This series questions and complicates what ‘reporting from abroad’ can mean in a globalized world that faces interconnected and local crises alongside forces grappling with how to liberate our beings from oppressive structures rooted in past and present (neo)colonialism and imperialism. We can take this as a chance to collectively and constructively consider both broader and different conceptions of philosophy than those more widely studied within USA institutions and culture—and the conditions that shape such studies around the globe by APA-related thinkers. We can learn how local institutions and global contexts shape the possibilities of research, speech, and our visions of philosophy.
I am trained in social and political philosophy, hold the chair ‘Diversifying Philosophy’ at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (since Spring 2021), and serve as chief editor of the Journal of World Philosophies, the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies, and the Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies. I migrated from India to Germany in the late 1990s. My doctoral supervisor Hubert Schleichert (1935–2020) expressed interest in supervising my doctoral thesis, if I was ready to explore a non-Eurocentric approach to world-philosophical traditions. Intrigued at the prospect of working on such a methodology, I agreed. Many years passed before I would explore the potentiality of that training.
In 2013–2014, Confluence: Journal of World Philosophies began its life. Geeta Ramana (Mumbai), James Maffie (Maryland), Henry Rosemont Jr., and Lukas Trabert helped materialize my vision to start an international, peer-reviewed journal that would bring together state-of-the-art scholarship on world philosophies primarily for a readership in Germany and Europe. Geeta Ramana and Maffie served as the journal’s first co-editors, Trabert—then manager of the prestigious German academic publisher Verlag Karl Alber—generously agreed to host it through their press, while Rosemont discussed the modalities of journal publishing with me. In this initial phase, a host of international and national scholars at different career levels featured their work in the journal, thus helping it gain visibility. However, our plans to make the publications more accessible to a readership outside Europe could not be materialized as the open-access format was relatively new and not well developed in Germany then. Two years later, in 2016, Indiana University Press agreed to include the Journal of World Philosophies into its well-established program as one of its first open-access journals. Not only did the move increase the journal’s outreach beyond Europe, but furthermore Amy Donahue (Kennesaw), Carl Mika (Canterbury), Carlos Sánchez (SJSU), Rohan Sikri (UGA, now NYU), and Eddy Souffrant (UNC, Charlotte), joined the journal as co-editors. They brought with them new thematic foci and exciting ways of doing philosophy through the world-philosophical perspective. Today, the journal publishes work on a whole range of topics, be it Indigenous philosophies, Mexican-American and Latinx philosophy, African(a) philosophy, Indic philosophies, Chinese philosophy, philosophy of the Islamic world, transnational feminism, critical philosophy of race, Japanese philosophy, and so on. In addition, the academic space that opened up through the journal’s activities led up to a collaborative endeavor with Leah Kalmanson (UNT), Nader El Bizri (Sharjah), James Madaio (Czech Academy of Sciences), Takeshi Morisato (Edinburgh), Pascah Mungwini (UNISA), Ann Pang-White (Scranton), Mickaella Perina (UMass Boston), Omar Rivera (Texas A&M) and Georgina Stewart (Auckland University of Technology). Thanks to their editorial cooperation, innovative ideas can be materialized in book length in the series Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies and the Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies.
Research through the emerging field of ‘world-philosophical perspective’ currently boasts of different methodological approaches to studying world-philosophical positions. Some commonalities are discernible through this plurality though. This research is not beholden to a dynamic of showcasing itself as “Proper Philosophy” in allegiance to a canon. Source-texts are not read to find hooks that could connect them to conventional academic philosophy. Work done in the world-philosophies mode does not restrict the term “philosophy” to a body of thought that contingently emanated in one time-slice in human history in one region of the world. Rather, it uses the plural form “philosophies” to signal the possibility of understanding other human practices of meaning-making about the world and specific places in it, by developing adequate frameworks to understand them. Moreover, this research neither uncritically takes as a given geographical denotations that are routinely used to identify “authentic” world-philosophies, nor does it seek to map these philosophies along the lines of supposedly predetermined “cultures” and “traditions” that somewhat curiously end up in positing a monolithic “East” versus a monolithic “West.” Rather, its practitioners are aware that such denotations are contingent historical practices. They narrate specific stories carved out in specific historical moments. These narratives are not static and unchangeable. They can, and should, be updated to better reflect the source material. Bearing this in mind, many authors who currently publish on world philosophies try to bridge the gap between standard philosophical vocabulary and the concepts that need to be developed to facilitate an adequate understanding of world-philosophical positions. Accordingly, they painstakingly seek to create languages that can adequately present the philosophical content found in the source material.
Currently, the project flourishes in the US academic context, seeming to utilize inroads paved several decades ago by philosophers working on transnational feminist epistemology and a critical philosophy of race. In contrast, these inroads have yet to be as developed in Europe, at least in the contexts with which I am familiar. Mainstream European philosophies, whether analytic or continental, continue to be their default mode, naturalized to such an extent that any systemic critique tends to be quickly construed as an ad hominem attack on those who perceive themselves as being that tradition’s successors. In these contexts, one tends to foster approaches to world-philosophical traditions that clearly signal their allegiance to a standard way of doing academic philosophy.
