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Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, by Bryan W. Van Norden
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Review
A powerful call for a global approach to philosophy, demonstrating in practice what it would mean to bring philosophical ideas from different traditions together to rethink the field of philosophy and to rethink the world around us. A wonderful, highly important, and tremendously exciting work. (Michael Puett, author of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life)Taking Back Philosophy is a high-spirited, passionate, over-the-top and ultimately entirely persuasive argument for the inclusion of Chinese thought in the teaching of philosophy in American and European universities. In so doing, it also presents a brilliant case for the importance of philosophy in the moral and political lives of all of us, not just philosophers or academics let alone academic philosophers. It persuades both through polemical and often hilarious attacks on narrow-minded European philosophers and even more narrow-minded American academics and through positive examples of ways in which texts from different traditions can illuminate one another. It will make some people hopping mad and convert many others to the worthy cause of multiculturalism. (Wendy Doniger, author of The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry)Bryan Van Norden's Taking Back Philosophy is a take-no-prisoners attack on normal philosophy, the kind that sees itself as a series of footnotes to Plato. Jay Garfield’s polemical foreword provides compelling evidence that philosophy in the Anglophone world is structurally racist. Van Norden’s text provides a crystal-clear argument for philosophy in a new and inclusive key. If philosophy is concerned with the contours of truth, goodness, and beauty, it will need to open itself to the deep and long-lived philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Americas. A discipline-changing manifesto! (Owen Flanagan, author of The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility)Taking Back Philosophy throws down the gauntlet to the way philosophy has traditionally been taught―and in most places continues to be taught―by the Western philosophical establishment. The book is a must-read for anyone who teaches philosophy or who thinks that there is no philosophy outside the traditions originating in Ancient Greece. (Graham Priest, author of One: Being an Investigation Into the Unity of Reality and of Its Parts, Including the Singular Object Which Is Nothingness)Van Norden challenges philosophers in ways they have never been challenged before while also making the most compelling case I have ever seen for the value of a philosophical education and its very practical benefits for societies that care about promoting civil discourse. He writes engagingly about what philosophy is and what it should be, moving seamlessly between the voices of Chinese, Indian, and Western philosophers, presidential candidates, and Supreme Court justices and offering colorful examples from film, literature, and everyday life. It is at once a stinging indictment of the exclusion of diverse perspectives from the discipline of philosophy and a ringing endorsement of the value of studying philosophy. (Erin M. Cline, author of Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development)A delightful book that takes a global perspective, challenging narrowness in the current philosophic, political, and cultural scene. (Stephen H. Phillips, author of Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy)A vigorous, clear, and convincing book suitable for any reader who cares about philosophy, the liberal arts, or the relevance of diverse cultures to basic questions about how we ought to live. (Aaron Stalnaker, coauthor of Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis)An important book. Philosophers working within and outside departments of philosophy should read and reflect thoughtfully on its arguments. (Reading Religion)This is a wonderfully lucid, purposefully polemical tract calling for non-Western philosophies to be introduced into University curricula. (New York Review of Books)A spirited defense of philosophy as a dialogue that should include multiple perspectives and traditions. (Choice)
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About the Author
Bryan W. Van Norden is chair professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and professor of philosophy at Vassar College. His books include Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy (2007) and Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (2011).Jay L. Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and professor of philosophy, logic, and Buddhist studies at Smith College.
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Product details
Paperback: 248 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press (December 5, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0231184379
ISBN-13: 978-0231184373
Product Dimensions:
5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.1 out of 5 stars
13 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#434,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I imagined I would just start this book last night, but instead I was compelled to finished it in one sitting. Van Norden’s Taking Back Philosophy: A Cultural Manifesto argues in a convincing, sharp, and yet charitable tone, that teaching philosophy non multi-culturally is disadvantageous to us all and even downright non philosophical.Van Norden urges us to return to the way of Socrates and Confucius. The way of approaching others and the world in wonder. The way of learning by discussing with diverse others how best we can all live well. The way that we only know is being done well when some start to worry if we might be 'corrupting the youth.'Unlike Van Norden, many people who write about philosophy offer a murky, abstract, or no definition of philosophy. Or worse yet, they quip that what philosophy is is a philosophical question. Or even more ridiculously, that philosophy is something only Greeks and those influenced by them could do, because the word ‘philosophy’ comes from Greek.Van Norden will have none of this chicanery. He doesn't mince words. He doesn't evade us in an inky cloud. He respects us too much. To his credit, Van Norden gives us a clear definition of what he thinks philosophy is that we can openly agree or disagree with:“Philosophy is dialogue about problems that we agree are important, but don’t agree about the method for solving, where ‘importance’ ultimately gets it sense from the question of the way one should live.â€This is why philosophy should be studied multiculturally. Not because of what one critic of Van Norden called the 'ooshy gooshy need to pretend every culture is equally advanced.’ But, because philosophy can only be of best use to us when it offers differing voices with different assumptions from different traditions. Because then, and only then, will it be allowed for the greatest amount of people with differing assumption to disagree, talk with, and learn from each other about how to solve problems, especially the most important one of all, which is what it means to live a good life.Van Norden argues that philosophy dies when we create walls around our own traditions to protect them from other traditions. For we all have assumptions that blind us, and what the study of multicultural philosophy does is to make our assumptions more obvious by showing that other people and cultures do not share them. In a very real sense, all the assumptions we make come from some philosopher or another, whether or not we know this. We are therefore already already doing philosophy whether or not we realize it, or even do philosophy well.As Van Norden memorably put in in an enjoyable rant of his:“Do you think that the purpose of life is to make the most of your intelligence and contribute to your community? You’re an Aristotelian. Do you think there is no purpose to life except for the one each of us chooses for herself? You’re an existentialist. Do you think that morality has to be explained psychologically, by our emotions and other motivations? You’re a Humean. Do you think that what is right is to do whatever produced the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people? You’re a utilitarian. Do you think that there are some actions that are intrinsically wrong and must never be done, even if they would result in desirable consequences? You’re a Kantian. Do you think that government is designed to protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty and property? You’re a Lockean. Do you think that government must protect our freedoms, but wealth inequality is justifiable only insofar as it benefits those most in need? You’re a Rawlsian. Do you think that much of religious belief can be justified by philosophy? Please say hello to my friend Thomas Aquinas. Do you think we can legitimately have religious belief even though most it must be accepted on faith? Go hang out with my buddies Pascal and Kierkegaard. Do you believe that religion is superstition that has had a largely negative influence on the world? Read Bertrand Russell or J.L. Mackie. Or do you dismiss philosophy as nothing but rationalizations for the will to power or structure of domination? Enjoy Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Foucault. (Oops! They’re philosophers too!) The question is not whether philosophy is important you. It already is. The only question is whether you choose to become self-aware and critically reflective about the philosophical beliefs you hold.â€We do philosophy better when we know what our influences and assumptions are. We do it even better when we are able to (as Van Norden himself does) make our our assumptions respectfully clear to others. We simply blind ourselves to different and perhaps better questions and answers about how we might live well when we ignore or disparage philosophy.This is why Van Norden repeats again and again that the study of philosophy is not incompatible with living well, whether that means something practical, spiritual, or financial for you. Even if you are a scientist who ignorantly despises philosophy as impractical, such as Neil Degrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking, you need philosophy just as much of the rest of us, because as Einstein himself argued:“So many people today -and even professional scientists- seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is -in my opinion- the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a seeker after the truth.â€Or take the words of Schrodinger who (like Einstein also) won a Nobel Prize in physics:“The scientific picture of the real word around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.â€Philosophy helps us do everything better when we do it right, and the only reliable way to do it wrong is to exclude learning from others because we assume we are correct, especially if it’s just because they look or sound different. In other words, the only way to always do bad philosophy is when we ignorantly argue against the multicultural learning and teaching of ‘others’ philosophies. If we aren't worried about corrupting the youth, and inspiring them with questionable ideas about what it means to live well, we aren't doing philosophy right.Van Norden's writing is, as a rule, crisp and precise. His manifesto works as a fine introduction to Chinese philosophy and the study of philosophy more generally. I recommend Van Norden's manifesto to anyone who has ever been interested in studying ‘Non Western philosophy’ and does not know where to begin or feels worried about being disparaged for doing so. Van Norden will equip you with all the arguments you need to make rigid and reactionary defenders of any 'traditional' canon look like the silly pedants they are. Van Norden might even make you laugh too, and what more can you want out of a work on philosophy trying to help you live better?
An important contribution to the debate about whether philosophy is just a Greek-Roman-Europe-American thing. Jay Garfield does the forward. This was an important simulation to my own thinking about philosophy. I think philosophy has lost it way. We need to take back philosophy.
Great intro for non academic of philosophy. Ethics, morality, how to approach becoming a self examiner are all parts here. In a wide world multiculturalism is lost if we is
Great book and a very important read for those with cosmopolitan leanings. It definitely made me rethink about how to shape a syllabus.
Great book. Open page 1, start reading. It's a fascinating ride.
This work is a no holds barred, gauntlet throwing indictment of the exclusion of the philosophy of China, India, Africa, and the Americas in the canon of current academia. Dr. Van Norden speaks directly to the reader in a clear, unimpeded prose that is easily absorbed and understood.How arrogant we are in our Anglocentric world to ignore discplines that predate our learning by hundreds of years. I myself was asked to write a book on colonial America, which rapidly turned into Genealogical Encyclopedia of the Colonial Americas, allowing me to include events happening in South America, almost a century before the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia.Van Norden demonstrates this multicultural vision. He also has a keen grasp of the practical role of philosophy in society, to quote, "What way should one live? Bernard Williams referred to this as the 'Socrates' question,' and identified it as central to ethical philosophy. I would expand upon this and say that it is the ultimate motivating question behind philosophy in every tradition."I would describe this book as a journey, tying together dialogues that may have been lost or discarded, and weaving them back together into one beautiful patchwork of thought.
Very good at contextualizing academic philosophy’s obsession with “the west†and relates philosophy to this same thought region’s political epoch just as well. I would have liked to dive deeper into how philosophy was/is practiced beyond the west rather than just hear about a few thinkers, so that we could better understand both similar and different world views and engage them for a better world.
I've been learning from Van Norden's work on Chinese philosophy for some time. I'm a fan of his and grateful for his work. I also teach non-Western philosophy and am sympathetic to his cause (understatement), and agree with much of his case. He effectively argues that the exclusion of non-Western philosophy from the canon is a completely contingent accident of history, stemming from ethnocentricm and racism in figures like Kant, and perpetuated by sloth, inertia, and more subtle forms of bias today. I only wish it wasn't written in such a politicized tone. Some of my biggest supporters in my department are non-progressive philosophers who are practically uniformly sneered at by Van Norden. It's unfortunate because it's almost like the book is written for people who largely agree with him and think like him. I do understand that VN is writing from a place of justifiable frustration after many years of struggle. It's too bad that like so many people, he often asserts subtle (or not so subtle) political shibboleths of group loyalty when it doesn't help and only excludes people that may have actually been sympathetic to his project. As Mozi stresses, such partiality prevents us coming together for a unified cause.
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