Taking Bak Philosophy

TA K I N G B A C K
PHILOSOPHY
A Multicultural Manifesto
B R YA N W. VA N N O R D E N
Foreword by Jay L. Garﬁeld
TAKING BACK
PHILOSOPHY
TAKING BACK
PHILOSOPHY
A M U LTICU LTU R AL MAN I F E STO
BRYAN W. VAN NORDEN
Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press
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Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Van Norden, Bryan W. (Bryan William), author.
Title: Taking back philosophy: a multicultural manifesto /
Bryan W. Van Norden.
Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2017] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017031091 | ISBN 9780231184366
(cloth: acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231184373 (pbk.: acid-free paper) |
ISBN 9780231545457 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy.
Classification: LCC B53.V28 2017 | DDC 101—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031091
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and

durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Cover photo: Herve BRUHAT/Gamma-Repho via Getty Images
To the Memory of
Rev. Charles E. Van Norden, DD (1843–1913)
our family’s first philosopher
and
Warner Montaigne Van Norden (1873–1959)
our family’s first Sinologist
1
I am a citizen of the world.
—Diogenes
Only those who are petty regard themselves as separate from

others solely because of the space between their bodies.
—Wang Yangming
CONTENTS
Foreword xi
Jay L. Garfield
Preface xxiii
1 A Manifesto for Multicultural Philosophy 1

Why Multicultural Philosophy? 3
A Second-Best Approach 8
The Quality Argument 12
Essentialist Ethnocentrism 16
The History of Philosophical Ethnocentrism 19
Avoiding Intellectual Imperialism 29
Where Do We Go from Here? 31
2 Traditions in Dialogue 38
Metaphysics 40
Political Philosophy 52
Ethics 62
Weakness of Will 72
Other Voices 82
3 Trump’s Philosophers 85
Building Racial Walls in American Politics 86
x Y Contents
Building Walls to Protect Chinese Civilization 88

Building Walls to Protect Western Civilization 98
Jericho 107
4 Welders and Philosophers 110

Philosophy and Occupational Training 112
Philosophy and Democratic Citizenship 115
Philosophy’s Value to Civilization 130
5 The Way of Confucius and Socrates 138

Philosophy’s Special Role Among the Humanities 138
So What Is Philosophy? 142
Recovering the Way of Confucius and Socrates 151
Notes 161
Index 203
FOREWORD
JAY L. GARFIELD
T
his book has its origins in what Bryan Van Norden and
I had thought was an innocuous opinion piece in The
Stone column of the New York Times, one we thought
likely to be completely ignored, but which instead, to our aston-
ishment, ignited a firestorm of controversy across the philosophy
blogosphere. That column had its origin in a rather wonderful
conference on minorities in philosophy, hosted by the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania philosophy department, and organized by
its graduate students. The graduate students and the many oth-
ers who attended that conference were delightful.
Bryan and I were struck, however, by the fact that, despite
including the keynote address in the regular department collo-
quium series, and even though the conference was held at
the philosophy department, the Penn faculty almost entirely
boycotted the proceedings. Most members of that department
were simply not interested in hearing about non-Western
philosophy, even if their own graduate students organized a
conference on the topic in their own department.
We found that surprising. And out of that surprise came our
short editorial, which is reproduced in chapter 1 of the present
volume. From our previous experiences, we expected that most
xii Y Jay L. Garfield
of our colleagues would roll their eyes and ignore it as one more
lunatic fringe call for change in a field notoriously resistant to
change. We hoped that a few would take us seriously and either
bite the bullet and agree that their departments should be re-
named or think about expanding their curriculum and hiring
(and indeed a very few have taken the latter course).
We thought that a few more would offer the same tired argu-
ments against change: It is too hard to cover the “core,” so how
can we possibly devote scarce resources to the non-Western
fringe? There just aren’t any good graduate programs training
people in these areas, so how can we hire? We don’t read the
languages, so how can we seriously address these texts and tradi-
tions? We lack the expertise to determine what is good and what
is bad in non-Western philosophy, so how can we hire or assess
our colleagues’ work? What would we cut to make room for this?
We know how to respond to those rejoinders, and we find
ourselves doing so all the time. Indeed, the present volume ad-
dresses these arguments carefully and in detail. But while
there were a few of those in the eight hundred replies we re-
ceived the first day on the Times website (a record for The Stone)
and in the thousands of others that quickly populated other
philosophy sites, we were not prepared for the level of vitriol,
personal attacks, and frank racism that characterized most of
the replies, including many from within our own profession.
Nor were we prepared for some of the spectacularly ill-informed
essays that appeared subsequent to our editorial in response to
it. On the one hand, we regretted having provided an occasion
for some of this rhetoric; on the other hand, we are glad that it
is out in the open, as it demonstrates clearly what is at stake as
we consider the future of our profession. This book is a careful,
if polemical, consideration of that future in response to this
wave of hostility.
Foreword Z xiii
One philosopher wrote that Native Americans have not been

literate long enough to produce philosophy; many connected
Kongzi to fortune cookies; others tarred us with the brush of
“political correctness.” (We think that it is in fact correct from a
political point of view not to be explicitly racist, or even to per-
petuate structural racism; we also think, perhaps charitably,
that our opponents agree; one must then wonder how bad one’s
own position is if the best way to defend it is to concede that the
opposition is correct, if only on matters of politics.) Many ar-
gued, either without citing any textual support or by providing
a single snippet of some non-Western text out of context as evi-
dence, that there simply is nothing valuable in any non-Western
tradition. If this kind of argument were emblematic of the
greatness of Western philosophy, then, quite frankly, we would
think it is better off abandoned. Our colleagues in Asian tradi-
tions can’t afford to offer such patently racist or lame argu-
ments, and they don’t.
Two responses stick in my mind. One scholar, who chose to
remain anonymous, wrote that while Kongzi might have had
some good philosophical ideas, China never produced a tradi-
tion of argument and commentary following his work, and so
there was no real philosophical tradition in China. This is what
White Privilege looks like. This author obviously knows abso-
lutely nothing about the history of Chinese philosophy (which
has a very rich and ongoing “tradition of argument and com-
mentary”); she or he also presumably also knows that she or he
knows nothing about that vast tradition; nonetheless, she or he
feels perfectly comfortable pontificating about it in public.
Imagine a Chinese scholar conceding that the West had pro-
duced Heraclitus, and that he is worth studying, but asserting
that the West has no tradition of debate and argument after
him.
xiv Y Jay L. Garfield
And indeed this invocation of White Privilege is common

not only among our recent critics, but among so many with
whom I have discussed this issue over the years. It combines the
assumption that being European, or being educated in the Eu-
ropean tradition, authorizes one to pronounce on all things in-
tellectual with the casual assumption that the ocean of texts
with which one is unfamiliar contain nothing worthwhile,
nothing worth studying, nothing worth teaching, and could
not possibly measure up to Western philosophy in profundity or
rigor, and even that they could not possibly be doing the same
thing. One is reminded of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s infa-
mous remarks:
I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.—But I have

done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I
have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and San-
scrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men
distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am
quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the
Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them
who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library
was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The
intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully
admitted by those members of the Committee who support the
Oriental plan of education.1
Nicholas Tampio wrote a sustained reply to our editorial, ti-

tled “Not All Things Wise and Good Are Philosophy.”2 While
his article is well intentioned, it illustrates the central fallacies
and prejudices that serve to maintain the Eurocentrism of our
discipline. Tampio takes as his initial premise the claim, “Phi-
losophy originates in Plato’s Republic.” Let us leave aside the
Foreword Z xv
point that this ignores all of Plato’s earlier dialogues as well as

the pre-Socratic tradition in Greece, and let us charitably read
The Republic as a metonym for Greece. Even so, in an argument
for the claim that all philosophy is Western, the initial premise
is that philosophy starts in Greece. You just couldn’t beg the
question more obviously. Tampio asserts just before this that
while “it might seem broadminded to call for philosophy pro-
fessors to teach ancient Asian scholars such as Confucius
and Candrakürti in addition to dead white men such as David
Hume and Immanuel Kant, . . . this approach undermines what
is distinct about philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and
pays other traditions the dubious compliment of saying that
they are just like ours.” This sets out his two lines of argument.
First, neither Confucius (Kongzi) nor Candrakürti is really a
philosopher (and therefore presumably—given the conclusion
of the essay—no alleged non-Western philosophers are real
philosophers), and, second, it is more respectful to classify them
as “sages” rather than philosophers.
Tampio describes both Kongzi and Candrakürti as “sages . . .
on mountaintops” in contrast to those engaged in real philoso-
phy, which takes place “among ordinary human beings in cit-
ies.” This characterization is important not only because of its
historical inaccuracy, but because of what it shows about the
prejudices that keep our field so narrow. Kongzi taught in a se-
ries of cities in China, and Candrakürti taught at what was the
largest university in the world at the time (Nælandæ). Neither,
so far as anyone knows, came anywhere near a mountaintop,
and each was part of an urban intellectual elite. The important
point is that even though this information is easily available,
Tampio doesn’t bother to get it right; European scholars don’t
have that burden to bear. The presupposition that non-European
intellectuals spend their time on mountaintops and in caves is
xvi Y Jay L. Garfield
not an irrelevant factual error, but a form of condescending

romanticism. It suggests a quaint detachment from the need to
test one’s arguments against other philosophers. The reality
that both the Indian and the Chinese traditions are richly dia-
lectical is of course important, as it ought to persuade those
who close the door to these traditions on these grounds to open
them. But it also important to confront the underlying preju-
dice that leads those who tout the “unique” commitment to rea-
son of the Western tradition to fail to meet those standards
themselves.
In addition to the curious claim that some thinkers cannot
be philosophers because of the physical environments in which
they wrote, Tampio argues that Kongzi is not a philosopher
because of the content and form of his writing. This at least is
relevant (although, even were this argument sound, the most it
could show is that Kongzi was not a philosopher, not that there
was no philosophy in China, which is the intended conclusion).
The evidence that Tampio offers that Kongzi is not a philoso-
pher is a single remark about xiào (filial duty) from the Analects,
taken out of all context—a remark that, in context, is actually
an important part of a larger argument that this disposition is a
standing character trait continuous with respect for the law and
authority instead of a momentary attribute. Tampio does noth-
ing to search for this context or even to explore how other
scholars read these passages. Imagine quoting Plato in the
Symposium on the original humans—“Then also people were
shaped like complete spheres. Their backs and sides made a cir-
cle. They had four hands, with the same number of legs and two
faces—completely the same—on top of a circular neck. . . . and
whenever they got running fast, it was just like acrobats re-
volving in a circle—legs straight out and somersaulting!”—and
Foreword Z xvii
concluding not only that Plato was not a philosopher, but also
that there are no philosophers in the West.3 In subsequent cor-
respondence, Tampio acknowledged that he hasn’t actually
read Kongzi or Candrakürti, let alone any of the thinkers who
are in dialogue with them. (In this respect, he is less qualified
to have an opinion than even Macaulay was regarding Indian
philosophy.) Nonetheless, he is comfortable dismissing their
work. Here is one reason to extend the canon: perhaps if philo-
sophical education were sufficiently broad, philosophers would
neither think nor write like this.
Finally, Tampio suggests that exalting non-Western intel-
lectual activity (no matter what its form) as “the possession of
wisdom” (rather than philosophy, the love of wisdom) is more
respectful than the colonialist impulse to assimilate it to what
we do. We should not, that is, take our own practices to be hon-
orific standards against which to hold others. Fair enough. But
what do we mean by apparently innocuous phrases like “wis-
dom traditions”? There are two things to say about this: First,
this is not a way of honoring, but of condescendingly disparag-
ing a tradition. We have departments of philosophy because we
value philosophy as an activity. Those departments are reso-
lutely Eurocentric because we take European philosophy as the
default, or paradigm, case of philosophy, conceived, as Tampio
himself puts it, as reflective rational investigation of an argu-
ment about the fundamental nature of reality, or, as Sellars so
perfectly put it, the attempt “to understand how things in the
broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broad-
est possible sense of the term.”4 We don’t have departments of
“wisdom traditions,” because we don’t value what we take them
to be—nonrational exercises in mythopoetic thinking, or some-
thing like that. To praise Kongzi and Candrakürti by putting
xviii Y Jay L. Garfield
them in that category is to justify ignoring them as sources of

reflection, consigning them to the status of the objects of an-
thropological research.
Moreover, to draw this distinction, and to draw it on the
basis of cultural location, as not only Tampio but the vast ma-
jority of philosophers do (either explicitly as so many of our
critics have, or implicitly in curricular and staffing decisions
that replicate that distinction), is to regard, usually with no evi-
dence whatsoever, the intellectual efforts of those in East Asia,
Africa, and India, and of the indigenous communities around
the world, as of a fundamentally different character from our
own. And that almost always amounts to presuming it to be
irrational, or at least incompetently rational, as does Tampio.
Imagine, for instance, defining “food” as that which the Ital-
ians and the French prepare, and then defining the cuisines of
Asia as “fodder,” politely saying that we don’t want to conde-
scend to it by suggesting in a colonialist voice that they are do-
ing the same thing that we do when they cook and eat!
I belabor Tampio’s essay and the remarks of our anonymous
critic because they are typical of the arguments that we so often
hear, and Tampio’s has the virtue of being articulated with
great clarity in an extended essay. Let me repeat the central
point: Most professional philosophers have neither studied nor
taught, nor considered creating positions for those who do
study or teach, nor considered giving centrality in the philoso-
phy curriculum to any philosophy pursued in any non-Western
culture. Nonetheless, everyone in our profession who has stud-
ied or taught this material seriously agrees that there is a massive
body of philosophically sophisticated, well-argued, and impor-
tant work in non-Western philosophical traditions. Moreover,
scholars who have studied this literature agree that it is of the
same kind as philosophy pursued in the West, and that it ad-
Foreword Z xix
dresses similar issues, albeit with distinct perspectives, and that

it offers distinctive arguments and positions.
It follows that ignoring this work is both epistemically and
morally reprehensible. It is epistemically reprehensible since it
requires us to ignore arguments, positions, and perspectives on
issues we care about that we have good reason to believe are
valuable. And its requires us to do so simply on the grounds
that the material we ignore is written by people inhabiting cul-
tures different from our own. The only arguments for doing so
are clearly bankrupt. If you don’t believe this now, you will be-
lieve it by the time you finish reading this book. But there is a
moral issue as well: ignoring non-Western philosophy in our
research, curriculum, and hiring decisions is deeply racist, and
is a practice we cannot endorse in good faith once we recognize
this.
In leveling the charge of racism—a charge I recognize to be
serious and not to be leveled lightly—I do not mean to suggest
that our colleagues in philosophy individually harbor or act
upon racist views. That would be irresponsible, and, I believe,
false. But there is a distinction to be drawn between individual
and structural racism. A social structure can be racist without
any individual who participates in it being racist when it serves
to establish or to perpetuate a set of practices that systemati-
cally denigrate—implicitly or explicitly—people of particular
races.
Philosophy as it is practiced professionally in much of the
world, and in the United States in particular, is racist in pre-
cisely this sense. To omit all of the philosophy of Asia, Africa,
India, and the Indigenous Americas from the curriculum and
to ignore it in our research is to convey the impression—
whether intentionally or not—that it is of less value than the
philosophy produced in European culture, or worse, to convey
x x Y Jay L. Garfield
the impression—willingly or not—that no other culture was

capable of philosophical thought. These are racist views.
When we academic philosophers have a position open—
perhaps because our Kant specialist retired, or our metaphysician
who works exclusively on possible-worlds modal realism took a
job elsewhere—and we decide that we now have a big “hole” in
Kant or modal metaphysics, and take that hole to be bigger, more
in need of filling than one that comprises all of East Asia, India,
Africa, and Indigenous America, we have endorsed a racist view
of the relative importance of these areas. We have to decide
whether we can reflectively endorse these views, and whether
we can reflectively endorse the practices that express and entrench
them.
It is worth reflecting for a moment, as we consider this ques-
tion, on the fact that, in the contemporary humanities, philoso-
phy stands magnificently alone in this respect. You can’t run an
art history program that attends only to Anglo-European art
anymore; you can’t run a literature program that reads only
works written in English and European languages; and you
can’t run a history department in which only European and
American history are studied. You could once upon a time, but
if you tried now, you would be ridiculed, and properly so. So,
ask yourself, is it different in philosophy because we just have
higher standards, or is it different because we are simply insti-
tutionally less reflective, more retrograde? An honest answer is
deeply troubling.
It is clear, as Bryan Van Norden argues in this book, that
this situation requires remediation, and fortunately, it is not
hard to see how to remediate it. But that will require a collec-
tive will and a collective effort. We must begin to see our cur-
rent departments and journals, and our own philosophical edu-
cations, as inadequate because of serious lacunae. We must see
Foreword Z x xi
filling those lacunae as an internal intellectual need and as a

moral imperative. And we must come to realize that doing so
will make us each better philosophers, will make our depart-
ments better departments, will allow us to educate our students
better, will make philosophy a more valuable social asset, and
will not be a cost we must bear, but an enjoyable and exciting
intellectual adventure. That is, we must now act in good faith,
enacting the values we all endorse. This book shows us why we
must do that, how we can do that, and that it really is in each of
our interests to do so. I urge you to read on.
PREFACE
J
ay Garfield and I did not anticipate the storm of contro-
versy that would result when we published “If Philoso-
phy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is” in
The Stone column of the New York Times blog (May 11, 2016). Per-
haps we should have: after all, we were calling upon ethnocentric
philosophy departments to rename themselves “departments of
Anglo-European philosophy” to reflect their intentional disre-
gard of everything outside the mainstream philosophical canon.
However, it immediately became obvious that our challenge to
the chauvinism of US philosophy departments had struck a
nerve. This book is an effort to develop in detail the case for a
multicultural approach to philosophy.
Like the original editorial, this book is polemical and inten-
tionally provocative in the hope that it will incite discussion
and raise awareness. This work is also intended to be interesting
and accessible to general readers. Since the point is to get non-
specialists excited about the issues so they will want to read
more and gain a deeper understanding, my argumentation is
less guarded and less detailed than I would produce in a work
intended solely for my fellow scholars. In addition, my editor
specifically asked for a work that is “cheeky,” so I tried to deliver
x xiv Y Preface
that tone, and have not shied away from being openly partisan
in my presentation, and sometimes sardonic in a manner I
would eschew in the classroom or in a scholarly publication.
To assist those who want to learn more about philosophy
outside the Anglo-European canon, I maintain a bibliography,
“Readings on the Less Commonly Taught Philosophies,” at
http://bryanvannorden.com. I am grateful to James Maffie and
Sean Robin for suggestions of some titles to include related to
Native American thought, and to Travis W. Holloway for ad-
vice about readings in Continental thought.
I owe thanks to Jay Garfield for many things: for providing
an inspiring example of how to engage in multicultural philos-
ophy, for the initial suggestion about renaming ethnocentric
philosophy departments, and for writing the generous foreword
to this book. (Unfortunately, his numerous other commitments
made it impossible for him to be a coauthor.) I am indebted to
Wendy Lochner, my editor at Columbia University Press, for
suggesting a book developing in more detail themes from the
editorial Jay and I wrote. Wendy has also provided much help-
ful feedback on earlier drafts of this book, as did Erin Cline,
Benjamin Huff, Jeffrey Seidman, Victor Mair, David E. Mung-
ello, Matthew Walker, and two anonymous referees. My copy-
editor, Robert Demke, did a thorough job of correcting a num-
ber of careless mistakes in my original manuscript. I am also
thankful to Lewis Gordon, Charles Goodman, and Kyle Whyte
for advice about doctoral programs in Africana, Indian, and In-
digenous philosophy, respectively. William Levitan helped me
to avoid a mistaken attribution to the learned abbess Héloïse. I
offer prospective thanks to Professor Wu Wanwei of the Wuhan
University of Science and Technology, who is already at work
on the Chinese translation of this book. Of course, I owe an es-
pecially great debt to Barbara, Charles, and Melissa Van Norden,
Preface Z x xv
both for feedback on the manuscript and for putting up with my

busy schedule of naps, watching zombie movies, playing zombie
video games, and more naps.
The editorial that inspired this book was intended to have a
list of cosignatories from the “Minorities and Philosophy” con-
ference at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. Their names
could not be included because of the editorial policy of the New
York Times, but Jay and I are very grateful for the support of Na-
lini Bhushan, department of philosophy, Smith College; Aditi
Chaturvedi, department of philosophy, Ashoka University; Alan
Fox, department of philosophy, University of Delaware; Alexan-
der Guerrero, department of philosophy, University of Pennsyl-
vania; Nabeel Hamid, doctoral student in philosophy, University
of Pennsylvania; Jennie Innes, philosophy major, Brooklyn
College; Julie R. Klein, department of philosophy, Villanova
University; James Maffie, department of philosophy, University
of Maryland; Deven Patel, South Asian studies, University of
Pennsylvania; Jessica Taylor (Treijs), philosophy major, Brook-
lyn College; Christina Weinbaum, philosophy major, Brooklyn
College; and Kathleen Wright, department of philosophy,
Haverford College. (None of them should be blamed for any-
thing I say in this book, nor should Jay.)
Parts of this book appeared previously in Skye Cleary, “Chi-
nese Philosophy in the English-Speaking World: Interview
with Bryan Van Norden,” Blog of the APA, May 17, 2016, http://
blog .apaonline .org /2016 /05 /17 /chinese -philosophy -in -the-
english-speaking-world-interview-with-bryan-van-norden /;
Jay Garfield and Bryan W. Van Norden, “If Philosophy Won’t
Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” The Stone, blog, New
York Times, May 11, 2016, www.nytimes.com /2016/05/11 /opin-
ion /if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.
html; and my articles “Chinese Philosophy Is Missing from
x xvi Y Preface
U.S. Philosophy Departments: Should We Care?” Conversation,

May 18, 2016, https://theconversation.com/chinese-philosophy-
is-missing-from-u-s-philosophy-departments-should-we-care-
56550; “Confucius on Gay Marriage,” Diplomat, July 13, 2015,
http: //thediplomat .com /2015 /07/confucius-on-gay-marriage /;
“Problems and Prospects for the Study of Chinese Philosophy
in the English-Speaking World,” APA Newsletter on the Status
of Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies 15, no.
2 (Spring 2016): http://c.ymcdn.com /sites/www.apaonline.org/
resource /collection /2EAF6689–4B0D -4CCB -9DC6 -FB926
D8FF530/AsianV15n2.pdf; “Three Questions About the Crisis in
Chinese Philosophy,” APA Newsletter on the Status of Asian and
Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies 8, no. 1 (Fall 2008):
3–6, https: //c.ymcdn.com /sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/
collection /2EAF6689 -4B0D-4 CCB-9DC6 -FB926D8FF530/
v08n1Asian.pdf; “What Happened to the Party of Lincoln?”
Hippo Reads, http://read.hipporeads.com/what-happened-to-the-
party-of-lincoln/. The penultimate paragraph of this book in-
cludes a paraphrase of a line from the poem “Dion” by William
Wordsworth: “And what pure homage then did wait / On Di-
on’s virtues, while the lunar beam / Of Plato’s genius, from its
lofty sphere, / Fell round him in the grove of Academe.”
TAKING BACK
PHILOSOPHY
1
A MANIFESTO FOR
MULTICULTURAL PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient.

—Immanuel Kant
We’re going to let our children know that the only philosophers
that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois
and Alain Locke came through the universe.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
P
hilosophy has been a favorite whipping boy in the
culture wars since 399 bce, when an Athenian jury
sentenced Socrates to death. However, philosophers
nowadays are seldom accused of “corrupting the youth.” In-
stead, a surprisingly wide range of pundits—from celebrity sci-
entist Neil deGrasse Tyson (majoring in philosophy “can really
mess you up”) to Senator Marco Rubio (“Welders make more
money than philosophers. We need more welders and less phi-
losophers”)—assert that philosophy is pointless or impractical.1
Tyson’s comment is ironic, since he is a PhD, a doctor of phi-
losophy, reflecting the historical fact that natural science developed
out of the field he denigrates. Moreover, truly great scientists
2 Y A Manifesto for Multicultur al Philosophy
recognize the continuing importance of philosophy. Einstein

even remarked that the “independence created by philosophical
insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a
mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” Rubio’s
claim is simply inaccurate. Not only do philosophy majors earn
more than welders, but they also earn more on average than
political science majors like Rubio. In addition, those who
study philosophy score at or near the top in admission tests
for law school, medical school, and even business school. One
businessperson who majored in philosophy was even on the stage
when Rubio made his dismissive comment: former Hewlett-
Packard CEO and Republican presidential candidate Carly Fio-
rina majored in philosophy.2
Although the critics of academic philosophy are mistaken
about where the problem is, departments are failing their stu-
dents in a crucial way: they are not teaching the profound, fas-
cinating, and increasingly relevant philosophy that is outside
the traditional Anglo-European canon.
Among the top fifty philosophy departments in the United
States that grant a PhD,3 only six have a member of their regu-
lar faculty who teaches Chinese philosophy.4 There are only
three additional doctoral programs in the United States outside
the top fifty that have strong faculty in Chinese philosophy.5
I am focusing here (and in the remainder of this book) on Chi-
nese philosophy, because it is my own area of expertise. How-
ever, Chinese philosophy is only one of a substantial number of
less commonly taught philosophies (LCTP) that fall outside
the Anglo-European mainstream. For example, only six doc-
toral programs in philosophy in the United States have special-
ists on Indian philosophy, and only two of those departments
are ranked among the top fifty.6 Only two US doctoral pro-
grams in philosophy regularly teach the philosophies of the
A Manifesto for Multicultur al Philosophy Z 3
Indigenous peoples of the Americas.7 Most US philosophy de-

partments have no regular faculty who teach courses on Afri-
can philosophy.8 Even some major forms of philosophy deeply
influenced by the Greco-Roman philosophical traditions are
largely ignored by US philosophy departments, including Afri-
can American, Christian, Continental, feminist, Islamic,
Jewish, Latin American, and LGBTQ philosophy.
What are these departments teaching instead? Every one of
the top fifty schools has at least one (and often more than one)
faculty member who can lecture competently on the ancient
Greek Parmenides. There is only one surviving work by Par-
menides. It is a philosophical poem, and includes gems like “It is
right both to say and to think that what-is is: for it can be, / but
nothing is not: these things I bid you ponder.”9 If we turn to
contemporary philosophy, we find that almost every leading US
philosophy department has a specialist in the philosophy of
language, someone prepared to heatedly debate whether the sen-
tence “The present king of France is bald” is false (as the Bertrand
Russell camp claims) or neither true nor false (as the Peter Straw-
son wing asserts).10 It appears that contemporary philosophers
are more likely to be accused of boring the youth to death with
their sentences than they are of being sentenced to death for
corrupting the youth!
WHY MULTICULTUR AL PHILOSOPHY?
In order to appreciate why the narrowness of philosophy de-

partments is so problematic, let’s consider one example of a less
commonly taught philosophy (LCTP). Chinese philosophy
deserves greater coverage by US universities for at least three
reasons. First, China is an increasingly important world power,
both economically and geopolitically—and traditional philoso-

phy is of continuing relevance. Chinese businessmen pay for
lessons from Buddhist monks, Daoism appeals both to peasants
(for whom it is part of tradition) and to many intellectuals (who
look to it for a less authoritarian approach to government), and
China’s current President, Xi Jinping, has repeatedly praised
Confucius.11
What should we make of the Chinese government’s support
of Confucius? At the beginning of the twentieth century, Chi-
nese modernizers of the May Fourth Movement claimed that
Confucianism was authoritarian and dogmatic at its core, so
that China must “overturn the shop of Confucius” in order to
become a strong, democratic nation. Many contemporary Chi-
nese intellectuals agree. (One Chinese professor told me that
the US NBA is more relevant to the lives of contemporary Chi-
nese than Confucianism.) In response to this critique, “New
Confucians” claim that Confucianism can and should be made
compatible with Western democracy, but can also contribute to
Western philosophy insights about communitarian modes of
political organization and the cultivation of individual virtues.
Other commentators suggest that Confucian meritocracy is ac-
tually superior to the mob rule of Western democracy. (After
watching the last US election, it is tempting to agree with
them.) Still others would argue that President Xi’s invocation
of Confucius is simply a tool in the service of a chauvinistic
nationalism.12
Having an informed opinion about issues like the preceding
is important for understanding China’s present and future.
How will the next generation of diplomats, senators, represen-
tatives, and presidents (not to mention informed citizens) learn
about Confucius and his role in Chinese thought if philoso-
phers refuse to teach him? Some of my philosophical colleagues
would reply that students can learn about Confucianism from

religious studies or area studies departments. I would remind
them how vociferously they would complain if their dean told
them they don’t need to hire a Kant specialist, because the Ger-
man department can teach him, and they don’t need to hire a
political philosopher, because the political science department
has someone who covers “that sort of thing.” Philosophers ask
certain questions of texts and use certain methods for discuss-
ing them that are not necessarily practiced in other humanities
or social science disciplines. Other disciplines have equally valu-
able methodologies, but there is no substitute for reading a text
philosophically.13
A second reason that Chinese philosophy should be studied
in US philosophy departments is that it simply has much to
offer as philosophy. Consider the revelations in just a few of
the seminal works about Chinese philosophy in the English-
speaking world. Lee H. Yearley started a minor revolution in
comparative philosophy with his book Mencius and Aquinas:
Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of Courage, which shows how
the concepts of Western virtue ethics can be applied to the
study of Confucianism.14 Yearley argues that the two traditions
are similar enough for comparisons to be legitimate, but differ-
ent enough for both traditions to learn from each other. For
example, both the Thomistic tradition and the Confucian tra-
dition have lists of “cardinal virtues” (the major virtues that en-
compass all the lesser ones); however, the lists overlap only
partially. The Confucian cardinal virtues are benevolence, righ-
teousness, propriety, and wisdom, while the Thomistic list of
natural virtues is wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation.
Thinking about different conceptions of the cardinal virtues gives
us a broader range of possible answers to the question: What is
it to live well?15
Many philosophers are doing fascinating work on other

aspects of Confucian philosophy: comparing Confucian and
Western conceptions of justice,16 discussing how Confucian
views of filial piety and childhood education can inform spe-
cific public policy recommendations,17 bringing seminal West-
ern philosophers like Hobbes and Rousseau into productive
dialogue with Mengzi and Xunzi,18 examining the similarities
and differences between Christian and Confucian views of
ethical cultivation,19 and combining insights from Chinese phi-
losophy with contemporary psychology and metaethics to for-
mulate powerful alternatives to conventional Western ethics.20
Some leading mainstream philosophers have also been open-
minded enough to engage in dialogue with Confucian thought,
including Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum.21
Asian philosophy can also make important contributions to
the philosophy of language and logic. For example, most West-
ern philosophers (going back to Aristotle) have argued that no
contradiction can be true. However, there are a surprisingly
large number of statements that seem to be both true and false.
Some are sentences in ordinary language (like the Liar Para-
dox, “This sentence is false,” which is false if it is true, and
true if it is false), while others are generated by formal logico-
mathematical systems (like Russell’s Paradox, “There is a set that
has as a member every set that is not a member of itself,” which
both does and does not have itself as a member). Asian philoso-
phers have been more willing to entertain the possibility that
some statements might be both true and false. Consequently,
some contemporary philosophers are attempting to synthesize
Buddhist and Daoist insights about paradoxes with “paracon-
sistent logic” to defend dialetheism, the claim that some con-
tradictions are true.22 This is not the only technical topic on
which Asian philosophy anticipates Western philosophy by
millennia: the ancient Mohist philosophers recognized that

“opaque contexts” block the substitutivity of coreferential terms,
something not fully appreciated in the West until the twentieth
century.23
The third reason that it is important to add Chinese philoso-
phy to the curriculum has to do with the fact that philosophy
faces a serious diversity problem. As researchers Myisha Cherry
and Eric Schwitzgebel pointed out recently,
Women still receive only about 28% of philosophy PhDs in the

United States, and are still only about 20% of full professors of
philosophy—numbers that have hardly budged since the 1990s.
And among U.S. citizens and permanent residents receiving
philosophy PhDs in this country, 86% are non-Hispanic white.
The only comparably-sized disciplines that are more white are
the ones that explicitly focus on the European tradition, such as
English literature. Black people are especially difficult to find in
academic philosophy. Black people or African Americans con-
stitute 13% of the U.S. population, 7% of PhD recipients across
all fields, 2% of PhD recipients in philosophy, and less than 0.5%
of authors in the most prominent philosophy journals.24
Least well represented among PhDs in philosophy are Native

Americans, of whom there are estimated to be twenty individu-
als, in total, working in higher education.25 Both my own expe-
rience and that of many of my colleagues suggest that part of
the reason for homogeneity among philosophers is that stu-
dents of color are confronted with a curriculum that is almost
monolithically white. As Cherry and Schwitzgebel note, white
male students “see faces like their own in front of the classroom
and hear voices like their own coming from professors’ mouths.
In the philosophy classroom, they see almost exclusively white
men as examples of great philosophers. They think ‘that’s me’

and they step into it.” Students of philosophy are ill served by a
narrow, ethnocentric education. Fixing the problem of philoso-
phy’s homogeneity is a matter of justice, but it is also about the
very survival of philosophy as an academic discipline. Women
and students of color are an increasing percentage of college
students, and by 2045 whites will be a minority in the United
States. Philosophy must diversify or die.
For all the geopolitical, philosophical, and demographic rea-
sons I have given, philosophy departments in the United States
need to increase offerings in not just Chinese philosophy, but
other LCTP. So how is philosophy doing in the process of di-
versifying the curriculum? A decade ago, among the top fifty
doctoral programs in philosophy in the United States, four of-
fered courses in Chinese philosophy.26 We are now up to eight,
if we include departments that cross-list courses by faculty in
other departments. It would be a mistake to infer from this that
we will continue to see slow but regular growth in coverage of
Chinese philosophy. Some departments that previously had
faculty specializing in Chinese philosophy lost them. In addi-
tion, some departments that currently have faculty in this area
are not committed to replacing them when they retire. Can’t we
do better than this?
A SECOND - BEST APPROACH
At the “Minorities and Philosophy” conference on non-Western

philosophical traditions at the University of Pennsylvania in
2016, my colleague Jay Garfield (an analytically trained phi-
losopher who has become a leading expert on Buddhism) sug-
gested, half-jokingly, that any philosophy department that does

not teach any Africana, Arab, Chinese, or Indian philosophy
should be forced to change its name to “department of Anglo-
European philosophy.” I was taken with the idea, and suggested
that we cowrite an editorial on this topic. It appeared in The
Stone, the philosophy blog of the New York Times:
We ask those who sincerely believe that it does make sense to

organize our discipline entirely around European and American
figures and texts to pursue this agenda with honesty and open-
ness. We therefore suggest that any department that regularly
offers courses only on Western philosophy should rename itself,
“Department of European and American Philosophy.” This
simple change would make the domain and mission of these de-
partments clear, and would signal their true intellectual com-
mitments to students and colleagues. We see no justification for
resisting this minor rebranding, . . . particularly for those who
endorse, implicitly or explicitly, this Eurocentric orientation.
Some of our colleagues defend this orientation on the grounds
that non-European philosophy belongs only in “area studies”
departments, like Asian Studies, African Studies, or Latin
American Studies. We ask that those who hold this view be con-
sistent, and locate their own departments in “area studies” as
well, in this case, Anglo-European Philosophical Studies.
Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that
it is unfair to single out philosophy: we do not have depart-
ments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is noth-
ing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions
offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European
and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not ad-
dressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize
and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are mar-

ginalized in Anglo-European philosophy. There are no compa-
rable differences in how mathematics or physics are practiced in
other contemporary cultures.
Of course, we believe that renaming departments would not
be nearly as valuable as actually broadening the philosophical cur-
riculum and retaining the name “philosophy.” . . . We hope that
American philosophy departments will someday teach Confucius
as routinely as they now teach Kant, that philosophy students will
eventually have as many opportunities to study the Bhagavad Gita
as they do The Republic, that the Flying Man thought experi-
ment of the Persian philosopher Avicenna (980–1037) will be as
well-known as the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment of Hilary
Putnam (1926–2016), that the ancient Indian scholar Candrakir-
ti’s critical examination of the concept of the self will be as well-
studied as David Hume’s, that Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), Kwazi
Wiredu (1931– ), Lame Deer (1903–1976) and Maria Lugones will
be as familiar to our students as their equally profound colleagues
in the contemporary philosophical canon. But, until then, let’s be
honest, face reality and call departments of European-American
Philosophy what they really are.27
The editorial produced a storm of controversy. The previous

five essays in The Stone averaged 277 comments per article. Our
piece received 797 comments before replies were closed twelve
hours later, and over thirty websites commented or hosted dis-
cussions. (My own college-age children were most impressed
by the fact that we earned a thread on Reddit.)28 The replies
were inordinately passionate for what is essentially a discus-
sion of academic curriculum. Some regarded the movement
toward multiculturalism in philosophy as an obvious step.
Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University,

remarked:
The venerable canon of the liberal arts is largely built upon the
hegemony of western, European, and British writing, art, culture
and perspectives. Many faculties, including ours at Trinity in
Washington, have done great work over the years transforming
courses and curricula to include many more voices and contribu-
tions from a remarkably broad range of cultures and traditions.
These changes have strengthened and enriched the entire liberal
arts curriculum, making it more open and accessible to a signifi-
cantly more diverse generation of students. Let’s face facts: there’s
a Muslim Mayor in London, signifying the fact that even those
who revere All Things British need to catch up with the now-
settled reality of great diversity in contemporary life. The canon
of learning should reflect that, including Philosophy.29
However, many responses were quite negative:
Sure, name the departments in a way that accurately reflects the

content and teach global thought traditions but, for better or
worse, there is a particular school of thought that caught fire,
broke cultural boundaries, and laid the foundation of modern
science (Does anyone want to fly in a plane built with non-west-
ern math?) and our least oppressive governmental systems. This
makes one particular school of thought an appropriate founda-
tion for the study of other schools.30
(Personally, I will only fly in a plane built with non-Western

math. After all, the numeral zero is an Indian innovation, our
word “algebra” comes from Arabic, and the ancient Egyptians
invented quadratic equations.)31 Another reader of our editorial

was even more dismissive: “Please preserve us from your political
correctness. There is much that is of historical interest and value
in non-European philosophy, but come on, there’s a reason that
Europe leaped ahead of the rest of the world. I do not believe
that we should sacrifice that merely because of an ooshy gooshy
need to pretend that all cultures are equally advanced.”32
THE QUALIT Y ARGUMENT
These critical comments suggest that non-European thought

somehow isn’t as good as European philosophy. Most contem-
porary Western intellectuals gingerly dance around this issue.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia was an exception, saying in
print what many people actually think, or whisper to like-
minded colleagues over drinks at the club. In the majority deci-
sion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that
legalized gay marriage across the United States, Chief Justice
Anthony Kennedy quoted both Confucius and the Roman phi-
losopher Cicero (106–43 bce) on the “centrality of marriage
to the human condition.”33 In his dissenting opinion, Scalia
chided Kennedy for daring to invoke the Chinese sage: “The
Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the
disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story
to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”34 He echoes
this sentiment in the conclusion of his dissent: “The world does
not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop-
philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in
today’s opinion has to diminish this Court’s reputation for
clear thinking and sober analysis.” 35 Notice that Scalia said
nothing that might be interpreted as an aspersion upon Cicero;
only Confucius earned his contempt. Ironically, Confucius is

featured on the East Pediment of the Supreme Court Building,
along with Moses and Solon, as representing three of the great
legal and moral traditions of the world.36
It is not only right-wing jurists who impugn non-European
philosophy. Many philosophers, including ones who might
describe themselves as politically progressive, are also dismis-
sive of it. Massimo Pigliucci, an analytic philosopher of science,
wrote an essay, “On the Pseudo-Profundity of Some Eastern
Philosophy.”37 (He says “some,” but there is no indication in the
body of his essay that he sees any limitations to his claims.)
Pigliucci concludes that “there is no such thing as Eastern phi-
losophy” based on his exhaustive research—which he admits
consisted of reading some kĎans and one Wikipedia article on
the topic. Philosophy, Pigliucci explains, is inquiry “conducted
by the use of logical reasoning, where possible informed by
empirical science.” (A philosophy graduate student who casu-
ally threw around terms such as “logical reasoning” and “em-
pirical” as if they were unambiguous and uncontroversial would
be given a remedial reading list including the works of Pierre
Duhem, Gaston Bachelard, Thomas Kuhn, Jean-François
Lyotard, Paul Feyerabend, Michel Foucault, W. V. O. Quine,
Wilfred Sellars, Donald Davidson, and Richard Rorty, for
starters.) Pigliucci continues that “Buddhism, Taoism, Confu-
cianism and so forth” are not “philosophical in nature because
they do not attempt to argue for a position by using logic and
evidence.” (Italics mine: “and so forth” is, of course, a well-
known logical operator, used to make precise generalizations
based on empirical evidence.) Finally, Pigliucci explains that, in
addition to its logical and empirical basis, actual (that is, West-
ern) philosophy “won’t require decades of meditation staring at
a wall.”
I would ask Pigliucci (or the ghost of Scalia) why he thinks

that the Mohist state-of-nature argument to justify government
authority is not philosophy.38 What does he make of Mengzi’s
reductio ad absurdum against the claim that human nature is
reducible to desires for food and sex?39 Why does he dismiss
Zhuangzi’s version of the infinite regress argument for skepti-
cism?40 What is his opinion of Hanfeizi’s argument that po-
litical institutions must be designed so that they do not depend
upon the virtue of political agents?41 What does he think of
Zongmi’s argument that reality must fundamentally be mental,
because it is inexplicable how consciousness could arise from
matter that was nonconscious?42 Why does he regard the Pla-
tonic dialogues as philosophical, yet dismiss Fazang’s dia-
logue in which he argues for and responds to objections against
the claim that individuals are defined by their relationships to
others?43 What is his opinion of Wang Yangming’s arguments
for the claim that it is impossible to know what is good yet fail
to do what is good?44 Does he find convincing Dai Zhen’s effort
to produce a naturalistic foundation for ethics in the universal-
izability of our natural motivations?45 What does he make of
Mou Zongsan’s critique of Kant,46 or Liu Shaoqi’s argument
that Marxism is incoherent unless supplemented with a theory
of individual ethical transformation?47 Does he prefer the for-
mulation of the argument for the equality of women given in
the Vimalakirti Sutra, or the one given by the Neo-Confucian
Li Zhi, or the one given by the Marxist Li Dazhao?48
Of course, the answer to each question is that those who
suggest that Chinese philosophy is irrational have never heard
of any of these arguments because they do not bother to read
Chinese philosophy and simply dismiss it in ignorance. Frankly,
such comments remind me of the sort of undergraduate who
doesn’t complete the assigned readings, but thinks he has some
“really cool ideas” about the topic anyway, and that the whole
class would benefit greatly from hearing them. My grade would
be “D-. See me!”
If you are offended when someone says you are wrong, you
have no business claiming to be any kind of intellectual. But
there is a great difference between a sincerely reasoned argu-
ment and an unargued dismissal. As English clergyman William
Paley (1743–1805) lamented, “Who can refute a sneer?” After all,
“such attacks do their execution without inquiry.” Much more
of philosophy than we like to admit is simply argumentum per
supercilia, “argument by raised eyebrows.” The great economist
John Maynard Keynes gave a wonderful description of how this
technique was practiced by one of the founders of analytic phi-
losophy, G. E. Moore (1873–1958):
Moore was a great master of this method—greeting one’s re-

marks with a gasp of incredulity—Do you really think that, an
expression of face as if to hear such a thing said reduced him to
a state of wonder verging on imbecility, with his mouth wide
open and wagging his head in the negative so violently that his
hair shook. “Oh!” he would say, goggling at you as if either you
or he must be mad; and no reply was possible.49
It should come as no surprise that Moore treated non-Western

philosophy with nothing but contempt. After Indian philoso-
pher Surama Dasgupta read a paper on the epistemology of
Vedanta to a session of the Aristotelian Society in London,
Moore’s only comment was, “I have nothing to offer myself. But
I am sure that whatever Dasgupta says is absolutely false.” The
audience of British philosophers in attendance roared with
laughter at the devastating “argument” Moore had leveled
against Vedanta.50 This is the level of pseudo-argumentation
that is typically used to dismiss philosophy that is outside the

Anglo-European canon. When people assert that non-Western
philosophy is not really philosophy or at least is not good phi-
losophy, it is never because they have carefully studied it and
have an informed and coherent opinion. I know this because
anyone who bothers to learn about it with an open mind does
recognize it as both philosophical and important.
ESSENTIALIST ETHNOCENTRISM
Another argument against multicultural philosophy appeared

in the conservative journal The Weekly Standard, in a response to
Garfield’s and my editorial. D. Kyle Peone argued that, because
“philosophy” is a word of Greek origin, it refers only to the tra-
dition that grows out of the ancient Greek thinkers.51 A similar
line of argument was given in Aeon magazine by Nicholas
Tampio, who pronounced that “Philosophy originates in Pla-
to’s Republic.”52 (Bad news for those who teach pre-Socratic
philosophers like Parmenides!) In other words, the essence of
philosophy is to be a part of one specific Western intellectual
lineage. This kind of essentialist argument against the existence
of non-Western philosophy fails for two major reasons: one
conceptual and one historical.
First, the conceptual problem with essentialism: Whether
people are engaging in the same kind of inquiry—for example,
whether it is philosophical or scientific—cannot depend merely
on accidents of history. Consider a parallel case. The Pythago-
rean Theorem states that for any right triangle, the square of the
length of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is
equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two
sides. Although the discovery of the theorem is conventionally
attributed to Pythagoras, it is Euclid who gives the first surviv-

ing Western proof of this theorem in his Elements. As it turns
out, the Pythagorean Theorem was also known in China. The
earliest occurrence of it is in the ancient Zhoubi Suanjing. 53
The Zhoubi Suanjing gives a proof of the theorem that meets
the most rigorous mathematical standards, and is arguably
more elegant than the proof in the Elements. Are we to say that
the Zhoubi Suanjing is not about “mathematics” because it is
not part of the mathematical tradition that grows out of the Py-
thagoreans and Euclid? This seems patently absurd. If the
Pythagorean Theorem were unknown in the West, the proof of
it from the Zhoubi Suanjing could be translated into English
and pass the standards of any top academic journal of mathe-
matics in the United States.
There are also clear historical examples of intellectual
traditions accepting and being broadened by alien systems of
thought. When Buddhism was brought to China by missionar-
ies from India in the first century ce, there already existed a
robust and diverse native spiritual tradition, including Confu-
cianism and Daoism (each of which had a variety of competing
interpretations). Buddhism was a completely alien system of
thought that challenged many of the fundamental ethical and
metaphysical assumptions of the classic Chinese thinkers.
However, Chinese philosophers studied Buddhist works, trans-
lated them into their own language, learned a new technical
vocabulary, and engaged with Buddhist arguments. As a result,
the Chinese intellectual tradition was permanently deepened.
Even if one refuses to bestow the label of “philosophy” upon
any of these systems of thought, the fact that Confucianism
and Daoism were able to adapt to and incorporate Buddhist
ideas dispels the illusion that intellectual traditions have an un-
changing essence that makes them hermetically sealed.
A very similar transformation actually occurred in Western

philosophy not too long ago. When a major European univer-
sity began to teach the ideas of a particular noncanonical
thinker, mainstream philosophers on the faculty objected that
the new philosophy was not part of “our tradition,” and that it
was watering down the curriculum in the name of a misguided
fad. Because the new philosophy was inconsistent with many
widely held positions, some philosophers resorted to a flaccid
relativism, arguing that there were “two truths” on these mat-
ters. This sort of approach only convinced the mainstream phi-
losophers that the new philosophy was nonsense. However, a
brilliant philosopher argued that the best way to discover the
truth is through a pluralistic dialogue with all the major world
philosophies. This philosophical genius was Thomas Aquinas.
In the thirteenth century at the University of Paris, Aquinas,
Albertus Magnus, and others encouraged students and col-
leagues (who had previously only learned a form of Platonized
Christianity) to expand the canon and learn not just from the
philosophy of the pagan Aristotle (only recently rediscovered in
Western Europe), but also from Jewish and Muslim thinkers.
The result was to reinvigorate and deepen the Western philo-
sophical tradition. (Siger of Brabant, the infamous “Latin
Averroist,” was the one who advocated the “two truths” doc-
trine. Interestingly, there are competing accounts of how Siger
died, 54 but I suppose each of them is true, in its own way.) The
case of Aquinas and the rediscovery of Aristotle is just one of
many examples that illustrate that the Western philosophical
canon is not, and never was, a closed system. Philosophy only
becomes richer and approximates the truth more closely as it
becomes increasingly diverse and pluralistic.
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL

ETHNOCENTRISM
The second reason that essentialist arguments against multicul-

turalism fail is that the definition of philosophy as a self-contained
dialogue that begins with the Greeks is a recent, historically
contingent, and controversial view. As Peter K. J. Park notes in
his book Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, the view that
“philosophy’s origins are Greek was, in the eighteenth century,
the opinion of an extreme minority of historians.”55 The only
options taken seriously by most scholars during this era were
that philosophy began in India, that philosophy began in Af-
rica, or that both India and Africa gave philosophy to Greece.56
Furthermore, when European philosophers first learned
about Chinese thought in the seventeenth century, they imme-
diately recognized it as philosophy. The first major translation
into a European language of the Analects, the saying of Confu-
cius (551–479 bce), was done by Jesuits with extensive training
in Western philosophy. They titled their translation Confucius
Sinarum Philosophus (Confucius the Chinese Philosopher, 1687).
One of the major Western philosophers who read with fasci-
nation Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). He was stunned by the apparent
correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented
and which became the mathematical basis for all computers)
and the Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically repre-
sents the structure of the universe via sets of broken and un-
broken lines, essentially 0s and 1s.57 Leibniz also famously said
that, while the West has the advantage of having received
Christian revelation, and is superior to China in the natural sci-
ences, “certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful
to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts
of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of
mortals.”58
In 1721, the influential philosopher Christian Wolff echoed
Leibniz in the title of his public lecture Oratio de Sinarum Phi-
losophia Practica (Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the
Chinese). Wolff argued that Confucius showed that it was pos-
sible to have a system of morality without basing it on either
divine revelation or natural religion. Because it proposed that
ethics can be completely separated from belief in God, the lec-
ture caused a scandal among conservative Christians, who had
Wolff relieved of his duties and exiled from Prussia. However,
his lecture made him a hero of the German Enlightenment, and
he immediately obtained a prestigious position elsewhere. In
1730, he delivered a second public lecture, De Rege Philosophante
et Philosopho Regnante (On the Philosopher King and the Rul-
ing Philosopher), which praised the Chinese for consulting “phi-
losophers” like Confucius and his later follower Mengzi (fourth
century bce) about important matters of state.59
Chinese philosophy was also taken very seriously in France.
One of the leading reformers at the court of Louis XV was
François Quesnay (1694–1774). He praised Chinese governmental
institutions and philosophy so lavishly in his work Despotisme
de la China (1767) that he became known as “the Confucius of
Europe.”60 Quesnay was one of the originators of the concept
of laissez-faire economics, and he saw a model for this in the
sage-king Shun, who was known for governing by wúwéi (non-
interference in natural processes).61 The connection between the
ideology of laissez-faire economics and wúwéi continues to the
present day. In his State of the Union Address in 1988, Ronald
Reagan quoted a line describing wúwéi from the Daodejing,
which he interpreted as a warning against government regula-
tion of business.62 (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philo-

sophical idea was a good idea.)
So through most of the eighteenth century, it was not taken
for granted in Europe that philosophy began in Greece, and it
was taken for granted that Chinese philosophy was philosophy.
What changed? As Park convincingly argues, Africa and Asia
were excluded from the philosophical canon by the confluence
of two interrelated factors. On the one hand, defenders of Im-
manuel Kant’s philosophy consciously rewrote the history of
philosophy to make it appear that his Critical Idealism was the
culmination toward which all earlier philosophy was groping,
more or less successfully. On the other hand, European intel-
lectuals increasingly accepted and systematized views of white
racial superiority that entailed that no non-Caucasian group
could develop philosophy.63 (As Edward Said points out, the
Orientalist aspect of this racism was correlated with the rise of
European imperialism, including the adventures of the East
India Company in South Asia and Napoleon’s invasion of
Egypt.)64 So the exclusion of non-European philosophy from
the canon was a decision, not something that people have always
believed, and it was a decision based not on a reasoned argu-
ment, but rather on polemical considerations involving the pro-
Kantian faction in European philosophy, as well as views about
race that are both unscientific and morally heinous.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) himself was notoriously racist.
In his lectures on anthropology, Kant treats race as a scientific
category (which it is not), and grades the races hierarchically,
with whites at the apex:
1. “The race of the whites contains all talents and motives in

itself.”65
2. “The Hindus . . . have a strong degree of calm, and all

look like philosophers. That notwithstanding, they are much
inclined to anger and love. They thus are educable in the high-
est degree, but only to the arts and not to the sciences. They will
never achieve abstract concepts.”
3. “The race of Negroes . . . [is] full of affect and passion,
very lively, chatty and vain. It can be educated, but only to the
education of servants, i.e., they can be trained.” (In another
context, Kant dismissed a comment someone makes on the
grounds that “this scoundrel was completely black from head to
foot, a distinct proof that what he said was stupid.”)66
4. “The [Indigenous] American people are uneducable; for
they lack affect and passion. They are not amorous, and so are
not fertile. They speak hardly at all, . . . care for nothing and are
lazy.”
Kant ranks the Chinese with East Indians, and claims that
they are “static . . . for their history books show that they do not
know more now than they have long known.”67 So Kant, who
is one of the most influential philosophers in the Western tradi-
tion, asserted that Chinese, Indians, Africans, and the Indige-
nous peoples of the Americas are congenitally incapable of
philosophy. And contemporary philosophers take it for granted
that there is no Chinese, Indian, African, or Native American
philosophy. If this is a coincidence, it is a stunning one.
Because of Kant’s racism, it is difficult to believe that his
judgments on Confucianism in his lectures on Physical Geogra-
phy are based on a rational assessment of the evidence: “Phi-
losophy is not to be found in the whole Orient. . . . Their
teacher Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a
moral doctrine designed for the princes . . . and offers exam-
ples of former Chinese princes. . . . But a concept of virtue and
morality never entered the heads of the Chinese.”68 Kant also

breezily comments: “In China everybody has the freedom to
throw away children who become a burden, through hanging
or drowning.”69 However, as historian David E. Mungello
notes, “the horror felt by Europeans” about the Chinese prac-
tice of infanticide “was fed by a chauvinistic hypocrisy that
blinded them to the massive infant abandonments that were
even then occurring across Europe.” 70 Many classic European
myths reflect this reality: Rome was supposedly founded by
Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by a wolf after being
abandoned as infants; the story of Hansel and Gretel is about
children being left to starve in the woods. Abandonment of
infants became so common in the United Kingdom that in
1872 Parliament had to pass the Infant Life Protection Act,
which required registration of all infants.71 In China, infanticide
was hardly treated as a casual matter: Buddhists and Confucians
both condemned the practice when it did occur, and funded
foundling homes for abandoned children.72 I am not denying
that infanticide is horrific: it is. Nor am I denying that there is
something especially abhorrent about the Chinese preference
for female infanticide (and the contemporary trend of selective
abortion of female fetuses): there is. What I object to is the rhe-
torical use of infanticide to portray the West as morally superior
to China.
G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) was one of Kant’s most insightful
critics, but he shared Kant’s casual dismissal of Chinese
thought:
We have conversations between Confucius and his followers in

which there is nothing definite further than a commonplace
moral put in the form of good, sound doctrine, which may be
found as well expressed and better, in every place and amongst
every people. Cicero gives us De Officiis, a book of moral teach-

ing more comprehensive and better than all the books of Confu-
cius. He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical
and worldly wisdom—one with whom there is no speculative
philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for
their reputation it would have been better had they never been
translated.73
Elsewhere, Hegel opines: “In the principal work of Confucius . . .

are found correct moral sayings; but there is a circumlocution, a
reflex character, and circuitousness in the thought, which pre-
vents it from rising above mediocrity.”74 Ironically, many people
dismiss Hegel’s own philosophical writings for the same stylistic
flaws of “circumlocution” and “circuitousness.”
Note that Hegel is like Scalia in giving Cicero privileged
treatment compared to Confucius. Speaking as someone who
has actually read both of them, I find Confucius considerably
more interesting than Cicero. Cicero reminds me of the uncle
who buttonholes you at Thanksgiving to lecture you intermi-
nably about fly-fishing. Many others share my opinion. No
less an authority than classicist and Nobel Laureate Theodor
Mommsen said that “the dreadful barrenness of thought in
the Ciceronian orations must revolt every reader of feeling and
judgment.” 75 In a similar vein, Alston Hurd Chase, a beloved
teacher of Greek and Roman literature at Phillips Academy
Andover, admitted that “the windy, egotistic orations of Ci-
cero” caused generations of students to abandon the study of
Latin.76 In contrast, Herbert Fingarette, who was originally
trained as a mainstream analytic philosopher, said that, when
he actually read Confucius carefully, he found him to be “a
thinker with profound insight and with an imaginative vision
of man equal in its grandeur to any I know.” 77
Essentialist arguments against multiculturalism have con-

tinued into the twentieth century. Martin Heidegger claimed
that “The often heard expression ‘Western-European philoso-
phy’ is, in truth, a tautology. Why? Because philosophy is Greek
in its nature; . . . the nature of philosophy is of such a kind that
it first appropriated the Greek world, and only it, in order to
unfold.” 78 Similarly, on a visit to China in 2001, Jacques Derrida
stunned his hosts (who teach in Chinese philosophy depart-
ments) by announcing that “China does not have any philoso-
phy, only thought.” In response to the obvious shock of his
audience, Derrida insisted that “Philosophy is related to some
sort of particular history, some languages, and some ancient
Greek invention. . . . It is something of European form.” 79 The
statements of Derrida and Heidegger might have the appear-
ance of complimenting non-Western philosophy for avoiding
the entanglements of Western metaphysics. In actuality, their
comments are as condescending as talk of “noble savages,” who
are untainted by the corrupting influences of the West, but are
for that very reason barred from participation in higher culture.
Postcolonial feminist Gayatri Spivak, who translated Derrida’s
Of Grammatology into English, acknowledges that “almost by a
reverse ethnocentrism, Derrida insists that logocentrism is a
property of the West. . . . Although something of the Chinese
prejudice of the West is discussed in Part I, the East is never
seriously studied or deconstructed in the Derridean text. Why
then must it remain, recalling Hegel and Nietzsche in their
most cartological humors, as the name of the limits of the text’s
knowledge?”80
Sometimes the narrow-mindedness characteristic of con-
temporary philosophers is amusingly baffling. I vividly remem-
ber many of my early experiences being interviewed for a job as
an assistant professor. The writing sample I submitted as part of
my application packet discussed Daoist critiques of Confucian

ethics. Part of the Daoist argument is that those who self-con-
sciously advocate virtue (like the Confucians) are the first to
“role up their sleeves and resort to force” (as Daodejing 38 puts
it) when things don’t go their way. It is not an implausible argu-
ment that a conscious effort to be virtuous is self-defeating
because one can easily slide into hypocritical self-righteousness.
Confucians typically reply that emphasizing deference and hu-
mility as virtues will make self-righteousness less likely. I was
looking forward to discussing this debate between Daoists and
Confucians with other philosophers. However, in one inter-
view, a leading analytic epistemologist had only one question
for me: “You mention that thing about rolling up their sleeves.
In all the pictures I’ve seen of Chinese philosophers, they’re
wearing robes. Did those guys even have sleeves?” He seemed
fascinated to discover that they did.
During another interview, a philosopher asked me a long,
rambling question that I barely understood at the time and
most of which I could not reproduce to save my life. However, I
will always remember his conclusion: “So, I guess what I’m say-
ing is, it seems like Chinese philosophers are playing the intel-
lectual equivalent of minor league baseball, whereas Western
philosophers are playing major league baseball. Wouldn’t you
agree?” I did not, nor did I get that job.
The ethnocentrism of professional philosophers is sometimes
too offensive to laugh at. Former philosophy doctoral student
Eugene Park speaks movingly about his failed efforts to en-
courage a more diverse approach to philosophy:
I found myself repeatedly confounded by ignorance and, at

times, thinly veiled racism. To various faculty, I suggested the
possibility of hiring someone who, say, specializes in Chinese
philosophy or feminist philosophy or the philosophy of race. I

complained about the Eurocentric nature of undergraduate and
graduate curricula. Without exception, my comments and sug-
gestions were met with the same rationalizations for why phi-
losophy is the way it is and why it should remain that way. To
paraphrase one member of my department, “This is the intel-
lectual tradition we work in. Take it or leave it.”
The pressure to accept and conform to a narrow conception of
philosophy was pervasive. When I tried to introduce non-West-
ern and other noncanonical philosophy into my dissertation, a
professor in my department suggested that I transfer to the Re-
ligious Studies Department or some other department where
“ethnic studies” would be more welcome.81
Park eventually dropped out of his doctoral program. How

many other students—particularly students who might have
brought greater diversity to philosophy—have been turned off
from the beginning or have dropped out along the way because
philosophy seems like nothing but a temple to the achievement
of white males?
The sad reality is that comments like those by Kant, Hegel,
Heidegger, Derrida, Scalia, Pigliucci, and the professors Park
encountered are manifestations of what Edward Said labeled
“Orientalism”: the view that everything from Egypt to Japan is
essentially the same, and is the polar opposite of the West: “The
Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’;
thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal.’ ”82
Those under the influence of Orientalism do not need to really
read Chinese (or other non-European) texts or take their argu-
ments seriously, because they come preinterpreted: “ ‘Orientals’
for all practical purposes were a Platonic essence, which any
Orientalist (or ruler of Orientals) might examine, understand,
and expose.”83 And this essence guarantees that what Chinese,

Indian, Middle Eastern, or other non-European thinkers have
to say is at best quaint, at worst fatuous.
While racism is undeniably part of the problem, it is also
true that most US philosophers simply don’t know anything
about Chinese philosophy. As philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel
laments: “Ignorance thus apparently justifies ignorance: Be-
cause we don’t know their work, they have little impact on our
philosophy; because they have little impact on our philosophy,
we are justified in remaining ignorant about their work.”84 If
US philosophers do have any familiarity with Chinese thought
(perhaps through a nonphilosophical Asian literature survey
course they took as an undergraduate), it is probably from the
Analects of Confucius, the Daodejing, or the Changes. In my
opinion, of all the ancient classics, these three works are the
least accessible to contemporary philosophers. As Joel Kupper-
man explained,
If educated Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese (along with a small

number of Western scholars) think that they understand The
Analects of Confucius, it is because they have read it all, probably
more than once. The pithy sayings take on meaning in the larger
context. For the Western reader who is not a specialist The Ana-
lects of Confucius initially will seem like one of those amorphous
blots used in Rorschach tests.85
The same could be said about the Daodejing and the Changes:
without a great deal of effort and assistance in understanding
their background and influence, it would be easy to walk away
from these works thinking that Chinese philosophy is nothing
but shallow platitudes or simply word salad. Ironically, begin-
ning the study of Chinese philosophy with the Analects, Daode-
jing, or Changes is a bit like starting to learn about Western

philosophy with the pre-Socratics. The fragments of Heraclitus
and Parmenides, like the heterogeneous sayings recorded in the
Analects and Daodejing, are crucial background to understanding
what comes later, and they do present interesting philosophical
and textual issues for those equipped to handle them. However,
the beginner needs a lot of help in understanding what is philo-
sophically important about them, and you will get a misleading
impression if all you know about their respective traditions is
these works.86
However, as Schwitzgebel argues, “even by the strictest crite-
ria,” the ancient consequentialist Mozi and the Confucian virtue
ethicist Xunzi “are plainly philosophers.”87 Schwitzgebel, a highly
respected analytic philosopher of mind, goes on to note that the
moral realist Mengzi and his antirealist nemesis Zhuangzi are
comparable in style to Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, in that they
offer strong prima facie arguments even though they do not
write in the essay format favored by contemporary philosophers. I
would add the Legalists Hanfeizi and Shen Dao to the list of
ancient Chinese thinkers who are plainly philosophers.88 There
are also many interesting and powerful philosophers in the
later Chinese tradition, particularly in the Buddhist, Neo-
Confucian, and New Confucian traditions.89
AVOIDING INTELLECTUAL IMPERIALISM
So far, I have replied to those who would deny the title of “phi-
losophy” to non-Western thinkers on the grounds that they
don’t engage in anything recognizable as competent philosophy
(an assertion that can be falsified by simply reading the thinkers
in question), and I’ve challenged the essentialist ethnocentrism
that defines philosophy as grounded in a particular historical

tradition (a view that is both conceptually confused and histori-
cally dubious). However, some argue that characterizing non-
Western thought as “philosophy” is itself a kind of intellectual
imperialism, since it takes for granted the Western category. I
certainly agree that we have to be careful to understand how
doctrines and practices of argumentation are situated in their
particular cultures. These doctrines and practices will normally
not overlap perfectly with our own. However, it is equally im-
portant to avoid the misconception that philosophy in the
West is monolithic. As Justin E. H. Smith elegantly illustrates
in his recent work, “philosophy has in fact been many things
in the 2,500 years or so since the term was first used,”90 and
“philosophy’s motion throughout history from one self-concep-
tion to the next has been at best a sort of random stumbling.”91
In general, I suggest that we should agree to stop using the word
“the” in intellectual history. “The Western conception of phi-
losophy,” “the Chinese view of the sage,” “the Indian view of
liberation”: these and similar definite descriptions are all non-
referring, because “the” suggests uniqueness. Plato, Kant, and
Russell do not share one understanding of what philosophy is.
Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians do not agree about what
makes someone a sage, nor do they even agree about who is a
sage. Indian philosophers do not hold the same doctrines about
what you need to be liberated from, or how you get liberated
from it, or what you are liberated into. Consequently, the dan-
ger is not that we might mistakenly impose the unique Western
conception of the philosopher onto (for example) the unique Chi-
nese conception of the sage. Rather, the temptation to avoid is
the assumption that what one Western philosopher does is de-
finitive of all philosophy, and must be what philosophers in other
cultures are doing (if they are doing philosophy at all). For ex-
ample, if we compare the ancient Confucian Mengzi (fourth

century bce) with René Descartes (1596–1650), the founder of
modern Western philosophy, they seem to be engaged in activi-
ties that are completely unrelated. However, Mengzi does seem
to be exploring the same fundamental question as the ancient
Stoic Epictetus (fl. 200 bce)—what is the best way to live—
even though they offer answers that are different in interesting
and informative ways. A more appropriate Asian philosopher to
bring into dialogue with Descartes would be the Buddhist
thinker Dharmakürti (fl. 600 ce), who provides alternative con-
clusions and arguments regarding the same kinds of issues in
epistemology and metaphysics that vex Cartesians. In chapter 5,
I discuss in more depth the issue of what philosophy is, why we
should use a broad characterization of philosophy, and why
some kinds of non-Western thought are clearly philosophy.
However, I hope the preceding considerations will encourage
those who are worried about the danger of intellectual imperi-
alism to keep reading until then.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
As the Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi notes, ethical knowl-

edge comes first in time, but appropriate action is what is most
important. Consequently, I offer the following concrete recom-
mendations. To my fellow academic colleagues: the next time
you are authorized to hire a new philosopher, consider whether
it is really best for the long-term health of your department,
for the education of your students, and even for the survival of
philosophy as an academic discipline to hire yet another per-
son who specializes solely in mainstream Anglo-European
philosophy.
One bad argument I sometimes hear against diversifying the

curriculum is “What would you have us cut? We can barely cover
Western philosophy as it is!” You’re right. You can’t cover all of
Anglo-European philosophy. But guess what? You were never
close to covering all of Western philosophy and you never will
be! There are more than a dozen distinct “topical” subjects in
Western philosophy (including aesthetics, applied ethics, epis-
temology, logic, metaethics, metaphysics, normative ethics,
philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy
of mind, philosophy of science, and political philosophy, among
others) and at least eight distinct historical subjects in Western
philosophy (ancient Western philosophy, Hellenistic philoso-
phy, medieval Western philosophy, early modern Western
philosophy, nineteenth-century Continental philosophy, twen-
tieth-century Continental philosophy, history of analytic phi-
losophy, and history of pragmatism). So, if you want to have
comprehensive coverage of Western philosophy, you will need a
minimum of twenty philosophers in your department. In real-
ity, even large departments in the United States do not try to
have comprehensive coverage, but instead have philosophers
with overlapping areas of competence. One top philosophy de-
partment has nineteen faculty members, seven of whom list
philosophy of mind as an area of expertise. (To its credit, this
department also has one specialist in Chinese philosophy and
one on Africana philosophy.) So, yes, if you are going to add
non-Western philosophy or some other LCTP to your cur-
riculum, you will have less coverage in some area. But you are
already making compromises about coverage all the time. Fur-
thermore, scholars who teach some kind of LCTP almost
invariably also teach and do research in some “mainstream”
area. Chinese philosophy pairs well with ethics; Indian philoso-
phy easily meshes with analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and
philosophy of language; many other LCTP are directly relevant

to political philosophy.
I once approached a leading philosopher for advice about
how to increase diversity in the curriculum of US philosophy
departments. I deeply admire her and her work, which includes
extensive activism as a progressive public intellectual, so I was
hopeful that she would be supportive. She replied that, given
how few scholars know classical Chinese or Sanskrit well enough
to supervise doctoral students, and how few students come into
graduate school with any background in these languages, we
can’t change things without “cutting corners.” I concede that
part of the reason for the glacial rate of change in philosophy is
a pipeline problem. In a vicious circle, few institutions teach
philosophy outside the Anglo-European mainstream, so there
are few recent PhDs in these areas for institutions to hire, so
the number of institutions that teach these kinds of philosophy
does not increase.
Although the pipeline problem is real, it is not an excuse for
failure to diversity the curriculum. First, the Society for Asian
and Comparative Philosophy, which is probably the largest
professional organization devoted to the study of non-Western
philosophy, has over six hundred members.92 Consequently,
there are enough strong scholars currently doing research that
we could double the number of top institutions teaching Asian
philosophy overnight if there were the will to do so. Second,
many understudied areas in philosophy do not require expertise
in what the US Foreign Service Institute describes as “Category
III” languages (the most difficult ones for English-speakers to
learn). Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi
wrote in English; Simone de Beauvoir, the seminal feminist ex-
istentialist, wrote in French; Enrique Dussel, a foundational
figure in Latin American philosophy of liberation, writes in
Spanish. Third, philosophers have both “areas of specialization”

(the subjects they publish on and supervise dissertations about)
and “areas of competence” (topics they can teach an undergrad-
uate survey course on). Even if you cannot find someone quali-
fied to do research in one of the LCTP, you can at least hire
someone who can teach the topic to undergraduates.
What you should absolutely not do is go to someone already
in your department who teaches Anglo-European philosophy
but happens to be of non-European descent and say, “We’re
getting pressure about teaching Asian/African/Islamic phi-
losophy. Why don’t you work up a course on it?” Yes, this really
does happen. This is deeply racist. (It’s as bad as telling me that
I’m of Polish descent, so I must love Kielbasa and Pierogis. I
mean, I am and I do, but that’s beside the point.) Furthermore,
untenured faculty will often have to swallow their pride and
accept your request out of fear of losing their job by being
“uncollegial.”
Finally, some advice to students: Both as individuals and
when organized, you have considerable power to encourage the
faculty and administration of colleges and universities to teach
philosophy outside the Anglo-European mainstream. As a
start, form a local chapter of Minorities in Philosophy (MAP)
and connect with chapters at other schools.93 MAP is a student
organization devoted to increasing diversity in the field of phi-
losophy in all ways: among students at the undergraduate and
graduate levels, among faculty, and in courses offered. Local
MAP chapters sometimes organize reading groups or invite
speakers to campus to discuss understudied philosophers. An-
other simple method to effect change is to vote with your add
form. When courses on Chinese, Indian, or other LCTP are
offered, sign up for them. If no courses are offered in these ar-
eas, you can request to do independent studies on them. If no
one seems receptive, it is time to request changes by talking to

professors, chairs, deans, and your college or university presi-
dent. If requests don’t work, turn to petitions. If petitions, don’t
work, it’s time to organize protests.
If getting your philosophy department to change its curric-
ulum encounters too much resistance at first, follow Garfield’s
suggestion and fight for the second-best result: demand that
philosophy departments change their names to “departments
of Anglo-European philosophy” to reflect their actual curricu-
lum. There is really no legitimate way they can reject a demand
to admit what they teach. This might seem like giving up.
However, I believe that, if this change were enforced, it would
be at most a decade before philosophy departments become
multicultural. Currently, departments can hide behind the
name “philosophy,” which represents a topic with cosmopoli-
tan significance, to disguise the fact that their approach is
indefensibly parochial. If their shame were exposed to their
colleagues and students, the pressure for change would become
insurmountable.
I have been warned that linking the call to study non-West-
ern philosophy to issues of diversity and identity politics will
politicize it in ways that may lead to outcomes I would not pre-
fer.94 I agree. As a professor, I jealously guard my right to con-
duct my own research and teach my own classes as I see fit. This
is not arrogance or stubbornness. I have spent years developing
expertise in my areas of specialization, and figuring out how
best to communicate to my students what I have learned and
most importantly my love for philosophy. I am always inter-
ested in feedback, positive or negative, and I take it into ac-
count in making long-term adjustments. However, in terms of
the fundamentals, no one with at most four years of under-
graduate education knows better than I do after thirty years of
experience in teaching and research. Consequently, in an ideal

world, philosophy departments should make their own deci-
sions about their curricula internally.
Sadly, we are not in an ideal world. I and many others have
been fighting with rational arguments for decades to try to get
greater acceptance of non-Western philosophy into the curricu-
lum. I have appealed to my colleagues in philosophy to make
moderate changes on their own terms in response to the reali-
ties of a changing world. However, I increasingly think that the
only way to effect change in philosophy is by appealing to stu-
dents to mobilize and demand changes. If and when curricular
change is forced upon philosophy departments, it will not be
moderate, and it will not be guided by a deep understanding
of what philosophy is about or what its intellectual standards
are. This is why Garfield and I ended our editorial with this
warning:
We offer one last piece of advice to philosophy departments that

have not already embraced curricular diversity. For demo-
graphic, political and historical reasons, the change to a more
multicultural conception of philosophy in the United States
seems inevitable. Heed the Stoic adage: “The Fates lead those
who come willingly, and drag those who do not.”95
It is one thing to suggest that greater pluralism can make phi-

losophy richer and better approximate the truth. It is another
thing to show it. Consequently, in chapter 2, “Traditions in
Dialogue,” I will provide several examples to illustrate how
Western and Asian philosophy can be brought into a construc-
tive conversation. Not all beliefs are held for reasons that are
conscious or rational, though, so in chapter 3, “Trump’s Phi-
losophers,” I will argue that the heated opposition we see to
multiculturalism in philosophy is motivated, in large part, by

the same chauvinistic instincts that inflame nationalism, rac-
ism, and other kinds of ethnocentrism. Some people don’t see
the value of any kind of philosophy. In chapter 4, “Welders and
Philosophers,” I explain the vocational benefits of a philosophi-
cal education, the contributions of philosophy to Western civi-
lization, and the value of philosophy in producing citizens
committed to rational, civil discourse. Finally, in chapter 5,
“The Way of Confucius and Socrates,” I will argue that con-
temporary philosophers are partially responsible for their own
marginalization in society and discuss how they can change
that by returning to the exalted aspirations that have always
motivated great philosophical work, regardless of its civiliza-
tion of origin.
2
TRADITIONS IN DIALOGUE
I am a human, and nothing human is alien to me.

—Terence
Within the Four Seas, all are brothers.

—Zigong
I
n the previous chapter I called for greater inclusivity and
openness to philosophy outside the mainstream Anglo-
European canon. I dropped the names of a few texts,
thinkers, and issues that could contribute substantially to a
broader dialogue. However, it is fair to ask for more detailed
examples. Consequently, in this chapter I provide a few specific
illustrations of how different intellectual traditions can be
brought into dialogue. Some readers will be disappointed to
discover that my comparisons are only between a handful of
Asian and European philosophers. However, I can only re-
sponsibly discuss the areas in which I claim competence. To
advocate that we teach the less commonly taught philosophies
(LCTP) is not to suggest the unrealistic goal that we should all
be equally adept at lecturing on all of them. Moreover, I do not
Tr aditions in Dialogue Z 39
go into nearly as much depth in this chapter as would be ap-

propriate in a purely academic work. Nonetheless, even the
selective, cursory discussions in this chapter demonstrate con-
clusively just how much room there is for productive dialogue
between traditions.
Philosophers—who, as a group, are known for not agreeing

about anything—agree that modern Western philosophy begins
with René Descartes (1596–1650). There is almost as much of a
consensus that modern Western political philosophy begins
with Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).1 The two disagreed about a
great deal.2 Hobbes asserted that “the universe, that is, the
whole mass of all things that are is corporeal—that is to say,
body.”3 Descartes, in contrast, believed that, in addition to
physical objects, the universe includes souls that are incorporeal
and immortal. However, Descartes and Hobbes agreed on a
fundamental claim: the universe is composed of distinct indi-
vidual entities. Although there have been occasional philosophers
who have dissented from this view (most notably Parmenides,
Spinoza, and Hegel), individualistic metaphysics is something
like the orthodoxy in Western philosophy.4 This belief has been
developed in various ways, but it is so fundamental to Anglo-
European philosophy that it generally has not been seen as re-
quiring demonstration. The issue has not been whether we are
distinct individuals, but how we are fundamentally distinct and
what the implications of this are. However, if we assume that
individuals are distinct, it creates a number of problems in meta-
physics (our account of the most fundamental kinds of things
that exist and how they are related), political philosophy (our
conception of how and why human communities should be or-
ganized), and ethics (our view of the best way for a person to live).
We shall see that Buddhist, Confucian, and Neo-Confucian
40 Y Tr aditions in Dialogue
philosophies offer alternatives on these topics that are undeni-

ably worth taking seriously.
METAPHYSICS
In his major philosophical works, Discourse on Method and Med-

itations on First Philosophy, Descartes argues that there are two
distinct kinds of substances in the universe: things that think
(souls) and things that occupy space (material objects). 5 His use
of the word “substance” is potentially misleading for us. When
we talk about a “substance,” we are typically talking about
something that lacks individual identity (especially if it is dis-
gusting): “Ew, what is this substance stuck to the bottom of my
shoe?” For Descartes, “substance” is a technical philosophical
term, which he inherited from Aristotle (384–22 bce). Aristotle
defined a substance as a thing that has qualities but is not itself
a quality of anything else.6 For example, the color red is not a
substance, because it is a quality of something else, like a fire
hydrant. But a fire hydrant is not a quality of anything else, so
it is a substance. The thesis that the universe is divided into
qualities of various kinds and the things that they are qualities
of sounds simple and accurate. However, as Aristotle himself
came to recognize, this seemingly straightforward account gen-
erates problems as soon as we think more carefully about what
it means.7 Let’s return to Descartes to see how.
In trying to explain what a material object (a substance that
occupies space) is, Descartes invites us to consider a piece of
wax, fresh from the beehive, and its sensory qualities. It has the
taste of honey, a floral scent, is hard and cold to the touch.
However, if you melt the same piece of wax, it loses its taste and
odor, changes its shape, and feels hot and soft. Descartes then
asks his readers, “does the same wax remain? One must confess
that it does: no one denies it; no one thinks otherwise. What
was there then in the wax that was so distinctly comprehended?
Certainly none of the things that I reached by means of the
senses. For whatever came under taste or smell or sight or touch
or hearing by now has changed, yet the wax remains.”8
The material thing that remains the same through the vari-
ous changes is the substance. But what is this substance? You
cannot identify the substance with any properties, like being
hot or cold, hard or malleable. The substance is the thing that
has these qualities, and remains the same as the properties
change. This led Aristotle to suggest at one point that there
must be what he called “prime matter,” a quality-less substra-
tum that is the bearer of properties.9 Something seems incoher-
ent, though, about the notion of a thing that has an identity but
no properties.
Descartes compares our knowledge of substances to seeing
people out his window, crossing the street in the dead of winter,
completely bundled up in clothes: “But what do I see over and
above the hats and clothing? Could not robots be concealed un-
der these things? But I judge them to be men.”10 Similarly, “when
I distinguish the wax from its external forms, as if having taken
off its clothes, as it were, I look at the naked wax.”11 (How
quaint Western philosophy is, with all its little similes and met-
aphors!) The problem, of course, is that we have seen people
without their coats and hats on, and we know what they look
like. In contrast, we have not seen wax without its “external
forms.” As Descartes admits, we know the wax in itself “neither
by sight, nor touch, nor imagination.”12
Descartes discusses space-occupying substances as a step
toward understanding what a thinking substance is. However,
his account of souls inherits all the problems that afflicted his
account of material objects. Souls engage in mental acts like

thinking, perceiving, and willing. But none of these acts are
what the soul is. The soul is the underlying thing that does the
thinking, perceiving, and willing. And your soul is supposed to
be different from mine, even if you and I are thinking the very
same thing. What makes one soul different from another if the
acts of the soul are not what make it what it is?
The puzzles of personal identity are illustrated by the film
Regarding Henry (1991), in which Harrison Ford plays an attor-
ney who is shot in the head during a convenience store robbery.
After brain surgery, Henry’s memories are gone. He does not
recognize his wife, his children, or his colleagues from work.
Prior to his brain injury, Henry was a brilliant but also heartless
lawyer. Afterward, he seems to have only average intelligence,
but is kind and loving. Is he the same person before and after
brain surgery or not? According to Descartes, there is a defini-
tive answer: the same soul is attached to his body, so he is the
same person. But this answer seems unsatisfying because all the
qualities of the soul that seemed to make Henry who he was
have changed. Perhaps it is the same Henry because he has the
same body? However, Henry’s body is actually not the same.
His brain, the physical organ we probably associate the most
with our identity, has suffered significant trauma. So perhaps
we should say that Henry 1 (before brain trauma) and Henry2
(after brain trauma) are different people? But our bodies (and
our mental states) are changing all the time. My brain and my
mind at birth are immensely different from my brain and mind
today. Am I not the same person? Or do only sudden and sig-
nificant changes in the brain or mind make us a new person?
How significant must a change be in order to count as making
someone a new person? If these questions seem vexing, perhaps
it is because we started with the wrong assumption: that there is

an unchanging self that persists through qualitative change.13
Descartes’s only real argument that there must be individual
substances distinct from all of their qualities is that “no one
denies it; no one thinks otherwise.”14 Well, actually, some peo-
ple have denied this. The Buddhist tradition argues that there
are five kinds of states that exist: physical states (being hard or
malleable, hot or cold, etc.), sensations (experiences of physical
or mental states, which may be pleasant, unpleasant, or neu-
tral), perceptions (conceptual identification of that which one
senses), volitions (such as desiring, willing, and choosing), and
consciousness. Buddhists call these the “Five Aggregates.” A
concrete example will clarify what sorts of things they are: Sup-
pose I am in the presence of a plate of freshly baked chocolate
chip cookies. The visual receptors in my eyes are stimulated
by the light reflected off the cookies, while molecules liberated by
the heat of the cookies stimulate the olfactory receptors in my
nose. As a result of these physical states, I have a visual sensation
of golden brown circles with dark brown spots against a white
background, and the pleasant olfactory sensation of baked
dough, brown sugar, and just a hint of vanilla. These sensations
are followed by a perception: the identification of what I am
sensing as chocolate chip cookies. At this point, I develop a
volition, a desire to eat the cookies—all of them, right now, in
one sitting. However, I also have consciousness, which allows
me to be aware of and think critically about my mental states. I
may remind myself that eating a couple of cookies is pleasant,
but I will feel an unpleasant sugar rush if I eat all of them at
once, thereby reconceptualizing my choice in a way that leads
to moderate consumption. (In the case of cookies, this last step
never happens for me, but you get the idea.)
4 4 Y Tr aditions in Dialogue
Of course, this simple example does not do justice to the

complexity of the concept of the Five Aggregates. As Jay Gar-
field points out, Buddhist accounts of “consciousness” do not
map neatly onto those in Western philosophy of mind (even
though they are debated with the same level of subtlety).15
What is important to grasp is that Buddhist metaphysics re-
gards the world as composed of transient states and properties
that are causally dependent on other states and properties. It
does away with the notion of metaphysical substances or prime
matter as explanatorily useless. This ontology of states rather
than things has substantial (pardon the expression) implica-
tions for how we think about ourselves.
In the second century bce, in what is now Pakistan, the Bud-
dhist monk Nægasena arrived for a royal audience with King
Milinda. When Milinda asked him his name, the monk replied
that he is called “Nægasena,” but “this ‘Nægasena’ is only a des-
ignation, a label, a concept, an expression, a mere name because
there is no person as such that is found.”16 Milinda and Nægasena
proceed to have a subtle philosophical debate over what it
means to say that there is “no person.” (At this same period in
history, Descartes’s and my ancestors in Europe were illiterate
barbarians bashing one another with clubs.) They consider
three suggestions about what a self would be: Is the self identi-
cal with one of the Five Aggregates? Is the self identical with
all of the Aggregates? Is the self something distinct from all of
the Aggregates? Nægasena and Milinda are obviously both
familiar with previous Buddhist arguments against the reality
of the self, so they quickly agree on negative answers to all three
questions. (1) The self cannot be identified with a person’s nails,
“teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart,
liver . . . brain, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat,” or any physical
thing.17 As the Buddha himself had explained, nothing physical

could plausibly be identified as the self because, qua physical
thing, it has no experiences: “If, friend, no feeling existed,
could there be the thought, ‘I am’?”18 In other words, identify-
ing the self with any physical thing violates our intuition that
the self is conscious. One of the other Aggregates might seem a
better candidate for the self, since they each involve conscious-
ness in some way. However, suppose we identified the self with
a pleasant sensation. The Buddha explains why this is also un-
satisfactory: “So anyone who, on feeling a pleasant feeling,
thinks ‘This is my Self,’ must, at the cessation of that pleasant
feeling, think, ‘My self has departed!’ ” This violates our intu-
ition that the self is something that persists over time. The same
applies to any other kind of sensation, as well as to any instance
of the other mental Aggregates. (2) What about the possibility
that the self is identical with all of the Aggregates taken together?
Upon reflection, we see that this will not work either. Since
each of the Aggregates is changing individually, the combina-
tion of them taken together is also changing, and so cannot be
a permanent self: “It is just like a mountain river, flowing far
and swift, taking everything along with it; there is no moment,
no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but it goes on flow-
ing and continuing. So . . . is human life, like a mountain river.
The world is in continuous flux and is impermanent.”19 This is
very similar to the famous claim of the Greek philosopher
Heraclitus, who “says that all things pass and nothing stays,
and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says
you could not step twice in the same river.”20 (Of course, some
people seem to think that, when Heraclitus says this, it is phi-
losophy, but when a Buddhist says the same thing, it is not
philosophy.)
(3) Is the self then something different from the Aggregates?

