Diversifying the Canon: Interview with Kathleen Higgins

Kathleen Higgins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. She is author of several books, including Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” (Lexington, 2010); The Music of Our Lives (Lexington, rev. ed. 2011); and The Music between Us:  Is Music a Universal Language? (University of Chicago Press, 2012), which received the American Society for Aesthetics Outstanding Monograph Prize for 2012.  She has edited or co-edited several other books on such topics as non-Western philosophy, Nietzsche, German Idealism, aesthetics, ethics, erotic love, and the philosophy of Robert C. Solomon.  She is currently president of the American Society for Aesthetics.

What are you doing in your own classroom/ university to diversify the philosophical canon?

In general, I try to indicate the restricted character of accounts that I am giving, noting when a sweep of historical information is confined to “the West,” or when a reading is just an instance of a rich tradition.  I also assign work by those outside the traditional canon when appropriate and readings that consider those writing outside the tradition.  I try to choose anthologies, when I use them, that have contents that are not restricted to the white male luminaries who dominate the canon.  At the same time, I try to connect some of the positions that are well represented in the canon with positions taken by authors who are not.

What’s your favorite piece to teach and why?

Probably my favorite is the Cook Ding story from Zhuangzi, a brief account of a Duke being enthralled to see his cook engage in butchering an ox with as much grace as a ritual dancer and asking the cook to tell him about his work.  I like teaching this because it sums up so much of Daoist thought – the idea that “experts” are not necessarily the people who are in a position to teach, that hierarchies are unstable even within particular relationships, that overthinking an activity often undermines it, that the most mundane activities can become art, that allowing natural tendencies within one’s situation to work for one is the key to effectiveness, and that perceiving as clearly and as fully as one can is fundamental to finding meaning in life.  It is also a completely startling story, and in this sense it demonstrates the Daoist effort to undermine expectations so as to prompt readers to perceive things freshly.

Which pieces do you find resonate most with students?

This varies a lot with the class and the context.  Once they get used to the light-heartedness of the Zhuangzi, students often find it engaging, and I have often made use of stories from it in Introduction to Philosophy and Introduction to Ethics classes. These days, I am teaching predominantly aesthetics courses.  In these, probably students resonate most with articles on the ways that artworks can reinforce stereotypes, for example, Paul Taylor’s “The Last King of Scotland – The Ethics of Race in Film” and Laura Mulvey’s “Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look.”  They also seem engrossed by the question of what to make of film that is in many ways “good” from an aesthetic point of view but far from good when evaluated ethically.  Mary Devereaux’s “Beauty and Evil: The Case of Leni Riefenstahl” engages them in connection with this question.

What are the biggest challenges and rewards in teaching these?

One challenge is to avoid being too didactic when discussing art and ethics.  Another is to make it clear that deciding whether a film has a good or bad moral message is not the end of the story.  A great reward is seeing that students get the importance of the problem of art playing on and potentially reinforcing stereotypes.  It is also very satisfying when they are able to articulate how art, even though fictional, might be able to harm people.

What advice do you have for other philosophers interested in these pieces you’re recommending?

In general, a challenge in diversifying the content of one’s syllabus is that one is often not as well informed about the larger context of non-canonical readings than one is about the canon.

I think one has to recognize one’s own status as a relative novice in learning about work outside the traditional canon but not let one’s intellectual humility dissuade one from exploring such materials and introducing them to students.  Another challenge is to avoid reinforcing the impression that the Western canon is the essence of philosophy, with readings outside it representing an addendum.

Depending on the course one is teaching, one might pair readings from the canon with non-canonical readings that deal with similar material or approach similar content from another point of view.  In some cases, one spend some of a semester telling a rather traditional story about the tradition and then introducing other materials that complicate the story.  I think there is always a danger of distorting non-Western ideas by making them seem to fit Western models too neatly, but it is sometimes helpful to give students some impression about how the Western tradition has viewed particular issues and then point out that other traditions may start with different assumptions, showing how these assumptions affect what comes into view in connection with certain topics.

What general advice do you have for other philosophers interested in diversifying their syllabi?

I think it is good to be on the lookout for work outside the canon that addresses the topic of one’s courses.  Be sure to avail yourself of on-line resources that might help you diversify.  The American Society for Aesthetics website, for example, has links to curricula that emphasize diversity in connection with various topics in aesthetics.  My main advice is to try it.  It has the potential to make topics that you may have taught for years seem fresh, to you as well as your students.

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This series of the APA Blog is dedicated to understanding what our fellow philosophers are doing in and out of the classroom to diversify the canon. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else to write a post for this series, please contact us via the interview nomination form here.

Header image: Portrait of Zhuangzi, Wikimedia Commons