same with philosophy? 

More and more, that is becoming the norm. The American Philosophical 
Association (founded by Benjamin Franklin) routinely has sections in Asian 
philosophy and even in Buddhist philosophy. The Philosophical Gourmet (a web 
site that, among other services, gives advice to undergraduates seeking 
graduate programs in philosophy), list and ranks programs in Indian and 
Chinese philosophy. Despite all those promising signs, Asian philosophy is 
usually see as a "add-on" feature; it's what a student can do after she has 
read all the Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, 
Heidegger, and Derrida that a young mind can hold.

> I have never 
> understood why an M.A. in Philosophy implies that you have studied
> European thinkers but not Asian or African thinkers.

Thirty years ago, Archie Bahm of University of New Mexico, argued that no one 
could be considered educated in philosophy unless they knew at least 
something about Indian and Chinese philosophy. He also argued that both 
European and Indian philosophy and Chinese philosophy could all be improved 
by each tradition taking seriously the other two. And in talking about 
European philosophy, he found it essential to take into account Jewish and 
Muslim thinkers as well as Christians. When I was a young pup, I was quite 
enamored with Bahm's vision of philosophy and was pleased to see that his 
ideas had found a receptive audience among his colleagues at his home 
university (which is now my academic home). Alas, as the Eagles pointed 
out, "things in this world change very slowly if they ever change at all," 
and the University of New Mexico's philosophy program is still rather rare in 
North America. If we want our students to find academic jobs, it is claimed 
by most of my colleagues, we had better suit their credentials to the 
actually existing academic market rather than trying to re-educate the entire 
world at once.

> It seems almost comically provincial.

At the risk of irritating some of my esteemed colleagues, I really do think 
that philosophers, on the whole, are among the most provincial humanists in 
the academic realm. One of my dear friends from undergraduate days was for 
years chair of a philosophy department that refused to accept the idea that 
there were any philosophers in Africa. My friend is an African, but he is 
taken seriously as a philosopher because he did his doctorate on Heidegger. 
See, an African who studies a German is almost as good as white. But an 
African who studies Africans is considered hopelessly parochial, especially 
in the world of philosophy in which it is rare for French philosophers and 
German philosophers to acknowledge one another's existence.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the world of academic philosophers to show 
signs of any love of wisdom.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico