Philosophers of  the Arabs

                 
Bryan W. Van Norden
The second reason that essentialist arguments against multiculturalism fail is that the definition of philosophy as a self-contained dialogue that begins with the Greeks is a recent, historically contingent, and controversial view. As Peter K. J. Park notes in his book Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, the view that “philosophy’s origins are Greek was, in the eighteenth century, the opinion of an extreme minority of historians.” The only options taken seriously by most scholars during this era were that philosophy began in India, that philosophy began in Africa, or that both India and Africa gave philosophy to Greece. Furthermore, when European philosophers first learned about Chinese thought in the seventeenth century, they immediately recognized it as philosophy. The first major translation into a European language of the Analects, the saying of Confucius (551–479 bce), was done by Jesuits with extensive training in Western philosophy. They titled their translation Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius the Chinese Philosopher, 1687). One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. Leibniz also famously said that, while the West has the advantage of having received Christian revelation, and is superior to China in the natural sciences, “certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precept of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals.”
In 1721, the influential philosopher Christian Wolff echoed Leibniz in the title of his public lecture Oratio de Sinarum Philosophia Practica (Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese). Wolff argued that Confucius showed that it was possible to have a system of morality without basing it on either divine revelation or natural religion. Because it proposed that ethics can be completely separated from belief in God, the lecture caused a scandal among conservative Christians, who had Wolff relieved of his duties and exiled from Prussia. However, his lecture made him a hero of the German Enlightenment, and he immediately obtained a prestigious position elsewhere. In 1730, he delivered a second public lecture, De Rege Philosophante et Philosopho Regnante (On the Philosopher King and the Ruling Philosopher), which praised the Chinese for consulting “philosophers” like Confucius and his later follower Mengzi (fourth century bce) about important matters of state.
Chinese philosophy was also taken very seriously in France. One of the leading reformers at the court of Louis XV was François Quesnay (1694–1774). He praised Chinese governmental institutions and philosophy so lavishly in his work Despotisme de la China (1767) that he became known as “the Confucius of Europe.” Quesnay was one of the originators of the concept of laissez-faire economics, and he saw a model for this in the sage-king Shun, who was known for governing by wúwéi (non- interference in natural processes). The connection between the ideology of laissez-faire economics and wúwéi continues to the present day. In his State of the Union Address in 1988, Ronald Reagan quoted a line describing wúwéi from the Daodejing, which he interpreted as a warning against government regulation of business. (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philosophical idea was a good idea.)
So through most of the eighteenth century, it was not taken for granted in Europe that philosophy began in Greece, and it was taken for granted that Chinese philosophy was philosophy. What changed? As Park convincingly argues, Africa and Asia were excluded from the philosophical canon by the confluence of two interrelated factors. On the one hand, defenders of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy consciously rewrote the history of philosophy to make it appear that his Critical Idealism was the culmination toward which all earlier philosophy was groping, more or less successfully. On the other hand, European intellectuals increasingly accepted and systematized views of white racial superiority that entailed that no non-Caucasian group could develop philosophy. (As Edward Said points out, the Orientalist aspect of this racism was correlated with the rise of European imperialism, including the adventures of the East India Company in South Asia and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.) So the exclusion of non-European philosophy from the canon was a decision, not something that people have always believed, and it was a decision based not on a reasoned argument, but rather on polemical considerations involving the pro-Kantian faction in European philosophy, as well as views about race that are both unscientific and morally heinous.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) himself was notoriously racist. In his lectures on anthropology, Kant treats race as a scientific category (which it is not), and grades the races hierarchically, with whites at the apex:

1-“The race of the whites contains all talents and motives in itself.”
2-“The Hindus . . . have a strong degree of calm, and all look like philosophers. That notwithstanding, they are much inclined to anger and love. They thus are educable in the highest degree, but only to the arts and not to the sciences. They will never achieve abstract concepts.”
3-“The race of Negroes . . . [is] full of affect and passion, very lively, chatty and vain. It can be educated, but only to the education of servants, i.e., they can be trained.” (In another context, Kant dismissed a comment someone makes on the grounds that “this scoundrel was completely black from head to foot, a distinct proof that what he said was stupid.”)
4-“The [Indigenous] American people are uneducable; for they lack affect and passion. They are not amorous, and so are not fertile. They speak hardly at all, . . . care for nothing and are lazy.”
Kant ranks the Chinese with East Indians, and claims that they are “static . . . for their history books show that they do not know more now than they have long known.” So Kant, who is one of the most influential philosophers in the Western tradition, asserted that Chinese, Indians, Africans, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are congenitally incapable of philosophy. And contemporary philosophers take it for granted that there is no Chinese, Indian, African, or Native American philosophy. If this is a coincidence, it is a stunning one.
