Julie Walsh is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. Her research centers on questions about human freedom and metaphysics of mind in the 17th century, primarily in the works of Nicolas Malebranche, Antoine Arnauld, and John Locke. She has also recently expanded her research interests to understudied early modern thinkers including Anton Amo and Gabrielle Suchon.
What are you doing in your own classroom to diversify the philosophical canon?
My approach is actually to not think about diversifying the canon. Instead, I think about presenting my students with an accurate picture of the philosophical world. When I teach my Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy course, for example, I want to introduce my students to as many of the ways that philosophy was being done in that time period as possible. This means engaging with the texts of non-Western thinkers and engaging with the writings of women. The philosophical importance of doing so is evident when we engage with, for instance, Princess Elisabeth’s correspondence with Descartes, wherein our understanding of the Cartesian metaphysics is deepened, by way of his letters, alongside the development of a novel dualism, by way of hers. Broadening the scope of thinkers also means being flexible with respect to genre. Letters, novels, and poems must be on the table as legitimate philosophical texts in order to honestly capture the different voices that represent the community of philosophical thinkers in the period, many of which were excluded from traditional education and spaces within which treatises could be written. Sartre’s plays and Plato’s dialogues are already accepted as on par, philosophically, with treatises; why not also Madame de Maintenon’s?
My syllabus for this class always contains some of the landmark, “canonical” thinkers, like Leibniz and Hume, but they are put in conversation with texts written by, for instance, Walda Heywat and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Moreover, a classic text like Descartes’s Meditations is considered as a set of meditations. Students are encouraged to read this text as its author intended—not as a treatise, but as an exercise. Looking at such a cornerstone text in this light makes for an easier transition to studying different genres for their philosophical content, like, for instance, Margaret Cavendish’s novel, The Blazing World.
In short, I would say that the history of philosophy is already incredibly diverse—with respect to both thinkers and texts. I try to portray this history in a more complete and accurate way. This is what I aim to bring to my students.
What’s your favorite piece to teach and why?
I love teaching Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz’s The Answer. Sor Juana was a nun and intellectual, born near Mexico City, writing in the latter half of the 17th century. The Answer is a letter written in response to one of Sor Juana’s critics, who chastised her for being too intellectual, too into books, and thus not quite meeting the expectations (and constraints) of the cloistered life. In her answer, Sor Juana beautifully expresses her understanding of intellect as a gift from God that ought to be used. She does not disagree with her critic that theology is the “Queen of the Sciences” and thus ought to be her central focus. Rather, Sor Juana argues that in order to best understand this Queen, one must master the lesser, more terrestrial sciences. To back up her argument, she canvasses examples of theological points that, in her view, cannot be understood without a grasp of more worldly sciences. In a second phase of argumentation, Sor Juana draws on Scripture and history to highlight the role of powerful and learned women, like the Queen of Sheba and Queen Christina of Sweden, through time. In short, Sor Juana makes the case for women, nuns included, to have access to education and provides good Scriptural and historical evidence that learned women can, indeed, have a positive impact on the world.
This is a great piece of writing because, as a letter, it challenges our notions of philosophical genre, it is an example of early modern feminist thought, and it exposes students to a philosopher who is a nun, a woman of color, and a fierce and brilliant thinker. She writes circles around her critic!
Which pieces do you find resonate most with students?
My students love reading the women of the period, from Princess Elisabeth’s raising the interaction problem of Descartes (how do mind and body communicate if wholly heterogeneous substances?), to Anne Conway’s unique elaboration of a kind of morally-determined reincarnation of finite spirits, to Mary Wollstonecraft’s powerful call for the education of women. But if I had to identify one particular standout piece, it would be Anton Amo’s treatise on the “apathy” (that is, impassivity) of the human mind. Students are fascinated by Amo’s personal history (Dwight Lewis wrote an excellent APA blog post on Amo). But they are also intrigued by the fact that Amo raises questions of Descartes that are very similar to Elisabeth’s, and they really enjoy working through Amo’s positive account of how he understands the communication between mind and body.
From my experience, we cannot overestimate the way that students appreciate and respond to taking a course that has a syllabus with a diverse array of voices. Indeed, for some, it is still a very rare thing to take a course that actually includes voices resembling their own.
What are the biggest challenges and rewards in teaching this material?
Every year, I have students telling me how much they appreciate seeing women on the syllabus—authors from Mexico, from Ghana and Ethiopia, from China. Many students walk into a history of philosophy class expecting that the class will only engage with writings from white, European men. When they see that that is not the case, their perspective on philosophy as a whole changes. They see that philosophy is not, and has never been, one thing or one (white, European, male) voice. This helps to erase the picture of philosophy as a space made by and for only one kind of person. This immediately creates room in the discipline, in the classroom, and in their minds for the possibility of other kinds of thinkers.
There are, of course, challenges to building a course around such diverse material, and material that does not already have a wealth of secondary literature. For example, for me, it is challenging to teach texts that are informed by a non-Judeo-Christian religious background. When, for instance, a text draws on Neo-Confucianism, I am way outside my zone of expertise. What is required, in these cases, is a lot more preparatory work and study on my part in order to prepare for class.
Teaching outside my comfort zone also means that I have to give up some control in the classroom—which can be scary at first. But I have come to see that even if I can’t answer every question about, for instance, the influences on Kaibara Ekken, or the precise nature of Mulla Sadra’s Aristotelianism, the benefit of the representation of Japanese or Islamic thinkers far outweighs any discomfort I might have in the face of having to say, “I’m not sure—that’s something for us to explore together. Let’s start.”
What advice do you have for other philosophers interested in these pieces you’re recommending?
Time permitting, I think it’s a really good idea to invest effort into reading lots of different texts, and deciding how to excerpt them. A few years ago, I spent an entire summer requesting volumes of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Ethiopian, etc. anthologies through my inter-library loan system. I combed through the texts, noted the ones that might work for me, and spent many hours thinking about how to craft a course that included authors from these volumes. It was an immense about of work, but the result was that I am deeply invested in each and every text, and I also have some sense of how each text fits into the larger narrative of the tradition. I found the experience demanding, but, in the end, richly rewarding.
But time often does not permit this kind of project! I am aware of two anthology projects currently in the works, which promise to make teaching a more diverse history of philosophy much, much easier. These anthologies will be welcome additions to the community, especially for our colleagues with personal and professional commitments that do not allow for much time for other things.
In the meantime, if you are teaching a text that is new to you, you might reach out to someone who has worked on or taught that thinker. This information is often readily discernible from a quick google search. Of course, any of us who have written for this blog series would also be a good place to start!
What general advice do you have for other philosophers interested in diversifying their syllabi?
There are some great online resources. Project Vox seeks to recover the lost voices of women in the early modern period. They also have sample syllabi. Likewise, New Narratives is a project that aims to bring attention to women thinkers, as well as offer different ways of conceiving of philosophical conversations through the 17th and 18th centuries. It also offers a digital collection of texts, which is a great place to start. You can follow these projects on social media, which is a quick and easy way to come into contact with the fantastic people behind the projects, as well as others who are interested and invested in this kind of work.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy are also good resources for overviews of thinkers with whom you might not be familiar. And, believe it or not, Wikipedia is a great place to start your investigations—they offer a really nice chronology of philosophers (including non-Western) throughout the centuries. For example, I think Wikipedia’s chronology for the 17th century thinkers is excellent. Sometimes thinkers on these lists are already regularly taught and researched in other departments, like French and Francophone Studies, History, English, and Religion. So doing this kind of work can also be an opportunity for interdisciplinary conversation. Reach out to our colleagues in other departments at your institution—you might find that there is already a specialist next door who can help.
We also have colleagues in philosophy who work on many of the thinkers that I have mentioned above. Doing some digging through philpapers or academic.edu can help to shed light on who is engaging with whom. I would suggest reaching out to them too. Ask them questions about the texts and/or the thinkers. Invite them to teleconference with your class. In my experience, most people working on heretofore understudied thinkers are happy to share what they’ve learned, and to share strategies for teaching. We are all united in our efforts to expand the early modern syllabus, and the more we reach out to each other and ask questions, the sooner we can leave behind talk of “canons” and move towards talk of narratives, problem-based syllabi, and an accurate history of philosophy, the better for everyone.
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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: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, by Miguel Cabrera, Wikimedia Commons
Dear Michaela: Thank you for this excellent post! I learned a lot reading it, and have found some new authors to explore, as well, which I am always in need of.
One tiny nitpick: as a Sor Juana scholar, it is important for me to question whether Sor Juana is a “woman of color”. Her parents were both White by any modern standard: her father was a Spanish citizen, and her mother was a criolla, of Spanish descent but born in the new world. Additionally, although Sor Juana had challenges not faced by others of her class (being as she was an illegitimate daughter of her father), she was overall extremely privileged. She was best friends with two successive Vicereines of New Spain, who protected her as long as they were able from her more powerful critics.
Although I love and appreciate Sor Juana, and in my view she does diversify our on average very European canon in her situatedness in Latin America, her womanhood, and her other unique characteristics (ex., her writing in Spanish, her ability to use Nahuatl, her female Catholic perspective), she is no more a “woman of color” than any English-descended American colonist would have been a “man of color”.
I only press this because in Mexico today we face racism and classism along the full spectrum that it is experienced in the United States, and making all Latin Americans out to be “of color” simply because of their cultural differences may be unhelpful to students in our current global context.