“The best idea that may occur to those who try to acquire genuine knowledge, if they were educated according to traditional methods, is to doubt if they were taught well and to wish to discover the truth themselves.”
–François Poulain de la Barre, 1673
This is the second post in a two-part series that explores how and why to include a discussion of race in (early) modern philosophy.
In Part I, I explored four themes that an instructor could follow in a discussion about race in a modern philosophy course, with an eye toward how those themes connect to some common course topics and narrative arcs. There, I sidestepped a discussion of why I view race as an important topic, mostly because including a discussion of race in the curriculum is compatible with a variety of pedagogical goals.
Here in Part II, I will return to this issue and explore several arguments for why one might include a discussion of race in a modern philosophy course. Doing so lends support to my claim that the how is compatible with a variety of different whys. I also want to focus on some considerations that I find particularly compelling from within my own pedagogical approach, where I examine the possibility of inherited ignorance in the narratives of the history of philosophy that are passed on as canon.
But first, I have one brief qualification: I think there are many ways to teach modern philosophy well, that include widely varying content and course objectives. I tend to be a pluralist about pedagogical aims. In fact, my own curricular decisions are not the result of any sort of attempt to realize some vision of an ideal course, but are instead informed by what I think would benefit my students, given the particularities of the specific institutional and social context. For instance, my current version of modern philosophy leans more heavily toward coverage of many traditionally ‘canonical’ figures, but this is because the curriculum across our department is already relatively diverse. When I consider what to include, I am thinking not just about this course, but about what students will encounter in other classes, and the course would likely look somewhat different in a different institutional context. I don’t think that there is really a right way to teach this course (although this doesn’t preclude the possibility that there are some wrong ways to teach it). What is important is to reflect on various pedagogical goals and to be able to defend the choice to pursue some goals rather than others, especially as they relate to a range of values that are themselves open to critical examination.
With that in mind, I’ll begin with a brief survey of some familiar arguments for diversifying the canon, particularly arguments that have been developed for why women should be studied in a modern philosophy course, and offer some thoughts about how those arguments also apply to including race in the curriculum. I will, for the most part, be mentioning these arguments rather than exploring them in detail, as I think many of these claims will already be familiar and have already been extensively defended by others. I group them according to arguments that focus on accuracy, diversity, relevance, and justice. My main focus, however, will be on a type of justice argument, in which I consider the absence of a discussion of race as an area of inherited ignorance in the history of philosophy, which looms large in my own thinking about why a discussion of race is important to include in my course.
Accuracy arguments
Accuracy arguments emphasize what might be called the aim of fidelity in the history of philosophy or, put the other way around, the effort to avoid error. For instance, one of my course objectives is to introduce students to various modern philosophers and to the philosophical questions and problems that motivated their work in that historical period. When I set out to explore who was engaged in philosophical conversation in the 17th and 18th Centuries, it became clear that many women were actively involved in philosophy during this period, including those who developed distinct philosophical positions and critiques of well-known topics, as well as topics and ideas that have not been as widely examined. Furthermore, when I considered what sorts of problems concerned various modern philosophers, I ended up realizing that topics such as the equality of women, education, the relation between reason and the passions, and the rationality of animals were a central part of the philosophical conversation for many modern philosophers (although they had not been a central part of my introduction to modern philosophy, which was largely focused on metaphysics and epistemology).
So, too, was the topic of race, especially in the 18th Century. This work includes discussions of race by canonical figures such as Bernier, Locke, Voltaire, Kant, in addition to many others whose work is less familiar, such as Anton Wilhelm Amo, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano. Discussions of race also figure prominently in philosophy of science during the 18th Century, especially in relation to discussions about classification and life sciences.
Leaving out a discussion of race means that there is a gap in our account of the philosophical themes of this historical time period, one whose significance seems especially notable given its ethical, social, and political importance in the centuries that followed (more on this below). Including a discussion of race in the curriculum gives students a more accurate account of the range of philosophical inquiry occurring at the time.
Diversity Arguments
There are also arguments that focus on diversity across various dimensions, such as in syllabi, classrooms, and historical records. For instance, many of the arguments for the inclusion of women in modern philosophy syllabi also apply to other types of diversity, including race, although I won’t work through the details here. A good list of resources is available on the Resources on Diversity and Inclusion section of the APA website, and I also recommend George Yancy’s edited volume Reframing the Practice of Philosophy: Bodies of Color, Bodies of Knowledge for a more specific focus on race.
Another diversity-related argument arises from considering the role that historical survey courses have in constructing the broader narrative that students encounter about what counts as philosophy and who counts as a philosopher. There is some overlap here with concerns about accuracy, for, given that many people were doing philosophy in the modern period, it seems problematic to identify only one subset of this philosophical work as worth covering in a survey class that is often a student’s introduction to this period. This problem is given additional force when one also considers that the construction of the traditional canon in modern philosophy was influenced by those who wished to portray the history of philosophy in a particular way (e.g. as inevitably leading to Kant) and by philosophers who were implicitly or explicitly influenced by racist assumptions.
Thinking about diversity raises the question of what sorts of topics from the modern period might be of interest if we cast a net wider than a narrow set of concerns that have been somewhat narrowly circumscribed by those who wrote the historical record many of us inherited. Once one does so, the fact that the biological concept of race first emerges in this period is clearly significant.
Contemporary Relevance Arguments
A third sort of argument appeals to the relevance of race to topics of contemporary interest. One reason to study the history of philosophy is to better understand the present. Studying the history of philosophy develops perspective on how current philosophical conversations have arisen from particular social and historical contexts. One is also invited to consider how things might have looked from a different time and place: which assumptions were taken for granted, which questions were prioritized, which methods of inquiry were predominant, etc. This process promotes a deeper understanding of ourselves, as we see our own situation not as inevitable, but as inherited, and thus open for critical examination. These are familiar reasons to study history in general; the history of philosophy applies this focus to philosophical ideas and their intellectual, social, cultural, political, and economic influence. (Kevin Graham developed a version of this argument in his comments on a version of this material that I presented at the 2022 Central Division APA).
It is impossible to cover everything in modern philosophy in a single-semester. The question is not if some themes will be selected and others omitted, but which ones, and why.
Thus, the argument goes something like this: one way to select topics is by considering their significance, including both their philosophical significance but also their broader historical significance. Given the vast influence of ideas about race on the post-enlightenment colonial world, race is not a peripheral notion to add to the canon. Rather, it occupies a central position in the time period when considered in relation to its relevance to the social, political, and economic development that followed, as well as its deep significance to the lived experiences of millions of people across several centuries.
Justice Arguments
There is one other type of argument that has become central to my own reasons for teaching about race in modern philosophy: that I am not complicit in furthering an area of active ignorance in my students and (relatedly) in the discipline.
I noted in Part I that I didn’t have any particular reason for not including a discussion of race in the curriculum, other than that we tend to teach what we know, and this was a gap in my own knowledge. To adapt a phrase from Shannon Sullivan: Why didn’t I teach about race in modern philosophy? Because, seemingly, there was so little worth teaching. After all, if there was something important about race to include in this course, surely I would have encountered it at some point, right?
The absence of a discussion of race from my curriculum when I first began teaching modern philosophy was not the result of a conscious decision to prioritize other themes. I didn’t teach anything about race in modern philosophy because I didn’t know anything significant happened in regard to race in modern philosophy. For better or worse, our own educational experiences generally inform our view of the key philosophers, texts, problems, arguments, and themes in a particular content area. Despite what was in many other ways an excellent education, race was never mentioned in the undergraduate and graduate courses I took that covered various philosophical figures and themes from this period; sustained engagement of women philosophers was notably absent as well.
I have come to view this gap as an area of inherited ignorance in my own philosophical education and, to a certain extent, more broadly in the discipline (obviously there is variation across different experiences here). The view of the canon that I learned was the result of a particular historical development in which various philosophers and themes were selected as essential, while others were not. The development of the canon was informed by a particular view of what philosophy is and how the history of philosophy should be told: in the case of modern philosophy, the canon developed as the result of Euro-centric philosophers who at best centered their own philosophical interests, and at worst were operating under specifically racist assumptions. (See Park, Peter K. J., 2013. Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780-1830.)
Even though I didn’t participate in the development of this canon, and despite the fact that I am explicitly committed to anti-racist pedagogy, I still inherited it. What I can do is extend critical examination to the canon, considering whether the story that it tells perpetuates a problematic ignoring of important parts of that history. Our understanding of the history of philosophy shapes our identity as philosophers and our view of the discipline of philosophy; telling it as responsibly as we can is of vital importance to our students and to ourselves.
I try, insofar as I am able, not to perpetuate injustice in my teaching. By continuing to teach a story of modern philosophy that omits a discussion of race, I believe I would be continuing to perpetuate a narrative about the history of philosophy in which any discussion of race is absent. It is difficult to see how this absence could be justified in a non-racist pedagogy. That is to say, I believe I would be complicit in perpetuating a white supremacist version of the history of philosophy. (If someone could give me a good reason for why, for instance, Berkeley’s idealism is a more important development in modern philosophy than the development of the biological concept of race, please feel free to enlighten me. But it is also possible to do both, as I do in my own classes.)
Conclusion
Ultimately, while the justice argument is central to my reasons for teaching about race in modern philosophy, I will conclude by emphasizing that those who may not accept the version of a justice argument I briefly sketched here may nevertheless find more than sufficient reasons to teach about race. Again, the how is compatible with a variety of different whys.
The themes sketched in the first post can be of use to anyone who is interested in teaching about race, for whatever the reason. But the structure of this series also reflects my own experience, in which the why was much less of an obstacle than the how.
When facing an area of inherited ignorance, learning what there is to know is an essential first step. Exploring how to teach race in modern philosophy puts one in a position to make a decision. After all, it’s one thing to select content from a variety of possibilities; it’s another to be unaware that anything is missing. One may choose not to teach about race, but one should not think that there is nothing to teach.
Sharon Mason
Sharon Mason teaches at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), and her regular courses include Modern Philosophy, Theories of Knowledge, and Philosophy of Science. She is also a faculty associate in the STEM Residential College and a frequent collaborator with the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College. Her research focuses on questions concerning knowledge and perspective, such as reflection and the first-person perspective in virtue epistemology, ontological metaphors in the structuring of concepts of the first-person perspective, and the epistemology of climate science denial. Her most recent areas of interest include epistemologies of ignorance and philosophical pedagogy.