One would think that those who work in environments favorable to the development of the world-philosophical perspective would stand in solidarity with others who find themselves in less favorable settings. However, that solidarity is not always forthcoming. One reason seems to be that a hunt to possess the “right” label that can be used to market decolonized philosophy has already begun. Due to the manner in which institutions of higher education function as cogs in the wheel of geopolitical power-mongering today, that hunt is, apparently, driven by institutions that seek to increase the market value of their researchers and their research, despite the repeated calls of some philosophers to stop mining world-philosophical positions as if they were commodities made for a select audience that does not see any other better purpose for them.
When I met him, Schleichert had already moved away from his initial interest in the philosophy of physics and philosophy of mind to social and political philosophy. After his relocation to Germany from Vienna, he began to study what is commonly termed Chinese philosophy. As he narrated, senior members of the Vienna Circle (of which he was a part), had encouraged young and upcoming philosophers like him to follow the trendsetter Ludwig Wittgenstein and search for philosophical inspiration in sources outside Europe. His Klassische chinesische Philosophie: Eine Einführung (1990) was an early attempt in this regard. Schleichert trained me to see and critically investigate the different ways standard academic philosophy centered European philosophical categories. He encouraged a thorough study of recent publications in social and political philosophy to ascertain whether they referenced world-philosophical positions or thinkers associated with them at all. In the rare cases when they were acknowledged, I studied and analyzed whether and how the source texts were bent or construed to align with the publications’ positions. Relatedly, if I suspected covert references could be found, I sought to corroborate this impression through the study of contemporary literature around the same topic.
In contrast, my peers were—in general—taught to understand philosophy as a discipline in which the canon crystallized a solid body of strong arguments that had withstood the scrutiny of their fiercely critical predecessors. Arguments that could potentially be included in that scholarship had to emulate them, constraining our expressible “reasonable” ways of thinking. And to this end, one had to engage with the time-consuming, methodologically-limited detailed intricacies of canonical positions. On the other hand, I was taught to consider the canon to be a social construct and to examine whether positions that were routinely ‘just’ taken to fall outside the purview of philosophy warranted that exclusion.
I went on to pursue a habilitation—the erstwhile second standard qualification for a professorship in the German-speaking countries—on the ethics of migration. While engaging with the literature on migration justice, I became interested in the body of scholarship that is today subsumed under the label epistemic oppression. In the ensuing years, this literature gave me a conceptual framework to fully understand how my philosophical training was typically rendered invisible when I was perceived as not conforming with the norm of being an academic philosopher in Europe. I was then not counted as a knower worthy of philosophical engagement. This norm, it seemed to me, could be changed, if it were possible to work in concert with like-minded people who worked toward developing a critical non-Eurocentric mode of philosophizing. The idea of establishing a journal that brought together relevant work for a readership in Germany and Europe was thus born.
Today, a decade after the journal began its life, I am cautiously optimistic that changes may be imminent in the way academic philosophy is conducted, even in Europe. On an almost-daily basis I accompany philosophy students in Amsterdam who use the world-philosophical perspective to explore and develop positions that can help them fully grasp and sometimes even refashion their identities or even deploy that perspective in innovative ways to proactively discontinue the epistemic domination that was exercised on other parts of their world by their forebears. These students seem to be intent on reworking the conceptual tool-box of a discipline that has relatively effectively shored up its practices in the name of a rigorous inquiry that will lead up to an ultimate truth. Through their demands for a practice of academic philosophy whose frameworks reflect our interdependent world adequately, these students give me reason to hope that academic philosophy will be diversified in Europe in the long run.
Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach
Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach currently holds the chair ‘Diversifying Philosophy’ at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She serves as chief editor of the Journal of World Philosophies, the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies, and the Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies. She was a member of APA’s ‘Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies’ Committee from 2017-2020.
alicehank winham studied BA Philosophy and Theology at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford, where ze is now pursuing an MPhil Buddhist Studies at Lady Margaret Hall through the Faculty of Oriental Studies soon to be renamed the ‘Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.’ Ze focuses on philosophy of logic and language and social epistemology across traditions, including classical Buddhist philosophy and its modern interpreters, feminist philosophy, and the Black Radical Tradition. alicehank is also dedicated to critical pedagogy, philosophies of transformation and liberation, and social and environmental activism, such as through mentoring programmes, publishing journals, and direct action. In philosophy, ze works on expanding our disciplinary and interpretative horizons for a more caring and considered world through oxfordpublicphilosophy.com and Philiminality Oxford. Ze also works to reflect and act upon zer values through Biblionasium, environmental activism, and Lift Economy’s Next Economy MBA.