This would be something like Descartes’s view. The king asks
Nægasena about a very similar position in another part of their
extensive dialogue:
“Revered Nægasena, is there such a thing as an experiencer?”

“What does this ‘experiencer’ mean, sire?”
“A soul within that sees a visible form with the eyes, hears a
sound with the ear, smells a smell with the nose, tastes a taste
with the tongue, feels a touch with the body and discriminates
mental states with the mind. Just as we who are sitting here in
the palace can look out of any window we want to look out of,
even so, revered sir, this soul can look out of any door it wants to
look out of.”21
Nægasena argues that it is unclear how to understand the rela-

tionship between such a soul and the body that it is supposed to
“look out of.” If the soul sees, why does it need the eye at all, for
example? Why can’t the soul see as well, or even better, without
the organ of the eye? Of course, the soul does use the eye to
see, and does not see better when the eye is removed. But
then, Nægasena suggests, why not adopt a simpler alternative:
“Because, sire, of the eye and visible form eye-consciousness
arises. . . . The same applies to the ear and sound, nose and
smell, tongue and taste, body and touch, and mind and mental
states. These are things produced from a condition and there is
no experiencer found here.”22 In other words, the Aggregate of
consciousness is different for each kind of consciousness, and
arises simply as a result of the interaction between the inten-
tional object of consciousness (for example, a color) and the
sense organ (for example, an eye). Reference to some mysterious
“experiencer” beyond the interaction between the color and the

eye adds nothing to the explanation.
The metaphysical arguments against a self seem unanswer-
able, but what concerns King Milinda is the problematic ethical
implications that they appear to have. If there is no self, who
is it who engages in virtuous or vicious conduct? Who is it who is
ignorant or enlightened? As King Milinda notes, the doctrine
of no-self seems to lead to ethical nihilism: “revered Nægasena,
if someone were to kill you there would be no murder.”23 It ap-
pears that there would be no self who murders and no self who
is murdered, and hence no wrongdoing.
Nægasena replies with the simile of the chariot. He asks the
king, “did you come on foot or in a vehicle?”24 The king replies
that he came in a chariot. Nægasena then applies the same anti-
substantialist argument to the chariot that they had applied to
Nægasena himself. Is a chariot the same as its wheels? Clearly
not, because you can repair the wheels and it will be exactly the
same chariot. Is the chariot the axle? No, we would refer to it as
the same chariot even if the axle were completely replaced. Is
the chariot the yoke, reins, goad, or flagstaff? No, no, no, and
no, for the same reasons. Nægasena teasingly tells the king that
he was obviously not telling the truth when he said he rode here
in a chariot, since he can identify no thing that is the chariot:
“You are king over all India, a mighty monarch. Of whom are
you afraid that you speak a lie?”25 Milinda protests that he is
not lying, and that “ ‘chariot’ exists as a mere designation” based
upon the various parts.26
“Even so it is for me, sire,” Nægasena explains. “ ‘Nægasena’
exists as a mere designation,” used in the presence of his physi-
cal form, consciousness, etc. “However, in the ultimate sense
there is no person as such that is found.” He then quotes some
verses attributed to a Buddhist nun and praised by the Buddha

himself:
Just as when the parts are rightly set

The word “chariot” is spoken,
So when the there are the aggregates
It is the convention to say “a being.”27
It is easy to misunderstand Nægasena’s position here. He is not

claiming that there is a thing that is the chariot (or a person)
and that it is identical with the combination of the relevant Ag-
gregates. (We saw earlier why this won’t work.) Instead, he is
suggesting that, in the presence of certain combinations of Ag-
gregates, we follow social convention in using the word “char-
iot” (or “Nægasena”). In other words, there is no thing that is
oneself; the Cartesian thinking substance is an illusion. How-
ever, this does not mean that we can or should stop calling one
another “Nægasena,” or “Milinda,” or “Bryan,” or “Barack.” To
do so is useful for practical purposes, and what guide us are
social conventions about linguistic usage. Similarly, we can
continue to say things like “Charles Manson is a bad person” or
“Mother Teresa was very enlightened.” But these claims do not
require that there is some unique metaphysical entity that a
proper name refers to that remains the same over time.
Returning to our earlier example from the film Regarding
Henry, Nægasena would say that there is no fact about whether
Henry is the same person. It is a matter of social convention
whether we regard him as such. There is a collection of chang-
ing physical and mental states prior to the shooting and there is
a collection of transient psychophysical states after the shoot-
ing, and our social convention is to call them both “Henry.”
This is reflected in the fact that the family and colleagues of
“Henry” prior to the shooting welcome “him” back after the

shooting (and prefer the way “he” is now). Notice that similar
considerations could apply to abortion. For a Cartesian, there is
a fact about when the fetus is “ensouled,” and from that mo-
ment on it is the same person. To end the life of an ensouled
body is the moral equivalent of murder. However, the problems
with defining when human life begins suggest that an applica-
tion of Nægasena’s view is more appropriate. We do not discover
when human life begins; we decide when life begins, trying to
do so in a way that is as humane as possible.28
The preceding view is characteristic of Theravæda, which
nonsectarian historians regard as the earlier form of Buddhism.
Mahæyæna Buddhism, the dominant form in East Asia, would
not deny anything Nægasena said, but extends it in a new direc-
tion. We might say that Theravæda argues that there is no self,
while Mahæyæna claims that there is no individual self. The
Tang-dynasty Chinese Buddhist philosopher Fazang (643–712)
wrote a philosophical dialogue that is representative of one
strand of the Mahæyæna position.29 Fazang asks us to consider a
building.30 What makes a building a building? Surely it is noth-
ing other than the parts that make it up. There is no thing in
addition to its parts that constitutes the building. So what are
the parts of the building? Consider an individual rafter: What
makes it a rafter? Fazang argues that it is a rafter because of the
role that it plays in constituting the building. One might object
that the rafter would still exist even if the rest of the building
did not. Fazang replies that then it would no longer be a rafter.
(For example, a plank that had been a rafter might be repur-
posed as a bench. We might want to say, “This bench used to be
a rafter,” but it would not be plausible to say, “This bench really
is a rafter, despite the appearance that it is a bench.”) What
makes a rafter a rafter (as opposed to a bench or a teeter-totter)
is the role it plays in the building. So the rafter is dependent

on the building for its identity, but we already saw that the
building is identical with all its parts. Consequently, the rafter
is dependent on all the other parts of the building for its iden-
tity: the rafter depends on each of the other rafters, each of the
shingles, each of the nails, and so on. But what is true of the
rafter in relation to the building is true of anything in relation
to the entire universe.
Fazang summarizes his point with a slogan: “All is one, be-
cause all are the same in lacking an individual nature; one is all,
because cause and effect follow one another endlessly.”31 “All is
one,” because the entire universe is nothing else beyond the
particular configuration of transient physical and mental states
in causal relationships that make it up. “One is all,” because
any one thing is what it is because of its relationships with all
the other things that define it. The building is the building be-
cause of each of the parts that make it up (“all is one”), but the
rafter is a rafter because it is a part of the building (“one is all”).
As a matter of brute causal fact, the universe we live in would
collapse like a house of cards if some malevolent higher power
plucked out of the causal web the lowliest member of the army
of Alexander the Great, or your third cousin twice removed. It
is not poetry but the most relentless logic of cause and effect
that demonstrates that the last breath of Julius Caesar is my
morning cup of coffee; the entire universe is a speck of dust;
and I am you. A universe without you, or even a universe with-
out this particular grain of sand, is as completely fictional as
Hogwarts or House Lannister.
Ray Bradbury’s seminal short story “A Sound of Thunder”
(1952) gives a colorful example of the way in which events sepa-
rated by immense gulfs of space and time can be substantially
connected. In the story, a time traveler goes back to the Jurassic
era and accidentally steps on a butterfly. When he returns to

the present, he finds that the course of history has been modi-
fied, in some ways that are trivial, but in some ways that are
disastrous. Bradbury’s story is more than speculation, because
scientists have known since the nineteenth century that minute
changes in the initial conditions of deterministic systems can
lead to immense changes in the later states of that system: Henri
Poincaré noted this in regard to “the three-body problem” in
physics.32 Then, in the twentieth century, Edward Lorenz helped
bring about a minor revolution in science by showing a similar
phenomenon in meteorology: extremely small atmospheric
changes (like the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil) can
have massive consequences (like a hurricane in Florida).33 In
honor of Bradbury, this scientific truth is now called “the but-
terfly effect.” While the significance of causal connections may
not always be as dramatic as in Bradbury’s story, it seems unde-
niable that it is possible to trace relations between any two
things in the universe. If it seems difficult to imagine what rela-
tion exists between Diego, my French bulldog, and Charon,
the largest of the moons of Pluto, keep in mind that the two
exert a gravitational pull on each other (gravity decreases as the
inverse square of distance but never disappears) and both were
created in the same Big Bang.
Consider how this understanding transforms our concep-
tions of ourselves. Who am I? I am a husband, a father, a teacher,
an author, and a US citizen, among other things. But each of
these properties is relational: I am a husband because I have a
spouse, a father because I have children, a teacher because I
have students, an author because I have a readership, a US
citizen because of historical facts and institutional structures I
participate in. But the things I am related to are also defined
by me.34
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Thomas Hobbes shared Descartes’s radical metaphysical indi-

vidualism, arguing that there is “nothing in the world universal
but names, for the things named are every one of them indi-
vidual and singular.”35 For this reason, Hobbes’s political phi-
losophy is in many ways the natural counterpart of Descartes’s
metaphysics. Just as Buddhism helped us see alternatives to in-
dividualistic metaphysics like that of Descartes, Confucianism
will help us to see the limitations of individualistic political
philosophies like that of Hobbes.
Hobbes’s political project is to explain how government au-
thority can be justified, on the assumption that each human is
originally completely independent, metaphysically and ethi-
cally, from every other human. Hobbes also appears to assume
that each human being is purely self-interested: “of the volun-
tary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. ”36
Consequently, “if any two men desire the same thing . . . they
become enemies; and in the way to their end, which is princi-
pally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation
only, endeavor to destroy or subdue one another.”37 Given these
assumptions, Hobbes concludes that the natural state of human
beings is “a condition of war of every one against every one.”38
In this conflict, one individual may have some marginal physi-
cal or intellectual advantage over another. However, these do
not make a significant difference, since even “the weakest has
strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machina-
tion or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger
with himself.”39 Consequently, life in the state of nature is “soli-
tary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” 40 like the worlds portrayed
in the film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and the television series
The Walking Dead (2010–present).41
This situation might seem to make legitimate government

authority impossible, but Hobbes argues that, on the contrary,
it is precisely what makes government a rational necessity. In
humans’ natural state of merciless competition “there can be no
security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living
out the time which nature ordinarily allows men to live.” Con-
sequently, it is a law of nature “that a man be willing, when
others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself
he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things,
and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he
would allow other men against himself.” 42 Humans therefore
can and do enter into a “covenant” to renounce violence, dis-
honesty, and thievery against one another. Now, since “cove-
nants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to
secure a man at all,” 43 it is necessary that there “be some coer-
cive power to compel men equally to the performance of their
covenants by the terror of some punishment greater than the
benefit they expect by the breach of there covenant.” 44 This co-
ercive power is provided by the government. In summary, hu-
mans naturally have a right to do anything, including harming
and killing others, in the pursuit of their individual self-inter-
ests. However, everyone will suffer horribly in this situation.
Consequently, humans agree to renounce most of their rights to
the government in exchange for protection from other people.
In order for this to succeed, government must have an exclusive
and in principle unlimited right to use force to compel adher-
ence to its laws. Although government restricts our natural
liberty, we are better off under even the most authoritarian gov-
ernment than we are in the state of nature.
Hobbes’s philosophy is ingenious, but it faces several insur-
mountable problems. In a passage that seems almost tailor-
made as a response to Hobbes, Confucius (551–479 bce) argues
that “if you try to guide the common people with coercive reg-
ulations and keep them in line with punishments, the common
people will become evasive and will have no sense of shame. If,
however, you guide them with Virtue, and keep them in line by
means of ritual, the people will have a sense of shame and will
rectify themselves.”45 The Confucian critique of authoritarian po-
sitions like that of Hobbes is that, no matter how severe the pun-
ishments and how intrusive the government surveillance, people
will endlessly devise ways to evade the laws so long as their only
motivations for compliance are self-interested. In contrast, if
humans can cultivate compassion and integrity (“Virtue”) and
respect for social conventions that they regard as sacred (“ritual”),
the laws and punishments will be almost unnecessary.46
Mengzi, a philosopher of the fourth century bce, defends
Confucius’s political thesis, arguing that a state can be prosper-
ous in the long run only insofar as its citizens are motivated by
benevolence (compassion for the suffering of others) and righ-
teousness (disdain to do what is shameful, like lying and cheat-
ing). In contrast, being motivated by profit—even if it is the
profit of a group to which one belongs—is self-undermining.
Mengzi warns a ruler:
Why must Your Majesty say “profit”? Let there be benevolence

and righteousness and that is all. Your Majesty says, “How can
my state be profited?” The Counselors say, “How can my family
be profited?” The scholars and commoners say, “How can I be
profited?” Those above and those below mutually compete for
profit and the state is endangered. . . . There have never been
those who were benevolent who abandoned their parents. There
have never been those who were righteous who put their ruler
last. Let Your Majesty say, “Benevolence and righteousness,”
and that is all. Why must you say “profit”?47
Mengzi demonstrates a further problem with Hobbes’s philos-

ophy: its vision of human nature is not just ugly; it is also de-
monstrably mistaken. Mengzi presents a thought-experiment
aimed at an egoist in his own era, Yang Zhu, that is equally
effective against Hobbes:
The reason why I say that humans all have hearts that are not
unfeeling toward others is this. Suppose someone suddenly
saw a child about to fall into a well: everyone in such a situation
would have a feeling of alarm and compassion—not because
one sought to get in good with the child’s parents, not because one
wanted fame among their neighbors and friends, and not be-
cause one would dislike the sound of the child’s cries. From this
we can see that if one is without the heart of compassion, one is
not a human.48
Every aspect of Mengzi’s thought-experiment is carefully cho-

sen. Notice the following points. (1) Mengzi asks us to imagine
a case in which a child is in danger. Children, since they are in-
nocent and nonthreatening, trigger our compassion more easily
than adults. (2) We are supposed to imagine that a person sud-
denly sees the child. The suddenness is important, because it
suggests that the reaction will be unreflective. There is no time
to think about who the child’s parents are, or what rewards
might come from saving the child, or even whether it would be
annoying to listen to the child cry all night as it struggled to
stay afloat in the well. All that the instantaneous reaction can
represent is one’s feelings for the child in danger. (3) This pas-
sage is often misquoted as stating that any human would save
the child at the well; however, Mengzi does not commit him-
self to anything as strong as that. He merely states that any
human in such a situation would have a “a feeling of alarm and
compassion.” The feeling could be fleeting. Perhaps one’s sec-

ond thought would be about how one hates the child’s parents
and would love to see them suffer, or self-interested fear that
one might fall into the crumbling well oneself if one attempted
to save the child. All Mengzi is arguing for is the universal hu-
man capacity to feel genuine compassion in at least some cir-
cumstances. (4) Mengzi invites us to consider what we would
say of someone who did not have at least a fleeting feeling of
compassion when suddenly confronted with a child about to
fall into a well. He suggests—plausibly, I think—that we would
describe such a person as “inhuman.” “Psychopath” is the tech-
nical term for beings who lack even this minimal compassion
for others. We can quibble over whether they are technically
not human, but we certainly agree that they lack something
crucial to normal humanity.
In summary, Mengzi’s child-at-the-well thought-experi-
ment describes a reaction to a child (a paradigmatic object of
compassion) that is sudden (so there is no time to formulate
ulterior motives). Mengzi only claims that any human in this
situation would at least have a momentary reaction of alarm
and compassion (he does not claim that everyone would act to
save the child), and he suggests that we would regard someone
who lacked such a reaction as an inhuman beast (rather than a
human being). Elsewhere, Mengzi expresses his view of human
nature concisely as “Benevolence is what it is to be human.” 49
Contemporary developmental psychology supports Meng-
zi’s view that normal humans have an innate but incipient
disposition toward compassion.50 Intuitively, we should not be
surprised in the least that humans have evolved a disposition to
care for the well-being of others. Like other primates (and like
canids, cetaceans, and elephants), we humans are pack animals
whose survival depends upon a mutual willingness to make
sacrifices for others, typically without any certainty of payback.

Darwin himself offered an account of the evolution of moral
motivations, 51 and more formal demonstrations of how evolu-
tion selects for altruism have been provided by recent
biologists.52
Mengzi’s alternative conception of human nature leads to a
very different view of humans in the state of nature. Humans
naturally live in groups, and naturally work together to solve
common problems. Government is important because it can
harness the human tendency toward group loyalty for the benefit
of all. Mengzi claims that, in ancient times, “the waters over-
flowed their courses, inundating the central states. Serpents
occupied the land, and the people were unsettled. In low-lying
regions, [people] made nests in trees. On the high ground, they
lived in caves.” In response to these problems, a sage arose who
organized people who “dredged out the earth and guided the
water into the sea, chasing the reptiles into the marshes.”53
Mengzi does not hold some Pollyannaish vision of humans
as never engaging in conflict. He recognizes that military and
police force will sometimes need to be used. However, he thinks
that crime is generally a product of poverty: if the people “lack
a constant livelihood . . . [w]hen they thereupon sink into crime,
to go and punish them is to trap the people.”54 Confucius was
making the same point when he advised a ruler who was con-
cerned about the prevalence of robbers in his state: “If you could
just get rid of your own excessive desires, the people would not
steal even if you rewarded them for it.”55
In addition to the fact that controlling the people solely
through appeals to narrow self-interest and the threat of vio-
lence is impractical, and the fact that Hobbes’s psychology is
unrealistic, there is a third major problem with Hobbes’s politi-
cal philosophy. As we saw in considering Buddhist critiques of
Descartes’s view, it is implausible that humans are ultimately

metaphysically distinct from one another. But what are the po-
litical implications of the Buddhist view? The movement known
as “Neo-Confucianism” appropriated the insights of Buddhism
in order to provide a metaphysical basis for its own distinctive
political philosophy and ethics. Cheng Hao (1032–85) expressed
the Neo-Confucian view clearly with a metaphor: “A medical
text describes numbness of the hands and feet as being ‘unfeel-
ing.’ This expression describes it perfectly. Benevolent people
regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one Substance.
Nothing is not oneself.”56 Cheng is comparing being numb or
“unfeeling” toward one’s own limb with being “unfeeling” to-
ward another person. Something is wrong if we are numb in
one of our feet because we might allow it to become damaged
and not be motivated to do anything about it. Our numbness
makes us fail to act appropriately toward what is a part of us.
Similarly, being unfeeling toward the suffering of another is a
failure to respond with appropriate motivation and action to-
ward what is, ultimately, a part of ourselves.
But can we really accept the ethical and political implica-
tions of the view that there are no individual selves? This is the
issue that divided the Buddhists and the Neo-Confucians.
Their disagreement had a metaphysical aspect and an ethical
aspect. Metaphysically, Buddhists like Fazang claim that we
are all aspects of a transpersonal self. Because an enlightened
being sees all humans as equally parts of one whole, he or she
rejects selfishness and loves everyone equally. However, this
view also leads the fully enlightened person to reject romantic
love and filial piety, because each of these is an attachment of
one (illusory) individual to other (illusory) individuals. (This is
why Buddhist monks and nuns in most cultures are celibate.)
As Fazang puts it: upon achieving enlightenment, “the feelings
are extinguished, and the dharmas that are manifestations of

Substance become blended into one.”57
Neo-Confucians were drawn to the Buddhist view that be-
nevolence is justified by the metaphysical fact that we form “one
body” with others. However, they harshly criticized Buddhists
for challenging the value of conventional familial relation-
ships, 58 and argued that the Buddhists went too far in under-
mining the notion of the individual. When one of his disciples
announced happily, “I no longer feel that my body is my own,”
Cheng Hao smiled and replied, “When others have eaten their
fill are you no longer hungry?”59 Consequently, Neo-Confucians
tweaked the Buddhist metaphysics: they argued that, in order
for things to be defined by their relationships to other things,
there must be individual things that stand in those relation-
ships. How can you have a relationship without things that are
related by it? (More abstractly, a relationship is of the logical
form aRb, where a and b are individuals that stand in the rela-
tionship R. Without the distinct individuals a and b to relate,
there is no relationship R.) For example, if the rafter is defined
by its relationship to other parts of the building, like the nails
and shingles, there must be bits of wood, metal, and tile (these
specific individual entities) in order for them to stand in the
relationship of being-parts-of-the-building. Similarly, the rela-
tionship of motherhood does not exist unless there is at least
one specific person who is a mother and another specific per-
son who is her child; the property of being a student does not
exist unless there is at least one individual who stands in the
student-of relationship to one other individual. The great Neo-
Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130–1200) explained it like
this, using the term “Pattern” to describe the web of relation-
ships among entities: “It’s like a house: it only has one Pattern,
but there is a kitchen and a reception hall. . . . Or it’s like this
crowd of people: they only have one Pattern, but there is the
third son of the Zhang family and the fourth son of the Li fam-
ily; the fourth son of the Li family cannot become the third son
of the Zhang family, and the third son of the Zhang family
cannot become the fourth son of the Li family.”60 Consequently,
romantic intimacy, filial piety, and other attachments are justi-
fied because there genuinely are individual husbands who love
their individual wives, individual children who respect their in-
dividual parents, and so on.
I worry that the Neo-Confucians have fallen back into a
paradoxical notion similar to a Cartesian substance or Aristote-
lian prime matter: the quality-less individual that stands in
relationships but is not defined by them. However, there is
something very appealing about the Confucian effort to do jus-
tice both to the fact that we are dependent upon others and to
the fact that we are individuals with our own needs, goals, life
histories, and attachments.
During his reelection campaign in 2012, President Barack
Obama gave a speech in which he (unknowingly) expressed this
Confucian perspective:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some
help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Some-
body helped to create this unbelievable American system that
we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads
and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that.
Somebody else made that happen. . . . The point is, is that when
we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but
also because we do things together.61
This statement was widely criticized by conservatives, who saw it

as an attack on the achievements of individual business owners
and their right to profit from the fruit of their labor.62 However,
for those who have learned the lessons of Neo-Confucianism,
Obama’s statement is simple common sense.
I am not a businessman, but I too am proud of my accom-
plishments. I am proud of having taught generations of stu-
dents, and of publishing a number of books and articles. I
believe that my successes in teaching and publication would
not have occurred without my hard work and ability. However,
I suffer from no delusions that I am some sort of intellectual
Robinson Crusoe.63 I know that I did not single-handedly
come up with every idea and methodology I have ever de-
pended upon as a stepping-stone to developing my own orig-
inal thoughts. I am indebted to my parents for giving me
opportunities they did not have. My career is dependent on
every teacher I have had from first grade through graduate
school. And, of course, my roles as teacher and author are com-
pletely dependent upon my students and my readers. So you
should look with pride upon your individual accomplishments,
but you should also not lose sight of the fact that you did not do
that alone.
Confucians are certainly not the only political theorists in
China. Mozi argued two millennia before Hobbes that conflict
in the state of nature necessitates the establishment of govern-
ment. Moreover, Mozi’s version of this argument is more plau-
sible than that of Hobbes, because Mozi does not assume that
humans are self-interested. He argues that the conflict in the
state of nature arises from the fact that humans have different
conceptions of right and wrong.64 Legalists like Shen Dao
and Hanfeizi argued that humans are largely (although per-
haps not exclusively) self-interested, and so governments can
only succeed through explicit and clear laws that are enforced
with lavish rewards for compliance and severe punishments for
transgression.65 This chapter only scratches the surface of

Chinese political thought.
ETHICS
Closely related to the issue of how society should be structured

is the fundamental question of ethics: How should one live? In
his seminal book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that
modern Western ethics is fundamentally incoherent because it
turned its back on the insights of Aristotelian thought. I am
sympathetic to much of MacIntyre’s critique. However, we
shall see that Confucian views of ethical cultivation can pro-
vide plausible alternatives to the Aristotelian conception.
MacIntyre argues that modern ethics inherited an ethical
framework from medieval Aristotelianism but dropped one of
the parts necessary to make sense out of it.66 According to the
classical conception, humans are born with an uncultivated na-
ture characterized by various drives, intellectual faculties, and
most importantly ethical potentialities. Without cultivation,
these drives lead to immorality (cruelty, dishonesty, etc.) as well
as self-destructiveness. Through ethical cultivation, humans
shape their drives, hone their faculties, and actualize their poten-
tialities. For example, we have drives to satisfy our sensual de-
sires, but we learn delayed gratification; we have some capacity
for practical reasoning, but we improve it through education
and practice; and we have a potential to become a virtuous per-
son that we gradually actualize. Insofar as we fully actualize
our potential, we develop a stable virtuous character, which leads
to consistently moral behavior. In summary, morality is an ex-
pression of the virtuous character we develop as the result of
ethical cultivation that actualizes our potentiality, thereby trans-
Virtuous nature Morality
Transformation of our
potentiality into actuality
through ethical cultivation
Uncultivated human
Immorality
nature at birth
FIGURE 2.1
forming our uncultivated nature at birth, which would otherwise

lead to immorality. Figure 2.1 gives us a visual representation of
this framework.
However, an important part of the rise of modern science
was the rejection of the classic Aristotelian distinction between
potentiality and actuality. In a famous parody by Molière
(1622–73), an Aristotelian medical student explains that the
reason opium puts people to sleep is that it has a virtus dormi-
tiva, a “sleep-inducing power.”67 The suggestion is that accounts of
the universe in terms of potentialities that become actualities are
nothing but pretentious pseudo-explanations. Both Descartes
and Hobbes deny that there is any such thing as potentiality.
Descartes asserted that “a merely potential being, . . . properly
speaking, is nothing.”68 Hobbes complained that “There is no
such word as potentiality in the Scriptures, nor in any author of
the Latin tongue. It is found only in School-divinity, as a word

of art, or rather as a word of craft, to amaze and puzzle the la-
ity.”69 All that exists is purely and fully actual. As we shall dis-
cuss in chapter 4, Aristotelian science is more sophisticated
than it is now given credit for. Ironically, the contemporary
view that physical reality is composed of mass-energy, which
has the potential to assume different forms, is closer to the Ar-
istotelian view than it is to the atomism that was the scientific
orthodoxy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.70 How-
ever, it is undeniable that early modern science achieved a revo-
lution by attempting to explain reality quantitatively in terms of
objects in motion rather than qualitatively in terms of things
actualizing their potential.
What was a positive conceptual development for natural sci-
ence was disastrous for ethics, though. The stricture against
discussing the actualization of a potentiality made the relation-
ship between our innate motivations and our moral practices
incoherent. The vertical dimension of ethics—what we might
call the ethics of aspiration—collapsed, leaving us with an
image of human nature as savage, and a moral code with no
intelligible relationship to that nature. Figure 2.2 is a visual rep-
resentation of the fractured framework for ethics that moder-
nity left us with.
The political philosophy of Hobbes is an example of the des-
perate effort to find some rational justification for morality that
appeals only to human nature at its most unrefined. Ultimately,
modern ethics was led to the existentialist view that ethics is a
criterion-less choice between equally unjustified ways of life
(some moral and some immoral).71 Educational and spiritual
practices, on this conception, are nothing but brainwashing.
Recognizing the insoluble problems that modern ethics cre-
ated for itself, a host of recent Western philosophers have been
Virtuous nature Morality
Uncultivated human
Immorality
nature at birth
FIGURE 2.2
leading us “back to the future” by seeking to recover and mod-

ernize the insights of the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics.72
However, Aristotle’s conception of ethical cultivation has seri-
ous problems of its own. Aristotle claims that “the virtues arise
in us neither by nature nor against nature, but we are by nature
able to acquire them, and reach our complete perfection through
habit.” 73 In other words: “we become just by doing just actions,
temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave ac-
tions.” 74 However, Aristotle thinks that the beginner in ethical
cultivation does not do virtuous actions “in the way in which
just or temperate people do them.” 75 Specifically, the beginner
does not yet love virtue for its own sake, nor does he act out of
a settled state of character.76 But this leaves us with a substan-
tial theoretical problem: If we are not naturally virtuous, how
could any amount of habituation help us to develop the emotions
and motivations that are distinctive of virtue? It seems that ha-

bituation can produce, at most, external behavioral compliance
with virtue, rather than genuine virtue.
Consider an analogy. The behaviorist B. F. Skinner famously
demonstrated that a pigeon can be taught to play ping-pong
through conditioned response. By rewarding the pigeon with
food for certain behaviors, it gradually becomes habituated to
beating back a ping-pong ball thrown toward it, using its wings as
paddles. This is a clear example of what habituation is like. How-
ever, it is a very unsatisfactory model of ethical cultivation. First,
if we avoid stealing or lying simply because, like the pigeon, we
have become habituated to certain behavior, we are not really vir-
tuous, because we do not have the right motive. As Mengzi puts
it, a virtuous person “acts out of benevolence and righteousness;
he does not merely act out benevolence and righteousness.” 77
Perhaps even more importantly, humans are capable of more
adaptive and reflective behavior than pigeons. As Skinner dem-
onstrated, the pigeon will keep responding to ping-pong balls
the same way for the rest of its life, long after you stop rewarding
it with food. However, a human can come to realize that she is
no longer being rewarded for virtuous behavior, or punished for
vicious behavior. As soon as virtue seems inconvenient, a person
who merely behaves virtuously out of habit is easily prone to suc-
cumbing to temptation. Aristotle knows that virtue requires
acting out of the right motive. However, what he lacks is a co-
herent explanation of how to instill those motives, given that he
regards human nature as morally indifferent.
Comparative philosophers have developed a useful framework
for situating Aristotle’s view of ethical cultivation in relation
to various alternatives, both Anglo-European and Asian. This
framework divides theories of cultivation into development, dis-
covery, and re-formation models.78 According to re-formation
models, human nature has no active disposition toward virtue, so

it must be reshaped through education and behavior to acquire
whatever motivations, perceptions, or dispositions that are re-
quired for virtue. Aristotle has a re-formation model, as does the
ancient Confucian Xunzi. Xunzi illustrates this model of ethical
cultivation with a metaphor: “Through steaming and bending,
you can make wood straight as a plumb line into a wheel. And
after its curve conforms to the compass, even when parched un-
der the sun it will not become straight again, because the steam-
ing and bending have made it a certain way.”79 Human ethical
transformation is just as radical: people “are born with desires of
the eyes and ears, a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds. If
they follow along with these, then lasciviousness and chaos will
arise.”80 However, through ethical education and socialization, a
person “makes his eyes not want to see what is not right, makes
his ears not want to hear what is not right, makes his mouth not
want to speak what is not right, and makes his heart not want to
deliberate over what is not right.”81 Re-formation models are not
antirational. The person who has been successfully cultivated is
in a position to see why morality is justified. However, re-forma-
tion models tend toward an authoritarian view of education, be-
cause the beginner must simply have faith that she will eventu-
ally see the why behind the what that she is being habituated
into.82 The primary theoretical problem of re-formation models is
that, as we have seen, they have trouble explaining how motiva-
tions like compassion, a sense of shame, and love of virtue de-
velop out of a nature that is morally inert.
Developmental models have an easy answer to this chal-
lenge; they claim that humans innately have incipient disposi-
tions toward virtuous feeling, cognition, and behavior. Ethical
cultivation is a matter of nurturing these nascent dispositions
into mature virtues. Part of what is fascinating about Mengzi
is that there is no other philosopher, Chinese or European,

who presents such a pristine version of a developmental model.
(Rousseau is the closest Western analogue.)83 We saw earlier
that Mengzi presents a thought-experiment to show that normal
humans have at least an incipient tendency toward compas-
sion (the child at the well story). Using an agricultural metaphor,
Mengzi describes our innate dispositions toward virtue as
“sprouts.” He claims that, in order to become fully virtuous, we
have to “extend” these sprouts. There has been a vibrant debate,
both in East Asia and in the West, about how precisely to un-
derstand extension. A famous dialogue between Mengzi and a
king illustrates the issues.
The ruler’s subjects suffer because he taxes them excessively
to pay for wars of conquest and the luxurious lifestyle that he and
other aristocrats enjoy. However, Mengzi says that he knows
the king is capable of being a genuinely great ruler. When the
king asks Mengzi how he knows this, Mengzi relates an anec-
dote he had heard: “The King was sitting up in his hall. There
was an ox being led past below. The King saw it and said,
‘Where is it going?’ Someone responded, ‘We are about to con-
secrate a bell with its blood.’ The King said, ‘Spare it. I cannot
bear its frightened appearance, like an innocent going to the
execution ground.’ ”84 The king confirms that the story is true
but asks Mengzi what the incident has to do with being a great
ruler. Mengzi replies, “In the present case your kindness is suf-
ficient to reach birds and beasts, but the benefits do not reach
the commoners. Why is this case alone different? . . . Hence,
Your Majesty not being a genuine king is due to not acting; it is
not due to not being able.”85
David Wong notes that there are three major lines of inter-
pretation of this passage in recent Western discussions.86 (1) As
we saw earlier, there were egoists in Mengzi’s era, so perhaps
Mengzi simply wants the king to recognize that he is capable of

acting out of compassion. This interpretation is supported to
the frequent references in the discussion to the king’s capability
or ability. (2) We could see Mengzi as giving the king what is a
“quasi-logical” argument.87 You showed compassion for the suf-
fering of an ox being led to slaughter (case A). However, your
subjects are also suffering (case B). Since case B is relevantly
similar to case A, and you showed compassion for case A, you
ought to, as a matter of logical consistency, also show compas-
sion in case B. This interpretation is supported by the fact that
the word Mengzi uses for “extend” here is used by another an-
cient Chinese philosopher as the name for a form of inference:
“ ‘Extending’ is submitting it to him on the grounds that what
he does not accept is the same as what he does accept.”88
(3) Wong himself has argued persuasively for a third interpre-
tation. Mengzi is trying to help the king to conceptualize his
subjects in a new way that allows his compassion for the ox to
flow to his subjects: he should see not just the ox, but each of his
suffering subjects, as “like an innocent going to the execution
ground.” One advantage of this interpretation is that it provides
a psychologically plausible explanation of how ethical cultiva-
tion is a genuine development of preexisting motivations.
We have seen that the best metaphor to illustrate a re-forma-
tion model of ethical cultivation is carving or reshaping a recal-
citrant material. In contrast, a development model goes well
with the metaphor of a farmer cultivating a plant.89 Discovery
models, the third category of theories of ethical cultivation, of-
ten use visual metaphors: “The Pattern of the Way simply is
right in front of your eyes.”90 As this metaphor suggests, dis-
covery models hold that humans innately have the fully formed
capacities necessary for virtue. All that is needed is to exercise
them. Buddhists and Neo-Confucians tend toward discovery
models, because they hold that everyone is capable, at least in

principle, of achieving enlightenment, which is a matter of
simply discovering the way the universe actually is. Discovery
models are also extremely common in the West, particularly in
the modern era. The two major trends in modern Western me-
taethics are naturalism and intuitionism. Naturalists, like
Hobbes or David Hume (1711–76), see morality as grounded in
human motivations or passions. In contrast, Western intuition-
ists think that morality is a matter of “seeing” nonnatural moral
facts. However, for both, morality is not about developing a
capacity or restructuring one’s motivations, but simply discov-
ering something, either about oneself or about the world. For
example, H. A. Prichard (1871–1947) is representative of many
intuitionists. He asserts that our knowledge of ethical truth is
self-evident and infallible: “To put the matter generally, if we
do doubt whether there is really an obligation to originate A in
a situation B, the remedy lies not in any process of general
thinking, but in getting face to face with a particular instance
of the situation B, and then directly appreciating the obligation
to originate A in that situation.”91 Notice the visual metaphor:
“getting face to face with.” The only concession Prichard makes
to possible disagreements is that “the appreciation of an obli-
gation is, of course, only possible for a developed moral being,
and that different degrees of development are possible.”92 We
can easily imagine what sort of person Prichard, an English-
man writing at the height of the British empire, imagines to be
a less “developed moral being,” and how convenient this was for
imperialism.
What is striking from a comparative perspective is how re-
markably primitive Western versions of discovery models are com-
pared to their Buddhist and Neo-Confucian counterparts. This
is so for at least two reasons: (1) Buddhist and Neo-Confucian
Tr aditions in Dialogue Z 7 1
versions of discovery models do not resort immediately to ap-

peals to brute intuitions or emotions that one either has or does
not have,93 and (2) they offer guidance about how to deal with
cases in which you know what you should do, but find yourself
strongly tempted to do something else.
Suppose I am being an inattentive father: I do not make
time for my children, nor do I make an effort to share their in-
terests, nor do I ask them persistent but good-natured questions
until they finally talk to me. You tell me I really ought to take a
more active role as a father. I reply that I have my own needs
and projects, I already provide my children with free room and
board, and lots of other parents are positively abusive, so why
are you giving me a hard time? You tell me, as Prichard might,
that it is a self-evident truth that I have an obligation to be a
better father. Do you actually expect anything other than a
middle finger in reply?
Contrast the preceding with the Neo-Confucian response to
the same challenge. The Neo-Confucian would ask me “Who
are you?” Any answer I give will make reference, at least im-
plicitly, to other people, who define who I am. Consequently, if
I am an inattentive father, it is not just bad for my children,
because being a father is part of what defines me. Being a bad
father is being a bad me. Similarly, if I am a lazy teacher, it is
not bad only for my students, because being a teacher is part of
who I am. To fail at being a teacher is to fail at being me. Now,
I am not suggesting that the Neo-Confucian approach is guar-
anteed to transform immoral people into moral people. There is
no magic fix for ethical nihilism. The most we can hope for
from any moral theory is that it helps a few people to be a little
better, and prevents a few people from becoming worse. But the
Neo-Confucian challenge at least has some kind of rational trac-
tion in convincing those who may be susceptible to conversion,
as opposed to the schoolmarmish finger-waving of Western

intuitionism or naturalism.
WEAKNESS OF WILL
In contrast to the preceding examples, suppose I already know

that I should be a more attentive father or a more demanding
teacher, but I give in to the temptation to fail in one or both
areas. Western philosophers describe cases like these as “weak-
ness of will”: the phenomenon in which a person knows what
she ought to do but gives into temptation and does something
else. This is one of the most common and familiar phenom-
ena of our moral experience. However, it raises two substan-
tial problems: one theoretical and one practical. The theoretical
problem is to explain how moral knowledge is related to moral
action in a way that makes weakness of will possible. This prob-
lem is especially pressing for any discovery model. If all there is
to morality is discovering something through the exercise of an
innate capacity, then it seems that the discovery of this knowl-
edge must be both necessary and sufficient for action. The prac-
tical problem is to provide guidance to those who succumb to
weakness of will about how to overcome it. Neo-Confucian
philosophers have fascinating contributions to make on both
issues.
Neo-Confucian debates over weakness of will typically start
from an evocative passage in the canonical ancient text, the
Great Learning: “What is meant by ‘making thoughts have Sin-
cerity’ is to let there be no self-deception. It is like hating a
hateful odor, or loving a lovely sight. This is called not being
conflicted.”94 What is the “it” that should be “like hating a
hateful odor, or loving a lovely sight”? The passage means that a
person with Sincerity will hate evil like she would hate a bad
odor, and love goodness like she would love a lovely sight. What
is distinctive about hating a bad odor is that cognition and mo-
tivation are combined. To recognize an odor as disgusting is to
be repelled by it. If I smell the milk and recognize that it has
gone bad, I do not have to try to muster the motivation to avoid
putting it in my coffee. My hatred of evil should manifest the
same unity of cognition and motivation. If I recognize that
something is evil, I should be repulsed by it, viscerally and au-
tomatically. I should not have to force myself to avoid doing
evil, any more than I have to force myself to avoid drinking
spoiled milk.
“Loving a lovely sight” illustrates the same point, but it re-
quires explanation to see why. The term I am translating as
“sight” here is sè. In classical Chinese (the language in which
the Great Learning is written), sè can mean color or appear-
ance,95 and some translations render it this way.96 However, it
more commonly means lust, or the physical beauty that inspires
lust. Thus, Confucius once complained, “I have yet to meet
someone who loves Virtue as much as he loves physical beauty
(sè).”97 Consequently, “loving a lovely sight” does not refer to
our fondness for a particular shade of blue, or even our admira-
tion for a beautiful sunset. It refers to being erotically attracted
to physical beauty.98
So when the Great Learning tells us that we should hate evil
“like hating a hateful odor” and we should love goodness “like
loving a lovely sight,” it means that we are to hate evil the
same way we are repulsed by a disgusting odor, and we are to
love goodness the same way we are erotically drawn to physical
beauty. The substantive content of these similes is the claim
that our hatred of evil and our love of goodness should be si-
multaneously cognitive and affective. When we recognize that
an odor is disgusting, we do not have to decide to be repulsed by

it, or force ourselves to treat it as disgusting. To recognize an
odor as disgusting (a form of perception) is to be repulsed by it
(a kind of motivation). Similarly, when we recognize something
as evil (perception), we should be repulsed by it (motivation)
just as automatically and viscerally. The visual simile makes the
same point about cognition and affect. To find someone sexu-
ally attractive is to feel drawn to that person erotically. In a
parallel manner, when we recognize something as good (per-
ception), we should be drawn toward it (motivation), without
the need for any strength of will. “Sincerity” is the term used to
describe this state.
Now that we understand what Sincerity is, we are in a better
position to see why the Great Learning characterizes it as the
absence of self-deception. On a Neo-Confucian version of a
discovery model, we have an innate capacity to recognize that
we are individuals who are largely defined by our relationships
to others. As Wang Yangming (1472–1529) states:
Great people regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad creatures as

their own bodies. They look upon the world as one family and
China as one person within it. Those who, because of the space
between their own physical form and those of others, regard
themselves as separate [from Heaven, Earth, and the myriad
creatures] are petty persons. . . . How could it be that only the
minds of great people are one with Heaven, Earth, and the myr-
iad creatures? Even the minds of petty people are like this. It is
only the way in which such people look at things that makes
them petty. This is why, when they see a child [about to] fall into
a well, they cannot avoid having a mind of alarm and compas-
sion for the child. This is because their benevolence forms one
body with the child.99
One who fully grasps that she “forms one body” with others
can no more be indifferent to the suffering of her neighbor than
she can be indifferent to an injury to her own limb. However,
one can choose whether to attend to this knowledge or not. If
one decides not to attend to his ethical knowledge, he is deceiving
himself about who he really is. Hence, he is doubly engaging in
self-deception: he is deceiving himself about what his self is.
When we lie to ourselves in this way, we are “conflicted,” as the
Great Learning says, because there is a tension between one
part of ourselves, our moral nature, and another part, our selfish
desires.100
Neo-Confucians in general would agree with the preceding
account, both as an interpretation of the Great Learning and as
a description of human moral psychology. However, there is a
crucial disagreement on one detail. This ambiguity is suggested
by a distinction drawn by Cheng Yi (1033–1107):
Genuine knowledge is different from common knowledge. I

once met a farmer who had been mauled by a tiger. Someone
reported that a tiger had just mauled someone in the area and
everyone present expressed alarm. But the countenance and
behavior of the farmer was different from everyone else. Even
small children know that tigers can maul people and yet this is
not genuine knowledge. It is only genuine knowledge if it is like
that of the farmer. And so, there are people who know it is
wrong to do something and yet they still do it; this is not genu-
ine knowledge. If it were genuine knowledge, they definitely
would not do it.101
The fear of the farmer who had been mauled by a tiger is an-
other example of the sort of visceral combination of cognition
and motivation that the Great Learning illustrates with the
examples of a “hateful odor” and a “lovely sight.” Now, when

Cheng Yi describes this as “genuine knowledge,” this suggests
that those who have not been mauled by the tiger do not really
know how dangerous tigers are. However, Cheng Yi does not
contrast the phrase “genuine knowledge” with “fake knowledge”
or “so-called knowledge,” as we might expect. He contrasts the
knowledge of the farmer with “common knowledge,” which
suggests that others do know that tigers are dangerous, just not
as profoundly as the farmer who was mauled. So which is the
right way to understand the relationship between virtuous
knowledge and motivation? Should we say that those who are
not motivated to do what is right do not really possess knowl-
edge in any sense at all, or should we say that they may have a
kind of knowledge, but not the deep kind of knowledge that is
ideal?
Zhu Xi argues that the simile from the Great Learning must
be interpreted in the light of an earlier passage in the same text
that reads: “Only after knowledge has reached the ultimate do
thoughts have Sincerity.”102 For Zhu Xi, this suggests a two-
part process of ethical cultivation: obtaining knowledge of what
is good and bad, and then making that knowledge motivation-
ally efficacious through continual attentiveness. The beginner
in cultivation will find that this attentiveness requires constant
effort. When he lapses at this effort, he will succumb to weak-
ness of will: “When people know something but their actions
don’t accord with it, their knowledge is still shallow. But once
they have personally experienced it, their knowledge is more
enlightened, and does not have the same significance it had be-
fore.”103 This solves both the theoretical and the practical chal-
lenge that weakness of will poses. Weakness of will is possible
through a failure to be attentive to the moral knowledge that
we have. Our task as ethical agents is to avoid self-deception
and be attentive to our moral knowledge, until doing so be-

comes second nature. Consequently, Zhu Xi understands the
Great Learning’s similes of loving the good like loving a lovely
sight and hating evil like hating a hateful odor as descriptions
of the ultimate goal that each of us is working toward.
Zhu Xi’s most incisive critic was Wang Yangming. He is fa-
mous for his doctrine of the “unity of knowing and acting,”
which is typically interpreted as a denial that weakness of will
is possible.104 Wang states: “There never have been people who
know but do not act. Those who ‘know’ but do not act simply do
not yet know.”105 One of Wang’s disciples questions how this is
possible: “For example, there are people who despite fully
knowing that they should be filial to their parents and respect-
ful to their elder brothers, find that they cannot be filial or re-
spectful. From this it is clear that knowing and acting are two
separate things.” Wang responds with three arguments.
First, Wang argues that ethical knowing is intrinsically con-
nected to ethical motivation, in the same way that knowledge
and motivation are connected in “loving a lovely sight” or “hat-
ing a hateful odor”:
Smelling a hateful odor is a case of knowing, while hating a

hateful odor is a case of acting. As soon as one smells that hate-
ful odor, one naturally hates it. It is not as if you first smell it and
only then, intentionally, you decide to hate it. Consider the
case of a person with a stuffed-up nose. Even if he sees a mal-
odorous object right in front of him, the smell does not reach
him, and so he does not hate it. This is simply not to know the
hateful odor. The same is true when one says that someone knows
filial piety or brotherly respect. That person must already have
acted with filial piety or brotherly respect before one can say he
knows them.106
For Wang, the simile from the Great Learning does not describe
the goal of cultivation, in which ethical knowledge and motiva-
tion are fully unified after years of effort; instead, it describes
what genuine ethical knowledge is like from the very start. In
the vocabulary of Western ethics, Wang is a motivational inter-
nalist, who holds that to know the good is intrinsically to be
motivated to pursue it.107
Wang’s second argument for the unity of knowing and act-
ing is that merely verbal assent is insufficient to demonstrate
knowledge: “One cannot say that he knows filial piety or broth-
erly respect simply because he knows how to say something
filial or brotherly. Knowing pain offers another good example.
One must have experienced pain oneself in order to know pain.
Similarly, one must have experienced cold oneself in order to
know cold, and one must have experienced hunger oneself in
order to know hunger.”108 To understand the important episte-
mological and linguistic point Wang is making here, consider a
variation on a classic example from Western philosophy. Imag-
ine a hypothetical individual, “Mary,” who is forced to perceive
the world through a black and white television monitor. She
becomes a brilliant neuroscientist specializing in vision, and
eventually knows everything there is to know about the physics
and neurology of color experiences. However, suppose she is
finally released from her bondage to the black and white televi-
sion monitor and can go and see the world as it is. Now she will
learn something new. She will finally know what phenomenal
colors are like. Previously, Mary knew more about color expe-
riences than anyone else, but she did not know what phenome-
nal colors are.109 Similarly, Wang says, you might know a lot
about pain, hunger, feeling cold, and goodness, but you do not
know pain, hunger, feeling cold, or goodness itself unless you
have the right experience. One significant difference between

Wang’s example and that of Mary is that color experiences are
not intrinsically motivating. It does seem plausible, though,
that some experiences (among them pain) are intrinsically
motivating.
Wang’s disciple objects that we talk about knowing and act-
ing separately, and that this verbal distinction is valuable be-
cause it reflects the fact that there are two distinct aspects to
moral cultivation. Wang acknowledges that it can be useful for
practical purposes to verbally distinguish between knowing
and acting:
there is a type of person in the world who foolishly acts upon

impulse without engaging in the slightest thought or reflec-
tion. Because they always act blindly and recklessly, it is neces-
sary to talk to them about knowing. There is also a type of
person who is vague and irresolute; they engage in speculation
while suspended in a vacuum and are unwilling to apply them-
selves to any concrete actions. Because they only grope at shad-
ows and grab at echoes, it is necessary to talk to them about
acting.110
However, Wang argues that verbally distinguishing “knowing”

and “acting” is consistent with recognizing that they are two
aspects of one unified activity: “I have said that knowing is the
intent of acting and that acting is the work of knowing and that
knowing is the beginning of acting and acting is the comple-
tion of knowing. Once one understands this, then if one talks
about knowing [the idea of] acting is already present, or if one
talks about acting, [the idea] of knowing is already present.”111
We might say that knowing and acting are like the concave and
the convex sides of a curved line: conceptually but not meta-

physically distinguishable.
Reviewing Wang’s arguments, we can see why David S.
Nivison remarked, “There are pages in Wang, sometimes, that
could almost make acceptable brief notes in contemporary
philosophy journals like Analysis.”112 However, it is important
to recognize that Wang’s point is not purely theoretical. What
he is concerned about is the phenomenon of people who
separate knowing and acting into two distinct tasks to perform

and think that one must first know and only then can one act.
They say, “Now, I will perform the task of knowing, by studying
and learning. Once I have attained real knowledge, I then will
pursue the task of acting.” And so, till the end of their days, they
never act, and till the end of their days, they never know. This is
not a minor malady, nor did it arrive just yesterday. My current
teaching regarding the unity of knowing and acting is a medi-
cine directed precisely at this disease.113
Wang has in mind the followers of Zhu Xi, but his point has
contemporary relevance. Eric Schwitzgebel has done empirical
research on the relationship between studying or teaching eth-
ics and actual ethical behavior. He acknowledges that the data
is limited, but so far he has been unable to find any positive
correlation between the theoretical study of ethics and being
ethical.114 Wang would argue that this proves his point: the ab-
stract and theoretical study of ethics will not make you a better
person. However, Wang would insist that what is wrong with
Western ethics is not that it tries to make humans better peo-
ple, but that it does not try in the right ways. If we have any
interest in our courses in ethics and political philosophy mak-
ing a difference, it is worth looking at what else thinkers like
Mengzi, the Buddhists, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming have to

say on this topic.
Just to give a teaser: Confucians stress that, to provide a
foundation for ethical development, it is the responsibility of
government to make sure that the people’s basic physical needs
are met (for food, for freedom from fear, and for the possibility
for communal life), that everyone gets an education that both
teaches them basic skills and socializes them to be benevolent
and have integrity, and that everyone who can benefit from ad-
vanced education has the opportunity to receive it (regardless of
social class). Regarding the structure of ethical education,
Confucius himself says, “If you learn without thinking about
what you have learned, you will be lost. If you think without
learning, however, you will fall into danger.”115 As Philip
J. Ivanhoe notes, later Confucians agree with this saying, but
argue vociferously about the relative emphasis to give to learn-
ing from classic texts and teachers as opposed to thinking inde-
pendently.116 As you might guess, philosophers with a discovery
model of cultivation like Wang Yangming tend to emphasize
thinking, while those with a re-formation model like Xunzi put
more emphasis on learning.
Contemporary US philosophers will probably have the most
difficulty in accepting two additional aspects of Chinese ethical
education. (But perhaps these are the sine qua non for genuine
ethical transformation?) First, Chinese philosophers think that
practical activities—including meditation, communal ritual
activities, and even what we might describe today as “work-
study”—have as much of a role to play as intellectual ones in
learning ethics. In addition, it is considered crucial to keep in
mind that the ultimate point of studying ethics is to be a better
person and transform society, not just to theorize. (I return to
this latter point in chapter 5.)
OTHER VOICES
I hope readers of this chapter have found some things that they
agree with or at least find intriguing conceptual possibilities.
However, this chapter discusses subtle and complex issues in
only a few pages, so I would be surprised if you found nothing
you want to challenge. (In fact, if you have no questions or ob-
jections, I’m disappointed in you. As Zhu Xi said, “Those who
don’t have opinions simply have not read carefully enough to
have any doubts!”)117 But there is one thing I believe I have es-
tablished beyond any possible doubt. (And that is not a phrase I
use very often.) Buddhist, Confucian, and Neo-Confucian
texts can obviously be brought into productive dialogue with
major Anglo-European philosophical works. It’s fine to tell me
that you don’t agree with them, but philosophy is not about
teaching only figures whom you agree with. (I regularly teach
Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Russell, and Sartre, each of whom I
think is deeply and fundamentally wrong.) So after reading this
chapter, don’t try telling me that Buddhist, Confucian, and
Neo-Confucian thinkers are not really philosophers.
Given limitations of space and of my own abilities, I have only
talked about a few philosophers from outside the Anglo-European
mainstream. However, any acquaintance with Indian philosophy
reveals that, in terms of both methodology and subject matter, it
is philosophical even according to the most narrow standards that
Anglo-European philosophy might supply. Just open a book!
(One place to start is my bibliography of readings on the less com-
monly taught philosophies at http://bryanvannorden.com.) Afri-
can-American, feminist, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, and
LGBTQ philosophies are influenced by the mainstream Anglo-
European traditions, so it should come as no surprise that they
can easily be integrated into the curriculum of US colleges and
universities. I know the least about African philosophies and the

philosophies of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. How-
ever, a few examples illustrate how easily they can be brought into
dialogue. James Maffie’s excellent Aztec Philosophy provides a
philosophically sophisticated introduction to this form of pre-
Columbian metaphysics, which is challengingly different from
both the individualistic metaphysics characteristic of most of
the West and the versions of monism that we find in Chinese
Buddhism or Neo-Confucianism.118 In The Dance of Person and
Place, Thomas M. Norton-Smith uses the philosophy of Nelson
Goodman (a leading twentieth-century analytic thinker) to un-
derstand Shawnee Native American thought.119 From a more
Continental perspective, This Is Not a Peace Pipe by Dale Turner
uses the resources of Critical Theory to understand the political
situation of Native Americans.120 For an anthology of essays by
Indigenous philosophers on a variety of topics, see American In-
dian Thought, edited by Anne Waters.121 Turning to African phi-
losophy, Kwame Gyekye’s An Essay on African Philosophical Thought
discusses the conceptual scheme of the Akan people, which he
suggests offers a form of communitarian ethics distinct from any
Western system.122 Kwazi Wiredu’s Philosophy and an African
Culture deals with a variety of problems recognizable from the
Anglo-European tradition, including critiques of Marxism and
various theories of truth (including Ramsey’s redundancy thesis
and Dewey’s conception of truth as warranted assertibility).123
Even if you insist that Indigenous American or African thought
is not philosophy, these books will at least give you a way to inte-
grate examples drawn from these traditions into the philosoph-
ical curriculum. In summary, to paraphrase Mengzi:
In the present case your philosophizing is sufficient to reach

from Socrates to Sartre, but the benefits do not reach to Confucius
or the Buddha, to the Shawnee or the Akan. Why is this case

alone different? Hence, your not being a multicultural philoso-
pher is due to not acting; it is not due to not being able.
In the preceding two chapters, I have presented a number of

rational arguments for a multicultural approach to philosophy.
However, not all beliefs are rational, or are held for conscious
reasons. In the next chapter, I try to show that the desire to
draw a sharp boundary between Anglo-European philosophy
and supposedly nonphilosophical thought is a manifestation of
a broader pattern of xenophobic, chauvinistic, nationalistic, and
racist efforts to separate “us” from “them.”
3
TRUMP’S PHILOSOPHERS
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border.

—Donald J. Trump
If we do not make it to the Great Wall we are not real

Chinese.
—Mao Zedong
I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great

wall.
—Richard Nixon
D
onald Trump repeatedly promised to build a wall be-
tween the United States and Mexico, and Ronald
Reagan promised to protect “states’ rights.” President
Xi Jinping has praised classical philosophers like Confucius for
forging the “unique mental outlook of the Chinese.”1 Conser-
vative intellectuals have warned of the dangers of higher edu-
cation betraying “our Western heritage.” And contemporary
philosophers, including ones who identify as politically pro-
gressive, click their tongues about how everything outside the
86 Y Trump’s Philosophers
traditional canon that goes back to Plato and Aristotle is not

real philosophy.
They are all in the business of building walls.
Although these camps disagree about many things, each is
deploying an ethnocentric and chauvinistic view of culture to
distinguish “us” from “them” in a way that makes clear that “we”
are rational, self-controlled, just, and civilized, whereas “they”
are illogical, impassioned, unfair, and barbaric. Sometimes
they are explicit; other times they speak in code. Some of them
are fully aware of what they are doing; others have absorbed
subconsciously a worldview that they would reject if they could
see it for what it is. Sometimes they try to make their views
palatable by masking them in what are essentially myths of
noble savages, quaint and childlike, untouched by the deforma-
tions of Western thought—but, for that very reason, excluded
from dialogue with it. But all of them are building and main-
taining walls.
BUILDING R ACIAL WALLS IN

AMERICAN POLITICS
Trump has compared his proposed US-Mexico wall to the

Great Wall of China in terms of its grandeur and feasibility.
He could stand to learn a bit more about Chinese history. The
Great Wall was completed around 1570, and China was con-
quered by the Manchus in 1644. This is hardly a model of suc-
cess. Why does Trump want to build a wall?2 The supposed
reason was to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico:
“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rap-
ists.”3 The reality is that the number of illegal immigrants from
Mexico living in the United States has been steadily declining
Trump’s Philosophers Z 87
since 2007.4 In other words, illegal immigrants from Mexico

have been leaving the United States for years, so if a border wall
would be good for anything, it would be for keeping illegal im-
migrants in. In addition, immigrants as a whole are substan-
tially less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United
States.5 Since there is no genuine policy reason for building the
wall, the only explanation for the immense popularity of the
suggestion among Trump’s supporters is that it is symbolic of
the need to separate “us” from “them.”6 Trump’s success in cap-
turing the Republican nomination and then the presidency in
2016 was so shocking, and confounded so much conventional
political wisdom, that it is tempting to think that he is some
kind of aberration. In reality, Trump is merely appealing ex-
plicitly to ethnocentric rage and fear that previous mainstream
politicians have encouraged implicitly, or at least benefitted
from.7
When Reagan ran for president in 1980, one of his first cam-
paign speeches was at the Neshoba County Fair. No presiden-
tial candidate has spoken at this event before or since, and there
is no good reason to choose this as a site for a speech—except for
one. The fairgrounds are a few miles from Philadelphia, Mis-
sissippi, where, in 1964, three civil rights workers were mur-
dered, with the direct participation of local law enforcement
officers, for the “crime” of registering African Americans to
vote. In his speech in Neshoba, Reagan stated that he sup-
ported “states’ rights.” The official name of the openly segrega-
tionist “Dixiecrats” (the southern Democrats who opposed
Truman because of his support for civil rights) was the “States
Rights’ Democratic Party,” so the message was transparent to
Reagan’s audience.8 I have no doubt that some people have
voted Republican because they interpret “states’ rights” as a
principled commitment to limited government. But to do so is
to be blind to what this phrase actually means for a substantial

number of people.
If one has any remaining doubts about the racism underlying
Reagan’s appeal, they should be crushed by the admission of
Lee Atwater, a top political strategist for both Reagan and G.
H. W. Bush, and later Republican National Committee chair-
man. In an infamous but frank interview, Atwater admitted
that the GOP had consciously decided to use coded language
to appeal to racist voters:
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968

you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say
stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. . . . I’m
saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we
are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other.
You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “we
want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing
thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”9
If we consider the preceding facts, a clear picture emerges. The

party of Lincoln made a deal with the Devil to win over voters
who want to build walls between races.
Surprisingly, this sort of racial nationalism is not that differ-
ent from certain forces at work in contemporary China.
BUILDING WALLS TO PROTECT

CHINESE CIVILIZATION
In January 2011, a thirty-foot-tall bronze statue of Confucius

was unveiled in Tiananmen Square. Just three months later, a
scaffold went up around it. When the scaffold came down, the
statue was gone.10 Official sources were initially silent about the
removal of the statue. Eventually, they explained that the plan
all along had been to temporarily display the statue in Tianan-
men Square, and then later move it to a courtyard in the nearby
museum of antiquities, where the statue now sits. However, if
this were the plan, why hadn’t the authorities announced this in
advance, or at least explained it immediately when questioned
about the statue’s disappearance?
Tiananmen Square is a sensitive location for many reasons.
It is in front of the Forbidden City, the home of China’s emper-
ors in the Qing dynasty. It is the location of the mausoleum of
Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the founder of the People’s Republic
of China.11 And it is the site of what is discreetly referred to in
China as “the incident of June 4, 1989,” in which student pro-
testors agitating for government reform were killed by the
army. Consequently, the political significance of anything that
happens there is magnified. The peek-a-boo of the Confucius
statue reflects an ideological struggle for the soul of China be-
tween China’s left and right. For China’s left, Confucius is a
symbol of feudalism, superstition, and exploitation of the peo-
ple by the privileged. For China’s right, Confucius is an example
of the greatness of Chinese civilization, a guide to personal mo-
rality of contemporary relevance, and a symbol of what uni-
fies all Chinese as a people. In order to understand the contours
and significance of this debate, we need to take a quick look at
recent Chinese history.
After leading the Chinese Communists to victory in the
civil war against the Nationalists (1949), Mao Zedong insti-
tuted the radical agricultural and industrial “reforms” of the Great
Leap Forward (1958–61). The results were disastrous. Tens of
millions starved during the “Great Famine.” Officials were ini-

tially reluctant to report the truth for fear of being persecuted,
but when the extent of the disaster became known, moderates
like Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) began to edge Mao out of power.
Mao responded by launching the “Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution” (1966–76), in which students were encouraged to
drop out of school and join the paramilitary Red Guards. With
all the mercy of the Inquisition and all the objectivity of the
Salem Witch Trials, the Red Guards humiliated, tortured, and
killed whoever appeared to them to be a supporter of feudalism
or capitalism. The temple of Confucius in his (supposed) home-
town of Qufu was vandalized. Worse yet, many people (includ-
ing Deng) were tortured on trumped-up charges. On a recent
visit to China, I talked with a retired professor who showed me
the scars left from when Red Guards drove nails into his hands,
trying to get him to confess to being a foreign agent. The evi-
dence against this professor? He had studied German literature
abroad.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping returned to power
and led China in a much more moderate direction. A signifi-
cant part of “Deng-ism” is acknowledging Mao’s mistakes. The
official slogan is that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent
wrong. However, China continues to wrestle with Mao’s leg-
acy. Mao founded the People’s Republic of China, so to com-
pletely repudiate him would be to disavow Communism. The
Communist Party is woven too intimately into the very fabric of
government to do that. (Recently a popular TV host got in serious
trouble when a video of him making some sarcastic comments
about Mao at a dinner party came to light.)12 However, there
is almost nothing recognizable as “Mao-Zedong-Thought”
per se in the actual practices of Chinese society, culture, and
economy.13
Professor Paul Gewirtz of Yale Law School describes the

social and political problem that faces China:
China today places great value on making money and on self-

interested material success, long denied to the Chinese. But val-
ues in addition to individual materialism are needed to hold a
country together and make it a good country. Where will these
values continue to come from in China? The announced ideol-
ogy of China’s Communist Party no longer seems to be a source
of moral values for Chinese society. Indeed, it is no longer clear
what that ideology really is. China certainly has no equivalent to
the United States’ faith in its Constitution as a continuing source
of our country’s values, as almost a civic religion.
Moreover, China does not have a strong conventional reli-
gious tradition that can be the source of values. Furthermore, the
close family structures that were a traditional forum for the gen-
erational transfer of values have been weakened as Chinese
society has become more mobile and, yes, more free.14
Why should we regard this situation as problematic for China?

There are at least three issues. (1) First, as thinkers in the her-
meneutic tradition have stressed, human beings are creatures
who can only make choices against the “horizon of signifi-
cance” that an ethical vocabulary supplies.15 The seminal soci-
ologist Emile Durkheim used the term “anomie” to describe
the feeling of alienation that results when the individual lacks a
horizon of significance and feels at sea in an amoral society.
Anomie (which we might also describe as “alienation”) is, at the
very least, unpleasant, and it seems to be a serious issue for some
in China. A recent mental health survey of students at Peking
University reported that over 40 percent of freshmen feel that
life is “meaningless.”16 In addition, there is some reason to think
that it is one of the causes of the second problem. (2) When in-
dividuals have no ethical vocabulary in which to articulate deep
values, they are easily prone to certain kinds of wrongdoing.
Everyone can see the force of satisfying immediate and superfi-
cial desires, such as desires for food, sex, wealth, prestige, and
power. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these
motivations. However, if pursued without regard for other val-
ues, they can easily lead to corruption and cruelty.17 (3) A third
problem is that, in the absence of an ethical vocabulary, it is far
too easy for those who wield power to do so in an arbitrary or
self-serving manner. I take this to be part of the point that Mi-
lan Kundera is making when he writes that “The struggle of
man against power is the struggle of memory against forget-
ting.”18 Insofar as we, as a community, remember our shared
ethical vocabulary, we can deploy that vocabulary to resist arbi-
trary exercises of governmental (or other) authority. For all
three of these reasons, post-Mao China needs new ethical vo-
cabularies in which people can believe.19
The complexity of the intellectual situation in China was
brought home to me at a conference I attended in Wuhan,
China, in 2014.20 Of the Chinese philosophers in attendance, I
would say that about 40 percent were Marxist philosophers,
approximately 40 percent were specialists in some kind of
Anglo-European philosophy (including Western political phi-
losophy), and about 20 percent were specialists in traditional
Chinese philosophy (who seemed interested only in narrow
philological issues). Throughout the conference, the three groups
largely spoke past one another. I don’t assume that these exact
percentages are representative of the state of the field in China
as a whole; however, the discipline of philosophy in China is
largely segregated along these lines, and dialogue across the
divides seems minimal.
This is the complex situation that China’s President Xi Jin-

ping has inherited. Xi was born into privilege: his father was a
high-ranking official in the government and the Chinese Com-
munist Party. However, during the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s
father was purged from power and jailed, and Xi himself was,
like many young intellectuals, “sent down” to do farm work in
the countryside. “Bullied” is far too weak a term to describe the
physical, verbal, and psychological abuse Xi suffered at the hands
of the Red Guards.21 Reflecting later on his experience, Xi said:
“I think the youth of my generation will be remembered for the
fervor of the Red Guard era. But it was emotional. It was a
mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could
not be realized, it proved an illusion.”22 Because of this back-
ground, what Xi and many other Chinese government officials
see as particularly important today is to avoid the mob rule and
violence of Cultural Revolution–era China.
Xi has also inherited a nation with numerous separatist move-
ments. Most Westerners are aware of the unrest in Tibet. But
many people in Hong Kong, which only rejoined the People’s
Republic in 1997, are also unsatisfied. Hongkongers are most
comfortable speaking Cantonese or English, and angrily refer to
the throngs of Mandarin-speaking shoppers from the Mainland
as “locusts.” Xinjiang, the huge and natural-resource-rich prov-
ince in China’s northwest, is largely populated by the Uighurs, a
Muslim group, which sometimes chafes under Beijing’s control.
The island of Taiwan has had an independent government since
1949, but the People’s Republic has made clear that it will go to
war if it formally claims independence. The United States has
regularly sent aircraft carrier strike forces to Taiwan as a show of
strength whenever it has been threatened by the mainland. This
happened as recently as 1995. This is why Trump’s decision (while
he was president-elect) to accept a congratulatory phone call
from Taiwan’s president was a serious and potentially dangerous

strategic error, rather than a minor diplomatic faux pas.23
In order to give the Chinese people something to believe in
that can unify them as a race, Xi has frequently praised the
legacy of Confucius, something that would have been unthink-
able under Mao.24 I would classify Xi’s appropriations of Con-
fucianism into four groups: genuine, vacuous, confused, and
nationalistic. One of Xi’s exhortatory addresses to Communist
Party members illustrates him genuinely understanding and
correctly applying a Confucian saying. Xi stressed the impor-
tance of avoiding greed, being self-disciplined, and maintain-
ing one’s integrity. He appropriately illustrated this with one of
the most famous lines from Analects: “One who rules through
the power of Virtue is analogous to the Pole Star: it simply re-
mains in its place and receives the homage of the myriad lesser
stars.”25 Xi’s message, prompted by the widespread corruption
in China’s government, is that citizens will not respect and
obey the Party unless its members show genuine integrity.
Other times, classical allusions are simply empty window
dressing, because Xi seems completely uninterested in what the
passage he cites actually means. In a speech delivered to the
Chinese Academy of Engineering praising technological inno-
vation, Xi cites a line from a canonical Confucian text merely
because the latter uses the word “new.” However, the original
Confucian classic is praising moral renewal, not new technol-
ogy.26 Xi shows a similar lack of interest in the original meaning
of expressions when he quotes Confucius’s famous autobio-
graphical comment “at forty I became free of doubts” merely to
note that it was the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of
diplomatic relations between China and Brazil.27
Xi sometimes attempts to sincerely apply a phrase, but fails
to understand it. In an address to the students of Peking Uni-
versity, Xi admonishes them with a phrase that he takes to be a

description of an ideal person: “In his speech he insists on being
trustworthy, and with regard to his actions he insists they bear
fruit.” However, in its original context, Confucius is criticizing,
not praising, the “narrow, rigid little man” who insists on these
rules.28 In fact, the later Confucian Mengzi would explicitly
state that “As for great people, their words do not have to be
trustworthy, and their actions do not have to bear fruit. They
rest only in righteousness.”29 Confucius and Mengzi are not ad-
vocating casual lying. They simply disagree with those who
(like Kant in the West) claim that the obligation to tell the
truth may not be broken in any circumstances, even to save an
innocent life.30 In denying that actions “have to bear fruit,” they
are suggesting that actions should be judged by their intentions
and motivations, not by their actual consequences. (Hmm.
These sound suspiciously like philosophical issues, don’t they?)
In my opinion, what is most significant about Xi’s appropri-
ation of Confucianism is his use of it to inspire racial identity
and nationalism. This comes out most clearly in an address he
gave to students at Peking University:
Chinese culture emphasizes that “the people are the foundation

of the state,” “the heavens and humans form a unity,” “harmo-
nize without forming cliques”; it emphasizes that “just as the
actions of the heavens are reliable, the gentleman improves
himself unceasingly”; “the great Way is to treat the whole world
as one community”; it emphasizes that “whether the world rises
or decays is every ordinary person’s responsibility”; it stresses
ruling the country by means of Virtue, transforming people
through culture; it emphasizes that “the gentleman cares about
righteousness,” “the gentleman is magnanimous,” “the gentle-
man takes righteousness as his substance”; it emphasizes that
“speech must be trustworthy, and actions must bear fruit,” “if a

person is not honest, how can he be acceptable?”; it emphasizes
that “virtue is never alone, it is sure to have neighbors”; “the be-
nevolent love others,” “help others to do good,” “that which one
does not like, do not inflict upon others,” “be friendly to one an-
other whether coming or going, help one another in keeping
watch,” “treat the old and young of one’s own family as you
should and extend it to the old and young of other families,”
“support the poor and rescue those in difficulty,” “do not be anx-
ious over having little, be anxious about inequality,” etc. These
sorts of thoughts and ideals, both in the past and today, all clearly
have the distinctive characteristic of our nation; they all have an
unfading value for one’s era. . . . Most fundamentally, what makes
us Chinese at birth is that we have the unique mental outlook of
the Chinese, that we have a perspective on value that the com-
mon people intuitively employ daily. The core values of socialism
that we advocate have simply fulfilled and embodied the inheri-
tance and refinement of the distinguished Chinese tradition.31
What is important here is not the undigested barrage of quota-

tions. What is important is the inspiring feeling they leave his
audience with: the feeling that they should be proud to be Chi-
nese, that the Chinese have a unique perspective on the world,
and that socialism is the way that this proud heritage will be
preserved. In this respect, Xi’s support of the Chinese classics is
as insincere as the invocation of the Bible by US politicians who
would bar refugees (“He loveth the stranger in giving him food
and raiment, love ye therefore the stranger” [Deuteronomy
18:19, KJV]) or cut funding to the needy (“Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it
unto me” [Matthew 25:40, KJV]), or as the violence done in
the name of the Qur’an, a scripture that explicitly condemns
harming noncombatants (“whosoever kills a human being, except

(as punishment) for murder or for spreading corruption in the
land, it shall be like killing all humanity; and whosoever saves
a life, saves the entire human race” [5:32]) and preaches love of
those who practice other religions (“all those who believe, and
the Jews and the Sabians and the Christians, in fact any one
who believes in God and the Last Day, and performs good
deeds, will have nothing to fear or regret” [5:69]).32
President Trump’s expressions of respect for the Bible are
similarly hypocritical. He claimed that the Bible is his favorite
book, but in a talk at Liberty University it became clear that
he does not even know how to pronounce the name of one of the
most commonly cited books of the Bible. (He referred to 2 Cor-
inthians, which any Christian knows is read as “Second Corin-
thians,” as “Two Corinthians.”)33 On another occasion, when
pressed to name his favorite Bible verse, Trump said it was “never
bend to envy”—a line that is not found in the Bible.34 (Lest I be
accused of hypocrisy, my own favorite Bible verse is Micah 6:8:
“and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” [KJV])
Political figures who invoke philosophical or spiritual works
for nationalistic purposes have no interest in the actual content
of the classics they claim to revere. What is important in each
case is that the classics are symbols of what is distinctive and
superior about us as opposed to them. The distinction between
an “idol” and an “icon” is helpful in understanding the de-
formed role that spiritual traditions often play in politics. As
historian Jaroslav Pelikan explained, to treat something as an
idol is to worship a finite worldly thing, regardless of whether
that thing is a statue, a text, an institution, or a person. In con-
trast, to treat something as an icon is to regard it as an important
gift to humanity, but one that points beyond itself to some higher
truth that the icon can never fully reveal to us.35 Nationalistic
demagogues around the world are guilty of idolatry, of wor-
shiping some limited product of human history as if were the
truth that it guides us toward. There is a problem with encour-
aging idolatry, though. The classics are classics for a reason, and
if you tell young people to revere the classics, they just might
take you seriously. In other words, they might start reading the
classics with care and understanding, so that they search for the
great truths that the classics point toward. All great philoso-
phies and religious traditions have sometimes been co-opted as
ideologies to support the status quo, or to encourage nationalis-
tic intolerance. But thinkers in every generation have been in-
spired by these same traditions to think for themselves, chal-
lenge injustice, and fight for the well-being of the common
people, not just the elites. This is what gives us people like
Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Akbar the Great
(1542–1605), and Kang Youwei (1858–1927).
As we shall see in the next section, there are those who gen-
uinely treat the classics as icons rather than as idols, but none-
theless want to build walls between civilizations. However, I
will argue that their views are ultimately incoherent. Once you
are serious about seeking the truth, you cannot have any plau-
sible reason for silencing other voices in that quest.
BUILDING WALLS TO PROTECT

WESTERN CIVILIZATION
In his recent book Too Dumb to Fail, conservative commentator

Matt K. Lewis discusses “the dirty secret of the conservative
movement in America today: everyone knows that it has lost its
intellectual bearings.”36 Lewis states that, prior to the rise of the

Tea Party, “the story of the rise of the conservative movement . . .
is one of big, thoughtful ideas that address serious existential
questions about human nature and the rise of civilization.” 37
Specifically, “Conservatism is about conserving the good things
about Western civilization. . . . It’s the belief that Western civili-
zation didn’t merely happen, but was instead the result of the
accumulated wisdom of our ancestors. It’s about a realization
that Western civilization and its institutions evolved naturally,
and that long-standing traditions must be preserved.”38 The
italics in the quotation are mine, but I don’t think they unfairly
distort the underlying message: there is something special about
Western civilization as opposed to other civilizations, and the
unique Western tradition is under threat by those who wish to
dilute it with something else. Lewis warns that “almost every
facet of the culture, from the music industry to the worlds of
food writing and travel writing . . . are dominated by people of
the Left.”39 The undermining of culture doesn’t stop there: “con-
servatives worry about the ‘feminization’ of sports.” 40 (True.
Every time I watch the Super Bowl, I just shake my head and
sadly mutter, “Butch it up, girls!”)
Lewis traces the development of the sort of conservatism
he represents to Aristotle’s Politics (fourth century bce) and
Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Aristotle strikes me as an unlikely ally for a contemporary con-
servative, because he believes that the state is responsible for
raising children in the right habits. Aristotle would have no
tolerance for fundamentalist parents who want to home school
their children to “protect” them from socialization, or for those
who want to leave education to the uncertainties of the free
market. Aristotle’s position on the responsibilities of the state for
the education of the young seems more like Hillary Clinton’s

slogan “It takes a village to raise a child.” Moreover, the anti-
intellectualism of contemporary conservatism (that Lewis laments
and that we shall explore in chapter 4) is in direct opposition to
Aristotle’s view of a good life. Aristotle regards manual labor
and trade as necessary to support a civilization, but unworthy of
cultivated gentlemen, who should devote their time to purely
intellectual pursuits. Wealth, for Aristotle, is not for gaudy in-
dividual displays of conspicuous consumption; wealth exists to
educate people and to give them the leisure to think, to discuss,
and to research. Unsurprisingly, Aristotle regards a plutocracy (in
which the wealthy rule) as one of the worst forms of government,
so he would be horrified by the level of influence of money in
contemporary US politics.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) is a more promising inspiration for
conservatism. Burke was horrified by the French Revolution,
and showed considerable prescience in recognizing that it
would turn into an orgy of anarchic violence. The lesson to
learn, Burke claimed, was that human institutions have gradu-
ally evolved to meet human needs, and we do not always fully
understand how or why they work. Consequently, to radically
restructure society in the light of a utopian ideal will have un-
foreseeable and dangerous consequences. Burke was right about
genuinely radical utopian schemes. As Lewis notes, the horrors
of the Russian Revolution were as bad as those of the French.
He might have added that a further vindication of Burke’s
thesis can be found in Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward
(discussed earlier).
However, there is a problem with trying to be both Aristo-
telian and Burkean. For many contemporary Aristotelians—
from lay Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre to progres-
sive secularist Martha C. Nussbaum—what is inspiring about
Aristotelianism is precisely that it is not a static catalogue of “a

priori” truths (as Lewis describes it), but a framework that can
adapt and improve in the light of new experiences, including
exposure to new cultures.41 As MacIntyre explains:
We are apt to be misled here by the ideological uses to which

the concept of a tradition has been put by conservative political
theorists. Characteristically such theorists have followed Burke
in contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradi-
tion with conflict. Both contrasts obfuscate. . . . Traditions, when
vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition
becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead.42
Moreover, it is simply a mistake to try to apply Burke to main-

stream political disagreement in the United States. A woman
who wants to be paid the same amount as a man for doing the
same job, and doesn’t want to be groped or ogled as a condition
of her employment, is not Madame Defarge, gleefully con-
demning innocents to the guillotine. African Americans who
want to exercise the right to vote, or receive the same treatment
during a routine traffic stop that a white person expects, are not
destroying the foundations of the rule of law: they are asking to
fully participate in it. Hispanics and Latinos who want to have
their citizenship and their ethics affirmed, not challenged, are
not lining Czar Nicholas II and his family up against a wall and
executing them. Gays and lesbians who can now marry and
adopt children are not undermining the oldest human institu-
tion; they are happily integrated into it. And, to turn specifi-
cally to the main topic of this book, it is hard to see how giving
students the opportunity to be inspired by Buddhism in addition
to Platonism, or Confucianism in addition to Aristotelianism,
will lead to (in the immortal words of Bill Murray’s character
from the original Ghostbusters) “human sacrifice, dogs and cats

living together, mass hysteria.”
For me, one of the most valuable lessons to learn from the
French Revolution and Burke’s insights about it is that a society
that does not gradually evolve in response to changes and social
pressures will eventually suffer sudden and disastrous upheaval.
France, Russia, and China did not have violent revolutions
because those in power agreed to moderate changes. They de-
scended into violent chaos because change was denied for so
long. Contemporary philosophy professors who insist that “We
already get students of color in our classes. Remember that one
last year?” are expressing the “Let them eat cake” of our era.
(Remember the Stoic adage cited in chapter 1: “The Fates lead
those who come willingly, and drag those who do not.”)
Lewis is part of a long line of conservative US intellectuals
whose thought emphasizes protecting Western civilization,
including William F. Buckley, whose book God and Man at Yale,
published in 1951, accused the professors of his alma mater of
undermining their students’ faiths in Christianity and laissez-
faire capitalism.43 Buckley expressed the outrage of a conserva-
tive undergraduate confronted by liberal professors, while Al-
lan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind, published in
1987, vividly described the experience of a conservative profes-
sor who found the traditional canon to which he had devoted
his life under siege by student agitators.44 Both books were
surprise best sellers, and Bloom’s is particularly relevant to our
topic.
I am not completely unsympathetic to Bloom’s frustrations. I
was a graduate student at Stanford when undergraduates occu-
pied the president’s office to chants of “Hey hey, ho ho! Western
culture’s got to go!” and used the acronym DEWM to describe
a curriculum consisting only of the works of dead European

white males.45 Even though I am (obviously) completely sup-
portive of broadening the curriculum, it is not because I do not
also love the best of the Western tradition. And the comments
and actions of the students did manifest a sort of contemptuous
and uninformed dismissiveness that I found grating. I suppose
in a parallel universe I am an educational fundamentalist with a
goatee. (That’s a Star Trek reference, in the unlikely event that
anyone reading this is not a nerd at heart.)
However, I disagree with substantial aspects of Bloom’s diag-
nosis of the problem. Bloom complains bitterly that nowadays
One of the techniques of opening young people up is to require a

college course in a non-Western culture. Although many of the
persons teaching such courses are real scholars and lovers of the
areas they study,* in every case I have seen this requirement . . .
has a demagogic intention. The point is to force students to rec-
ognize that there are other ways of thinking and that Western
ways are not better. . . . Such requirements are part of the effort
to establish a world community and train its member—the person
devoid of prejudice.46
Many readers will find themselves nodding and wondering

what is wrong with any of this. Bloom’s response is that a cer-
tain degree of ethnocentrism is necessary for the well-being of
the individual and for society:
Men must love and be loyal to their families and their peoples in
order to preserve them. Only if they think their own things are
*Bryan waves.
good can they rest content with them. A father must prefer his
child to other children, a citizen his country to others. That is
why there are myths—to justify these attachments. And a man
needs a place and opinions by which to orient himself. . . . The
problem of getting along with outsiders is secondary to, and
sometimes in conflict with, having an inside, a people, a culture,
a way of life.47
In short, in order to continue to exist and to flourish, it is
necessary for the members of a culture to believe that “their way
of life is the best way, and all others are inferior,” even if myths
are needed to sustain this ethnocentrism.48
So Bloom’s position on the importance of studying the classics

of Western civilization is importantly different from that of
traditional conservatives like Lewis or Buckley. Bloom is not
committed to the specific value of the Bible, or the free market
system, or even belief in God. What is important for Bloom is
that we avoid spiritual shallowness and ethical nihilism by being
educated into “our” cultural tradition, and respectfully partici-
pating in the great conversation that runs through classics like
Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine’s Con-
fessions, Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, Pascal’s
Penseés, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Gov-
ernment, Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, and Rousseau’s
Émile (each of which Bloom discusses in the book). Bloom is
fully aware that there are competing voices in this conversation
(like Nietzsche and Heidegger), and it almost doesn’t matter to
him which voice one prefers, as long as one (deferentially) adds
one’s own to it. But this brings out the fundamental incoher-
ence in Bloom’s view. He states that “the Bible is not the only
means to furnish a mind, but without a book of similar gravity,
read with the gravity of the potential believer, it will remain

unfurnished.” 49 I actually agree, but with an emphasis on the
qualification “a book of similar gravity.” If reading the Bible
intently and seriously gives breadth and depth to one’s mind
(and it certainly does), why not also the Mengzi? or the Bhagavad
Gita? or Chĝshingura? There is more than one “great conversation”
in the world, and more than one way to furnish a soul.
In addition to his call for a return to the reverential study of
the classics of the Western tradition, many other things that
Bloom said endeared him to US conservatives. He asserts that
affirmative action led to colleges having “a large number of stu-
dents who were manifestly unqualified and unprepared,” and
therefore facing a dilemma: “fail most of them or pass them
without their having learned.”50 I have not experienced the di-
lemma Bloom alleges occurred. (And I suspect that it was a
self-fulfilling prophecy for Bloom: if you don’t expect a particu-
lar group of students in your class to do well, they probably
won’t.) Furthermore, what discussions of affirmative action
typically miss is that, even if race ceased to be a factor in admis-
sions tomorrow, no competitive college or university would ad-
mit students solely based on standardized tests and high school
grades. It is well established that standardized tests like the
SAT and ACT are weak predictors of academic success in col-
lege, and so many applicants with strong grades and test scores
apply to competitive schools that colleges almost have to use
some other criteria to select students. Moreover, at the under-
graduate level, the influence of athletic affirmative action
dwarfs that of racial affirmative action. Does this have a posi-
tive effect on education? Brock Turner was a championship
swimmer and was attending Stanford University on an athletic
scholarship when he sexually assaulted an unconscious woman
in 2015.51 Although his case attracted considerable media atten-

tion, he is hardly unusual. Fifty-four percent of student athletes
admit to engaging in coercive sexual activities.52 (How many
more are less self-aware about what they have done?) Where are
the calls to eliminate athletic affirmative action? In addition,
elite schools continue to give preference to children of alumnae.
For example, George W. Bush had poor grades and mediocre
SAT scores. His admission to Yale was based almost solely on
his being a “legacy” (the son and grandson of Yale graduates).
Donald Trump was able to transfer to an Ivy League business
school because his elder brother was high-school friends with
the admissions officer of the Wharton School. Where is the
outrage over this class-based affirmative action?53
The fact is that not everyone can afford to take the standard-
ized tests multiple times; not everyone can afford test prep
courses; not everyone can afford for an editor to go over their
application essay. Most importantly, not everyone even knows
these are options.54 I have been fortunate over the years to have
many students—of all races and social backgrounds—who
were bright and passionate. But I have also taught a few of the
George W. Bushes and Donald J. Trumps of the world: white,
wealthy students whose writing and reading comprehension
skills are mediocre at best, who show up for class smelling of
“weed,” and who put the bare minimum effort into their courses
because they know their family connections will get them a
good job after they graduate. Thanks, but I’ll take the first-gen-
eration college students trying to make a better future for
themselves and their families any day.
Bloom’s defense of the Western canon, his criticisms of af-
firmative action, and his disdain for the supposedly lax morals
of his colleagues and students made him a star in conservative
circles. There is an ironic coda to Bloom’s association with con-
servatism, though. The GOP has always taken a hard line

against gay rights. Two decades before Bloom published The
Closing of the American Mind, William F. Buckley had publicly
denounced novelist Gore Vidal as a “queer” in a televised debate
(long before the term was “owned” by gays).55 In the early years
of the AIDS crisis, Reagan’s press secretary simply cracked
jokes when asked what steps the administration was taking to
address the disease that was rapidly spreading among members
of the gay community.56 In 2016, in the wake of the deadliest
single incident of violence against LGBTQ people in US his-
tory (in which forty-nine people were murdered and fifty-three
were injured by a shooter in an Orlando gay nightclub), the
GOP approved what the Log Cabin Republicans condemned
as “the most anti-LGBT Platform in the Party’s 162-year his-
tory. Opposition to marriage equality, nonsense about bath-
rooms, an endorsement of the debunked psychological practice
of ‘pray the gay away’—it’s all in there.”57 Trump’s vice presi-
dent, Mike Pence, supported a constitutional amendment to
ban gay marriage, and said that same-sex marriage could lead
to “societal collapse.”58 However, after Bloom passed away, he
was outed as gay by his close friend Saul Bellow, who also sug-
gested that Bloom died of AIDS.59 As critic D. T. Max won-
dered, “How many members of the right will want their money
back now?”60
JERICHO
Demagogues like Trump are explicit about wishing to build

walls to separate races and religions; earlier politicians have
made similar promises using coded language. Chinese national-
ists like President Xi Jinping want to boost support for Confucius
as a symbol of Chinese culture, to preserve a Chinese racial

identity distinct from the West. Some intellectual US conser-
vatives want to separate what they see as the individualistic,
rational philosophy of the West from its decadent counterparts
in the rest of the world.
Many Western philosophers have similarly built a wall be-
tween “real” philosophy and some “other.” As we saw in chapter
1, this is sometimes done by claiming that “real” philosophy has
the same kind of rigor that is characteristic of the natural sci-
ences, while everything else is poetry or nonsense. Of course,
the philosophers who assert this do not actually bother to read
non-Western or other less commonly taught philosophies to see
whether they are rigorous. Other times, the wall-building is
done by stipulating that both philosophy and the overcoming of
philosophy must be historical descendants of the Greek philoso-
phia. This argument treats philosophy as if it is a hermetically
sealed dialogue with one particular set of ancient canonical
texts, and thereby both ignores and precludes the diversity and
creativeness of philosophy. These sorts of shallow arguments
are found among both analytic and Continental philosophers.
Almost all philosophers would categorically reject explicit rac-
ism. But I ask my fellow philosophers to recognize whom you
are implicitly aligning yourself with when you reject—without
genuinely investigating—philosophy from outside the Anglo-
European tradition. You are helping those who build and main-
tain walls: walls between races, walls between religions, walls
between civilizations. These walls need to come down. Let us
take inspiration from the Bible:
So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trum-
pets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of
the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that
the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city,
every man straight before him, and they took the city. (Joshua
6:20, KJV)
Although I have criticized many different kinds of intellectuals

in this chapter, all of us have one opponent in common: the
anti-intellectualism that rejects all philosophy as pointless or
impractical. I respond to this trend in the next chapter.
4
WELDERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
We need more welders and less philosophers.

—Marco Rubio
Whenever I hear “culture”—I cock my pistol.

—SS officer Hanns Johst
W
hen Marco Rubio quipped, during one of
the 2016 GOP presidential debates, “Welders
make more money than philosophers. We need
more welders and less philosophers,” he was doing more than
making a grammatical error.1 He was also guilty of several fac-
tual errors. First, as any economist will tell you, the fact that
profession X is paid more than profession Y does not mean that
the economy needs more people to do X. The supply and de-
mand for X and Y may have achieved equilibrium at different
salary levels from each other. (Does Rubio think that in an ideal
economy neurosurgeons would be paid the same as chimney
sweeps?) More importantly, philosophy majors on average earn
more than welders. The median starting salary for those who
studied “welding technology” was $37,000 per year, while those
Welders and Philosophers Z 111
with undergraduate degrees in philosophy earned on average

$42,000 per year; after ten to twenty years of experience, weld-
ers can expect to earn $53,000 per year, while philosophy majors
on average will earn $82,000 per year.2 Ironically, the same data
shows that those with a bachelor’s degree in political science
(like Rubio) earn almost exactly as much on average as phi-
losophy majors upon graduation; however, the philosophy
majors overtake the political science majors after a few years
of job experience, and earn more on average over their lifetimes.
But perhaps we are interpreting Rubio uncharitably. Maybe
by “philosophers” Rubio meant only professors of philosophy.
He is still wrong. The average starting salary for assistant
professors of philosophy and religion is over $54,000 per year,
already more than the salary a welder can expect after ten years
of experience, and full professors earn an average of $86,000
per year.
My point is not that we need more philosophers and fewer
welders. (Unlike Rubio, I believe in the free market system, and
have faith that the invisible hand of supply and demand will
determine how many philosophers and welders we need.) And
I am certainly not trying to “stigmatize vocational education,”
as Rubio accused some unspecified group of doing. There is
nothing intrinsically more noble about either being a philoso-
phy professor or being a welder. But in this chapter I will insist
on three points that Rubio’s comment missed: (1) Studying phi-
losophy is a legitimate career choice, even from a narrowly vo-
cational perspective. (2) It is a false dichotomy that one must
either study philosophy or become a welder. A liberal arts edu-
cation is valuable to every citizen of a democracy, and to the
maintenance of democracy itself. (3) Philosophy has made im-
mense contributions to our civilization. Moreover, by its nature
it is impossible for philosophy to ever become obsolete.
112 Y Welders and Philosophers
PHILOSOPHY AND
OCCUPATIONAL TR AINING
Philosophy majors earn more than those with any other hu-
manities degree,3 and my own students have gone on to success
in a variety of different professions, including medicine, sec-
ondary teaching, social work, and law enforcement. For those
considering a law degree, it is worth knowing that undergradu-
ate philosophy majors on average score higher than any other
major on the Law School Admission Test.4 (As I am writing
this, I currently have three former students attending top law
schools: one at Columbia Law School, another at NYU Law
School, and a third at the University of Michigan Law School.
Their parents must be thinking: “Oh, if only they had majored
in welding!”) Philosophy majors also have the highest average
score on the GRE Verbal and GRE Analytical Writing, and
are among the highest-scoring majors for the GMAT, the busi-
ness-school admissions test.5 Perhaps most impressively, phi-
losophy majors have the highest average probability of getting
admitted to medical school, better on average than any other
major, including biology and chemistry!6 We shouldn’t be sur-
prised that Darrell Kirch, MD, the CEO of the organization
that administers the Medical College Admission Test, was an
undergraduate philosophy major himself.7
What else do people who majored in philosophy do? A phi-
losophy major can be president of Morgan Stanley (Robert
Greenhill), founder and manager of a hedge fund (Don Brown-
stein), an investor (George Soros and Carl Icahn), CEO of
Overstock.com (my former Stanford classmate Patrick Byrne),
CEO of Time Warner (Gerald Levin), cofounder of PayPal
(Peter Thiel), a Supreme Court justice (Stephen Breyer and Da-
vid Souter), cofounder of Wikipedia (Larry Sanger), mayor of
Los Angeles (Richard Riordan), US secretary of education

(William Bennett), chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation (Sheila Bair), political activist (left-wing Stokely
Carmichael and right-wing Patrick Buchanan), prime minister
of Canada (Paul Martin, Jr.), president of the Czech Republic
(Vaclav Havel), a network television journalist (Stone Phillips),
a Pulitzer Prize–winning author (Studs Terkel), a Nobel Prize–
winning author (Pearl Buck and Bertrand Russell and Jean-
Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and Alexander Solzhenitsyn), a
Nobel Peace Prize winner (Albert Schweizer and Aung San
Suu Kyi), host of an iconic game show (Alex Trebek), a come-
dian/actor/producer (Ricky Gervais and Chris Hardwick), an
Academy Award–winning filmmaker (Ethan Coen), a four-
star general in the US army (Jack Keane), a fighter in the French
Resistance in World War II (Stephane Hessel), coauthor of the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (P. C.
Chang and Charles Malik), a martyr to German opposition to
Nazism in World War II (Sophie Scholl), pope (John Paul II
and Benedict XVI), or a seminal anthropologist (Claude Levi-
Strauss and Clifford Geertz)—just to give a few examples.
The practical value of our discipline relates to the fact that
philosophy courses typically do particularly well at teaching the
“three Rs” of a humanities education: reading, writing, and rea-
soning. Harvard Medical School professor David Silbersweig,
MD, explained that his undergraduate major in philosophy
has informed and provided a methodology for everything I have

done since. If you can get through a one-sentence paragraph of
Kant, holding all of its ideas and clauses in juxtaposition in your
mind, you can think through most anything. If you can extract,
and abstract, underlying assumptions or superordinate princi-
ples, or reason through to the implications of arguments, you
can identify and address issues in a myriad of fields. It has helped

me in immeasurable ways along my trajectory from philosophy
to an academic medical career, which suggest that Rubio [has] a
number of serious misconceptions about education.8
Philosophy is not unique among humanities fields in teaching

reading, writing, and reasoning, but philosophy classes typi-
cally put a special emphasis on clarity of expression, accuracy of
interpretation, and cogency of argumentation that is sometimes
lacking in other disciplines.9
I certainly wouldn’t say that most people should major in
philosophy (any more than I would say most people should be-
come welders). But some training in the reading, writing, and
reasoning skills that are distinctive of philosophy courses is
valuable to majors in a variety of different fields. I know an en-
gineer who, as an undergraduate, fed me the line every humani-
ties professor must have heard at some point: “Why should an
engineer be required to take a humanities course instead of tak-
ing that one additional engineering course that would help him
design a bridge that won’t collapse?!” First, any engineer who
is only one course away from designing a bridge that collapses
should not be anywhere close to graduation! I expect my bridges
to be designed by engineers who are well over the absolute min-
imum skill level required. More seriously, the fact is that, when
you study a technical field, advanced knowledge is constantly
changing. You always use the concepts that are taught to you in
the basic courses your freshman and maybe your sophomore
year. After that, the content of your courses is typically things
that will be obsolete a few years after you graduate, or perhaps
irrelevant to the particular job you end up in. You are still get-
ting something out of them, but it is simply more practice in
“thinking like an engineer” (or a businessperson, or a computer
scientist, or whatever). This is certainly valuable. However, what-

ever sort of career you end up in, if you need a college degree for
it, part of your job will be reading challenging texts with un-
derstanding and writing clearly and persuasively. If you end up
in an advanced management position, your job may also involve
understanding and discussing knowledgeably issues involving
ethics.
How do I know all this? The engineer in question admitted
it when I talked to him years later, after he had practical experi-
ence in his own profession.
Let us remind ourselves that the distinctive higher education
system of the United States—which requires most students to
take a liberal arts curriculum and, since World War II, has been
increasingly open to people of all social classes—is the envy of
the world. No wonder, because the system that makes natural
scientists study poetry and philosophy has produced nuclear
power, computers, supersonic flight, the polio vaccine, lasers,
transistors, oral contraceptives, CDs, the Internet, email, and
MRIs, and has put the first people on the moon. Ironically, as
liberal arts education in the United States is increasingly under
fire, governments in China, India, Japan, Singapore, and South
Korea try to re-create in their own countries the liberal arts model
that they recognize is one of the keys to US technological and
economic dominance.10
PHILOSOPHY AND
DEMOCR ATIC CITIZENSHIP
If failing to appreciate the practical value of studying philosophy

were the only problem with Rubio’s comment, it would be gratu-
itously cruel to pair it with one by an SS officer as the epigraphs
to this chapter. Rubio certainly did not intend to lead anyone

toward anything that horrific. In fact, his speech suspending
his 2016 presidential campaign after his loss to Trump in his
home state of Florida included the most inspiring rhetoric of
the Republican primaries and expressed the values that I be-
lieve are most important to him.11 But what Rubio fails to grasp
is that the anti-intellectualism he took part in during the early
parts of his campaign is inconsistent with the democracy and
justice that he honored at the end of his campaign.
Certainly, Rubio’s comment was not a political misstep in
the context of contemporary Republican politics. Had Carly
Fiorina (who also took part in the debate that night) confessed
to the fact that she majored in philosophy, her political ambi-
tions would have been crushed faster than you can fall off a
stage—which she later did.12 Rubio was not even the last per-
son to explicitly target philosophy during that debate. Senator
Ted Cruz, apparently noticing that Rubio’s line had gotten
thunderous applause, criticized the “philosopher-kings” who
run the Federal Reserve. (I somehow doubt that this is what
Plato meant by “philosopher-kings.”) Not wanting to be left
out, Governor John Kasich made the blanket statement, “Phi-
losophy doesn’t work when you run something.” (This sentence
makes less sense to me every time I read it.)
Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban devel-
opment, expressed his disdain for philosophy in another context,
when he opined that “political correctness” is a serious problem
for the US because “it’s the very same thing that happened to
the Roman Empire. They were extremely powerful. There was
no way anybody could overcome them. But these philosophers,
with the long flowing white robes and the long white beards,
they could wax eloquently on every subject, but nothing was
right and nothing was wrong. They soon completely lost sight
of who they were.”13 Let’s try to take Carson’s comment seriously.

By “these philosophers” Carson may mean either Academic or
Pyrrhonian Skeptics. Carson’s reaction is much like that of
Rome’s own archconservative, Cato the Elder (234–149 bce),
who had the skeptic Carneades (214–129 bce) expelled from
Rome. But neither ancient nor modern skeptics advocate ethi-
cal anarchy. Hellenistic Skeptics generally claimed that, while
we cannot know what the truth is, we can and should act upon
what appears to us to be most plausible.14 This position raises
many delightful philosophical puzzles (is there a distinction
between acting on what seems most plausible to us and believ-
ing in it?), but it hardly seems like something that would bring
the greatest empire of the ancient West to its knees.
Moreover, as a Christian, Carson should also know that there
was more to Hellenistic philosophy than Skepticism: the Book
of Acts (17:18) reports that St. Paul debated the Epicureans and
Stoics he met in Athens.15 Presumably, Carson would disap-
prove of the Epicureans’ materialistic conception of the uni-
verse and their view that good and evil are reducible to pleasure
and pain. However, the Epicureans did not see either of these
facts as entailing a sybaritic lifestyle: they advocated the mod-
erate satisfaction of desire as most conducive to a happy life. In
addition, it is hard not to admire Epicurus for admitting women
and slaves to his school.
The Stoics actually had a fairly significant influence on the
development of Christian thought, and Carson would approve
of many of their teachings, if he had bothered to learn about
them. Contrary to the Skeptics, the Stoics claimed that we can
know the truth with certainty, and contrary to the Epicureans
the Stoics argued that the only thing good in itself is virtue. The
Stoics also believed that God exists and is identical with logos
(reason). (We find similar language in the New Testament: “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God,” where “Word” is logos [John 1:1, KJV].) The
Stoics argued that the best way of life is to live in accordance
with the natural law dictated by the reason that exists within
each of us. (Compare this with Romans 2:14–15: “For when the
Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things con-
tained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto
themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts” [KJV].)
If the philosophers are not responsible for the fall of Rome,
what is? Edward Gibbon (1737–94) argued in his classic The De-
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire that “the introduction, or at
least the abuse of Christianity” was a contributing factor to the
decline of the empire, because it preached “the happiness of a
future life” over political activity in this life.16 Indeed, Gibbon
claimed that the preference for the afterlife was so extreme
among Christians during the period of persecution that they
actively sought martyrdom, going unsummoned to the tribunal
to gratuitously confess their faith and demand to be executed.17
Gibbon editorialized that, after Christianity was legalized by
Emperor Constantine (r. 306–37), “the active virtues of society
were discouraged . . . the last remains of military spirit were
buried in the cloister” and the “sacred indolence of the monks
was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age.” When
the Church did encourage activity, it was often counterproduc-
tive: “the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious
factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always
implacable.”18 Of course, Gibbon is not the last word on later
Roman history.19 But almost all serious historians would agree
with one point he makes: “instead of inquiring why the Roman
empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had
subsisted so long.”20 Rome fell for many complicated social, po-
litical, and economic reasons. Although it is a common conser-

vative trope to compare the decadent United States to decadent
Rome, there is no simplistic lesson to be learned from its fate.
To some extent, dismissals of philosophy by politicians sim-
ply reflect the anti-intellectualism that has been central to US
culture for a very long time.21 Presidents have to affect an ev-
eryman demeanor, dressing up like a cowboy (Ronald “The
Gipper” Reagan) or maintaining the hint of an accent they nor-
mally would have lost some time at Yale or Oxford (“Bill” Clin-
ton). One of the reasons that Al Gore lost to George W. Bush
in 2000 is that Gore never learned the art of hiding his intelli-
gence and erudition; in contrast, Americans correctly saw in
G. W. Bush someone they could relate to. Although Bush and
Gore each went to an Ivy League school, Bush could be forgiven
because (in his own words) he didn’t learn “a damn thing at
Yale.”22 Gore reminded Americans of the smart kid in class,
who’s in debate club, and always gets an A, and uses big words.
Nobody likes that kid. G. W. Bush, in contrast, is the friendly
goofball who’s on the cheerleading squad (which Bush actually
was). Everyone likes him, and even though he barely got through
school with Cs and Ds, he’ll be fine because when he graduates
he’ll just join the family business (which Bush also did).
There is a big difference, though, between wearing a Stetson
or playing a saxophone to show what a regular guy you are and
actively condemning education. The latter is the direction the
GOP has recently been taking. As conservative commentator
Matt K. Lewis laments, “Too many of today’s conservatives
deliberately shun erudition, academic excellence, experience, sa-
gaciousness, and expertise in politics.”23 In other words, the
conservative movement has been “Palinized.”24 When former
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin compared
conservative women like herself to “Mama Grizzlies,” who “kinda
just know when something’s wrong,” the unfortunate implication

is that innate and inarticulate intuition invalidates informed in-
telligence.25 Historian Stacy Schiff agrees that “Moms ‘do kinda
just know when something’s wrong’ ” but notes that “ideally
that category includes monitoring unprotected teenage sex un-
der one’s own roof ” (something that Palin failed to do with her
daughter Bristol). Turning more specifically to the political im-
plications of Palin’s metaphor, she states: “I’m all for saluting
the maternal sixth sense, though I’m not sure I want a govern-
ment run by intuition. We had one of those recently,” under
G. W. Bush, who led our country to war because of imaginary
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.26 But it was precisely Palin’s
anti-intellectualism that made her appealing to so many in the
contemporary Republican base.
It used to be that the Democrats were the party of anti-
intellectual populism. In the early nineteenth century, our first
Democratic president, Andrew Jackson, dismantled America’s
successful central bank, and was responsible for the ethnic cleans-
ing of Native Americans known as the “Trail of Tears.” Wil-
liam Jennings Bryan was the face of the Democratic Party at
the beginning of the twentieth century, running unsuccessfully
three times for the presidency. When Republican Teddy Roos-
evelt invited African American leader Booker T. Washington
to dine with him and his family at the White House, Bryan ex-
pressed outrage.27 Bryan also famously opposed evolutionary
theory, taking the stand for the prosecution in the Scopes
Monkey Trial, where he was skewered by Clarence Darrow.
In contrast, the Republican Party was once the party of
thoughtful intellectuals like Lincoln (who boasted of “having
studied and nearly mastered” the ancient classic of geometry,
Euclid’s Elements, and whose Gettysburg Address was modeled
on the Funeral Oration of the Athenian statesman Pericles),28
Teddy Roosevelt (Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude grad-
uate of Harvard), Hoover (who spoke Chinese and translated
the Renaissance work of metallurgy De Re Metallica out of
Latin), 29 Eisenhower (graduate of West Point, war hero, and
president of Columbia University), Nixon (who earned a degree
from a liberal arts college and then went on to law school), and
George H. W. Bush (Phi Beta Kappa at Yale). However, the GOP
has now become the party of B-movie actor Ronald Reagan
(who confessed that he could not remember whether he had vio-
lated his administration’s own policy by trading arms to Iran in
exchange for hostages),30 C-student George W. Bush (“They
misunderestimated me”),31 and D-list celebrity Donald Trump
(“I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words.
I have the best, but there is no better word than stupid.”).32
What happened?
In his book Too Dumb to Fail, Lewis does an excellent job of
diagnosing some of the causes of the rising anti-intellectualism
of the GOP, including the need to please evangelical voters in
southern red states, who often believe, mistakenly, that Chris-
tianity is inconsistent with education and reflectiveness. In ev-
ery presidential election since 1980 (the year Reagan was first
elected), the Republican presidential candidate has won in the
Bible Belt states of Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South
Carolina, and Texas. But pleasing this constituency sometimes
leads to embarrassing results. None of the GOP candidates in
2016 would admit to believing in evolution. When Gov. Scott
Walker was in the running for the Republican presidential
nomination and visited the United Kingdom, he was ridiculed
by a BBC interviewer for evading a question about whether he
believed in evolutionary theory: “Any British politician, right-
or left-wing, would laugh and say, ‘Yes, of course evolution is
true.’ ”33 Ted Cruz also evaded questions about his views on the
topic. However, even though “the son will not bear the punish-
ment for the father’s iniquity” (Ezekiel 18:20, KJV), it is diffi-
cult not to quote Cruz’s father on this topic: “Communism and
evolution go hand and hand. Evolution is one of the strongest
tools of Marxism because if they can convince you that you
came from a monkey, it’s much easier to convince you that God
does not exist.”34 Finally, Rubio, when asked how old he thought
the Earth is, sounded like a student trying to bluff when he had
not done the reading:
I’m not a scientist, man. . . . At the end of the day, I think there
are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created
and I think this is a country where people should have the
opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able
to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says.
Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m
not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great
mysteries. 35
In reality, there is no good reason to assume that the Bible is

inconsistent with evolutionary theory. The notion that parts of
the Bible should be read metaphorically is quite orthodox. No
less an authority than St. Augustine explained that he was ini-
tially reluctant to embrace Christianity because parts of the
Bible seemed implausible. However, St. Ambrose explained to
him that many passages were to be read not literally, but as
metaphors for a higher truth.36 Ambrose argued that this is
part of the point St. Paul was making when he said, “for the
letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:6, KJV).
Augustine would himself provide an extensive metaphorical in-
terpretation of the creation story in Genesis in the appendix to
his spiritual autobiography, the Confessions.37 But the ultimate
authority for metaphorical interpretations of the Bible is Jesus,

who warned his disciples against literalism:
And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had
forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed
and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Saddu-
cees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because
we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said
unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves,
because ye have brought no bread? . . . How is it that ye do not
understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye
should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Saddu-
cees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of
the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of
the Sadducees. (Matthew 16:5–12, KJV)
Jesus was using the metaphor of yeast ruining what should be

unleavened bread to warn the disciples not to be influenced by
the self-righteousness of the Pharisees or the Sadducees (two
sects that opposed Jesus). He chastises his disciples for their
overly literal reading, and he would do the same for those who
assume we must read the book of Genesis as if it were a news-
paper instead of scripture.
In general, there is no intrinsic conflict between being a
Christian (or any kind of theist) and being an intellectual. St.
Paul said, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy
and vain deceit” (Colossians 2:8), but most Christians histori-
cally have taken this to mean only that philosophy—if practiced
in a shallow or specious way—can be destructive of faith, not
that it must be, or must be avoided intrinsically. Francis Bacon
(1561–1626), whose works were a major influence on empiricist
philosophy of science, stated, “It is true that a little philosophy
inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy brin-

geth men’s minds about to religion.”38 The plausibility of Bacon’s
claim is reflected in the impressive list of seminal philosophers
who were theists (including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm,
Maimonides, Avicenna, Averroes, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz,
Spinoza, Berkeley, and Kierkegaard). In the twentieth century,
there have been many profound theologians,39 and a number of
highly influential philosophers who are theists.40 This cuts in
two directions. If those who believe in God are anti-intellec-
tual, it is due to laziness, not religious principle. However, phi-
losophers who are atheists should engage those with religious
beliefs as seriously and respectfully as they engage those who
disagree with them about the mind/body problem or conse-
quentialism vs. deontology.
A mistaken conception of religion as incompatible with sci-
ence or intellectual sophistication is one factor in the rise of
political anti-intellectualism. And this became especially sig-
nificant when the Moral Majority, a conservative Christian
religious group, helped Reagan win the presidency in 1980.
However, Reagan’s politics had an anti-intellectual slant long
before then. Part of Reagan’s successful campaign for governor
of California was predicated upon open disdain for the faculty
and students of the state’s public universities. (Students were
protesting in favor of the hair-brained ideas that the Vietnam
War was a bad idea, and that desegregation and ensuring
the voting rights of African Americans were good ideas. Kids
today!) Soon after being elected, Reagan complained that, by
funding higher education, the state was “subsidizing intellec-
tual curiosity.” 41 It seems not to have occurred to Reagan that,
as the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “If a university is not a
place where intellectual curiosity is to be encouraged and subsi-
dized then it is nothing.” 42
Anti-intellectualism grew even stronger in the GOP dur-

ing the presidency of Bush the Younger. After writing an ar-
ticle critical of the administration, journalist Ron Suskind
was summoned to a meeting with Karl Rove (who was Bush’s
campaign director and later senior advisor and deputy chief of
staff in the White House). According to Suskind, Rove told
him that
guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based commu-

nity,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions
emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nod-
ded and murmured something about enlightenment principles
and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world
really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re study-
ing that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creat-
ing other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how
things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you,
will be left to just study what we do.”43
This stunningly Nietzschean rejection of truth and evidence

was followed, less than a year later, by the US invasion of Iraq,
which was justified by the pursuit of imaginary weapons of
mass destruction for which there was never any compelling
evidence. (I still remember watching with incredulity as Secre-
tary of State Colin Powell argued in favor of the war before the
UN Security Council by waving a vial of what anthrax would
look like—if we had any samples produced in Iraq, which we
did not—and a drawing of what a mobile weapons lab would
look like—if we had any photos of one, which we did not.) The
Republican Party’s turn away from evidence and facts, which
began with Reagan and accelerated under G. W. Bush, has
now reached its climax in the “alternative facts” of the Trump

administration.
In fairness, the GOP has also fielded some impressive candi-
dates for the presidency since Reagan. George H. W. Bush, Bob
Dole, and John McCain were all intelligent, eloquent, prag-
matic war heroes with distinguished careers in public service.
But notice the common thread here: George H. W. Bush lost to
Clinton in 1992; Bob Dole lost to Clinton in 1996; and McCain
lost to Obama in 2008. There were certainly complex reasons for
these losses, including Bush reneging on his pledge to tell Con-
gress “read my lips: no new taxes” and the surge in new young
voters and voters of color who supported Obama. However, I
think thoughtful, sophisticated statesmen like Bush the Elder,
Dole, and McCain had two insurmountable weaknesses: they
don’t ignite the Republican base like candidates who offer sim-
plistic solutions, and they don’t seem different enough from their
Democratic counterparts to win over swing voters.
The serious ethical problem here is that anti-intellectualism
is actually the worst kind of elitism, because it suggests that one
must choose between being a welder and learning about phi-
losophy. Why shouldn’t welders study philosophy too? After
all, Socrates was a bricklayer and Spinoza was a lens grinder. If
they were alive today, they’d work at Home Depot and Lens-
Crafters. (The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was a slave, so he’d
be working at WalMart.)
Consider the following. Seven of the eight people on the
stage when Rubio made his sneer had college degrees.44 Rubio
and John Kasich both majored in political science; Carly Fio-
rina majored in philosophy and medieval history; Ben Carson
has an undergraduate degree in psychology; Jeb Bush majored
in Latin American studies; Ted Cruz studied public policy.
These are all liberal arts majors. Why would anyone think that
other liberal arts majors are more practical or employable or
economically valuable than philosophy? Do we imagine a busi-
nesswoman at the office confiding to a coworker: “That was close.
My son was going to be major in philosophy. Can you imagine?!
Thank God he switched his major to public policy. He’s going
to be raking in the big bucks now!” The only person on the stage
that night with a conventionally “practical” major was Donald
Trump, who studied economics (and subsequently led multiple
companies to bankruptcy and lost almost a billion dollars dur-
ing an economic boom).
When Rubio stood on a stage with a group of people who,
between them, have seven bachelor’s degrees (six of them in the
liberal arts), two JDs, an MBA, and two MDs, yet denigrated
liberal arts education, it sent a clear message to the electorate:
“We are highly educated; you should not be. We will get the educa-
tion and training that will allow us to effectively pursue our
goals; you don’t need information or practice in thinking objec-
tively or critically about the world. We will study something that
opens our minds and helps us to choose our own futures; you
should study something that makes you useful to the economic sys-
tem that we run.” A century ago, John Dewey warned of the dan-
gerous political implications of publicly funding only a narrow
vocational education: “This movement would continue the tradi-
tional liberal or cultural education for the few economically able
to enjoy it, and would give to the masses a narrow technical trade
education for specialized callings, carried on under the control of
others.” 45 This would make the educational system nothing but
“an instrument in accomplishing the feudal dogma of social pre-
destination” and for “transferring the older division of . . . directed
and directive class into a society nominally democratic.”46
There is an even more dangerous aspect of anti-intellectualism:

it is fascistic. Stuart Hampshire was a leading British philosopher
who served in military intelligence during World War II and
participated in the debriefing of Nazi officers. Hampshire came
to recognize that
below any level of explicit articulation, hatred of the idea of the

Jews was tied to hatred of the power of intellect, as opposed to
military power, hatred of law courts, of negotiations, of clever-
ness in argument, of learning and of the domination of learn-
ing: and in this way anti-Semitism is tied to hatred of justice
itself, which must set a limit to the exercise of power and to
domination. . . .47
The Nazi fury to destroy had a definite target: the target en-
compassed reasonableness and legality and the procedures of
public discussion, justice for minorities, the protection of the
weak, and the protection of human diversity.48
It is not coincidental that anti-Semitic themes are characteristic

of every kind of American and European nativist and national-
ist movement.
Consequently, in a democracy, philosophy courses are not
an “intellectual luxury” (as Reagan suggested).49 They should
not be a privilege of the wealthy. Philosophy belongs to who-
ever has the intelligence and the willingness to appreciate
it, whether it be the child of the welder or the child of the
CEO. Studying philosophy makes people more informed and
more thoughtful citizens, more comfortable with the fact that
others disagree with them, less vulnerable to manipulation and
deception, and more willing to resort to discussion rather than
violence.
It should come as no surprise, then, that making a broad

education widely available to the populace is part of what is
most distinctive about the United States. As Martha Nussbaum
explains:
Unlike virtually every nation in the world, we have a liberal arts

model of university education. Instead of entering college/uni-
versity to study a single subject, students are required to take a
wide range of courses in their first two years, prominently in-
cluding courses in the humanities. . . . Nor is the emphasis on
the liberal arts a vestige of elitism or class distinction. From
early on, leading U.S. educators connected the liberal arts to the
preparation of informed, independent, and sympathetic demo-
cratic citizens.50
Thomas Jefferson illustrates that Nussbaum’s view of the

value of a liberal arts education is not some trendy, liberal
conceit. Jefferson argued that the best way to combat tyr-
anny is
to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at

large; . . . whence it becomes expedient for promoting the pub-
lick happiness that those person, whom nature hath endowed
with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education
worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the
rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should
be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other
accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the
greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own
expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed
and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is
better that such should be sought for and educated at the common
expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided
to the weak or wicked.51
Consequently, despite their claim to revere the wisdom of

America’s Founding Fathers, the disdain of many contempo-
rary conservatives for publicly funded liberal arts education is
in opposition to a significant part of what has made America
“exceptional” and a “shining city upon a hill,” among other
nations.
PHILOSOPHY’S VALUE TO
CIVILIZATION
As I noted in chapter 1, some contemporary scientists take a

dim view of philosophy. Noted edu-tainer Neil deGrasse Tyson
warned that majoring in philosophy “can really mess you up.”
This is ironic, because Tyson has a PhD, which stands for doc-
tor of philosophy, reflecting the fact that all the sciences grew
out of philosophy. The pre-Socratic philosophers were the first
to experiment and speculate about the physical world and pro-
vide naturalistic explanations for phenomena, setting the stage
for all later science. Anaxagoras (fifth century bce) correctly
surmised that the Sun was not a god but actually a hot physical
object much larger than it appeared, that the Moon only shined
because of light reflected from the Sun, and that eclipses were
caused when objects came between the Earth and the Sun.
Leucippus (fifth century bce) and Democritus (460–370 bce)
developed the first version of the atomic theory, later confirmed
by chemist John Dalton (1766–1844 ce). Galileo (1564–1642)
famously said that “philosophy,” which for him included phys-

ics and astronomy,
is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands con-

tinually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood
unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the
letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of
mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other
geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to un-
derstand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in
a dark labyrinth.52
In saying this, Galileo was consciously echoing Plato (428?–348?

bce), who had argued that the universe can only be compre-
hended in mathematical terms.53
Plato’s student Aristotle (384–22 bce) perhaps did more than
anyone else to lay the foundations of Western science. He was a
keen observer of the natural world, who described the develop-
ment of chicken embryos that he observed by opening a series
of eggs on successive days in between laying and hatching.54
Carl Linnaeus (1707–78) is rightfully praised for elaborating the
contemporary biological categorization of living things accord-
ing to kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and spe-
cies. However, his system is based on Aristotle’s method of
definition by genus and differentia.55
It is a party game among shallow intellectuals to mock Aris-
totle for his hypotheses that turned out to be mistaken, like his
claim that the Sun goes around the Earth. However, it does not
make someone a bad scientist that she turned out to be mis-
taken about something. If it did, Galileo would be a bad scien-
tist because he believed that comets were optical illusions, 56
Lavoisier (the founder of modern chemistry) would be a bad

scientist because he denied that meteorites came from space, 57
and Einstein would be a bad scientist because he never accepted
quantum mechanics.58 A good scientist is someone who theo-
rizes based upon the best empirical evidence and most plausible
assumptions available to him or her. Aristotle’s geocentric hy-
pothesis made sense of the evidence available: the Sun does
appear to move, and the Earth does not feel as if it is moving.
Even more importantly, a good scientist lays the groundwork for
later scientific advances by offering a theory that can be refined,
tested, and even refuted. As Nietzsche noted, “It is certainly
not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely
thereby that it attracts subtler minds.”59
Those ignorant of history accuse Aristotle and his later
followers of an inflexible dogmatism that held back the devel-
opment of science. The reality is much more complex. As histo-
rian of science Thomas Kuhn explained: “Men who agreed with
Aristotle’s conclusions investigated his proofs only because
they were proofs executed by the master. Nevertheless their in-
vestigations often helped to ensure the master’s ultimate over-
throw.”60 The phenomenon that Aristotelian physics had the
most trouble accounting for was the motion of projectiles, like
an arrow (or, later, a cannonball). Aristotle offered some ten-
tative explanations for projectile motion, but acknowledged
that none of them was fully satisfactory. In response to these
problems, Aristotle’s medieval followers developed “impetus
theory,” which laid the foundation for Galileo’s concept of in-
ertia. In addition, as Jaroslav Pelikan observed, “By constructing
the telescope and using it to observe empirically, Galileo was a
more faithful Aristotelian than were those who quoted Aristo-
tle’s Physics against his observations.”61 For synthesizing many
earlier theories and starting science on a research program that
would eventually transcend his own insights, Aristotle is one of

the greatest scientists ever.
Even computers, the most revolutionary scientific achievement
of our era, are a gift of the philosophers. (You’re welcome!) Binary
arithmetic, which is the basis of all computers, was invented by
G. W. Leibniz (whose Sinophilia we discussed in chapter 1).
Leibniz had several acrimonious debates with Newton. One
thing they quarreled over was who discovered calculus. The an-
swer is that Newton discovered it first in time, but Leibniz an-
nounced his discovery first, and we use Leibniz’s symbolism for
the calculus nowadays. They also argued over whether location
in space is relative or absolute. Newton argued for the latter, but
Einstein would later prove Leibniz right. It’s tempting for the
humanist to crow that the philosopher won that argument.
However, Newton described himself as a “natural philosopher,”
and he would have been genuinely offended at the suggestion
that he was not really a philosopher. Of course, most scientists
nowadays are not philosophers. As Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
explained, this is because, once we know the proper methodol-
ogy for solving problems on a certain subject, “this subject
ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science.”
Only the questions “to which, at present, no definite answer
can be given remain to form the residue which is called philos-
ophy.”62 So could science completely replace philosophy? Some
people think so. Stephen Hawking recently pronounced that
“philosophy is dead,” and that “scientists have become the bear-
ers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”63
Wrong.
There are at least three reasons why it is impossible that all of
philosophy will be replaced by natural science, or that philoso-
phy will become obsolete. First, the history of science alter-
nates between long periods of “normal science” and brief periods
of “revolutionary science.”64 During periods of normal science,

scientists largely agree about the way the world works and the
proper methodology for studying it. Normal science is an
impressive activity, and those who do it, like Tyson and Hawk-
ing, deserve our utmost respect and admiration. However, rev-
olutionary science is what the true geniuses of science do: people
like Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, John Dalton, Darwin, Erwin
Schrödinger, and Einstein. During scientific revolutions, scien-
tists realize that their previous worldview and methodology do
not do justice to some aspect of reality. Consequently, they have
to radically restructure their concepts. For example, Einstein had
to fundamentally rethink what space, time, and gravity were in
order to formulate the Special and General Theories of Rela-
tivity. During periods of scientific revolution, scientists become
philosophers, and draw on the work of other philosophers to
help inform their views (for example, Galileo was influenced by
Plato, Dalton drew on Democritus, and Einstein’s approach to
science was shaped by Pierre Duhem). Consequently, when an-
other scientist asked him about the importance of physicists
learning about philosophy, Einstein replied:
I fully agree with you about the significance and educational

value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of sci-
ence. So many people today—and even professional scientists—
seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but
has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philo-
sophical background gives that kind of independence from
prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suf-
fering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—
in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan
or specialist and a real seeker after truth.65
The second reason that natural science will never replace

philosophy is that sciences like physics are successful precisely
because they limit their inquiry to particular aspects of reality
using particular methods. If someone argues that there is noth-
ing to reality besides what is studied by physics, we can legiti-
mately ask her why she thinks this. However, the answer to the
question of whether there is anything beyond physics cannot be
provided from within physics. Physics uses a particular meth-
odology, M, to study reality insofar as it is physical, P. But the
question we are asking is whether there is a reality that is not-P.
Since M is the methodology we use to study reality only insofar
as it is P, we cannot use that same methodology to explore
whether there is anything that is not-P. More generally, you
cannot show from within the limits of something that there is
nothing outside that limit. You have to straddle a limit, concep-
tually speaking, in order to define it. So if you try to show that
there is nothing beyond the factual and methodological limits
of physics, you have already transcended the limits of physics.
The final reason that philosophy will never be obsolete is
that it includes ethics, political philosophy, and philosophical
theology. These topics are intrinsically controversial but also in-
escapable. As I am fond of telling my students, whatever opinions
you have in these areas have their origins, at least in part, in
philosophical thought. Do you think that the purpose of life is to
make the most out of your intelligence and contribute to your
community? You’re an Aristotelian. Do you think that there is
no purpose to life except for the one each of us chooses for her-
self? You’re an existentialist. Do you think that morality has to
be explained psychologically, by our emotions and other moti-
vations? You’re a Humean. Do you think that what is right is
to do whatever produces the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of people? You’re a utilitarian. Do you think that there

are some actions that are intrinsically wrong and must never be
done, even if they would result in desirable consequences?
You’re a Kantian. Do you think that government is designed to
protect our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property? You’re
a Lockean. Do you think that government must protect our free-
doms, but wealth inequality is justifiable only insofar as it bene-
fits those most in need? You’re a Rawlsian. Do you think that
much of religious belief can be justified by philosophy? Please
say hello to my friend Thomas Aquinas. Do you think we can
legitimately have religious belief even though most of it must be
accepted on faith? Go hang out with my buddies Pascal and
Kierkegaard. Do you believe that religion is superstition that
has had a largely negative influence on the world? Read Ber-
trand Russell or J. L. Mackie. Or do you dismiss philosophy as
nothing but rationalizations for the will to power or structures
of domination? Enjoy Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Foucault.
(Oops! They’re philosophers too!) The question is not whether
philosophy is important to you. It already is. The only question
is whether you choose to become self-aware and critically re-
flective about the philosophical beliefs that you hold.
Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum me-
chanics and a noted cat lover/hater, was expressing similar views
about the limitations of science when he said that
the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It

gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a
magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all
and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to
us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet,
physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful
and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pre-
tends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are

very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.66
It is tempting to point out that the two scientists I have quoted

who praise philosophy, Einstein and Schrödinger, each won the
Nobel Prize in physics, while neither of the two scientists I
quoted who disparage philosophy has won one. However, that
would be a snarky observation to make, so I won’t do it.67
We have seen that philosophy is a valuable part of vocational
training for many careers. Beyond that, philosophy is important
to the maintenance of democracy itself: those who have been
trained to argue rationally and constructively have learned to value
discussion over violence, and pluralism over intolerance. Finally,
philosophy is responsible for so much that we view as valuable in
Western civilization, from natural science to the various formu-
lations we use to talk about ethics, politics, and spirituality. For
all these reasons, the anti-intellectualism that delights in degrad-
ing philosophy is both unwarranted and unfortunate. The value of
philosophy was summed up nicely by John Cleese (who obtained
a law degree from Cambridge University before becoming one of
the founders of the legendary comedy troupe Monty Python):
Philosophy seems so harmless, and yet, among dictatorships, phi-

losophers have always been among the first people to be silenced.
Why have dictators bothered to silence philosophers? Maybe
because ideas really matter: they can transform human lives.68
But what distinguishes philosophy from other fields in the hu-

manities and social sciences that discuss similar topics? And to
what extent are philosophers to blame for their discipline’s bad
reputation in contemporary society? We turn to these questions
in the final chapter.
5
THE WAY OF CONFUCIUS
AND SOCRATES
For our discussion is not about some ordinary matter, but the
way one should live.
—Socrates
Set your heart upon the Way.

