Diversifying the Canon: Interview with John Ramsey

John Ramsey is an assistant professor in philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado. He specializes in early Chinese philosophy and contemporary social philosophy. Some of his work has appeared in Philosophy East and West, The Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Asian Philosophy. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at UC, Riverside in 2013.

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

I’d like to distinguish between two senses of “diversity” because there really are, at least, two concerns in diversifying the canon. And, for each concern, there are different ways we can and ought to diversify our classrooms.

First, there’s a concern about a lack diversity of identity—the underrepresentation of women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ communities, and people with disabilities as well as other social identities—in the profession and the discounting of philosophical questions these identities inevitably raise. In other words, how can we bring more diverse contemporary voices as well as those historically excluded (say, women in the early modern period) into our classrooms? Actually, I think this is rather a straightforward matter: include philosophers from these identities on course reading lists. And regularly recommend readings from diverse philosophers to your departmental colleagues in the hopes that they too incorporate work from diverse philosophers in their courses.

When teaching a course in one of the “core” areas of western philosophy—philosophy of language, epistemology, or ethics—I make sure two things happen. On the one hand, in units that take up typical questions in analytic philosophy, such as “how does language refer?” I include readings by people of diverse identities on these topics and try to incorporate a week or two on a practical issue, such as the semantics of slurs, to show the limitations of the theoretical approaches. On the other hand, I also incorporate a unit or two on non-traditional questions. For instance, in philosophy of language, rather than work through the classic articles of speech act theory and pragmatics, I’d explore questions about oppressive speech and silencing. In fact, my experience is that these debates are framed in such a way that I end up teaching many ideas that appear in those articles. Over the years, I have found the Diversity Reading List quite helpful in designing these integrated courses. Admittedly, in the beginning, including diverse practitioners of philosophy might seem difficult but it becomes second-nature rather quickly.

The second problem of diversity is of diverse philosophical traditions—all those traditions that are lumped under that inept “non-Western” label. I want to suggest something radical—we should not try to diversify the philosophical canon in this way. (I’m assuming, here, that “the philosophical canon” refers to Anglo-European traditions.) How can we—in what ways can the Pāli canon of Buddhism be part of the history of Western philosophy? Of course, there are historical moments when some tradition influences a European thinker, as Alison Gopnik has recently argued might be the case with Buddhism and Hume. But to absorb traditions from around the world into an established Anglo-European canon not only smacks of colonialism and cultural (mis)appropriation, but also renders invisible unique and crucial components of these rich philosophical canons.

Instead, we should acknowledge what philosophers readily accepted before Kant and his racist anthropology jettisoned other philosophical traditions from the history of philosophy—that most civilizations philosophize and have robust philosophical canons of their own (see Peter K.J. Park’s Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy). So, when I’m not teaching a course in a “core” topic, I’m likely teaching a course situated within another canon. And in my introductory-level courses, I take a comparative approach and teach those exploring philosophy for the first time that there are many philosophical traditions out there and we’ll think through a few of them.

What’s your favorite piece to teach and why?

I love the Zhuangzi—a 3^rd to 2^nd century BCE Chinese work often considered a founding philosophical text of Daoism. It’s hard to describe the Zhuangzi—perhaps, this anachronistic mashup will convey something of what’s it like: imagine Jorge Luis Borges channeling Wittgenstein writing speculative fiction about a world undergoing constant transformation, while trying to convey the limits of knowledge, authentic and spontaneous agency, and radical political philosophy through fables, dialogues, and jokes. If you haven’t read it, pick up a copy—Robert Eno has an excellent teaching translation or there’s the public domain version by James Legge.

Whereas Descartes seeks the foundations of knowledge via skepticism, the Zhuangzi employs relativism and perspectivism. Many of my students seem to be uncommitted relativists and the text helps students see that even relativism must rely on some basis of knowledge. I usually teach Zhuangzi near the end of a course, so it’s a great proving ground for the interpretative and argumentative skills students have (hopefully) built up over the semester.

Which pieces do you find resonate most with students?

In my experience, students who’ve taken a few “traditional” courses are eager to engage with philosophies that break the mold. So, I usually get a lot of buy in from students when we’re working through readings and topics outside of what they find in typical philosophy courses.

I recently taught an advanced undergraduate seminar that explored a number of conceptions of what philosophy is, how philosophical traditions are formed and canonized around those conceptions, and how those conceptions underwrite the exclusion of diverse practitioners and traditions from philosophy. I’ll post a list of readings from the course in a comment below, but I think these three pieces resonated most with students: Park’s Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, Kristie Dotson’s “How Is This Paper Philosophy?” and Leah Kalmanson’s “The Ritual Methods of Comparative Philosophy.”

What are the biggest challenges and rewards in teaching these?

All three pieces assume background that most of the students did not have or had forgotten. Park discusses the late early modern period through Hegel; Dotson writes about professional philosophers’ experiences presenting and publishing their work, and Kalmanson explores methodologies in Chinese philosophy and how and whether we should incorporate them into current philosophical practice. So, the obvious challenge was reminding students of trends in early modern philosophy or giving them enough context so they could appreciate the arguments.

The rewarding part?—Watching students realize that there’s much more to philosophy than grappling with foundational texts and the arguments therein. In a way students were able to pass through the aura of mystique that often shrouds philosophy. I think they gained some insight into how the disciplinary practice of philosophy actually proceeds.

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

First, start small: incorporate one or two texts from diverse practitioners of philosophy. Second, avoid the “add-X-and-stir” problem. Karen Warren discusses the “add-women-and-stir” problem at length in her “Lead Essay” to An Unconventional History of Western Philosophy. Roughly the issue is this: one cannot just add women (and I would add, Confucians, Buddhists, people of color, or any other member of or tradition outside of Western philosophy) into “an otherwise unchanged conception and curriculum of philosophy” and hope to rectify their previous exclusion (8). So, create a unit around a text or two you’re incorporating and highlight those texts’ philosophical questions, issues, and methodologies. Do not just add some Confucian ethical theory alongside a unit framed by Aristotelian virtue theory. Instead, and this is crucial, learn about that tradition’s methodologies: how is philosophy produced in this tradition? (is it commentaries on oral traditions? communal writing projects headed by “masters”?), what are the tradition’s standards of critique and argument? what counts as a reason and evidence? how were students expected to learn these methodologies and the philosophy?

Although I am a specialist in early Chinese philosophy, I do teach other traditions in which I am not a specialist. So, I know what it’s like to grapple (frequently) with an unfamiliar tradition and I constantly remind myself of three principles when prepping such courses: (1) employ the principle of charity robustly; (2) avoid superficial comparisons to figures and theories in Anglo-European philosophy; and (3) learn the historical context. If this is your first time learning from another philosophical tradition, I recommend reading Tim Connolly’s introductory Doing Philosophy Comparatively—it’s a great guide for thinking through the problems and methods of comparative philosophy. Finally, it never hurts to seek out help from scholars working in those traditions. I frequent sites such as Global Philosophy, The Deviant Philosopher, and The Society for Teaching Comparative Philosophy blog. Recently, I found Bryan Van Norden’s Readings on the Less Commonly Taught Philosophies via the Indian Philosophy blog. I strongly recommend these sites to anyone who’s considering incorporating material from a philosophical canon outside of our own.

*

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: Zhuangzi, Wikimedia Commons