Because of Kant’s racism, it is difficult to believe that his judgments on Confucianism in his lectures on Physical Geography are based on a rational assessment of the evidence: “Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient. . . . Their teacher Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for the princes . . . and offers examples of former Chinese princes. . . . But a concept of virtue and morality never entered the heads of the Chinese.” Kant also breezily comments: “In China everybody has the freedom to throw away children who become a burden, through hanging or drowning.” However, as historian David E. Mungello notes, “the horror felt by Europeans” about the Chinese practice of infanticide “was fed by a chauvinistic hypocrisy that blinded them to the massive infant abandonments that were even then occurring across Europe.” Many classic European myths reflect this reality: Rome was supposedly founded by Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by a wolf after being abandoned as infants; the story of Hansel and Gretel is about children being left to starve in the woods. Abandonment of infants became so common in the United Kingdom that in 1872 Parliament had to pass the Infant Life Protection Act, which required registration of all infants. In China, infanticide was hardly treated as a casual matter: Buddhists and Confucians both condemned the practice when it did occur, and funded foundling homes for abandoned children. I am not denying that infanticide is horrific: it is. Nor am I denying that there is something especially abhorrent about the Chinese preference for female infanticide (and the contemporary trend of selective abortion of female fetuses): there is. What I object to is the rhetorical use of infanticide to portray the West as morally superior to China.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) was one of Kant’s most insightful critics, but he shared Kant’s casual dismissal of Chinese thought:
We have conversations between Confucius and his followers in which there is nothing definite further than a commonplace moral put in the form of good, sound doctrine, which may be found as well expressed and better, in every place and amongst every people. Cicero gives us De Officiis, a book of moral teaching more comprehensive and better than all the books of Confucius. He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom-one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated.
Elsewhere, Hegel opines: “In the principal work of Confucius . . . are found correct moral sayings; but there is a circumlocution, a reflex character, and circuitousness in the thought, which prevents it from rising above mediocrity.” Ironically, many people dismiss Hegel’s own philosophical writings for the same stylistic flaws of “circumlocution” and “circuitousness.”
Note that Hegel is like Scalia in giving Cicero privileged treatment compared to Confucius. Speaking as someone who has actually read both of them, I find Confucius considerably more interesting than Cicero. Cicero reminds me of the uncle who buttonholes you at Thanksgiving to lecture you interminably about flyfishing. Many others share my opinion. No less an authority than classicist and Nobel Laureate Theodor Mommsen said that “the dreadful barrenness of thought in the Ciceronian orations must revolt every reader of feeling and judgment.” In a similar vein, Alston Hurd Chase, a beloved teacher of Greek and Roman literature at Phillips Academy Andover, admitted that “the windy, egotistic orations of Cicero” caused generations of students to abandon the study of Latin. In contrast, Herbert Fingarette, who was originally trained as a mainstream analytic philosopher, said that, when he actually read Confucius carefully, he found him to be “a thinker with profound insight and with an imaginative vision of man equal in its grandeur to any I know.”
Essentialist arguments against multiculturalism have continued into the twentieth century. Martin Heidegger claimed that “The often heard expression ‘Western-European philosophy’ is, in truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek in its nature; . . . the nature of philosophy is of such a kind that it first appropriated the Greek world, and only it, in order to unfold.” Similarly, on a visit to China in 2001, Jacques Derrida stunned his hosts (who teach in Chinese philosophy departments) by announcing that “China does not have any philosophy, only thought.” In response to the obvious shock of his audience, Derrida insisted that “Philosophy is related to some sort of particular history, some languages, and some ancient Greek invention. . . . It is something of European form.” The statements of Derrida and Heidegger might have the appearance of complimenting non-Western philosophy for avoiding the entanglements of Western metaphysics. In actuality, their comments are as condescending as talk of “noble savages,” who are untainted by the corrupting influences of the West, but are for that very reason barred from participation in higher culture. Postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak, who translated Derrida’s Of Grammatology into English, acknowledges that “almost by a reverse ethnocentrism, Derrida insists that logocentrism is a property of the West. . . . Although something of the Chinese prejudice of the West is discussed in Part I, the East is never seriously studied or deconstructed in the Derridean text. Why then must it remain, recalling Hegel and Nietzsche in their most cartological humors, as the name of the limits of the text’s knowledge?”
Sometimes the narrow-mindedness characteristic of contemporary philosophers is amusingly baffling. I vividly remember many of my early experiences being interviewed for a job as an assistant professor. The writing sample I submitted as part of my application packet discussed Daoist critiques of Confucian ethics. Part of the Daoist argument is that those who self-consciously advocate virtue (like the Confucians) are the first to “role up their sleeves and resort to force” (as Daodejing 38 puts it) when things don’t go their way. It is not an implausible argument that a conscious effort to be virtuous is self-defeating because one can easily slide into hypocritical self-righteousness. Confucians typically reply that emphasizing deference and humility as virtues will make self-righteousness less likely. I was looking forward to discussing this debate between Daoists and Confucians with other philosophers. However, in one interview, a leading analytic epistemologist had only one question for me: “You mention that thing about rolling up their sleeves. In all the pictures I’ve seen of Chinese philosophers, they’re wearing robes. Did those guys even have sleeves?” He seemed fascinated to discover that they did.