—Confucius
PHILOSOPHY’S SPECIAL ROLE

AMONG THE HUMANITIES
T
o paraphrase Frost, I have a lover’s quarrel with aca-
demic philosophy. Although the narrow-mindedness
of many contemporary philosophers infuriates me, I
love philosophy itself: I love teaching it, and I love discussing it
with students and colleagues. I also recognize that academic
philosophy has a very distinctive role to play in higher educa-
tion, especially today. I’ve mentioned in earlier chapters that
philosophy teaches reading, writing, and reasoning, but in a
way that is distinctive from other disciplines. Let me explain
more clearly what I mean.
The Way of Confucius and Socr ates Z 139
In many institutions, philosophy is one of the few humani-

ties disciplines, and sometimes the only humanities discipline,
that still reads classic texts with what is known as a “hermeneutic
of faith.” Those who use a hermeneutic of faith read texts in the
hope of discovering truth, goodness, and beauty. They are open
to the possibility that other people, including people in very dif-
ferent times and cultures, might know more about these things
than we do, or at least they might have views that can enrich our
own in some way. Of course, if you take seriously the possibility
that others are right, you also have to take seriously the possi-
bility that they are wrong. (It’s a hermeneutic of faith, not a
hermeneutic of blind faith.) And if you are torn between which
of two options is right, or at least better than the other, you have
to discuss what reasons you have for believing in one or the
other. It might seem that this is the obvious or only way to read
philosophical, literary, and religious texts, but it is not. There
are two major alternative approaches to a hermeneutic of faith:
hermeneutics of suspicion and relativism.
Many contemporary humanists and social scientists empha-
size a hermeneutic of suspicion. Those using a hermeneutic of
suspicion look for motives for the composition of a text that are
unrelated to its truth or plausibility. Instead, they ask how the
text serves ulterior motives like economic interests and relations
of dominance and oppression, as well as sexist, racist, or impe-
rialist conceptions of the world. Many of those who use a her-
meneutic of suspicion reject as naïve a hermeneutic of faith.
I once gave a presentation to a multidisciplinary program in
which I outlined different philosophical perspectives one can
take on cross-cultural ethical disagreements. The first comment
after my talk was from an anthropologist who began, “The fact
is, Bryan, . . . ” and proceeded to explain to me that everything
I said was absolutely irrelevant because the only thing that is
140 Y The Way of Confucius and Socr ates
really important is how cultural relations are dictated by eco-

nomic interests. I replied that, while I agree that the issues she
brought up are very important, this does not mean we shouldn’t
also be interested in what we ought or ought not to do, or at least
in understanding more clearly what our options are. She merely
stared at me with the look of condescension and disgust one
might use on an adolescent who should know better than to be
picking his nose at the dinner table.
Those who completely reject a hermeneutic of faith do not
only have a narrow perspective; their position is simply incoher-
ent. If you give an interpretation of a text using a hermeneutic
of suspicion, you are asking your readers to take what you are
saying about that text as a candidate for truth. In other words,
the very act of interpretation assumes the validity of a hermeneu-
tic of faith. I am not saying that it is wrong to use a hermeneutic
of suspicion. The varieties of hermeneutics of suspicion are in-
dispensable parts of our contemporary scholarly toolkit. You’ll
notice that I have used a hermeneutic of suspicion at a number
of points in this book. My objection is only to the exclusive
use of hermeneutics of suspicion. I am concerned that herme-
neutics of suspicion have become hegemonic in the humanities
and social sciences. Philosophy departments are often the last
refuge of the hermeneutics of faith.
The other alternative to a hermeneutics of faith is a sort of
relativism, which suggests that if you believe something then
it is “true for you.” While hermeneutics of suspicion deserve
to be taken seriously, relativism does not. There are two forms
of relativism, cognitive and ethical.1 According to cognitive rel-
ativism, the truth or falsity of all claims depends upon the
perspective from which they are evaluated. (For the cognitive
relativist, “true” and “false” are like “front” and “back,” in that
they implicitly make reference to a point of view.) As Plato dem-
onstrated in ancient Greece and the Mohists demonstrated in

ancient China, we can see why this doctrine is incoherent by
trying to apply it to itself.2 Is cognitive relativism itself objec-
tively true or only relatively true? If you say that relativism is
objectively true, then not all claims are relative, so cognitive
relativism is false. (And if cognitive relativism is objectively
true, why can’t other claims be objectively true too?) If you say
that relativism is only relatively true, then from the perspective
of those of us who deny it, relativism is false, and we may safely
ignore it. (In fact, those of us who deny cognitive relativism be-
lieve that it is objectively false, so the cognitive relativist must
agree that his view is objectively false.)
Ethical relativism asserts that the truth or falsity of evalua-
tive claims (and only evaluative claims) depends upon the per-
spective from which they are evaluated. Ethical relativism is
not intrinsically incoherent. (Since ethical relativism itself is not
an evaluative claim—it is a purely semantic claim about evaluative
claims—it does not apply to itself, so it is not self-undermining
the way cognitive relativism is.) However, ethical relativism is a
banal dead end in philosophy. Suppose you are unsure about
whether capital punishment can be justified for some crimes.
One kind of ethical relativism tells you that it depends on what
you individually think. Does that help? Imagine you are torn
about whether drones should be used to kill suspected terror-
ists. It depends upon what your culture thinks, says another
kind of ethical relativism. Since Americans disagree about
whether drones should be used to kill suspected terrorists, you
now have to decide which “subculture” you belong to. Are you
any closer to a decision now? Students often think that there is
something more tolerant about relativism. This is simply a con-
ceptual confusion. According to relativism, whether you should
be tolerant of others depends upon the point of view you adopt.
If you adopt the point of view of xenophobic nationalists, then

you ought to be intolerant. If it seems that I am grumpy about
relativism, it’s because I am. In my more than thirty years of
experience as a teacher, I have found that every single time rela-
tivism comes up it is invoked by those who wish to insulate their
opinions from criticism, not those who wish to bring new voices
into the conversation or discuss issues in a more open-minded
way. In short, when the conversation gets challenging, the chal-
lenged turn relativist.
SO WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?
It is important that philosophy is one of the last bastions of the

hermeneutic of faith, and a discipline that is willing to chal-
lenge relativism. But of course this is not what is definitive of
philosophy. Other disciplines in the humanities can and occa-
sionally do use a hermeneutic of faith. If we look at the broad
sweep of activities that have been called “philosophy” (and its
cognate terms) in Western history, there is no common meth-
odology they employ, nor any set of topics they all discuss. In
other words, there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for
defining what has been called “philosophy” across all of history,
even if we limit the discussion to the West.3 However, I am
foolhardy enough to propose a definition of what philosophy is
for us now. We are doing philosophy when we engage in dia-
logue about problems that are important to our culture but we
don’t agree about the method for solving them.4 In game the-
ory, a game is said to be “solved” once there is an algorithm that
determines the best move in each situation. Using the notion
of a “solved game” as an analogy, we could say succinctly that
“philosophy is dialogue about important unsolved problems.”
Once we do agree about the method for solving a problem, the

problem gets kicked out of philosophy and into its own disci-
pline. Consequently (as we noted in chapter 4), astronomy,
biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics began as parts of
philosophy, but are now separate fields because in each case
there is (generally) agreement about what counts as reliable evi-
dence, good arguments, and well-established conclusions. View-
ing it in this way, we can see why philosophy is like a glacier: it
moves so slowly that it appears to be going nowhere, but in the
long run it radically transforms the world you live in.
The fact that philosophy deals with problems that we are un-
sure how to solve is part of what makes it tempting to “build
walls” around it.5 We may be seduced into simplifying seemingly
intractable philosophical problems by narrowing the number of
solutions we consider and the premises we entertain. However,
a moment’s reflection shows that this sort of strategy is coun-
terproductive. You cannot have confidence in the accuracy of
your conclusions, or even the usefulness of your method, if you
rule out in advance alternative perspectives on the problems un-
der discussion. As Alasdair MacIntyre has stressed, “any claim
to truth involves a claim that no consideration advanced from
any point of view can overthrow or subvert that claim. Such a
claim, however, can only be supported on the basis of rational
encounters between rival and incommensurable points of view.”6
Consequently, it is a fundamental failure of rationality to rule
out multicultural critiques a priori.
I want to stress again that “dialogue about methodologically
unsolved but important questions” is what philosophy is for us
now (in extension if not in intension). Philosophers of earlier
eras or different cultures typically categorize what they are do-
ing differently.7 This is something we need to keep continually
in mind so that we have a genuinely sympathetic and accurate
14 4 Y The Way of Confucius and Socr ates
understanding of their projects as a whole. However, we can

(without injustice) describe what they are doing as philosophy,
in our sense, if we recognize what they are discussing as poten-
tial answers to similar questions to the ones we philosophers
discuss today. And, as we have seen repeatedly in this book, we
frequently do find thinkers in other cultures addressing the im-
portant unsolved problems in ethics, metaphysics, political phi-
losophy, logic, and the philosophy of language that we still
wrestle with. Consequently, it is both legitimate and productive
to treat them as philosophers in our sense, and bring them into
the dialogue.
What I mean by “dialogue” can take various forms. Philoso-
phers sometimes provide arguments in favor of philosophical
claims. Nonphilosophers often have trouble grasping what phi-
losophers mean by an “argument.” An argument is not simply a
disagreement or a quarrel. In an argument, you try to convince
someone of a particular claim (your conclusion) by drawing her
attention to other claims (your premises) that you think she will
agree with, and that give a good reason to accept your conclusion.
What counts as a “good reason”? And are there some premises
that everyone ought to agree about? Well, if we all agreed about
the premises and what counts as a good reason, we wouldn’t be
doing philosophy anymore; we’d be doing astronomy, or biol-
ogy, or mathematics, or some other methodologically “solved”
discipline.
Providing arguments is undoubtedly an important part of
philosophical “dialogue.” However, I think philosophers in the
English-speaking world sometimes make one of two mistakes
about philosophical argumentation. First, there are many ways
to express and construct an argument. The structure of some
arguments is very clear. For example, Wang Chong (first cen-
tury ce) presents the following argument against survival after

death:
Humans are animals. Even if exalted as a king or lord, one’s na-

ture is no different from an animal. There are no animals that do
not die, so how could humans be immortal?8
Contrast Wang Chong’s syllogistic argument with the more

discursive and poetic style that Plato uses when he constructs
the allegory of the cave in book 7 of The Republic. In this dia-
logue, Socrates invites his interlocutor Glaucon to
compare the effect of education and of the lack of it on our na-

ture to an experience like this: Imagine human beings living in
an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way
up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself.
They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place,
with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of
them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their
heads around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and
behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is
a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along
this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of
puppeteers above which they show their puppets.
I’m imagining it.
Then also imagine that there are people along the wall, carry-
ing all kinds of artifacts that project above it—statues of people
and other animals, made out of stone, wood, and every material.
And, as you’d expect, some of the carriers are talking, and some
are silent.
It’s a strange image you’re describing and strange prisoners.
They’re like us. Do you suppose, first of all, that these prison-
ers see anything of themselves and one another besides the
shadows that the fire casts on the wall in front of them?
How could they, if they have to keep their heads motionless
throughout life. . . .
Then the prisoners would in every way believe that the truth
is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts.
They must surely believe that.
Consider, then, what being released from their bonds and
cured of their ignorance would naturally be like. When one of
them was freed and suddenly compelled to stand up, turn his
head, walk, and look up toward the light, he’d be pained and
dazzled and unable to see the things whose shadows he’d seen
before. . . . And if someone dragged him away from there by
force, up the rough, steep path, and didn’t let him go until he
had dragged him into the sunlight, wouldn’t he be pained, and
irritated at being treated that way? And when he came into the
light, with the sun filling his eyes, wouldn’t he be unable to see a
single one of the things now said to be true?9
Socrates describes how the person would gradually adjust his

eyes to the sunlight and come to recognize that the things he
had taken to be real in the cave were just shadows of things that
were themselves merely copies of the real things that existed
outside the cave.
What about when he reminds himself of his first dwelling place,

his fellow prisoners, and what passed for wisdom there? Don’t
you think that he’d count himself happy for the change and pity
the others?
Certainly.
This whole image, Glaucon, must be fitted together with

what we said before. The visible realm should be likened to the
prison dwelling, and the light of the fire inside it to the power of
the sun. And if you interpret the upward journey and the study
of things above as the upward journey of the soul to the intelli-
gible realm, you’ll grasp what I hope to convey.10
Plato uses this elaborate allegory to explain how a proper edu-

cation leads students to question their common-sense beliefs
(represented by the shadows in the cave) and gradually rise to
an understanding of reality through reason and mathematics.
Aristotle argues in a similarly poetic mode that pleasure cannot
be the goal of life, because pleasure is not itself a complete activ-
ity, but rather “completes the activity . . . like the bloom on [the
cheek of] youths.”11 As we can see from these examples, West-
ern philosophy largely consists of quaint myths and poetry, in
contrast with the precise argumentation that is characteristic of
Chinese philosophers.
My mainstream philosophical colleagues are champing at
the bit to point out that I have taken these selections from Plato
and Aristotle out of context. The allegory of the cave is part of
a complex and subtle epistemological and ethical project. Aris-
totle’s poetic comment about pleasure comes at the end of a
tightly argued discussion, and must be interpreted in the light
of his nuanced view of properties. You’re quite right. But per-
haps now you can understand my frustration with those who
treat Chinese philosophy as nothing but context-less kĎans or
fortune-cookie platitudes. Reading philosophy requires an ef-
fort to think about the text holistically, constructively, and char-
itably. We are used to doing this with Western texts that we
identify as philosophical. The fact that Aristotle, or Descartes,
or Kant, or Russell is often hard to understand, or is seemingly

contradictory, or occasionally gives what appear to be unper-
suasive arguments only inspires us to read more carefully, inter-
pret creatively, and reconstruct or even supply arguments. But
many philosophers, when they come to non-European philoso-
phy, simply roll their eyes and throw up their hands in frustra-
tion at the first knotty passage or unfamiliar technical term, like
a petulant freshman confronting Plato for the first time. I can-
not prevent anyone from being narrow-minded or intellectually
lazy. But I would much prefer you did not excuse your intellec-
tual vices by ignoring the fact that reading philosophy—any
philosophy from any tradition—is always hard work.
I have noted that one common mistake in Anglophone phi-
losophy is to pretend that all philosophical arguments (at least
in the Western tradition) are in tight syllogisms or are transpar-
ent at first glance, when in reality almost none are. A second
common mistake is the tendency to overemphasize argumen-
tation, as if that were the only thing that philosophers do in
dialogue. Another important aspect of philosophical dialogue
is the classification and clarification of alternatives. Gilbert Ryle
was doing this when he distinguished between “knowing how”
and “knowing that.”12 The Confucian Mengzi (fourth century
bce) was doing this when he gave three different paradigms of
what courage is (aggressive behavior, fearlessness, and action in
accordance with a strong sense of righteousness).13
In addition to presenting arguments and clarifying alterna-
tives, a third goal of philosophical dialogue is providing sub-
stantially new perspectives or answers to questions. Even if one
did nothing else, this is a significant contribution to philosoph-
ical discussion. This can involve a narrow suggestion on a spe-
cific topic. Karl Popper is largely remembered now for his claim
that science is distinguished from nonscience because we know

what kinds of tests would falsify a scientific claim. Although this
is merely a suggestion for an answer to the question of “What is
science?” (and a demonstrably mistaken one at that), it is a con-
tribution to philosophical dialogue. Similarly, when Confucius’s
disciple Youzi suggests that the virtue of benevolence develops
out of love for family members, this is in itself a valuable contri-
bution to philosophical discussion in ethics.14
Among the less commonly taught philosophies (LCTP), the
ones that I know the most about are the Three Teachings of the
Chinese tradition: Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism; I also
have some familiarity with the Advaita Vedanta school of the
Indian tradition. It is absolutely indisputable to anyone who
actually bothers to learn about these traditions that they dis-
cuss the sort of “important unsolved topics” that we recognize as
philosophical, and engage in all three of the methodologies
characteristic of philosophical dialogue. In regard to other non-
European traditions, I do not wish to make the same mistake I
have criticized others for making and pontificate about them in
ignorance. However, based on what little I know about African
philosophies and the philosophies of the Indigenous peoples of
the Americas, they at the very least provide substantial new
perspectives on how to understand the world, and for this rea-
son have earned their place in the philosophical dialogue.15 The
other LCTP (including African American, Christian, femi-
nist, Islamic, Jewish, Latin American, and LGBTQ philoso-
phy) are historically related to the Greco-Roman tradition, so
they are transparently philosophical.
Philosophers in the Western hermeneutic tradition—in-
cluding Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, and Rorty—
recognize the centrality of dialogue not just to philosophy but
to all of human existence. However, many of them have failed to

appreciate another of the key ethical requirements of dialogue:
to be open to new voices, alternative solutions, fresh vocabular-
ies, and different formulations of the same or similar problems
from outside the Anglo-European tradition. In some cases, as
with Gadamer, this can perhaps be forgiven as part of the lim-
ited cultural “horizon” in which the philosopher came to matu-
rity. In other cases, as with Heidegger, hermeneutics became
mistakenly fused with a dangerously nativist rejection of cos-
mopolitanism. Whatever the reason or rationalization, anyone
who shuts down possible avenues of dialogue in advance is fail-
ing to be a philosopher. And when the dialogue is blocked by the
exercise of institutional power, it becomes what Jean-François
Lyotard rightly called “terror”:
By terror I mean the efficiency gained by eliminating, or

threatening to eliminate, a player from the language game one
shares with him. He is silenced or consents, not because he
has been refuted, but because his ability to participate has
been threatened (there are many ways to prevent someone
from playing). The decision makers’ arrogance, which in prin-
ciple has no equivalent in the sciences, consists in the exercise
of terror. It says: “Adapt your aspirations to our ends—or
else.”16
The most horrifying forms of terror are physical: murder, im-

prisonment, and assault. But there are also insidious forms of
terror that are dangerous precisely because they are more subtle.
Recall (from chapter 1) what doctoral student Eugene Park was
told by one of his professors when he questioned why philoso-
phy couldn’t include works by noncanonical thinkers: “This is
the intellectual tradition we work in. Take it or leave it.”
RECOVERING THE WAY OF CONFUCIUS

AND SOCR ATES
One aspect of my characterization of philosophy may seem par-

ticularly problematic. I have argued that philosophy is dialogue
over important unsolved problems. Some will object that this is
far too broad, as different things will seem important to differ-
ent people. But there is one question that is most important in
every form of philosophy: What way should one live? Bernard
Williams referred to this as “Socrates’ question,” and identified
it as central to ethical philosophy.17 I would expand upon this
and say that it is the ultimate motivating question behind phi-
losophy in every tradition. Furthermore, it is the question that
gives sense and importance to even the most abstract topics in
metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics. So if I may be for-
given one further tweaking of my definition: philosophy is dia-
logue about problems that we agree are important, but don’t agree
about the method for solving, where “importance” ultimately
gets its sense from the question of the way one should live.
I worry that contemporary academic philosophers often lose
sight of this issue of importance, and are thus partly to blame
for the perception that philosophy is nothing but intellectual
masturbation. Consider some of the topics that many philoso-
phers consider central to their discipline and often use in teach-
ing introductory philosophy courses. If you were a disembodied
brain in a vat being electronically stimulated to believe that you
have a body, could you know this fact?18 Suppose there were
teleporters like in science fiction, but the way they worked was
by disintegrating you completely, and then building an exact
atom-by-atom duplicate of you somewhere else: Would this
new person be you or not?19 What is the right thing to do if you
are confronted with a runaway train that will kill five people if
you do nothing, but will only kill one person if you pull a lever
redirecting the train?20 Should we explain the fact that some
sentences must be true (like “1 + 1 = 2”) while others only hap-
pen to be true (like “Obama won in 2012”) by postulating that
there are an infinite number of alternative possible universes,
each of them just as real as the one we inhabit, and that some
sentences are true in all of them, while other sentences are only
true in some of them?21 What evidence do we have that emeralds
are green rather than grue, where “grue” refers to anything we
observed up until today that is green, or to anything we did not
observe before today and is blue.22 The examples I have drawn
so far are from analytic philosophy, the style that is dominant
in the English-speaking world. However, Continental philosophy
is not immune to degrading into intellectual onanism. I think
that Martha Nussbaum’s comment about Jacques Derrida could
be applied to many other recent Continental thinkers:
Once one has worked through and been suitably (I think) im-
pressed by Derrida’s perceptive and witty analysis of Nietzsche’s
style, one feels, at the end of all the urbanity, an empty longing
amounting to a hunger, a longing for the sense of difficulty and
risk and practical urgency that are inseparable from Zarathus-
tra’s dance. . . . Nietzsche’s work is profoundly critical of existing
ethical theory, clearly; but it is, inter alia, a response to the origi-
nal Socratic question, “How should one live?” Derrida does not
touch on that question. . . . After reading Derrida, and not Der-
rida alone, I feel a certain hunger for blood; for, that is, writing
about literature that talks of human lives and choices as if they
matter to us at all.23
Some students find purely intellectual puzzles fun, and there

will always be a trickle of students who want to devote their
lives to wrestling with them. This trickle will be enough to

keep elite philosophy departments staffed with people who,
generation after generation, will keep the same puzzles alive.
But it is not unreasonable for thoughtful students to wonder
whether the intellectual games played in philosophy class-
rooms are a better use of their minds than crossword puzzles or
Sudoku.
I am not arguing that philosophers should avoid thorny
technical questions. Sometimes we are led to quite subtle issues
by the dogged effort to construct a comprehensive answer to the
challenge “What way should one live?” (I have myself written
an entire article on grammatical and interpretive problems in-
volving two sentences in the Analects of Confucius.)24 If given
the right context, even the abstract problems I mentioned earlier
can assume a deep human significance. The teleporter thought-
experiment was originally part of a challenge to our ordinary
individualistic conception of ethics. The runaway train example
was introduced to illustrate the difference between doing some-
thing that harms another person and allowing to happen some-
thing that harms another person. But my experience is that many
philosophers end up fixating upon these examples as if they
were self-contained intellectual games. Let us never lose sight
of why the technical issues that we study matter, and let us
always make sure that our students see why they matter.
Consider Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Rus-
sell was the coauthor of Principia Mathematica, a three-volume
book that uses logic and set theory to prove that 1 + 1 = 2. (In
case you weren’t sure.) Principia Mathematica made significant
contributions to formal thought, but Russell was not simply
playing a pointless intellectual game when he worked on it. He
had a powerful and moving view of the purpose of human life
and how it is connected to philosophy:
The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire

for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is
justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to
all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus
contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but
also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citi-
zens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the
rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true freedom,
and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.25
After writing these lines, Russell would go on to become an

advocate for women’s suffrage, be imprisoned for his opposition
to the pointless bloodshed of World War I, get fired from a job
at the City College of New York for advocating sexual libera-
tion, speak out against Stalin when many intellectuals looked
the other way from his crimes, and become a leading advocate
of nuclear disarmament. Russell’s relentless search for objec-
tive truth no doubt played a role in preparing his mind for his
activism.
However, readers of Russell’s own Autobiography know that
another factor shaping his ethics was a specific experience he
had in 1901. Russell witnessed a close friend undergoing in-
tense, unrelievable suffering due to an illness:
She seemed cut off from everyone and everything by walls of

agony, and the sense of the solitude of each human soul sud-
denly overwhelmed me. . . . Suddenly the ground seemed to give
way beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. . . .
At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely dif-
ferent person. For a time, a sort of mystic illumination possessed
me. . . . Having been an Imperialist, I became during those five
minutes a pro-Boer and Pacifist.
Russell turns to the language of Asian philosophy to describe

his transformation: “Having for years cared only for exactness
and analysis, I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings
about beauty, with an intense interest in children, and with a
desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some
philosophy which would make human life endurable.”26 It
seems unlikely that Russell would have become such a forceful
advocate for others had it not been for the compassion that this
Zen-like experience taught him.27 How many students who
have read Russell’s seminal essay “On Denoting” (about the se-
mantics of the word “the”) know the passion that lies behind
his work?
Russell was deeply influenced by Plato. Plato explained that
he was motivated to pursue philosophy because he was horri-
fied by the corruption and vice that he saw in the government
of Athens, regardless of whether those in power happened to
represent the aristocratic or democratic faction: “So I was com-
pelled, praising true philosophy, to declare that she alone en-
ables men to discern what is justice in the state and in the lives
of the individuals. The generations of mankind, therefore,
would have no cessation from evils until either the class of those
who are true and genuine philosophers came to political power
or else the men in political power, by some divine dispensation,
became true philosophers.”28 John Rawls, the most important
mainstream Western political philosopher of the twentieth
century, was a decorated soldier in World War II. As a member
of the Occupation Force in Japan, he saw firsthand the devasta-
tion rendered by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and he said
this affected him deeply.29 The bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were supposedly justified by utilitarian consider-
ations: they saved more lives, on balance, than would have been
lost by invading the Japanese home islands. However, Rawls’s
classic A Theory of Justice argued that, contrary to utilitarianism,

each individual possesses intrinsic rights that cannot be sacrificed
for the sake of the well-being of others. On this basis, Rawls
would later argue explicitly that “both Hiroshima and the fire-
bombing of Japanese cities were great evils” 30 because they
specifically targeted civilians, who cannot be held morally re-
sponsible for the actions of their authoritarian government.
R. M. Hare, a leading British philosopher, developed a form
of philosophy called Prescriptivism, according to which there
are no objective moral facts, but only prescriptions that one is
willing to universalize and to actually live by. Many philoso-
phers are familiar with his work, but few know that he was led
to this philosophy by his horrific experiences in a Japanese pris-
oner-of-war camp in World War II.31 In this context, morality
was reduced to the absolute bare bones conceptually required
by the minimal meaning of moral terms.
So deeply meaningful life experiences often drive one to study
philosophy; studying philosophy can also prepare one to face
challenging life experiences. One of the most persuasive and
moving accounts of the value of philosophy and a liberal arts
education was offered by Admiral James Stockdale.32 Stockdale
was a POW in the Vietnam War. Prior to the war, he had taken
a philosophy course at Stanford in which he studied the thought
of the Stoic Epictetus. Epictetus teaches that maintaining one’s
integrity is more important than anything else, certainly more
important than avoiding pain. He also argues that we must learn
to accept our fate, and that hatred of our opponents is a trap.
Stockdale said that philosophical lessons he learned from
Epictetus helped him to survive years of torture with his char-
acter intact. (Epictetus was one of those Roman “philosophers,
with the long flowing white robes and the long white beards,”
that Ben Carson warned us about.)33 Upon his return to the
United States, Stockdale was awarded the Congressional Medal

of Honor, the highest award given by the US military, for his
courage and leadership as a POW.
Many people seem to think that education should only involve
studying authors you agree with. (More realistically, authors
they agree with. Recall Buckley’s complaint that his professors at
Yale were undermining students’ faith in Christianity.)34 How-
ever, Stockdale said that it was a great benefit to him that he
had taken a course in which he read systematically and chari-
tably the works of Marx and Lenin: “In Hanoi, I understood
more about Marxist theory than my interrogator did. I was able
to say to that interrogator: ‘That’s not what Lenin said; you’re a
deviationist.’ ”35 Stockdale explained that among the soldiers
most vulnerable to being “turned” by their interrogators were
those who had never been exposed to criticisms of their own
country, and had never gotten the opportunity to think care-
fully about why they rejected Marxism.
Stockdale isn’t the only heroic figure who learned from and
admired philosophy. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that his
favorite book after the Bible was Plato’s Republic: “it brings to-
gether more of the insights of history than any other book.
There is not a creative idea extant that is not discussed, in some
way, in this work. Whatever realm of theology or philosophy is
one’s interest—and I am deeply interested in both—somewhere
along the way, in this book you will find the matter explored.”36
The influence of Plato’s thought is evident in King’s own phi-
losophy. In his historic “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King
invokes the allegory of the cave in order to explain taking
actions (like civil disobedience) that were contrary to the con-
ventional values of his era: “Just as Socrates felt that it was nec-
essary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise
from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered
realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see

the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of ten-
sion in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths
of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understand-
ing and brotherhood.”37 In other writings, King makes refer-
ence to moral lessons he learned from Plato’s Symposium and
Phaedrus.38
As the preceding examples show, the greatest philosophy is
inspired by and inspires passionate engagement with the prob-
lems important to human life. Western philosophers are the
heirs to Socrates, who stated that “the unexamined life is not a
life fit for a human.”39 Yet you would be stunned at how often
contemporary philosophers are flummoxed or merely annoyed
if you ask them what difference their philosophical research
makes to the world, or even to their own lives. We should make
clear to ourselves and to our students why what we are studying
is important. And if we have trouble seeing the connection be-
tween our philosophy and any real-life concerns, we should fo-
cus our energies on something different.
Socrates and Confucius are seminal philosophical figures in
their respective cultures, and also paradigms of what philoso-
phy is in any culture. The differences between them are sub-
stantial, but the similarities are sometimes overlooked. For both
Socrates and Confucius, philosophy is far from an intellectual
parlor game: it has a significant ethical purpose. For both
Socrates and Confucius, philosophy is conducted through dia-
logue. For both Socrates and Confucius, dialogue begins in
shared beliefs and values, but is unafraid to use our most deeply
held beliefs to challenge the conventional opinions of society.
For both, to engage in dialogue is to only assert what one sincerely
believes. For both, dialogue involves charitably interpreting and
constructively responding to one’s interlocutor. For the traditions
that grow out of each thinker, the goal of dialogue is twofold:

truth and personal cultivation. For both traditions, we do not
fully understand at the beginning of the dialogue what truth
and personal cultivation are. For both traditions, dialogue is an
endless striving toward perfection. Fundamentally, dialogue
is an attempt to persuade rather than coerce. We find the same
values in the best philosophy of every era and every culture.
Contemporary philosophy needs to recover these ideals.
The thesis of this book is not that mainstream Anglo-
European philosophy is bad and all other philosophy is good.
There are people who succumb to this sort of cultural Maniche-
anism, but I am not one of them. This book is about broadening
philosophy by tearing down barriers, not about building new
ones. I too desire to bask in the lunar glow of Plato’s genius, and
walk side by side with Aristotle through the sacred grounds of
the Lyceum. But I also want to “follow the path of questioning
and learning” with Zhu Xi, and discuss the “Middle Way” of the
Buddha. I’m sure you and I will not agree about which is the best
way for one to live.
Let’s discuss it . . .
NOTES
FOREWORD
1. Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minutes on Education in India,” in Se-
lected Writings, ed. John Clive and Thomas Pinney (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1972), 241.
2. Nicholas Tampio, “Not All Things Wise and Good Are Philosophy,”
Aeon, September 13, 2016, https://aeon.co/ideas/not-all-things-wise
-and-good-are-philosophy.
3. Suzy Q. Groden, trans., The Symposium of Plato (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1970), 61 (Stephanus 189e–190b).
4. Wilfred Sellars, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (1962),
quoted in “Wilfrid Sellars,” by Willem deVries, Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
win2016/entries/sellars/.
1. A MANIFESTO FOR
MULTICULTURAL PHILOSOPHY
The epigraphs to chapter 1 are from Immanuel Kant, Physical Geogra-
phy, translated in Julia Ching, “Chinese Ethics and Kant,” Philosophy
East and West 28, no. 2 (April 1978): 169; and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
“Address Delivered at Poor People’s Campaign Rally” (March 19, 1968;
Clarksdale, Mississippi), cited in James Cone, Risks of Faith (Boston:
Beacon, 1999), 152n20 (original transcript of speech archived at the King
Center, Atlanta, GA, document 680323-02).
162 Y 1. A Manifesto for Multicultur al Philosophy
1. Tyson made this comment in an interview with Chris Hardwick

(who majored in philosophy) on Nerdist Podcast, episode 139, up-
loaded November 11, 2011, http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-139-neil
-degrasse-tyson/. Rubio made his assertion during the Republican can-
didates’ debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on November 10, 2015, which
is available at The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu
/ws/index.php?pid=110908.
2. For the sources to these claims and a more detailed response to critics
of the study of philosophy, see chapter 4.
3. Ranking philosophy departments is, of necessity, a controversial matter.
My ranking here follows the 2014–15 Philosophical Gourmet Report
(PGR), www.philosophicalgourmet.com/. (Full disclosure: I am on the
advisory board for the PGR.) For critiques of the PGR, see Katherine
S. Mangan, “175 Philosophy Professors Blast Ranking of Graduate Pro-
grams,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 18, 2002, http://chronicle
.com/article/175-Philosophy-Professors/34484/.
4. CUNY Graduate Center (Hagop Sarkissian), Duke University (David
Wong), University of California, Berkeley (Kwong-loi Shun), University
of California, Riverside (Eric Schwitzgebel), University of Connecticut
(Alex McLeod), and University of Michigan (Sonya Ozbey). An
additional two top-fifty institutions deign to allow members of another
department to cross-list their courses in philosophy: Georgetown Uni-
versity (Erin Cline) and Indiana University at Bloomington (Aaron Stal-
naker). (Departments often cross-list courses reluctantly and under pres-
sure. And the fact that a course in another department is cross-listed
does not ensure that students in philosophy with an interest in that topic
are supported and encouraged.) In Canada, Edward Slingerland teaches
in the philosophy department at the University of British Columbia.
5. University of Hawaii (Franklin Perkins), University of Oklahoma (Amy
Olberding), and University of Utah (Eric Hutton). European philoso-
phy departments are not much better. See Carine Defoort, “ ‘Chinese
Philosophy’ at European Universities: A Threefold Utopia,” Philosophy
East and West (forthcoming). See also Defoort, “Is There Such a Thing
as Chinese Philosophy? Arguments of an Implicit Debate,” Philosophy
East and West 51, no. 3 (2001): 393–413.
6. Indian philosophy is taught at the CUNY Graduate Center (Graham
1. A Manifesto for Multicultur al Philosophy Z 163
Priest), State University of New York, Buffalo (Nic Bommarito), Univer-

sity of Texas at Austin (Stephen Phillips), University of New Mexico
( John Bussanich and John Taber), Binghamton University (Charles
Goodman), and University of Hawaii (Arindam Chakrabarti). At
Harvard, Parimil Patil teaches a cross-listed course on Indian philosophy.
The phrase “less commonly taught philosophies (LCTP)” is modeled
on “less commonly taught languages (LCTL),” an expression used to
refer conveniently to the otherwise heterogeneous collection of lan-
guages that are outside the “mainstream” languages taught in most US
secondary and postsecondary schools.
7. Michigan State University (Kyle Powys Whyte) and University of
Oregon (Scott L. Pratt).
8. Top philosophy doctoral programs with specialists on some area in Af-
ricana philosophy (which includes both African and African American
philosophy) include Binghamton, Columbia, CUNY Graduate Cen-
ter, Emory, Harvard, Michigan State, New York University, Purdue,
Rutgers, Pennsylvania State, Stony Brook, Texas A & M, University of
Connecticut, and Vanderbilt.
9. Richard D. McKirahan and Patricia Curd, trans., A Presocratics Reader:
Selected Fragments and Testimonia, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011),
58, no. 6 (B6). Although I tease Parmenides here, he is undeniably a
great thinker. For a discussion, see Vishwa Adluri, Parmenides, Plato,
and Mortal Philosophy (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).
10. See Bertrand Russell, “Descriptions” (from Introduction to Mathemati-
cal Philosophy), in Classics of Analytic Philosophy, ed. Robert R. Ammer-
man (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1990), 15–24; and Peter F. Strawson, “On
Referring,” in Ammerman, Classics of Analytic Philosophy, 315–34. For
an entire book devoted to the debate, see Stephen Neale, Descriptions
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990).
11. Javier C. Hernández, “China’s Tech-Savvy, Burned-Out and Spiritually
Adrift, Turn to Buddhism,” New York Times, September 7, 2016, http:
//nyti.ms/2bTGFPG; Ian Johnson, “The Rise of the Tao,” New York
Times, November 5, 2010, http://nyti.ms/1ABiTcq. On President Xi’s
interest in Confucianism, see chapter 3.
12. Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of
Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Joseph Chan,
Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Jiang Qing, A Confucian
Constitutional Order: How China’s Ancient Past Can Shape Its Politi-
cal Future, ed. Daniel Bell and Ruiping Fan, trans. Edmund Ryden
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). I discuss Xi’s use of Con-
fucius in chapter 3.
13. I discuss what is distinctive about philosophy in chapter 5.
14. Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions
of Courage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
15. Later books that have developed virtue ethics interpretations of Con-
fucianism include May Sim, Remastering Morals with Confucius and Ar-
istotle (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Bryan W. Van
Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of
Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007);
and Stephen Angle, Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-
Confucian Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
16. Erin Cline, Confucius, Rawls, and the Sense of Justice (New York: Ford-
ham University Press, 2013). See also my review in Notre Dame Philo-
sophical Reviews, review no. 38 of July 2013, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news
/41386-confucius-rawls-and-the-sense-of-justice/.
17. Erin Cline, Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood
Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
18. Eric Schwitzgebel, “Human Nature and Moral Development in Men-
cius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 24
(2007): 147–68. See also Schwitzgebel, “Zhuangzi’s Attitude Toward
Language and His Skepticism,” in Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and
Ethics in the “Zhuangzi,” ed. Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 68–96.
19. Aaron Stalnaker, Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual
Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine (Washington: Georgetown University
Press, 2009).
20. David Wong, Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Owen Flanagan, The
Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016).
21. Martha Nussbaum, “Golden Rule Arguments: A Missing Thought,”

in The Moral Circle and the Self, ed. Chong Kim-chong and Tan
Sor-hoon (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 2003); Nussbaum, “Comparing
Virtues,” Journal of Religious Ethics 21, no. 2 (1993): 345–67; Alasdair Ma-
cIntyre, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation Between
Confucians and Aristotelians About the Virtues,” in Culture and Mo-
dernity, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1991), 104–22; MacIntyre, “Once More on Confucian and Aristotelian
Conceptions of the Virtues,” in Chinese Philosophy in an Era of Global-
ization, ed. Robin R. Wang (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2004), 151–62.
22. See Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, and Graham Priest, “The Way of the
Dialetheist: Contradictions in Buddhism,” Philosophy East and West 58, no.
3 ( July 2008): 395–402, and the special issue of Philosophy East and West—63,
no. 3 ( July 2013)—devoted to discussion of their work. See also Graham
Priest, One: Being an Investigation Into the Unity of Reality and Its Parts,
Including the Singular Object Which Is Nothingness (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 167–235; and my review in Dao 15 (2016): 307–10.
23. For an accessible presentation, see A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao
(La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), 150–55. Christoph Harbsmeier gives
what is perhaps the definitive overview of ancient Chinese philoso-
phy of language: Harbsmeier, Language and Logic, vol. 7, pt. 1, in Science
and Civilisation in China, ed. Joseph Needham (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
24. Myisha Cherry and Eric Schwitzgebel, “Like the Oscars, #Philoso-
phySoWhite,” Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2016, www.latimes.com/
opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0306-schwitzgebel-cherry-philosophy-so-white
-20160306-story.html.
25. Kyle Whyte, “Indigenous Research and Professional Philosophy in the
US,” Philosopher, blog, February 3, 2017, https://politicalphilosopher.net
/2017/02/03/featured-philosopher-kyle-whyte/.
26. Bryan W. Van Norden, “Three Questions About the Crisis in Chinese
Philosophy,” APA Newsletter on the Status of Asian and Asian-American
Philosophers and Philosophies 8, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 3–6, https://c.ymcdn
.com/sites/www.apaonline.org/resource/collection/2EAF6689–4B0D
-4CCB-9DC6-FB926D8FF530/v08n1Asian.pdf.
27. Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s
Call It What It Really Is,” The Stone, blog, New York Times, May 11, 2016,
www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets
-call-it-what-it-really-is.html.
28. “What’s Your Take on the Recent NYTimes Article Advocating Di-
versification in Philosophy Departments in the West?” www.reddit
.com /r /askphilosophy /comments /4j0un6 /whats_your_take_on_the_
recent_nytimes_article/. An especially insightful online response to
critics of our piece is Amy Olberding, “When Someone Suggests Ex-
panding the Canon,” http://dailynous.com/2016/05/13/when-someone
-suggests-expanding-the-canon/. Other interesting online discussions
(pro and con) include Brian Leiter, “Anglophone Departments Aren’t
‘Departments of European and American Philosophy,’” Leiter Reports:
A Philosophy Blog, May 11, 2016, http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog
/2016 /05 /anglophone -departments -arent -departments -of -european
-and-american-philosophy.html; John Drabinski, “Diversity, ‘Neutral-
ity,’ Philosophy,” http://jdrabinski.com/2016/05/11/diversity-neutrality
-philosophy/; Meena Krishnamurthy, “Decolonizing Analytic Political
Philosophy,” Philosopher, blog, June 3, 2016, https://politicalphilosopher
.net/2016/06/03/meenakrishnamurthy/; and Justin Smith, “Garfield and
Van Norden on Non-European Philosophy,” www.jehsmith.com/1/2016
/05/garfield-and-van-norden-on-non-european-philosophy-.html.
29. Patricia McGuire, comment on Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden,
“If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is,” New
York Times, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont
-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is.html#permid=18491745.
30. Shawn (no last name supplied), comment on Jay Garfield and Bryan
Van Norden, “If Philosophy Won’t Diversify,” New York Times, www
.nytimes .com /2016 /05 /11 /opinion /if -philosophy -wont -diversify -lets
-call-it-what-it-really-is.html#permid=18491934.
31. George Joseph, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Math-
ematics, 3rd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
32. Josh Hill, comment on Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden, “If Phi-
losophy Won’t Diversify,” New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2016/05
/11/opinion/if-philosophy-wont-diversify-lets-call-it-what-it-really-is
.html#permid=18495750.
33. Anthony Kennedy, Majority Opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S.

