The Ethics of “I”: Philosophy, Voice, and the Politics of Inclusion

1. Neither Here Nor There, But Thinking Through Both

My own philosophical journey was shaped by the tension between place and thought, between inherited traditions and the search for new forms of knowing. I was born and raised in Egypt, where I earned both my B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy at Cairo University. Those early years instilled in me not just a love of inquiry, but also a persistent awareness of the structural limitations placed on what could be asked, said, or considered philosophically legitimate. That awareness followed me across borders when I moved to the United States to pursue my Ph.D. at the University of Georgia.

There, I wrote my dissertation, Islamic Feminism and the Politics of Gender: Between Liberation and Non-Western Neocolonial Domination, as an attempt to grapple with the contradictions I saw between feminist aims and religious-political revivalism. I argued that movements framed as Islamic feminism, particularly in North Africa, often reproduce control rather than resist it. One of the central claims in that work is that Arabization itself has functioned as a form of colonization, displacing indigenous, agrarian, and historically gender-egalitarian ways of life with patriarchal structures rooted in desert-based, nomadic epistemologies.

But my philosophical questions have always exceeded disciplinary boundaries. I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, where I explore what it might mean for machines to experience cognition, and how such possibilities force us to rethink longstanding assumptions about intelligence, consciousness, and moral responsibility. These questions, too, are entangled with histories of power, extraction, and exclusion.

At Wofford College, where I now teach environmental ethics and philosophy of religion, I integrate feminist theory, decolonial thought, and ecological philosophy into my courses. Much of my current research focuses on water ethics, not merely as a question of scarcity or sustainability, but as a political and historical site of memory, belonging, and resistance in North Africa’s ongoing struggle over land and access.

During my time at the University of Georgia, I was deeply involved in International Student Life, where I worked to support immigrant and international students navigating the layered injustices of language, bureaucracy, and cultural alienation. That work continues to shape my commitments today, not only to academic justice but to creating spaces where questions of belonging and identity are not obstacles to philosophy but sources of its renewal.

At the heart of everything I do is a conviction that philosophy must be accountable to lived experience. I ask questions not to abstract away from life, but to return more carefully to it, to the land, to the body, to memory, and to the difficult, beautiful labor of imagining freedom.

2. Philosophy across Borders: From Cairo to America

When I first entered philosophy, it was not in a seminar room in the United States, but in Cairo. Studying philosophy in Egypt was exhilarating in its promise and frustrating due to limitations. Philosophy was framed as the highest form of rational inquiry, yet the canon was largely Western, and critical engagement with local, postcolonial realities was rare. The experience revealed an uncomfortable truth: even philosophy, which prides itself on questioning assumptions, could replicate colonial and patriarchal boundaries when left unexamined.

Later, when I continued my philosophical education in the United States, I encountered a different but related challenge. There was more openness to critique, but the underlying norms of rigor, objectivity, and philosophical legitimacy remained profoundly shaped by Eurocentric assumptions. Whether in Egypt or America, the deeper question remained: Whose knowledge counts? Whose experiences are treated as philosophically meaningful?

At first glance, the growing presence of women and minorities in philosophy programs seemed like a victory. Representation, long a concern in our field, appeared to be improving. Yet the deeper I delved into classrooms, research, and conferences, the clearer it became that representation alone was never the goal. Without structural transformation, inclusion risks becoming a mechanism for sustaining, rather than challenging, the hierarchies that historically excluded us.

3. Grounded Thinking

At its best, philosophy should help us reflect on who we are and the kind of world we live in. It shouldn’t be about showing off how distant or abstract we can sound. One way I’ve tried to bring my full self into philosophy, as a woman of Color and a Philosopher, is by choosing to write in the first person. In my work, I say things like “I will divide this into three parts,” “I argue,” or “I challenge this idea,” because I want my voice to be present. I don’t believe in pretending to be neutral when that so-called neutrality was never really neutral in the first place.

Being told to only write in the third person adds yet another obstacle for people who’ve already been pushed to the margins of philosophy. It asks us to disappear from our own work just to be taken seriously, even though the idea of being “neutral” or “objective” has roots in systems of power that were built to silence certain voices, especially those of women, people of Color, and Philosophers outside the Western tradition. For us, this pressure doesn’t just make us invisible once; it does so in three ways: because of who we are, because of the way our work is often dismissed, and because the traditions we come from aren’t seen as part of the “real” conversation.

First, we’ve inherited a version of philosophy that has long centered around men’s voices and treated women as outsiders. Second, the ways we think and frame ideas are often viewed as unimportant unless they are aligned with the formal, abstract language that dominates the field. And even when we use that language to try to fit in, our work is still often ignored, not because of what we’re saying, but because of who we are: our gender, our background, or the language we speak. Third, we’re constantly put in the position of having to prove that ideas from outside the Western tradition count as real philosophy, just because they’re not written in English or don’t follow the Western academic rules.