During another interview, a philosopher asked me a long, rambling question that I barely understood at the time and most of which I could not reproduce to save my life. However, I will always remember his conclusion: “So, I guess what I’m saying is, it seems like Chinese philosophers are playing the intellectual equivalent of minor league baseball, whereas Western philosophers are playing major league baseball. Wouldn’t you agree?” I did not, nor did I get that job.
The ethnocentrism of professional philosophers is sometimes too offensive to laugh at. Former philosophy doctoral student Eugene Park speaks movingly about his failed efforts to encourage a more diverse approach to philosophy:
I found myself repeatedly confounded by ignorance and, at times, thinly veiled racism. To various faculty, I suggested the possibility of hiring someone who, say, specializes in Chinese philosophy or feminist philosophy or the philosophy of race. I complained about the Eurocentric nature of undergraduate and graduate curricula. Without exception, my comments and suggestions were met with the same rationalizations for why philosophy is the way it is and why it should remain that way. To paraphrase one member of my department, “This is the intellectual tradition we work in. Take it or leave it.”
The pressure to accept and conform to a narrow conception of philosophy was pervasive. When I tried to introduce non-Western and other noncanonical philosophy into my dissertation, a professor in my department suggested that I transfer to the Religious Studies Department or some other department where “ethnic studies” would be more welcome.
Park eventually dropped out of his doctoral program. How many other students—particularly students who might have brought greater diversity to philosophy - have been turned off from the beginning or have dropped out along the way because philosophy seems like nothing but a temple to the achievement of white males?
The sad reality is that comments like those by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Scalia, Pigliucci, and the professors Park encountered are manifestations of what Edward Said labeled “Orientalism”: the view that everything from Egypt to Japan is essentially the same, and is the polar opposite of the West: “The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal.’” Those under the influence of Orientalism do not need to really read Chinese (or other non-European) texts or take their arguments seriously, because they come pre-interpreted: “ ‘Orientals’ for all practical purposes were a Platonic essence, which any Orientalist (or ruler of Orientals) might examine, understand, and expose.” And this essence guarantees that what Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, or other non-European thinkers have to say is at best quaint, at worst fatuous.
While racism is undeniably part of the problem, it is also true that most US philosophers simply don’t know anything about Chinese philosophy. As philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel laments: “Ignorance thus apparently justifies ignorance: Because we don’t know their work, they have little impact on our philosophy; because they have little impact on our philosophy, we are justified in remaining ignorant about their work.” If US philosophers do have any familiarity with Chinese thought (perhaps through a non-philosophical Asian literature survey course they took as an undergraduate), it is probably from the Analects of Confucius, the Daodejing, or the Changes. In my opinion, of all the ancient classics, these three works are the least accessible to contemporary philosophers. As Joel Kupperman explained,
If educated Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese (along with a small number of Western scholars) think that they understand The Analects of Confucius, it is because they have read it all, probably more than once. The pithy sayings take on meaning in the larger context. For the Western reader who is not a specialist The Analects of Confucius initially will seem like one of those amorphous blots used in Rorschach tests.
The same could be said about the Daodejing and the Changes: without a great deal of effort and assistance in understanding their background and influence, it would be easy to walk away from these works thinking that Chinese philosophy is nothing but shallow platitudes or simply word salad. Ironically, beginning the study of Chinese philosophy with the Analects, Daodejing, or Changes is a bit like starting to learn about Western philosophy with the pre-Socratics. The fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides, like the heterogeneous sayings recorded in the Analects and Daodejing, are crucial background to understanding what comes later, and they do present interesting philosophical and textual issues for those equipped to handle them. However, the beginner needs a lot of help in understanding what is philosophically important about them, and you will get a misleading impression if all you know about their respective traditions is these works.
However, as Schwitzgebel argues, “even by the strictest criteria,” the ancient consequentialist Mozi and the Confucian virtue ethicist Xunzi “are plainly philosophers.” Schwitzgebel, a highly respected analytic philosopher of mind, goes on to note that the moral realist Mengzi and his antirealist nemesis Zhuangzi are comparable in style to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, in that they offer strong prima facie arguments even though they do not write in the essay format favored by contemporary philosophers. I would add the Legalists Hanfeizi and Shen Dao to the list of ancient Chinese thinkers who are plainly philosophers. There are also many interesting and powerful philosophers in the later Chinese tradition, particularly in the Buddhist, Neo- Confucian, and New Confucian traditions. (Taking back philosophy, p. 19-29)