3 (2015).
34. Antonin Scalia, Dissenting Opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S.
8n22 (2015).
35. Ibid., 9. For a discussion of Kennedy’s invocation of Confucius, Scalia’s
dissent, and Chinese reactions, see Bryan W. Van Norden, “Confucius
on Gay Marriage,” Diplomat, July 13, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015
/07/confucius-on-gay-marriage/.
36. “The East Pediment: Information Sheet,” www.supremecourt.gov/
about/eastpediment.pdf.
37. Masimo Pigliucci, “On the Psuedo-Profundity of Some Eastern Phi-
losophy,” Rationally Speaking, May 23, 2006, http://rationallyspeak-
ing.blogspot.com/2006/05/on-pseudo-profoundity -of-some-eastern
.html.
38. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical
Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 65–66.
39. Ibid., 145.
40. Ibid., 223.
41. Ibid., 327–32, 339–51.
42. Justin Tiwald and Bryan W. Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese
Philosophy: Han Dynasty to the 20th Century (Indianapolis: Hackett,
2014), 101.
43. Ibid., 80–86. Discussed in chapter 2.
44. Ibid., 266–68. Discussed in chapter 2.
45. Ibid., 321–27.
46. Ibid., 375–85.
47. Ibid., 370–75.
48. For the relevant portion of The Sutra of the Teaching of Vimalakirti, see
Robin R. Wang, ed., Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writ-
ings from the Pre-Qin Period Through the Song Dynasty (Indianapolis: Hack-
ett, 2003), 272–77. For Li Zhi and Li Dazhao, see Tiwald and Van Norden,
Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 300–4 and 359–61, respectively.
49. John Maynard Keynes, Two Memoirs (London: Kelly Hart-Davis, 1949),
243–44. This passage was brought to my attention by Sarah Mattice.
50. Surama Dasgupta, An Ever-Expanding Quest of Life and Knowledge
(New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1971), 74.
51. D. Kyle Peon, “Yes—Let’s Call Philosophy What It Really Is,” Week-
ly Standard, May 19, 2016, www.weeklystandard.com/yes-lets-call
-philosophy-what-it-really-is/article/2002458.
52. Nicholas Tampio, “Not All Things Wise and Good Are Philoso-
phy,” Aeon, https://aeon.co/ideas/not-all-things-wise-and-good-are
-philosophy. See Jay Garfield’s foreword to this book for a detailed dis-
section of Tampio’s essay.
53. Christopher Cullen, Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China: The
Zhou Bi Suan Jing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
54. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. “Siger De Brabant” (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1911).
55. Peter K. J. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the
Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 (Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 2013), 76.
56. Even if it turns out that, as a matter of historical fact, Greek philosophy
developed in complete isolation from Indian and African philosophy,
this would not demonstrate that the latter was not philosophy. The
important point to learn from Park is that it is not an a priori truth that
“all philosophy begins in Greece.”
57. David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–
1800, 3rd ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009), 100–4.
58. Leibniz, Introduction to Novissima Sinica (1697), cited in Franklin Per-
kins, Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 146.
59. For discussions, see Robert Louden, “ ‘What Does Heaven Say?’ Chris-
tian Wolff and Western Interpretations of Confucian Ethics,” in Con-
fucius and the “Analects”: New Essays, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 73–93; and Donald F. Lach, “The
Sinophilism of Christian Wolff (1679–1754),” Journal of the History of
Ideas 14, no. 4 (October 1953): 561–74.
60. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 128.
61. Derk Bodde, “Chinese Ideas in the West,” unpublished essay prepared
for the Committee on Asiatic Studies in American Education (March
9, 1948), http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/web/s10/ideas.pdf.
(I am indebted to Mark Csikszentmihalyi for bringing Quesnay’s
interest in China to my attention.) On king Shun, see Analects 15.5.
62. Ronald Reagan quoted Daodejing 60 in his State of the Union Address
on January 25, 1988, archived at The American Presidency Project, www
.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=36035.
63. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, 69–95.
64. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 73–92.
65. Kant AA xxv.2 1187–1188, cited in Mark Larrimore, “Sublime Waste:
Kant on the Destiny of the ‘Races,’” Canadian Journal of Philosophy,
supplemental volume 25 (1999): 111–12. I learned of Kant’s discussion of
race in his lectures on anthropology from an excellent talk by Peter
K. J. Park, “Kant’s Colonial Knowledge and His Greek Turn,” American
Philosophical Association, Baltimore, MD, January 6, 2017.
66. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sub-
lime, ed. Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2011), 61. If you really want to be horrified, see the passage
from Hume that Kant approvingly quotes, ibid., 58n82.
67. Kant AA xxv.2 843, cited in Larrimore, “Sublime Waste,” 111.
68. Immanuel Kant, Physical Geography, translated in Ching, “Chinese
Ethics and Kant,” 169. All of us interested in Kant’s views on China
are deeply indebted to Helmuth von Glasenapp, ed., Kant und die Reli-
gionen des Ostens, Beihefte zum Jahrbuch der Albertus-Universität Königs-
berg/Pr. 5 (Kitzingen-Main: Holzner, 1954).
69. Immanuel Kant, Physical Geography, cited in Gregory M. Reihman,
“Categorically Denied: Kant’s Criticism of Chinese Philosophy,” Jour-
nal of Chinese Philosophy 11, no. 1 (March 2006): 63n22.
70. David E. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide Since
1650 (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 3. Infanticide by drown-
ing (never hanging) was the preferred method in China, and it resulted
in a quick death, as opposed to the European preference for infanticide
by abandonment, which resulted in a slow, lingering death.
71. Ibid.
72. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 134–39. For a
more detailed discussion see Mungello, Drowning Girls in China, 14–62.
Christian missionaries and Chinese Christian converts also took part in
charitable efforts to save children (99–115).
73. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Greek Philosophy
to Plato, trans. E. S. Haldane (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1995), 121. In their brilliant The Nay Science: A History of German Indology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep
Bagchee note that Hegel was also seminal in expelling Indian philo-
sophical texts from the philosophical canon and relegating them solely
to philology and social history.
74. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. Ruben Al-
varado (Aalten, Netherlands: WordBridge, 2011), 124.
75. Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, trans. William Dickson, vol. 4
(New York: Scribner’s, 1887), 726.
76. Alston Hurd Chase, Time Remembered (San Antonio: Parker, 1994), 2.1,
www.pa59ers.com/library/Chase/time2–1n2.html.
77. Herbert Fingarette, Confucius—the Secular as Sacred (New York: Harp-
er, 1972), vii.
78. Martin Heidegger, What Is Philosophy? trans. William Kluback and Jean
T. Wilde (New York: Twayne, 1958), 29–31, cited in Park, Africa, Asia,
and the History of Philosophy, 4. Heidegger’s views on Asian philosophy
varied over the course of his career. At one point, he began to collabo-
rate on a translation of the Daodejing, which he said had anticipated
his own philosophical views. However, his final view of philosophy was
ethnocentric. See Taylor Carman and Bryan W. Van Norden, “Being-
in-the-Way: A Review of Heidegger and Asian Thought,” Sino-Platonic
Papers 70 (February 1996): 24–34.
79. Du Xiaozhen and Zhang Ning, Delida zai Zhongguo jiangyanlu [Lec-
tures by Derrida in China] (Beijing: Zhongyang Bianyi, 2002), 139, cited
in Carine Defoort and Ge Zhaoguang, “Editors’ Introduction,” Contem-
porary Chinese Thought 37, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 3 and 9n14.
80. Gayatri Spivak, “Translator’s Preface,” in Of Grammatology, by Jacques
Derrida, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998),
lxxxii. For a detailed critique of Derrida’s Orientalism, see Jin Suh
Jirn, “A Sort of European Hallucination: On Derrida’s ‘Chinese Preju-
dice,’” Situations 8, no. 2 (2015): 67–83.
81. Eugene Park, “Why I Left Academia: Philosophy’s Homogeneity
Needs Rethinking,” November 3, 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/hippo
-reads/why-i-left-academia_b_5735320.html.
82. Said, Orientalism, 40.
83. Ibid., 38.
1. A Manifesto for Multicultur al Philosophy Z 17 1
84. Eric Schwitzgebel, “Why Don’t We Know Our Chinese Philosophy?”

APA Newsletter on the Status of Asian and Asian-American Philosophers
and Philosophies 1, no. 1 (2001): 27.
85. Joel J. Kupperman, Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 58.
86. When you do read the Analects and Daodejing, I recommend transla-
tions that contextualize the texts for you. For the sayings of Confucius,
I recommend Edward Slingerland’s translation, Analects: With Selections
from Traditional Commentaries (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003). For the
Daodejing (also written Tao Te Ching, the Classic of the Way and Virtue,
attributed to Laozi), I strongly recommend you first read carefully the
“Outline Introduction to the Laozi,” by Wang Bi (226–249) in Richard
John Lynne, trans., The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of
the “Tao-te Ching” of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 2004), and only then read the Daodejing itself. My
bibliography of “Readings on Less Commonly Taught Philosophies” at
http://bryanvannorden.com lists some anthologies of secondary essays
that will also help with the Analects and the Daodejing. There are actually
only a handful of passages in the Changes (Yijing, also written I Ching,
the Classic of Changes) that are philosophically important. Just read the
selections in Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philoso-
phy, 42–54.
87. Schwitzgebel, “Why Don’t We Know Our Chinese Philosophy?” 26.
88. For selections from the Analects, Daodejing, Mozi, Mengzi, Zhuangzi,
Xunzi, and Hanfeizi, see Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Clas-
sical Chinese Philosophy. On Shen Dao, see Eirik L. Harris, The Shenzi
Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 2016).
89. For selections, see Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese
Philosophy. In chapter 2, I discuss more specifically the philosophical in-
terest of several Confucian, Buddhist, and Neo-Confucian philosophers.
90. Justin E. H. Smith, The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2016), 2.
91. Ibid., 9.
92. Personal communication from Robin R. Wang, President of the SACP,
June 4, 2016.
93. See www.mapforthegap.com/about.html.

94. Leiter, “Anglophone Departments Aren’t ‘Departments of European
and American Philosophy.’”
95. Augustine (City of God, bk. 5, chap. 8) attributes the quoted phrase to
Seneca (c. 4 bce–65 ce), but Seneca (letter 108) is quoting a poem by
Cleanthes (fl. 300 bce).
2. TRADITIONS IN DIALOGUE
The epigraphs to chapter 2 are from Terence, The Self-Tormentor, act 1,
scene 1, and Confucius, Analects, 12.5.
1. Machiavelli (1469–1527) is also a defensible choice as the founding

figure of modern political philosophy.
2. See Descartes, “Third Set of Objections, by a Famous English Philoso-
pher, with the Author’s Replies,” in Philosophical Essays and Correspon-
dence, ed. Roger Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000).
3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Parts One and Two, ed. Herbert W. Schnei-
der (New York: Macmillan, 1958), “Of Darkness from Vain Philosophy
and Fabulous Traditions,” 9. (For the sake of readability, I omitted a
parenthesis present in the original quotation.)
4. David Hume (1711–76) has a particularly interesting critique of substan-
tialist views of the self that has been compared to Buddhist views. For
what I think is a decisive critique of Buddhist interpretations of Hume,
see Ricki Bliss, “On Being Humean About the Emptiness of Causation,”
in The Moon Points Back, ed. Yasuo Deguchi, Jay Garfield, Graham Priest,
and Koji Tanaka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 67–96.
5. More precisely, Descartes argued that both souls and physical objects
are dependent for their existence on a third substance, God.
6. Aristotle, Categories, 1.5.
7. Aristotle wrestles with the notion of substance, seemingly without
reaching any resolution, in Metaphysics, book 6.
8. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress,
3rd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), second meditation, 21.
9. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7.3.
10. Descartes, Meditations, 22. Yes, he says “robots” (automata). Simple
2. Tr aditions in Dialogue Z 173
mechanical automata existed in seventeenth-century Europe, and were

much discussed.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 21.
13. For a very readable survey of some major approaches to this topic, see
John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 1978).
14. Descartes, Meditations, 21.
15. Jay Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 122–74.
16. N. K. G. Mendis, trans., The Questions of King Milinda: An Abridgement
of the Milindpañha (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society,
1993), 29. Cf. Peter Harvey, trans., Questions of King Milinda, in Buddhist
Philosophy: Essential Readings, ed. William Edelglass and Jay Garfield
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 272.
17. Mendis, Questions of King Milinda, 30.
18. Peter Harvey, trans., “Extract from the Mahæ-nidæna Sutta, the ‘Great
Discourse on Causal Links,’” in Edelglass and Garfield, Buddhist Phi-
losophy, 271. The Buddha’s position does not need to reject the mind-
body identity thesis (that our mental states are somehow identical with
physical states). Instead, his argument can be interpreted as a dilemma:
the claim that the self is identical with physical states as we ordinarily
understand them violates our intuition that the self is conscious; the
claim that the self is identical with physical states that are also con-
scious states is vulnerable to the arguments given in the body of the text
against identifying the self with conscious states.
19. Devamitta Thera, ed., A̅guttara-nikæya (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Pali Text
Society, 1929), 700, quoted in Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught,
rev. ed. (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1974), 25–26.
20. Plato, Cratylus 402a, quoted in Daniel W. Graham, “Heraclitus,” Stan-
ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 ed.), ed. Edward N. Zalta,
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/heraclitus/.
21. Mendis, Questions of King Milinda, 47–48.
22. Ibid., 48–49.
23. Ibid., 29. Cf. Harvey, Questions of King Milinda, 272.
174 Y 2. Tr aditions in Dialogue
25. Ibid., 31. Cf. Harvey, Questions of King Milinda, 273.

27. Ibid.
28. I am expressing my own opinion about how the doctrine of no-self should
be applied to abortion. Buddhist clergy, philosophers, and laity do not
have a unified stance on this topic. For a sampling of perspectives, see
Damien Keown, Buddhism and Bioethics (New York: Macmillan, 1995);
Michael G. Barnhart, “Buddhism and the Morality of Abortion,” Journal
of Buddhist Ethics 5 (1998): 276–97; William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life:
Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994); Damien Keown, ed., Buddhism and Abortion (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1998).
29. The two major philosophical schools of Mahæyæna are Madhyamaka
and Yogacara. Fazang is a figure in Huayan Buddhism, which is largely
Madhyamaka, but (like Chinese Buddhism in general) tends to be syn-
cretic. See Jay L. Garfield and Jan Westerhoff, Yogacara and Madhya-
maka: Allies or Rivals? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
30. Fazang, “The Rafter Dialogue,” in Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy:
Han Dynasty to the 20th Century, ed. Justin Tiwald and Bryan W. Van
Norden (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014), 80–86.
31. Fazang, “Essay on the Golden Lion,” in Tiwald and Van Norden, Read-
ings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 88. “Cause” here is often translated as
“condition,” because the notion is broader than our concept of efficient
causation. As the example of the rafter and the building suggests, “con-
dition” includes conceptual dependence.
32. See James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin,
2008), 321–22.
33. Ibid., 9–31.
34. As Francis C. Cook explains, “my ‘fatherness’ is completely dependence
[sic] on the ‘sonness’ of my son to the same extent that his ‘sonness’ is
dependent on my ‘fatherness.’” Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of In-
dra (State Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), 83.
35. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4, 39.
36. Ibid., chap. 14, 112 (italics in original). It has been disputed whether
Hobbes is a strict psychological egoist. At the least, Hobbes thinks hu-
man benevolence and sympathy, if they do exist, are so weak that they
cannot play any substantial role in justifying or maintaining a political

system.
37. Ibid., chap. 13, 105.
38. Ibid., chap. 14, 110.
39. Ibid., chap. 13, 105.
40. Ibid., chap. 13, 107. The phrase “state of nature” was coined by John
Locke (1632–1704), but it is also used to describe other positions that
appeal to the state of humans prior to government.
41. This is only a partial analogy, since what makes The Walking Dead inter-
esting is that it explores the ways in which benevolence, integrity, and
loyalty can find a place even in the most desperate situations. However,
the primary characters repeatedly encounter people who have been
reduced to a genuinely Hobbesian state, like the citizens of Terminus.
(Sorry for the spoiler, but, come on, you knew Terminus was going to
be a bad place. It’s called “Terminus,” after all.) The classic Twilight
Zone episode “The Shelter” (1961) gives a brief and chilling expression
of a Hobbesian view of human nature, suggesting what would happen
among suburban neighbors during a nuclear attack if there were not
enough room in the fallout shelter for all of them.
42. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 14, 110 (this entire passage is in italics in the
original).
43. Ibid., chap. 17, 139.
44. Ibid., chap. 15, 120.
45. Analects 2.3 in Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Read-
ings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett,
2005), 5.
46. “Ritual” (or “rites”) is one of the most intriguing concepts that Con-
fucianism can offer Western philosophy. For discussions, see Herbert
Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: HarperCollins,
1972); Kwong-loi Shun, “Ren and Li in the Analects,” in Confucius and
the “Analects”: New Essays, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 53–72.
47. Mengzi 1A1, in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese
Philosophy, 117–18.
Philosophy, 129.
49. Mengzi 7B16, in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese
Philosophy, 155. More literally, the Chinese states “humaneness [rén ṩ]
is human [rén Ṣ].”
50. Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
51. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998),
pt. 1, chaps. 4–5, 100–38.
52. A classic essay on this topic is Robert L. Trivers, “The Evolution of
Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review of Biology 46 (1971): 35–57. Triv-
ers’s paper is often misinterpreted as arguing that seemingly altruistic
actions are actually self-interested; however, his actual view is that “the
emotion of sympathy has been selected to motivate altruistic behavior; . . .
crudely put, the greater the potential benefit to the recipient, the greater
the sympathy and the more likely the altruistic gesture, even to strange
or disliked individuals” (49, emphasis mine).
53. Mengzi 3B9, in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese
Philosophy, 134–35.
Philosophy, 122.
55. Analects 12.18, in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese
Philosophy, 37.
56. Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 201.
“Substance” here is literally “body.” It is not being used in quite the
same sense as “substance” in the Western tradition, but the differences
are not important for grasping the basics of the argument.
“Dharma” here refers to an instance of one of the Five Aggregates.
58. For the Confucian critique, see Han Yu, “A Memorandum on a Bone
of the Buddha,” and Lu Xiangshan, “Letter to Wang Shunbo”; for a
Buddhist response, see Huiyuan, On Why Buddhist Monks Do Not Bow
Down Before Kings, all in Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later
Chinese Philosophy.
60. Ibid., 174.
61. President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at a Campaign
Event in Roanoke, VA,” White House Office of the Press Secretary,
July 13, 2012, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/07/13/remarks

-president-campaign-event-roanoke-virginia.
62. Some of the outraged businessmen that Republicans paraded before
the media had benefited extensively from government contracts. See
Andrew Rosenthal, “You Didn’t Build That,” New York Times, July 27,
2012, http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/you-didnt-build
-that/.
63. Although Robinson Crusoe has become a symbol for the possibilities of
individual achievement, those who have actually read the novel know
that it is more about how very dependent we are upon the civilization
we have inherited (symbolized by the things Crusoe salvages from the
shipwreck he survived) and faith in God. (There is also an imperialistic
subtext in the work.)
64. On the similarities and differences between Hobbes and the Mohists,
see Bryan W. Van Norden, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early
Chinese Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 163.
See also Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1989), 45–46.
65. Eirik L. Harris, trans., The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis
and Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
66. My formulation differs in its details from MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3rd
ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 51–61. How-
ever, I think he would recognize my version.
67. Jean Baptiste Molière, The Hypochondriac, trans. A. R. Waller, in The
Plays of Molière (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1907), vol. 2, section 5, 235.
Molière’s play premiered 1673. In 1651, Hobbes had applied the same
critique to the Aristotelian explanation of “heaviness”: “But if you ask
what they mean by heaviness, they will define it to be an endeavor
to go to the center of the earth. So that the cause why things sink
downward is an endeavor to be below—which is as much as to say
that bodies descend or ascend because they do.” Hobbes, Leviathan,
chap. 46, 13.
68. Descartes, Meditations, third meditation, 31.
69. Thomas Hobbes, “An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s Book,” in The Eng-
lish Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. William Molesworth,
vol. 4 (London: John Bohn, 1840), 299.
70. Patrick Suppes, “Aristotle’s Concept of Matter and Its Relation to

Modern Concepts of Matter,” Synthese 28 (1974): 27–50. See chapter 4
for more on Aristotle’s contributions to the development of science.
71. See Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Humanism of Existentialism,” in Existen-
tialism: Basic Writings, ed. Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 290–308. For an alternative formulation
of a very similar position, see R. M. Hare, “A Moral Argument,” from
Freedom and Reason, 1963, reprinted in Twentieth Century Ethical Theory,
ed. Steven M. Cahn and Joram G. Haber (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1995), 386–99.
72. The literature on this topic is already immense, but in addition to Mac-
Intyre’s After Virtue, some of the seminal works include Elizabeth Ans-
combe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958): 1–19; Philippa
Foot, Virtues and Vices (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 1978); Rosalind Hurst-
house, On Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); John
McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” Monist 62 (1979): 331–50; Iris Mur-
doch, The Sovereignty of Good, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2001); Mar-
tha Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach,” in
The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 242–70; Michael Slote, From Mo-
rality to Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and Christine
Swanton, Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
73. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1985), 33–34 (ii.1, 1103a).
74. Ibid., 34 (ii.1, 1103a–b).
75. Ibid., 40 (ii.4, 1105b).
76. Ibid. (ii.4).
77. Mengzi 4B19, translation slightly modified from Ivanhoe and Van
Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 140.
78. See Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions
of Courage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 59–61;
Philip J. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, 2nd ed. (Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 2000), 17–18, 32–33, 59–60, 101–102; and Jonathan Schofer,
“Virtues in Xunzi’s Thought,” in Virtue, Nature, and Agency in the “Xun-
zi,” ed. Thornton Kline and Philip J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis: Hackett,
2000), 71–72.
79. Xunzi, “An Exhortation to Learning,” cited in Ivanhoe and Van Nor-
den, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 256. I think Confucius
himself viewed moral cultivation as re-formation, but this would be
heatedly disputed by many interpreters.
80. Xunzi, “Human Nature Is Bad,” cited in Ivanhoe and Van Norden,
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 298.
81. Xunzi, “An Exhortation to Learning,” cited in Ivanhoe and Van Nor-
den, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, 260.
82. See Eric Schwitzgebel, “Human Nature and Moral Development in
Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” History of Philosophy Quarterly
24 (2007): 147–68. I borrow the terminology of “the what” and “the why”
of ethics from Myles Burnyeat, “Aristotle on Learning to Be Good,”
in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A. O. Rorty (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980), 69–92.
83. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile: Or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom
(New York: Basic, 1979); and Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why
Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2012), 27–46 (passim).
Philosophy, 119.
Philosophy, 120.
86. David Wong, “Reasons and Analogical Reasoning in Mengzi,” in Es-
says on the Moral Philosophy of Mengzi, ed. Xiusheng Liu and Philip
J. Ivanhoe (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 187–220.
87. This is suggested by the seminal essay on this passage, David S. Nivison,
“Motivation and Moral Action in Mencius,” in The Ways of Confucian-
ism, ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1996), 91–119.
88. Mozi 45, “Lesser Selections,” translation mine but see Nivison, “Mo-
tivation and Moral Action in Mencius,” 97–98, for the comparison of
Mengzi’s use of the term and the Mohist one.
89. Edward Slingerland argues plausibly that “In order to engage in or
guide an abstract process such as education or self-cultivation, we must
inevitably make reference to some sort of metaphorical schema, and the
schema we invoke will have entailments that will serve as important
determinants of our practical behavior.” Slingerland, Effortless Action:
Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (New

York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 270 (emphasis in original).
90. Lu Xiangshan, Recorded Sayings, cited in Tiwald and Van Norden,
Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 253.
91. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” in Cahn and
Haber, Twentieth Century Ethical Theory, 47.
92. Ibid., 43n7.
93. Fans of modern Western ethics will no doubt argue that I have given
short shrift to more subtle intuitionists like Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900)
or naturalists like Hume, who argue that practical reasoning has a sub-
stantial role to play in regard to means-end reasoning and clarifying
the nature of potential objects of our intuitions or emotions. I agree that
I need to say more to explain why I don’t find accounts like theirs sat-
isfactory. However, as I note at the end of this chapter, the point is not
whether we agree about who is right in the philosophical debate among
Buddhists, Confucians, Aristotelians, intuitionists, and naturalists.
What is important is to admit that it is a philosophical debate.
94. Great Learning, commentary 6, in Tiwald and Van Norden, Read-
ings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 191–92. The commentary section of
the Great Learning is traditionally attributed to Confucius’s disciple
Zengzi (early fifth century bce); however, more recent scholarship
suggests that it is of unknown authorship and dates from the late third
century bce.
95. See Analects 10.8 and Analects 1.3, 2.8, respectively.
96. For example, Wing-tsit Chan has “love a beautiful color.” A Source Book
in Chinese Philosophy, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1963), 89. Chan’s Source Book was a great achievement for
its era. However, his translations have largely been superseded. Similar
comments apply to Yu-lan Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans.
Derk Bodde, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952). See
my bibliography of readings on the less commonly taught philosophies
at http://bryanvannorden.com for better choices.
97. Analects 9.18. The orthodox commentary of Zhu Xi explicitly links this
passage to the Great Learning: “Loving a lovely sight and hating a hate-
ful odor are Sincerity. Loving Virtue like one loves sex—this is to Sin-
cerely love Virtue. However, people are seldom able to do this.” Zhu
Xi, Lunyu jizhu, commentary on Analects 9.18, cited in Tiwald and Van
Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 191n44.
98. One might argue that this example is intrinsically sexist. It certainly
assumes what critic Laura Mulvey referred to as “the male gaze,” in
her classic essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16,
no. 3 (1975): 6–18. The authors of the Great Learning and over two mil-
lennia of Confucian commentators typically envisioned the “lovely
sight” in question as a beautiful woman, a woman who was excluded
from higher education and public office, and whose sexuality was a po-
tentially dangerous distraction from Virtue. However, the situation is
more complex than it appears at first. Generations of Confucians were
quite aware that many an emperor was led to disaster by the influence
of a handsome male lover. Furthermore, both male and female readers
today can sympathize with the example of being drawn to someone
erotically, even though they will conceptualize it according to their
own tastes.
99. Wang Yangming, “Questions on the Great Learning,” cited in Tiwald
and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 241–42 (glosses
in original translation).
100. There is a classic debate in ethics over unity vs. conflict as ideals of
psychological health. When Jesus demands that a demon name itself,
it replies, “My name is Legion: for we are many” (Mark 5:9, KJV). This
suggests that the evil are divided within themselves. On the other hand,
Walt Whitman celebrates psychic conflict when he asks, “Do I contra-
dict myself ? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain
multitudes.)” “Song of Myself.”
101. Cheng Yi, Er Chengji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2004), 1:16, cited in
Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 159.
102. Great Learning, classic, in Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later
Chinese Philosophy, 189 (emphasis mine).
103. Zhu Xi, Zhuzi yulei (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 1:148, cited in
Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 181.
104. David S. Nivison was the first to note the significance of weakness of
will as an issue in Chinese philosophy. See especially “The Philosophy
of Wang Yangming,” in The Ways of Confucianism, by David S. Nivison,
ed. Bryan W. Van Norden (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), 249–60.
105. Wang Yangming, A Record for Practice (Chuan xi lu), §5, cited in Tiwald
and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 267.
106. Wang Yangming, A Record for Practice, §5, cited in Tiwald and Van
Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 267.
107. One of the classic Western essays on internalism is Donald David-
son, “How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?” in Essays on Actions and
Events, 2nd ed. (New York: Clarendon, 2001), 21–42. Intriguingly, Da-
vidson thanks David S. Nivison, a leading scholar of Chinese philoso-
phy, in the acknowledgments to this anthology (xx).
108. Wang Yangming, A Record for Practice, §5, cited in Tiwald and Van Norden,
Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 267 (italics in original translation).
109. Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” Philosophical Quarterly 32, no.
127 (1982): 127–36.
Norden, Readings in Later Chinese Philosophy, 268 (glosses in original
translation).
112. Nivison, “The Philosophy of Wang Yangming,” 218.
114. Eric Schwitzgebel, “The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Role of
the Philosopher,” in Experimental Ethics, ed. H. Rusch, M. Uhl, and
C. Luetge (New York: Palgrave, 2014); Schwitzgebel, “Do Ethicists
Steal More Books?” Philosophical Psychology 22 (2009): 711–25; Schwit-
zgebel, “Are Ethicists Any More Likely to Pay Their Registration Fees
at Professional Meetings?” Economics and Philosophy 29 (2013): 371–80;
Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust, “The Moral Behavior of Ethics
Professors: Relationships Among Self-Reported Behavior, Expressed
Normative Attitude, and Directly Observed Behavior,” Philosophical
Psychology 27 (2014): 293–327; Schwitzgebel and Rust, “Do Ethicists and
Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?” Re-
view of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2010): 189–99; Schwitzgebel and
Rust, “The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors,” Philo-
sophical Psychology 27 (2014): 293–327; Schwitzgebel and Rust, “Ethicists’
and Non-Ethicists’ Responsiveness to Student Emails: Relationships
Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and
3. Trump’s Philosophers Z 183
Experimentally Observed Behavior,” Metaphilosophy 44 (2013): 350–71;

Eric Schwitzgebel, Joshua Rust, Linus Huang, Alan Moore, and Justin
Coates, “Ethicists’ Courtesy at Philosophy Conferences,” Philosophical
Psychology 35 (2012): 331–40.
115. Analects 2.15, cited in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical
Chinese Philosophy, 6.
116. Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation.
117. Zhu Xi, Zhuzi yulei, 190, cited in Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in
Later Chinese Philosophy, 184.
118. James Maffie, Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion (Boul-
der: University Press of Colorado, 2014).
119. Thomas M. Norton-Smith, The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpre-
tation of American Indian Philosophy (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2010).
120. Dale Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe: Toward a Critical Indigenous
Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
121. Anne Waters, ed., American Indian Thought (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2003).
122. Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan
Conceptual Scheme, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).
123. Kwazi Wiredu, Philosophy and an African Culture (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1980).
3. TRUMP’S PHILOSOPHERS
The epigraphs to chapter 3 are from Donald J. Trump, Announcement
of Presidential Candidacy, June 16, 2015, New York, NY; Mao Zedong,
“Mount Liupan,” translation mine but see Willis Barnstone, ed., The
Poems of Mao Zedong (Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1972), 68–69 for the Chinese text and an alternative translation; Richard
Nixon, “Exchange with Reporters at the Great Wall of China,” Febru-
ary 24, 1972. (In context, Nixon’s comment is not as silly as it sounds.)
1. ㏆ᖹ, “曺⸜天冒奱嶝埴䣦Ểᷣᷱ㟠⽫ẟῤ奪” (speech delivered May 4,

2014, uploaded July 20, 2015), http://cpc.people.com.cn/xuexi/n/2015
/0720/c397563–27331773.html. Translation mine.
184 Y 3. Trump’s Philosophers
2. Days after the election, Trump acknowledged that it could be “part wall,
part fence” (interview with Lesley Stahl, “The 45th President,” 60 Minutes,
aired November 13, 2016). A few weeks after that, he admitted that parts
of the border do not need a wall “because you have, you know, you have
mountains, you have other things” (interview with Sean Hannity, Fox
News, December 1, 2016, http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/12/01/donald
-trump-hannity-his-election-victory-message-protesters). This version
of Trump’s plan would involve no change from current policy, since the
border already has a combination of walls, fences, and natural barriers.
3. Trump, Announcement of Presidential Candidacy.
4. Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, “Migration Flows Between the US and Mexico
Have Slowed—and Turned Toward Mexico,” Pew Research Center, No-
vember 19, 2015, www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/chapter-1-migration
-flows-between-the-u-s-and-mexico-have-slowed-and-turned-toward
-mexico/#number-of-unauthorized-mexican-immigrants-declines.
5. Richard Pérez-Peña, “Contrary to Trump’s Claims, Immigrants Are
Less Likely to Commit Crimes,” New York Times, January 26, 2017, www
.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigrants-crime.html.
6. The prevalence of the us vs. them mindset is illustrated by a comment
from Representative Robert Pittenger (R, NC). When asked what mo-
tivated those who protested a police shooting in Charlotte, he asserted:
“The grievance in their minds is—the animus, the anger—they hate
white people because white people are successful and they’re not.” “NC
Congressman: ‘Protestors Hate White People Because They’re Suc-
cessful,’” New York Post, September 22, 2016, http://nypost.com/2016
/09/22/nc-congressman-protesters-hate-white-people-because-theyre
-successful/. (Videos and photographs show what is clearly a multira-
cial group of protestors.)
7. Since the election, some conservatives have crowed that Trump’s vic-
tory shows how out of touch the intellectual elite is with mainstream
America. See Charles C. Camosy, “Trump Won Because College-Edu-
cated Americans Are out of Touch,” Washington Post, November 9, 2016,
www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won
-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/. However, the
reality is that 53 percent of those who voted opposed Donald Trump,
Clinton won the plurality of the popular vote, and she won “big league”
among both Americans under thirty and people of color (who consti-
tute the fastest-growing share of the US population). The future does
not look bright for those who supported Trump.
8. Bob Herbert, “Righting Reagan’s Wrongs?” New York Times, November
13, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html.
9. Alexander P. Lamis, ed., Southern Politics in the 1990s (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1999), 8. The Atwater interview was
not noticed by the mainstream media until it was cited in an edito-
rial by Bob Herbert, “Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant,” New York
Times, October 6, 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/opinion/impos-
sible-ridiculous-repugnant.html. The audio recording of the interview
is archived at Rick Perlstein, “Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981
Interview on the Southern Strategy,” Nation, November 13, 2012, www
.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview
-southern-strategy/.
10. Andrew Jacobs, “Confucius Statue Vanishes Near Tiananmen Square,”
New York Times, April 22, 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/world/
asia/23confucius.html.
11. I have visited Mao’s mausoleum on several occasions. On each visit, I
have been told that the body is not available for viewing because it is be-
ing “cleaned.” I am beginning to think that he just doesn’t want to see me.
12. Chris Buckley, “Mocking Mao Backfires for Chinese TV Host,” Sino-
sphere, blog, New York Times, April 9, 2015, http://sinosphere.blogs
.nytimes .com /2015 /04 /09 /joking -about -mao -lands -tv -host -in -hot
-water/.
13. Nonetheless, the amount of support for Mao, at least as a symbol, is
often surprising to first-time visitors to China. A nontrivial number of
young people, who have no firsthand knowledge of the Cultural Revo-
lution, actually seem nostalgic about it. See Kiki Zhao, “Graduates’ Red
Guard Photos Cast Doubts on What They Learned,” Sinosphere, blog,
New York Times, June 26, 2014, http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com
/2014 /06 /26 /graduates -red -guard -photos -cast -doubt -on -what -they
-learned/. I have even met intellectuals who were “rusticated” during
the Cultural Revolution (sent to do hard labor in the countryside) who
feel that China under Mao had a positive moral spirit that is lacking in
China today.
14. Paul Gewirtz, “Xi, Mao, and China’s Search for a Usable Past,” China
File, January 14, 2014, www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint
/xi-mao-and-chinas-search-usable-past.
15. See, for example, Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1992).
16. Fu Danni, “Life Is Meaningless, Say China’s Top Students,” Sixth Tone,
November 23, 2016, www.sixthtone.com/news/life-meaningless-say
-china’s-top-students.
17. This is very similar to the view developed in Mengzi 6A15, cited in
Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical
Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 151.
18. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Aaron Asher
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 4.
19. I originally developed the ideas in the preceding paragraph in
“Zhuangzi’s Ironic Detachment and Political Commitment,” Dao 15,
no. 1 (March 2016): 1–17.
20. I was the only philosopher at the conference who was not Chinese.
When I showed my son the official group photograph of the confer-
ence, he quipped, “Where’s Waldo?”
21. Chris Buckley and Didi Tatlow, “Cultural Revolution Steeled a Schoolboy,
Now China’s Leader,” New York Times, September 25, 2015, www.nytimes
.com/2015/09/25/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-cultural-revolution.html.
After the Cultural Revolution, Xi studied chemical engineering and later
earned an LLD from Tsinghua University (the MIT of China).
22. ㆹ奱⼿ㆹẔ⻻㖞恋ᶨẋ曺⸜ㆸ攧Ⰽ⌮⯙㗗乊⌓ℝ㖞ẋ嶇䛨㽨≐炻恋㗗ᶨ
䥵ね互炻恋㗗ᶨ䥵㯃⚜烊⇘Ḯ㔯⊾朑␥䎮゛䟜䀕炻㚨⎶⎀⼿䓂军㗗ᶨ䥵
嘂㖈䘬ˤ(⣖奮˪᷄㕡㖞䨢˫䚩⥼Ḏ存䲣↿ᶻ孧:Ḉ㏆⸛) November 16,
2003, http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2003–11–16/11182145564.shtml. My
thanks to Professor Wu Wanwei for locating the Chinese original of
this quotation. English translation from Jonathan Watts, “Choice
of ‘Princeling’ as the Country’s Next President Came as a Shock to
Many,” Guardian, October 26, 2007, www.theguardian.com/world/2007
/oct/26/china.uknews4.
23. Max Fisher, “Trump, Taiwan and China: The Controversy, Explained,”
New York Times, December 3, 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/
world/asia/trump-taiwan-and-china-the-controversy-explained.html.
24. See Chris Buckley, “Xi Touts Communist Party as Defender of Confu-
cius’s Virtues,” Sinosphere, blog, New York Times, February 13, 2014, http:
//sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/xi-touts-communist-party
-as-defender-of-confuciuss-virtues/.
25. Xi Jinping, How to Read Confucius and Other Chinese Classical Think-
ers, ed. Fenzhi Zhang ( Jericho, NY: CN Times Books, 2015), 55. (This
book consists of brief excerpts from Xi’s speeches where he mentions
classical Chinese texts, along with the editor’s comments.) Xi is quot-
ing Analects 2:1; translation from Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in
Classical Chinese Philosophy, 5. On the Confucian emphasis on rule by
moral suasion rather than brute force, see chapter 2.
26. Xi, How to Read Confucius, 101–2. Xi was quoting the Great Learning,
commentary 3, which states that the sage-king Tang had the follow-
ing phrase inscribed on his bathtub: “Genuinely renew yourself daily.
Day by day renew yourself, and continue to do so each day.” As Zhu Xi
(1130–1200) explains, the sage meant that “people cleanse their minds to
remove evil just like they bathe their bodies to remove dirt.” See Zhu
Xi, Daxue jizhu (translation mine).
27. Xi, How to Read Confucius, 264–65. Xi is quoting Analects 2.4; translation
from Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy,
5. He does exactly the same thing with the phrase “at fifty, I understood
Heaven’s mandate” (also from Analects 2.4) in commemorating the fif-
tieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between
China and France (Xi, How to Read Confucius, 168–69).
28. Xi, How to Read Confucius, 185–86. Xi is quoting Analects 13.20; transla-
tion from Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical Chinese Phi-
losophy, 40.
29. Mengzi 4B11, cited in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical
Chinese Philosophy, 139.
30. Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Con-
cern,” in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. El-
lington, 3rd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
31. Ḉ㏆⸛, “曺⸜天冒奱嶝埴䣦Ểᷣᷱ㟠⽫ẟῤ奪.” Translation mine. These
quotations are largely drawn from the Analects of Confucius, and
the Mengzi, but some are from other classics, including the Classic of
Changes and Record of Rites.
32. Ahmed Ali, trans., Al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2001).
33. Jessica Taylor, “Citing ‘Two Corinthians’ Trump Struggles to Make the
Sale to Evangelicals,” NPR, January 18, 2016, www.npr.org/2016/01/18
/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale
-to-evangelicals.
34. Jenna Johnson, “Donald Trump Likes That Proverbs Verse That Might
Not Exist,” Washington Post, September 16, 2015, www.washingtonpost
.com /news /post -politics /wp /2015 /09 /16 /donald -trump -likes -that
-proverbs-verse-that-might-not-exist/.
35. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1986), 54–57.
36. Matt K. Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan
Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative
Roots) (New York: Hachette, 2016), xii.
37. Ibid., 26.
38. Ibid. (italics mine). Lewis’s book is the best presentation of a moder-
ate conservative position that I have read. However, not all those on
the right are so well intentioned. In response to a suggestion that the
GOP needs to extend its demographic base beyond older white voters,
Representative Steve King (R, IA) replied, “This ‘old white people’ busi-
ness does get a little tired. . . . I’d ask you to go back through history
and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by
these other categories of people that you’re talking about, where did
any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?” Reporter
Chris Hayes asked, “Than white people?” “Than Western civilization
itself,” King replied. “It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe
and the United States of America and every place where the footprint
of Christianity settled the world. That’s all of Western civilization.”
(Interview with Chris Hayes at the Republican National Convention,
MSNBC, cited in Philip Bump, “Rep. Steve King Wonders What ‘Sub
Groups’ Besides Whites Made Contributions to Civilization,” Wash-
ington Post, July 18 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp
/2016/07/18/rep-steve-king-wonders-what-sub-groups-besides-whites
-made-contributions-to-civilization/.)
39. Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail, 98.
40. Ibid., 99.