This kind of erasure isn’t just about leaving people out; it’s about building a system that only listens when we sound like those who once silenced us. It teaches us to question our own voice unless it’s echoed or approved by the same rules that have kept us out. Pushing back against this isn’t just about being seen or represented; it means rethinking the very rules about what counts as serious, valid, or “real” philosophy.

That’s why I use the idea of grounded thinking, a way of doing philosophy that says being clear and thoughtful doesn’t mean you have to hide where you’re coming from. Instead of pretending to be neutral by erasing our backgrounds and experiences, this approach incorporates those aspects into the work itself. It says that the best thinking happens when we’re honest about the histories, identities, and conditions that shape our questions. This kind of thinking still values clarity, strong arguments, and careful reasoning, but it also asks us to speak in our own voice, to explain why we care about the topic, and to take responsibility for the ideas we put into the world. In doing so, it makes room for more people, more questions, and more ways of thinking than the usual rules have allowed.

Grounded thinking isn’t just a method; it’s also a way of teaching. In the classroom, it means refusing to separate serious thinking from the person doing the thinking. Teaching with grounded thinking recognizes that where we’re speaking from matters, and that real insight can come first from life experience, not just abstract theory. For mentoring, it changes the goal: instead of shaping students to fit old academic molds, we help them stand on their own ground, confidently and clearly. It means treating experience as a strength, not a weakness, and creating spaces where students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, can learn to build strong arguments without having to erase who they are. In this way, mentoring becomes a way to empower people to think for themselves, not a system that keeps them out.

4. Voice, Authority, and the Ethics of “I”

Writing with “I” changed how I understand what it means to think and create knowledge. It helped me stop pretending I had no stake in what I was saying, and instead allowed me to fully take part in shaping meaning. For those of us who’ve been historically silenced in philosophy, this shift is more than stylistic; it’s personal and political. We’re often trained to put aside our own ideas or express them in ways that feel disconnected, just to be accepted. Using “I” helps rebuild trust in our own minds. It tells us our questions, critiques, and visions matter, not because they echo accepted traditions, but because they come from us. It also helps us break free from quiet habits that make us hesitate, downplay, or erase what we really mean in order to fit in.

Writing in the first person brings reason back down to earth. It shows that emotion and intellect can work together, and that being serious about ideas doesn’t mean we have to sound detached. It pushes back against the old belief that authority comes from distance, and instead shows that thoughtful, grounded voices can produce meaningful philosophy. Saying “I” invites us to think more deeply about how our personal and historical experiences shape the arguments we make. This isn’t about being overly personal or losing focus; it’s about reclaiming the right to speak honestly and fully. All philosophy starts from somewhere, and when we name where we stand, it makes our work more truthful and more responsible. It also makes it harder for dominant perspectives to keep pretending they’re the only neutral ones in the room.

Good philosophy still needs strong arguments, clear thinking, and honest questioning, but it also needs honesty about who’s doing the thinking and where they’re coming from. Writing in the first person helps break the illusion that ideas come from nowhere. It doesn’t give up on truth; it builds truth from real, grounded places instead of pretending to be above it all. In fact, this kind of writing makes philosophy stronger, because it forces us to take responsibility for what we say. Saying “I” makes it clear that ideas don’t just float freely—they come from people, with voices, values, and lived experiences. It’s not about turning philosophy into personal opinion. It’s about being clear-eyed about how our backgrounds shape our questions, and making that part of our work, not something to hide.

5. Exclusion as Method: Citation, Canon, and Curriculum

Some of the most powerful philosophers in history, like Descartes, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, and Fanon, wrote from the “I.” They understood that being honest about your perspective doesn’t get in the way of truth; it actually brings you closer to it. The push to keep first-person writing out of academic philosophy isn’t some ancient tradition of careful thinking; it’s a newer rule that often protects old hierarchies by pretending to be neutral. But when people who’ve been pushed out of philosophy use “I,” they break that isolation. They show that philosophy can be something shared, a way of thinking together, from where we really are, not from some imaginary, detached place. First-person writing doesn’t weaken philosophy. It brings it back to its purpose: asking hard, honest questions about the world we live in.

But speaking from your own place and perspective does more than just change your writing style; it challenges the deeper rules about whose knowledge is taken seriously in philosophy. Writing in the first person reveals a problem that runs through the field: we’re often told that some ideas count as real philosophy, while others are treated as just “cultural” or outside the core. That split isn’t based on the quality of the thinking; it’s based on long-standing patterns of exclusion shaped by institutions, colonial history, and language. These patterns determine which voices are saved and which are left out.

Whether in Egypt or the West, philosophy is still too often viewed not as a shared search for meaning and justice, but as a collection of ideas from those who’ve had access to academic power, mostly White, male, Western Philosophers. But building the field this way has come at a cost. It omits key aspects of history and narrows our understanding of philosophy itself. Take Thomas Aquinas, for example. His work with Aristotle wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of Islamic philosophers like Ibn Rushd (Averroes), who preserved, translated, and expanded those ideas centuries earlier. Yet these deep connections are often overlooked, perpetuating the false notion that Western philosophy developed in isolation, cut off from the rest of the world and needing no one else.

Modern academic philosophy continues to perpetuate many of the same patterns of exclusion. For example, when scholars write about major thinkers like Kant or Aristotle, they often only reference other Western sources, leaving out centuries of contributions from African, Islamic, and Asian Philosophers. This kind of narrow storytelling creates a one-sided version of philosophy, erasing its truly global history. Instead of seeing language differences as a challenge to be worked through, many scholars treat English, or other dominant Western languages, as the only ones that matter. As a result, important ideas from outside that world are overlooked, and the broader picture of how human thought has evolved becomes distorted.

As a woman of Color in philosophy, I experience these layers of exclusion in a profoundly personal way. When I teach non-Western philosophy in the U.S., I often find myself spending more time justifying the material’s inclusion in the classroom than actually exploring the ideas with my students. They’ve often been taught, without anyone saying it outright, that this kind of philosophy is just a cultural side note, not part of the real conversation. That quiet bias means the pressure to defend and explain falls mostly on those of us who bring different voices and traditions into the room.

This kind of exclusion isn’t just something that happens quietly; it’s often defended. I recall a tense and frustrating conversation with classmates in the U.S. about why it matters to include non-Western philosophy in the curriculum. I argued that these traditions shouldn’t be treated like optional extras; they should be a real part of how we learn to think philosophically. But some classmates questioned why American universities should even bother with philosophy from outside Europe or the U.S. To them, it seemed like a side interest, not something serious. What they missed was the deeper purpose of philosophy: not just learning one tradition’s answers but learning how to question our assumptions and see the world in new ways.

I saw this same kind of bias play out clearly during my talk at the APA Eastern Division Meeting in January 2025. I presented a paper called “What is Islamic Feminism?” But instead of asking about my arguments, many people questioned why I was even presenting on that topic at a Western philosophy conference, especially one where there might not be many Muslim women in the audience. The message was obvious: Western philosophy is perceived as something that belongs to everyone, while non-Western philosophy is viewed as specific, optional, or even out of place. It felt like my presence, and the topic itself, was something the audience was expected to “tolerate,” not something that truly belonged there.

This kind of erasure isn’t just about what’s said. It happens in every part of academic life:

• Who gets cited?
• Who gets taught?
• Who gets published?
• Even how we’re expected to write: without saying “I,” without saying “we,” without including our actual, lived voices.

6. Reclaiming Institutions, Rebuilding Philosophy

If we truly want philosophy to be more inclusive, then our institutions must change, not just our words. We can’t keep organizing syllabi around labels like “Western” and “non-Western” as if they say anything meaningful about the ideas themselves. Instead, we should focus on the questions being asked, the methods used, and the contributions made, regardless of their origin. Sorting ideas based on a thinker’s nationality or culture turns philosophy into a map of borders, instead of a space for serious thought. At its core, philosophy is about posing challenging questions and seeking to understand the world. The value of an idea should come from the insight it offers, not from where the thinker was born or what tradition they belong to. When we divide the field into “Western” and “non-Western,” we fall into false divisions that obscure the fact that these traditions are actually deeply interconnected. Greek, Islamic, Egyptian, African, Indian, and many other ways of thinking have long shaped each other, and pretending otherwise merely limits what philosophy can be.

Graduate programs shouldn’t just teach students to read different traditions; they should also help them understand how power shows up in things like translation, citation, and who gets to set the rules of the field. Reviewers and journals need to stop treating first-person writing as less serious or less objective. In many cases, using “I” actually makes the stakes of an argument clearer. Editors and academic gatekeepers need to rethink what they count as “rigorous,” and actively look for work that comes from voices and traditions that haven’t had a fair chance to be heard. Most of all, we need to stop treating philosophy like a fixed list of names to memorize. Philosophy should be taught as a living practice, one shaped by history and open to the world around us. Reclaiming the “I” is just the start. Institutions need to make sure that people who speak up aren’t only allowed in but are truly respected and supported once they’re there.

Real inclusion in philosophy isn’t just about adding a few non-Western thinkers to the reading list. It means fully recognizing their ideas as part of shaping what philosophy is and what it can become. If we organize philosophy around the questions we ask and the methods we use, instead of where a thinker comes from, we actually raise the bar. That means engaging with the best ideas, regardless of their origin, and rejecting the notion that only certain traditions have all the answers. New perspectives from long-marginalized communities don’t just add variety, they change the kinds of questions philosophy is willing to ask, and the forms its answers can take. If philosophy’s highest goal is the pursuit of truth, then it must move beyond cultural borders and recognize that truth doesn’t belong to any one tradition, language, or region. It belongs to all of us.

The Women in Philosophy series publishes posts on those excluded in the history of philosophy on the basis of gender injustice, issues of gender injustice in the field of philosophy, and issues of gender injustice in the wider world that philosophy can be useful in addressing. If you are interested in writing for the series, please contact the Series Editor Elisabeth Paquette or the Associate Editor Shadi “Soph” Heidarifar.