41. See ibid., 4; Nussbaum, “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Ap-
proach,” in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amartya
Sen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 242–70.
42. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1984), 221–22.
43. William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic
Freedom,” rev. ed. (Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1986). At a GOP
fundraiser during the 1960s, my parents (both lifelong Republicans)
met Buckley. My mother gushed, “I love you! I love you! I love you!”
Buckley flashed his famous smile and said, “Can’t you make up your
mind?”
44. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education
Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
45. Richard Bernstein, “In Dispute on Bias, Stanford Is Likely to Alter
Western Culture Program,” New York Times, January 19, 1988, www
.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/us/in-dispute-on-bias-stanford-is-likely-to
-alter-western-culture-program.htm.
46. Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 35–36.
47. Ibid., 37.
48. Ibid., 36. Bloom studied under Leo Strauss, who made similar claims
about the need for myths in his seminal The City and Man (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978).
49. Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 60.
50. Ibid., 94.
51. Sam Levin, “After Brock Turner: Did the Stanford Sexual Assault Case
Change Anything?” Guardian, September 1, 2016, www.theguardian
.com /us -news /2016 /sep /01 /brock -turner -stanford -assault -case -did
-anything-change.
52. Belinda-Rose Young, Sarah L. Desmarais, Julie A. Baldwin, and Ra-
sheeta Chandler, “Sexual Coercion Practices Among Undergraduate Male
Recreational Athletes, Intercollegiate Athletes, and Non-Athletes,”
Violence Against Women, May 30, 2016.
53. See Jean Edward Smith, Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016),
13–14; and Gwenda Blair, The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a
Presidential Candidate (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 241. Bush
the Younger and Trump are not isolated incidents. See Daniel Golden, The
Price of Admission (New York: Broadway, 2007) for an exposé of how
the wealthy routinely buy admission into elite colleges for their children.
54. Award-winning author Jennine Capó Crucet, the first person in her
family to attend college, explains how absolutely incomprehensible and
terrifying everything about college was to her and her family, including
things so obvious to most students that they are never explained. “Tak-
ing My Parents to College,” New York Times, August 22, 2015, http://nyti
.ms/1Lr81YG.
55. Hendrik Hertzberg, “Buckley, Vidal, and the ‘Queer’ Question,” New
Yorker, July 31, 2015, www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/buckley
-vidal-and-the-queer-question.
56. White House Press Briefing by Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes,
October 15, 1982. See the brief documentary film with the audio of the
exchange by Scott Calonic, “When AIDS Was Funny,” December 1,
2015, http://video.vanityfair.com/watch/the-reagan-administration-s
-chilling-response-to-the-aids-crisis.
57. The statement was in a direct mailing sent out over the signature of
Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans (a pro-
LGBT conservative group), cited in Steve Rothaus, “Log Cabin Re-
publicans: Party Passes ‘Most Anti-LBGT Platform’ in GOP History,”
Miami Herald, July 12, 2016, www.miamiherald.com/news/local/com-
munity/gay-south-florida/article89235362.html.
58. Will Drabold, “Here’s What Mike Pence Said on LGBT Issues Over
the Years,” Time, July 15, 2016, http://time.com/4406337/mike-pence
-gay-rights-lgbt-religious-freedom/.
59. See Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (New York: Penguin, 2001). Bellow, who
wrote the foreword to The Closing of the American Mind, explicitly stated
in interviews that Bloom is the model for the title character of this ro-
man à clef.
60. D. T. Max, “With Friends Like Saul Bellow,” New York Times, April 16,
2000, www.nytimes.com/2000/04/16/magazine/with-friends-like-saul
-bellow.html. This review is an informative and insightful discussion
of the general issue of the relationship between Bloom and Bellow’s
Ravelstein.
4. Welders and Philosophers Z 191
4. WELDERS AND PHILOSOPHERS

The quotation from Johst that is one of the epigraphs to chapter 4 is
literally “Whenever I hear culture . . . I unlock my Browning” (“Wenn
ich Kultur höre . . . entsichere ich meinen Browning”). The line is from
a play written by Johst, and the ellipsis is in the original, indicating a
pause, not text left out. A Browning is a kind of semiautomatic pistol,
and to “unlock” it is to take the safety off. See Quote/Counterquote, July
7, 2014, www.quotecounterquote.com/2011/02/whenever-i-hear-word
-culture.html. See below for the epigraph quotation of Marco Rubio.
1. “Republican Candidates’ Debate in Milwaukee Wisconsin,” American

Presidency Project, November 10, 2015, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/in-
dex.php?pid=110908.
2. For an interactive chart that will allow you to compare the lifetime
earnings of specific majors, see www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/
degrees-and-majors-lifetime-earnings.
3. Bourree Lam, “The Earning Power of Philosophy Majors,” Atlantic,
September 3, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/notes/2015/09/philosophy-majors
-out-earn-other-humanities/403555/.
4. “Value of Philosophy: Charts and Graphs,” DailyNous, http://dailynous
.com/value-of-philosophy/charts-and-graphs/.
5. Ibid.
6. See Paul Jung, MD, “Major Anxiety,” www.amsa.org/wp-content/up-
loads/2015/05/Major-Anxiety.doc; “Philosophy for Pre-Law and Pre-
Med,” Philosophy Department, UC Davis, http://philosophy.ucdavis
.edu /undergraduate -program /philosophy -for -pre -law -and -pre -med
-students; and “Philosophy a Practical Choice,” Department of Philoso-
phy, Belmont University, www.belmont.edu/philosophy/general_infor-
mation/. See also “Kaveh Kamooneh’s Student Resource Pages,” www2
.gsu.edu/~phlkkk/foryou.html#MCAT.
7. Emily P. Walker, “New MCAT: Hard Science No Longer Sole Aim,”
MedPage Today, n.d., www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/
GeneralProfessionalIssues/31219.
8. David Silbersweig, “A Harvard Medical School Professor Makes the
Case for Liberal Arts and Philosophy,” Washington Post, December
24, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/12/24
192 Y 4. Welders and Philosophers
/a-harvard-medical-school-professor-makes-the-case-for-the-liberal
-arts-and-philosophy/.
9. In chapter 5, I shall discuss the distinctive contribution that philosophy
makes to the humanities and social sciences.
10. Examples include Yuanpei College of Peking University, College of
Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo, Ashoka University, Delhi,
College of Liberal Studies of Seoul National University, S. H. Ho Col-
lege of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Yale-NUS College
in Singapore. See Sergei Klebnikov, “The Rise of Liberal Arts Colleges
in Asia,” Forbes, June 3, 2015, www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov
/2015/06/03/the-rise-of-liberal-arts-colleges-in-asia/. A representative
view is expressed by Po Chung, cofounder of the multinational corpo-
ration DHL, who explained that the liberal arts education he received
at Whittier College in the United States paid off in his career in ways
that he never expected. Consequently, he is now an ardent supporter of
the growing liberal arts programs in Hong Kong (“How General Edu-
cation Can Sharpen Hong Kong’s Edge,” South China Morning Post,
October 23, 2012).
11. “Transcript: Marco Rubio: ‘I Ask the American People, Do Not Give
in to Fear,’” Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2016, www.latimes.com/politics
/la-pol-prez-marco-rubio-speech-transcript-20160315-story.html.
12. Donovan Slack, “Whoops! Carly Fiorina Falls off Stage,” USA Today,
May 2, 2016, www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/05
/02/whoops-carly-fiorina-falls-ted-cruz/83831470/.
13. Phil Mattingly, “Ben Carson’s Longshot Presidential Bid Sudden-
ly Looks a Lot More Realistic,” Bloomberg Politics, October 15, 2014,
www.bloomberg .com /politics /articles /2014–10–15 /carsons -longshot
-presidential-bid-suddenly-looks-a-lot-more-realistic.
14. For discussions, see R. Bett, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient
Skepticism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); John Cooper,
“Arcesilaus: Socratic and Sceptic,” in Knowledge, Nature, and the Good:
Essays on Ancient Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004); and Katja Vogt, “Ancient Skepticism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, Fall 2015 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu
/archives/fall2015/entries/skepticism-ancient/.
15. For discussions of the various Western philosophical schools in this era,
see Gisela Striker, Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Martha Nussbaum, The Thera-
py of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2009); and John M. Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways
of Life in Ancient Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
16. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 38. See
Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged by Frank
C. Bourne (Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, 1963), 579.
17. Ibid., 239–40.
18. Ibid., 580.
19. For a more up-to-date account, see Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a
Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the
West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
20. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 579.
21. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York:
Vintage, 1966).
22. Jean Edward Smith, Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016), 14.
23. Matt K. Lewis, Too Dumb to Fail (New York: Hachette, 2016), 105.
24. The earliest political use of “Palinize” may be due to Sebastian Mallaby
of the Washington Post in “McCain’s Convenient Untruth,” September
7, 2008, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07
/AR2008090701950.html.
25. “Sarah Palin: Mama Grizzlies,” YouTube, July 8, 2010, https://youtu.be/
oF-OsHTLfxM?t=33s.
26. Schiff continues: “An actual grizzly mom is a single mom. . . . What
Mama Grizzly wouldn’t believe in school lunches, health insurance
and quality childcare? Who’s going to look after the kids while she’s
off hunting?” Gail Collins and Stacy Schiff, “Of Mama Grizzly Born?”
New York Times, August 18, 2010, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
/2010/08/18/of-mama-grizzly-born/. Palin is eminently easy to mock,
but she is also a tragic figure, as her former supporter and editor, Matt
K. Lewis, reminds us. Lewis, “You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah
Palin,” Daily Beast, January 28, 2015, www.thedailybeast.com/articles
/2015/01/28/you-betcha-i-was-wrong-about-sarah-palin.html.
27. Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New
York: Anchor, 2007), 114.
28. On Lincoln’s fondness for Euclid, see David Herbert Donald, Lincoln
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 142–43; and Henry Ketcham,
The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: A. L. Burt, 1901), 64–65. For the
influence of Pericles on Lincoln, see Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992).
29. See Patricia Zengerle, “Huntsman Wouldn’t Be the Only U.S. Presi-
dent to Speak Chinese,” Reuters, January 9, 2012, http://blogs.reuters
.com/talesfromthetrail/2012/01/09/huntsman-wouldnt-be-the-only-u
-s-president-to-speak-chinese/, and Georgius Agricola, De Re Metal-
ica, trans. Herbert Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (New York: Dover,
1950).
30. President Ronald Reagan, Televised Speech from the Oval Office,
March 4, 1987. Reagan also believed that the Chernobyl nuclear accident
fulfilled a prophecy in the Bible. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The
Role of a Lifetime, rev. ed. (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 679. Haines
Johnson probably gives the best overall assessment of Reagan: “He was
much more than he seemed to his detractors, who continually dispar-
aged him, and much less than his partisan followers believed him to
be.” Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years,
rev. ed. (New York: Anchor, 1992), 41.
31. George W. Bush, Campaign Speech at Bentonville, Arkansas, Novem-
ber 6, 2000.
32. Donald J. Trump, Campaign Rally in Hilton Head Island, SC, Novem-
ber 25, 2016, video archived at http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/30/trump
-i-know-words-i-have-the-best-words-obama-is-stupid-video/. As if to
prove my point that the Democratic and Republican parties have traded
identities, Trump has hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Of-
fice, and laid a wreath on Jackson’s grave. Jamelle Bouie, “Donald Trump
Sees Himself in Andrew Jackson,” Slate, March 15, 2017, http://www.slate
.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/donald_trump_sees_
himself_in_andrew_jackson_they_deserve_one_another.html.
33. Francis Perraudin, “Scott Walker Dodges Question About Evolu-
tion Beliefs During Trade Visit to UK,” Guardian, February 11, 2015,
www.theguardian .com /politics /2015 /feb /11 /scott -walker -special
-relationship-trade-cheese-republican-chris-christie.
34. Brian Tashman, “Rafael Cruz: Evolution Is a Communist Lie,” Right
Wing Watch, November 4, 2013, www.rightwingwatch.org/content/

rafael-cruz-evolution-communist-lie-gay-rights-endanger-children.
35. Michael Hainey, “All Eyez on Him,” GQ, November 19, 2012, www.gq
.com/story/marco-rubio-interview-gq-december-2012.
36. Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin,
1961), 113–16.
37. Ibid., bks. 11–13.
38. Francis Bacon, “Of Atheism,” in Essays, ed. John Pitcher (New York:
Penguin, 1986), 107.
39. Including Marilyn McCord Adams, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoffer,
Rudolf Bultmann, Hermann Cohen, Gustavo Gutierrez, Stanley Hau-
erwas, Bernard Lonergan, Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Neibuhr, Karl
Rahner, Rashid Rida, Franz Rosenzweig, Elizabeth Stuart, Shaykh
Abdal Hakim Murad, and Paul Tillich.
40. Including Elizabeth Anscombe, Martin Buber, Michael Dummett, Bas
van Fraassen, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Nicholas Re-
scher, Paul Ricoeur, Eleonore Stump, and Charles Taylor.
41. Cannon, President Reagan, 30. The transcript of the relevant press con-
ference is archived as Alex C. Kaempfer, “Press Conference of Gover-
nor Ronald Reagan,” February 28, 1967, http://chronicle.com/items/biz
/pdf/Reagan_press_conference_02–28–1967.pdf.
42. Cited in Dan Berrett, “The Day the Purpose of College Changed,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2015, http://chronicle.com/
article/The-Day-the-Purpose-of-College/151359/.
43. Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,”
New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004
/10 /17 /magazine /faith -certainty -and -the -presidency -of -george -w
-bush.html. Suskind does not name the speaker, but he has been iden-
tified as Rove. See Mark Danner, “Words in a Time of War: On Rheto-
ric, Truth, and Power,” in What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and
the New Face of American Politics, ed. András Szántó (New York: Public
Affairs, 2007), 23.
44. The exception is Rand Paul, whose educational background is bizarre.
He was studying biology and English when he dropped out of college
and somehow got admitted to medical school. He is now an ophthal-
mologist who founded his own accreditation agency so that he would
not have to be accredited by the state. The original board members of

this agency were Paul himself (as president), his wife Kelley (as vice
president), and his father-in-law (as secretary). “Rand Paul’s Doctor
Credentials Questioned for Lacking Top Board’s Certification,” Associ-
ated Press, June 14, 2010, www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/14/rand
-pauls -doctor -credentials -questioned -lacking -boards -certification
.html.
45. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916),
373.
46. Ibid., 372.
47. Stuart Hampshire, Innocence and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1991), 70. On his experience interrogating leading
Nazis, see ibid., 7–8.
48. Ibid., 71.
49. See Berrett, “The Day the Purpose of College Changed.”
50. Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humani-
ties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 17–18.
51. Thomas Jefferson, preamble to “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of
Knowledge,” in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, Charles
T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, et al. (Princeton: Princ-
eton University Press, 1950), 2:526–27.
52. Galileo, The Assayer, in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. Still-
man Drake (New York: Anchor, 1957), 237–38.
53. A seminal work on this point is Alexandre Koyré, “Galileo and Plato,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 4, no. 4 (October 1943): 400–28.
54. R. J. Hankinson, “Science,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle,
ed. Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
162–63.
55. Aristotle himself was influenced by Plato’s method of dichotomous
division. For an introduction to the issues, see Montgomery Furth,
“Aristotle’s Biological Universe: An Overview,” in Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009), 21–52. For more on Aristotle’s con-
tribution to biology, see Max Delbrück, “Aristotle-totle-totle,” in Of
Microbes and Life, ed. Jacques Monod and Ernest Borek (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1971), 50–55.
56. Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, 252–256. Galileo couches his
point in hypothetical terms, but this is presumably because he was wary
of making unqualified assertions that would get him in trouble with the
Inquisition.
57. “Rapport fait a l’Académie Royale des Sciences, par MM. Fougerous,
Cadet & Lavoisier, d’une observation, communiquée par M. l’abbé
Bachela, sur une Pierre qu’on pretend être tombée du ciel pendant un or-
age,” Observations sur la Physique ( June 1772): 63–76, cited in Matt Salus-
bury, “Meteor Man,” Fortean Times 265 (August 2010), http://mattsalusbury
.blogspot.com/2010/08/meteor-man-from-fortean-times-265.html.
58. Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum
Theory, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
59. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York:
Vintage, 1989), §18, 24.
60. Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1957), 117. For more on medieval Scholastic criticisms and
refinements of Aristotle’s view, see ibid., 115–23.
61. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1984), 16.
62. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1990), 155.
63. Matt Warman, “Stephen Hawking Tells Google ‘Philosophy Is
Dead,’ ” Telegraph, May 17, 2011, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google
/8520033/Stephen-Hawking-tells-Google-philosophy-is-dead.html. I
have a philosophical colleague who was at a public lecture that Hawk-
ing gave on the problem of free will and determinism. He said he was
honored to have been invited, but wanted to slink out in embarrassment
after hearing the talk. He explained: “If Hawking’s talk were turned in
as an essay in a freshman philosophy course, it would have earned a B+
at best.” Sounds like Stephen should keep his day job.
64. This distinction comes from Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
65. Albert Einstein, Letter to Thornton, December 7, 1944, Einstein Ar-
chive, 61–574.
66. Erwin Schrödinger, Nature and the Greeks (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1996), 95.
67. It goes without saying that I just used the rhetorical device of apophasis.
68. John Cleese, “Ideas Transform,” public service announcements by
John Cleese in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the American
Philosophical Association, 2000, www.publicphilosophy.org/media/100
YearsofPhilosophyInAmerica/18-IdeasTransform.mp3.
5. THE WAY OF CONFUCIUS

AND SOCRATES
The epigraphs at the beginning of chapter 5 are from Plato, Republic, bk.
1, 352d (translation mine), and Analects 7.6, cited in Philip J. Ivanhoe and
Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy,
2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 21.
1. As I have noted in other publications, we can further divide relativ-

ism according to whether claims are taken to be relative to individuals
or cultures. This gives us four possibilities: subjective ethical relativ-
ism, cultural ethical relativism, subjective cognitive relativism, cultural
cognitive relativism. See Bryan W. Van Norden, “Competing Interpre-
tations of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi,” Philosophy East and
West 46, no. 2 (April 1996): 248; and Van Norden, review of Scott Cook,
ed., Hiding the World in the World, China Review International 12, no. 1
(Spring 2005): 1–2.
2. Plato, Theatetus 170e; Mozi, “Canon” B79, translation in Angus C. Gra-
ham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China
(La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), 185.
3. This point is made very convincingly by Justin E. H. Smith in The Philoso-
pher: A History in Six Types (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
4. I am influenced here by Richard Rorty’s notion that hermeneutics is “ab-
normal discourse”: “Normal discourse (a generalization of Kuhn’s notion
of ‘normal science’) is any discourse (scientific, political, theological, or
whatever) which embodies agreed-upon criteria for reaching agreement;
abnormal discourse is any which lacks such criteria.” Rorty, Philosophy
and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 11.
5. I am indebted to an anonymous referee and to Wendy Lochner for en-
couraging me to address the issues raised in this paragraph and the next.
6. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation
5. The Way of Confucius and Socr ates Z 199
Between Confucians and Aristotelians About the Virtues,” in Culture

and Modernity, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1991), 113.
7. Aristotle’s Organon and Descartes’s Discourse on Method are just two
classic examples of philosophical works whose authors think they have
solved the problem of correct methodology. And neither Confucius nor
the Buddha thinks there is any fundamental methodological problem
that they have yet to solve. See also Smith, The Philosopher, on the vari-
ety of conceptions of philosophy.
8. Wang Chong, Balanced Inquiries, chap. 24, “Dao xu.” (Translation mine,
but compare Alfred Forke, trans., Lun-hêng, part 1, Philosophical Essays
of Wang Ch’ung [1907].)
9. The conclusion of George Lucas’s film THX 1138 invokes the Platonic
allegory of the cave.
10. Plato, Republic (Stephanus 514a–517b), trans. G. M. A. Grube and C. D.
C. Reeve (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 186–89.
11. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 10, chap. 4. (My translation, but com-
pare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin [Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1985], 276.)
12. Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000),
chap. 2.
13. Lee H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions
of Courage (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 144–68;
and Bryan W. Van Norden, “Mencius on Courage,” Midwest Studies in
Philosophy 21, no. 1 (September 1997), ed. Peter French, Theodore Ueh-
ling, and Howard Wettstein, 237–56.
14. Analects 1.2, cited in Ivanhoe and Van Norden, Readings in Classical
Chinese Philosophy, 3. See also the discussion of the passage in Zhu Xi’s
commentary, cited in Tiwald and Van Norden, Readings in Later Chi-
nese Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2014), 195–96.
15. I am not denying that they also engage in the other forms of philo-
sophical dialogue I have identified, but it would be presumptuous of me
to assert that they do based on my current level of knowledge.
16. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, trans. Geoff Ben-
nington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1984), 63–64.
200 Y 5. The Way of Confucius and Socr ates
17. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1985), 1.
18. Hillary Putnam, Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press: 1981), 1–21.
19. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986), 199–201.
20. Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Dou-
ble Effect,” in Virtues and Vices (New York: Clarendon, 1993), 19–32.
21. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986).
22. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 4th ed. (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1983), chap. 3, “The New Riddle of Induction.”
23. Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Litera-
ture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 171.
24. Bryan W. Van Norden, “Unweaving the ‘One Thread’ of Analects 4.15,”
in Confucius and the “Analects”: New Essays (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2002), 216–36.
25. Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1990), 161.
26. Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London:
Unwin, 1975), 149. Russell also discussed how important the poetry of
Shelley (35) and Blake (55) had been to him.
27. That such a horrible experience of a friend’s suffering could have a posi-
tive effect on one’s character illustrates Iris Murdoch’s insight that “the
kind of suffering which brings wisdom cannot be named and cannot
without blasphemy be prayed for.” Murdoch, The Nice and the Good
(New York: Penguin, 1978), 56.
28. Plato, Seventh Letter, in Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction (Princ-
eton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 5. Some question whether the Sev-
enth Letter is authentic; see, for example, Myles Burnyeat and Michael
Frede, The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter, ed. Dominic Scott (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015). However, I am inclined to agree with my
old teacher, Charles Kahn, that the arguments against its authenticity
are unpersuasive. See Kahn, review of Buryneat and Frede, The Pseudo-
Platonic Seventh Letter, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, November 9,
2015, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/62135-the-pseudo-platonic-seventh-letter/.
5. The Way of Confucius and Socr ates Z 201
29. Iain King, “Thinkers at War: John Rawls,” Military History Monthly,
June 13, 2014, www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-john
-rawls.htm.
30. John Rawls, “Fifty Years After Hiroshima,” Dissent (Summer 1995),
www.dissentmagazine.org/article/50-years-after-hiroshima-2.
31. Ved Mehta, The Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectu-
als (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 50.
32. James Stockdale, “The World of Epictetus,” in Vice and Virtue in Every-
day Life, 3rd ed., ed. Christina Sommers and Fred Sommers (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1993), 658–74.
33. See chapter 4.
34. See chapter 3.
35. Stockdale, “World of Epictetus,” 670–71.
36. King, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin
Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperCollins,
1986), 372.
37. Ibid., 291.
38. Ibid., 46–48.
39. Plato, Apology, 38a (translation mine).
INDEX
abortion, 23, 49; Buddhist 187n27, 187n31, 199n14; difficulty

perspectives on, 174n28 of appreciating philosophically,
Adluri, Vishwa, 163n9, 170n73 28–29, 171n86; first translated
affirmative action, 105–6 into a European language, 19.
African Americans, 87, 101, 120, See also Confucius (Kongzi),
124; in philosophy, 1, 7. See also quoted; Youzi; Zigong
Africana philosophy; King, analytic philosophy, 32–33, 80, 83,
Rev. Martin Luther, Jr.; 151–52; and ethnocentrism, 13, 15,
Obama, Barack Hussein II 26, 108, 166n28; and openness to
Africana philosophy, 3, 9, 22, 32, multicultural philosophy, 8, 24,
34, 82, 84, 149, 199n15; examples 29. See also Hare, R. M.; Moore,
of, 83, 157–58; exclusion from the G. E.; Rawls, John; Russell,
Anglo-European canon, xviii, Bertrand; Strawson, Peter
xix–xx, 21–22; and origin of anātman. See self, nonexistence of
Greek philosophy, 19, 168n56; Anaxagoras, 130
where taught, 163n8. See also Angle, Stephen, 164n15
King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr. Anglo-European philosophy, 2,
Aggregates. See Five Aggregates 9–10, 38, 66, 92, 150, 159;
Akbar the Great, 98 historical divisions of, 32;
akrasia. See weakness of will individualism in, 39; not
Albertus Magnus, 18 identical with all of philosophy,
Ambrose (saint), 122 16–28, 82–84, 108; strategies to
Analects, xvi, 153, 168n61, 171n88, broaden, 31–36. See also
175n46, 180n95, 180–81n97, philosophy
204 Y Index
Anscombe, Elizabeth, 178n72, Bennett, William, 113

195n40 Berkeley, George, 124
Anselm (saint), 124 Bhagavad Gita, 10, 105
Aquinas, Thomas. See Thomas Bible, 63, 96–97, 104–5, 108–9, 117–18,
Aquinas 121–23, 157, 181n100, 194n30
Aristotle, 1, 86, 124, 159, 180n93, Blake, William, 200n26
199n7; on contradictions, 6; on Bliss, Ricki, 172n4
ethics, 62–67, 135, 147, 178n72; Bloom, Allan, 102–107, 179n83,
not always a part of the 189n48, 190nn59–60
European canon, 18; on Bommarito, Nic, 163n6
substance, 40, 41, 172n7; as Bradbury, Ray. See butterfly effect
scientist, 63–64, 131–33, 134, Breyer, Stephen, 112
177n67, 196n55, 197n60; use by Bryan, William Jennings, 120
conservatives, 99–101, 104. See Buber, Martin, 195n40
also prime matter; substance Buchanan, Patrick, 113
Asian philosophy. See Chinese Buck, Pearl, 113
philosophy; Indian (South Buckley, William F., 102, 104, 107,
Asian) philosophy 157, 189n43
Atwater, Lee, 88, 185n9 Buddha, 45, 48, 84, 155, 159, 173n18,
Augustine, 104, 124, 172n95; on 199n7
metaphorical reading of the Buddhist philosophy, 4, 8, 13, 17, 23,
Bible, 122 29, 30, 39–40, 52, 81–83 (passim),
Aung San Suu Kyi, 113 101, 149, 159, 176nn57–58, 180n93,
Averroes, 18, 124 199n7; compared with Hume,
Avicenna, 10, 124 172n4; examples of, 6, 14, 31,
43–51, 57–59, 69–71, 173n18,
Bachelard, Gaston, 13 174n28, 174n31, 174n34; influence
Bacon, Francis, 123–24 on Bertrand Russell, 155;
Bagchee, Joydeep, 170n73 Madhyamaka distinguished
Barnhart, Michael G., 174n28 from Yogacara, 174n29;
Beauvoir, Simone de, 33 Mahāyāna distinguished from
Bell, Daniel, 163n12 Theravāda, 49. See also
Bellow, Saul, 107, 190nn59–60 Candrakīrti; Dharmakīrti
Benedict XVI, 113 building and rafter example. See
benevolence. See virtue, rafter dialogue
benevolence as a Burke, Edmund, 99–102
Index Z 205
Burnyeat, Myles, 179n82, 200n28 disciplinary divisions in, 92;

Bush, George H. W., 88, 121, 126 examples of, 5–7, 14, 26, 53–62,
Bush, George W., 106, 119–21 66–82, 94–96, 144–45, 148, 149;
(passim), 125, 190n53 exclusion from Anglo-
Bush, Jeb, 126 European canon, xviii, xix–xx,
Bussanich, John, 163n6 22–24, 26–28; influence on
butterfly effect, 50–51 laissez-faire economics, 20–21;
Byrne, Patrick, 112 where taught, 8, 162nn4–5.
See also Buddhist philosophy;
Cambridge University, 137 Confucianism; Daoism
Camosy, Charles C., 184n7 Christianity, 19, 97, 100, 102, 157,
Camus, Albert, 113 169n72, 188n38; and philosophy,
Candrakīrti, xv, xvii–xviii, 10 3, 6, 18, 20, 117–18, 121–24,
Carman, Taylor, 170n78 195nn39–40. See also Bible
Carmichael, Stokely, 113 Chung, Po Yang, 192n10
Carneades, 117 Cicero, 12, 24
Carson, Ben, 116–17, 126, 156 City College of New York, 154
Cato the Elder, 117 Cleese, John, 137
celibacy, 58 Cline, Erin, xxiv, 162n4, 164n16
Chakrabarti, Arindam, 163n6 Clinton, Bill (William), 126
Chan, Joseph, 163–64n12 Clinton, Hillary, 100, 184–85n7
Chan, Wing-tsit, 180n96 Coen, Ethan, 113
Changes, 19, 187n31; difficulty of Cohen, Hermann, 195n39
reading philosophically, 28–29, Columbia University, 112, 121,
171n86 163n8
chariot, simile of the, 47–48 Confucianism, 4–6, 13, 17, 22, 23,
Chase, Alston Hurd, 24 26, 30, 39–40, 52, 54, 62, 67, 101,
Cheng Hao, 58, 59 149; rites (or rituals) in, 175n46.
Cheng Yi, 75–76 See also Confucius (Kongzi);
Cherry, Myisha, 7–8 Mengzi; New Confucianism;
child at the well thought Neo-Confucianism; Xunzi;
experiment, 55–56, 68, 74 Wang Yangming; Zhu Xi
Chinese Communist Party, 89–91, Confucius (Kongzi), 10, 19, 28, 83,
94 149, 153, 167n35, 171n86, 179n79,
Chinese philosophy, xvi, 9, 17, 180n94, 199n7; Chinese
30–31, 32, 34; contemporary attitudes toward 4, 85, 88–89,
206 Y Index
Confucius (cont.) Darwin, Charles, 57, 134. See also

90, 107–8; compared with evolutionary theory
Socrates, 158–59; dismissed as a Dasgupta, Surama, 15
philosopher, xiii, xv–xvii, Davidson, Donald, 13, 182n107
12–13, 22–24; praised as a Daxue. See Great Learning
philosopher, 19–20, 24; quoted, Defoort, Carine, 162n5, 170n79
54, 57, 73, 81, 94–96 (passim), Democratic party, 126, 184–85n7,
138, 187n27. See also Analects; 194n32; anti-intellectualism
Confucianism and racism in, 87, 120; and
Continental philosophy, 3, 32, 83; Aristotelian values, 99–100;
ethnocentrism in, 108, 152. See and Confucian values, 60–61.
also Derrida, Jacques; Hegel, See also Bryan, William
G. W. F.; Heidegger, Martin; Jennings; Clinton, Bill
Nietzsche, Friedrich (William); Clinton, Hillary;
Cook, Francis C., 174n34 Gore, Al (Albert); Jackson,
courage. See virtue, courage as a Andrew
Crucet, Jennine Capó, 190n54 Democritus, 130, 134
Cruz, Rafael Bienvenido, 122 Deng Xiaoping, 90
Cruz, Ted (Rafael Edward), 116, Derrida, Jacques, 152;
121–22, 126 ethnocentrism of, 25, 27,
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, 168n61 170n80
Cullen, Christopher, 168n53 Descartes, René, 31, 44, 82, 104,
Cultural Revolution, 90, 93, 102, 124, 147, 172–73n10, 199n7; on
185n13 individual substances, 39–43,
CUNY Graduate Center, 162n4, 46, 48, 49, 52, 57–58, 60, 172n5;
162–63n6, 163n8 on potentiality, 63
development model of ethical
Dai Zhen, 14 cultivation. See virtue, models
Dalton, John, 130, 134 of cultivation of
Daodejing, 20–21, 26, 170n78, Dewey, John, 83, 127
171n88; difficulty of dharma, 59, 176n57
appreciating philosophically, Dharmakīrti, 31
28–29, 171n86 Diogenes, vii
Daoism, 4, 6, 13, 17, 30, 149. See also discovery model of ethical
Daodejing; Zhuangzi cultivation. See virtue, models
Darrow, Clarence, 120 of cultivation of
Index Z 207
Dole, Bob (Robert), 126 filial piety, xvi, 6, 58, 60, 77–78,
Drabinski, John, 166n28 149
Du Bois, W. E. B., 1 Fingarette, Herbert, 24, 175n46
Duhem, Pierre, 13, 134 Fiorina, Carly, 2, 116, 126
Durkheim, Emile, 91 Five Aggregates, 44–49, 176n57;
Dussel, Enrique, 33–34 defined, 43
Flanagan, Owen, 164n20
egoism, 52, 55, 61, 68, 174–75n36 Foot, Philippa, 178n72; runaway
Einstein, Albert, 132, 133; on value train example of, 151–52, 153
of philosophy, 2, 134, 137 Ford, Harrison. See Regarding
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 121 Henry
Epictetus, 31, 126, 156 fortune cookies, xiii, 12, 147
Epicurus, 117 Foucault, Michel, 13, 136
ethics, 5–6, 19–20, 26, 32, 39, 80–81, Freud, Sigmund, 136
83, 115, 135, 137, 144, 149, 153, 154, Frost, Robert, 138
179n82, 181n100; meta-, 14, 26, Fung, Yu-lan, 180n96
58, 70–72, 78, 180n93; utilitarian,
135–36, 155–56. See also virtue; Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 149–50
weakness of will Galileo Galilei, 130–31, 132, 134,
ethnocentrism: examples of, xiii, 197n56
xiv, 11–16 (passim), 21–27, 34, Gandhi, Mahatma, 33, 98
103–4, 188n38. See also racism Garfield, Jay, xi–xxi, xxiii–xxv
Euclid, 17, 120 (passim), 8–10, 16, 35, 36, 44,
evolutionary theory, 120, 121–22; on 165n22, 174n29
origin of altruistic motivations, Geertz, Clifford, 113
56–57, 176n52. Gervais, Ricky, 113
existentialism, 64, 135. See also Gewirtz, Paul, 91
Beauvoir, Simone de; Camus, Gibbon, Edward, 118
Albert; Sartre, Jean-Paul Gleick, James, 174n32
God. See theism
Fanon, Frantz, 10 Goodman, Charles, xxiv, 163n6
Fazang, 14, 49–50, 58–59, 174n29 Goodman, Nelson, 83; “grue”
feminist philosophy, 3, 14, 25, 27, 33, paradox of, 152
41, 82, 117, 119–20, 149, 154, Gore, Al (Albert), 119
193n26. See also sexism Graham, Angus C., 165n23, 177n64,
Feyerabend, Paul, 13 198n2
208 Y Index
Great Learning, 72–78, 180n94, Hispanic. See Latino/a and

180n97, 181n98; quoted, 72, 94, Hispanic Americans
187n26 Hobbes, Thomas, 6, 82, 104; on
Great Proletarian Cultural metaphysical individualism, 39,
Revolution. See Cultural 52; political philosophy of,
Revolution 52–55, 57–58, 64, 70, 174–75n36,
Great Wall (of China), 85–86 175n41; on potentiality, 63–64,
Gyekye, Kwame, 83 177n67; similarities and
differences with Mohists, 61,
Habermas, Jürgen, 149–50 177n64
Hampshire, Stuart, 128, 196n47 Hoffman, Martin L., 176n50
Hanfeizi, 14, 29, 61–62, 171n88 Hofstadter, Richard, 193n21
Han Yu, 176n58 Hong Kong, 93, 192n10
Harbsmeier, Christoph, 165n23 Hoover, Herbert, 121
Hardwick, Chris, 113, 162n1 Huiyuan, 176n58
Hare, R. M., 156, 178n71 Hume, David, xv, 10, 70, 82,
Harris, Eirik, 171n88, 177n65 135, 172n4, 180n93; racism of,
Harvard University, 113, 121, 163n6, 169n66
163n8 Hursthouse, Rosalind, 178n72
Havel, Vaclav, 113 Hutton, Eric, 162n5
Hawking, Stephen, 133, 134, 137,
197n63 Icahn, Carl, 112
Hayes, Chris, 188n38 icons and idols. See traditions,
Hegel, G. W. F., 39; role in excluding icons distinguished from
non-Western philosophy from idols in
the Anglo-European canon, Indian (South Asian) philosophy,
23–24, 25, 27, 170n73 xiv, xvi, xvii, 2, 9, 15, 30, 32–33,
Heidegger, Martin, 104; 34, 82, 149; exclusion from the
ethnocentrism of, 25, 27, 149–50, Anglo-European canon, xviii,
170n78 xix–xx, 21–22, 27–28, 170n73;
Hellenistic philosophy, 32, 117–18, and origin of Greek philosophy,
192–93n15 19, 168n56; where taught,
Heraclitus, xiii, 29, 45 162–63n6. See also Bhagavad
Herbert, Bob, 185nn8–9 Gita; Buddhist philosophy;
hermeneutics, 91, 139–40, 142, Candrakīrti; Dharmakīrti;
149–50, 198n4 Orientalism
Index Z 209
Indigenous Americans, 120; in Hermann; Levinas, Immanuel;

philosophy, 7. See also Whyte, Maimonides; Rosenzweig,
Kyle Powys Franz
Indigenous philosophy, xiii, 2–3, justice, 6, 8, 98, 116, 128, 144, 154–56
83, 149, 199n15; examples of, 83; (passim); as a virtue, 5, 65
exclusion from Anglo-
European canon, xviii, xix–xx, Kahn, Charles, 200n28
22; where taught, 163n7. See also Kang Youwei, 98
Indigenous Americans Kant, Immanuel, xv, xx, 5, 10, 14,
infanticide, 23, 169n70, 169n72 30, 113, 148; on normative ethics,
integrity. See virtue, righteousness 95, 136; role in excluding
(or integrity) as a non-Western philosophy from
intellectual imperialism objection, the Anglo-European canon, 1,
xvii–xviii, 29–31, 143–44. See also 21–23, 27, 169nn65–66, 169n68
noble savages Kasich, John, 116, 126
intuitionism. See ethics, meta- Kennedy, Anthony, 12, 167n35
Islam, 11, 93, 96–97; and Keown, Damien, 174n28
philosophy, xiv, 3, 9, 18, 28, 34, Keynes, John Maynard, 15
82, 149. See also Averroes; Kierkegaard, Søren, 124, 136
Avicenna; Murad, Shaykh King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr., 1, 33,
Abdal Hakim (Timothy 98; inspired by Plato, 157–58
Winter); Rida, Rashid King, Steve, 188n38
Ivanhoe, Philip J., 81, 178n78 King Milinda. See Milinda (king)
Kongzi. See Confucius (Kongzi)
Jackson, Andrew, 120, 194n32 Koyré, Alexander, 196n53
Jackson, Frank, “Mary” thought Krishnamurthy, Meena, 166n28
experiment, 78–79 Kuhn, Thomas S., 13, 132, 133–34,
Jefferson, Thomas, 129–30 197n64, 198n4
Jesus, 96, 123, 181n100 Kundera, Milan, 92
Jiang Qing, 164n12 Kupperman, Joel, 28
John Paul II, 113
Johnson, Haines, 194n30 LaFleur, William R., 174n28
Joseph, George, 166n31 Lame Deer, 10
Judaism, 97, 128, 149; and Laozi. See Daodejing
philosophy, 3, 18, 82. See also Latin American philosophy, 3,
Buber, Martin; Cohen, 33–34, 82
210 Y Index
Latino/a and Hispanic Americans, Lugones, Maria, 10

7, 85, 86–87, 101, 149 Lu Xiangshan, 176n58; quoted, 69
Lavoisier, Antoine, 132 Lynne, Richard John, 171n86
LCTP. See less commonly taught Lyotard, Jean-François, 13, 150
philosophies (LCTP)
Legalism. See Hanfeizi; Shen Dao Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xiv,
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, xvii
19–20, 124, 133 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 172n1
Leiter, Brian, 166n28, 172n94 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 195n40; on
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), comparative philosophy, 6, 143;
157 on tradition, 100–1; on virtue
less commonly taught philosophies ethics, 62–65, 177n66, 178n72
(LCTP), 2–3, 8, 32–34, 38, 82, Mackie, J. L., 136
108, 149; origin of term, 163n6 Mad Max: Fury Road, 52
Leucippus, 130 Maffie, James, xxiv, xxv, 83
Levinas, Immanuel, 195n40 Maimonides, 124
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 113 male gaze. See Mulvey, Laura
Lewis, David, multiple world Manicheanism, 159
metaphysics of, 152 Mao Zedong, 85, 89–90, 92, 94,
Lewis, Matt K., 98–102, 104, 119, 100, 185n11, 185n13
121, 188n38, 193n26 MAP. See Minorities and
LGBTQ: issues, 12, 101, 107, Philosophy
167n35, 181n98; philosophy, 3, Marx, Karl, 136, 157
82–83, 149 Marxism, 14, 83, 92, 122, 157. See also
Liberty University, 97 Chinese Communist Party
Li Dazhao, 14 mathematics, 6, 9–10, 11–12, 16–17,
Lincoln, Abraham, 88, 120 19, 32, 120, 131, 133, 143, 144, 147,
Linnaeus, Carl, 131 153
Liu Shaoqi, 14 Mattice, Sarah, 167n49
Li Zhi, 14 Max, D. T., 107, 190n60
Lochner, Wendy, xxiii, xxiv, 198n5 May Fourth Movement, 4
Locke, Alain, 1 McCain, John, 126
Locke, John, 104, 136, 175n40 McDowell, John, 178n72
Lorenz, Edward, 51 McGuire, Patricia, 11
Louden, Robert, 168n59 McLeod, Alexus, 162n4
Lucas, George. See THX 1138 Mencius. See Mengzi
Index Z 211
Mengzi, 5, 6, 20, 29, 31, 81, 83, 105, language competence objection,
171n88, 187n31; on human nature 33–34; nonexistence objection,
and political philosophy, 14, xiii, xviii–xix, 5–7, 14, 29,
54–57, 176n49; on ethical 143–44, 149; quality objection,
cultivation, 66, 67–69; on xiv, 5–7, 12–16, 108, 147–48. See
normative ethics, 95, 148 also intellectual imperialism
meta-ethics. See ethics, meta- objection; less commonly taught
metaphysics, 17, 25, 31, 32, 40–52, philosophies (LCTP); noble
58–60, 80, 83, 144, 151, 172n7; savages; pipeline problem
defined, 39. See also mind-body Mulvey, Laura, 181n98
problem; personal identity Mungello, David E., xxiv, 23
problem; prime matter; soul; Murad, Shaykh Abdal Hakim
substance (Timothy Winter), 195n39
Milinda (king), 44, 46–48 Murdoch, Iris, 178n72, 200n27
mind-body problem, 14, 46–47, 124, Murray, Bill, 101–2
173n18
Minorities and Philosophy, xi, xxv, Nāgasena, 44, 46–49
8, 34 Native American. See Indigenous
Mohism, 7, 14, 29, 69, 141; Americans; Indigenous
contrasted with Hobbes, 61, philosophy
177n64 naturalism. See ethics, meta-
Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), Neo-Confucianism, 14, 29, 39–40;
63, 177n67 on personal identity, 58–61;
Mommsen, Theodor, 24 on ethical cultivation, 69–72.
Moore, G. E., 15 See also Wang Yangming;
Mou Zongsan, 14 Zhu Xi
Mozi. See Mohism New Confucianism, 4, 29. See also
multicultural philosophy, xxiii, Mou Zongsan
xxiv, 10–11, 35–37 (passim), 84; Newton, Isaac, 133, 134
objections to: xii; Anglo- New York University, 112, 163n8
European philosophy matters Nietzsche, Friedrich, 25, 29, 104,
too objection, 102–3, 159; area 125, 132, 136, 152
studies objection, 5, 9, 27; Nivison, David S., 80, 179nn87–88,
comprehensiveness objection, 181n104, 182n107
32–33, 38, 143; essentialist Nixon, Richard M., 85, 121, 183
objection, xiv–xv, 16–19, 25, 108; (epigraph sources)
212 Y Index
noble savages, xv–xvi, 25, 86. See Paul (saint), 117, 118, 122, 123
also intellectual imperialism Paul, Rand, 195–96n44
objection Peking University, 91, 94–95,
nonaction. See wúwéi 192n10
(non-interference) Pelikan, Jaroslav, 97–98, 132
Norton-Smith, Thomas M., 83 Pence, Mike (Michael), 107
Nussbaum, Martha, 178n72, 193n15; Peone, D. Kyle, 16
on Aristotelianism 100–1; on Pericles, 120
comparative philosophy, 6; on Perkins, Franklin, 162n5, 168n58
Derrida, 152; on education, 129, Perry, John, 173n13
179n83 personal identity problem, 10,
41–51, 57–60, 173n13. See also self;
Obama, Barack Hussein, II, 48, soul; substance
152; election of 2008, 126; Phillips, Stephen, 163n6
quoted, 60–61 Phillips, Stone, 113
objections to multicultural philosophy: of language, 3, 6–7, 155;
philosophy. See multicultural political, 4, 5, 14, 19–20, 32, 33,
philosophy, objections to 39, 52–62, 64, 80, 83, 92, 101, 104,
Olberding, Amy, 162n5, 166n28 135, 144, 155–56, 166n28, 172n1,
Orientalism, xiv, 21, 170n80; 174–75n36, 175n40; problem of
defined, 27–28 defining, 13, 16–19, 25, 29–31,
Oxford University, 119 108, 142–49, 151; renaming
Ozbey, Sonya, 162n4 departments of, xii, xxiii, 9–10,
11, 35; subfields in, 32, 135. See
Paley, William, 15 also analytic philosophy;
Palin, Sarah, 119–120, 193n24, Anglo-European philosophy;
193n26 Continental philosophy; ethics;
Parfit, Derek, teleporter thought less commonly taught
experiment of, 151, 153 philosophies (LCTP);
Park, Eugene, 26–27, 150 metaphysics; multicultural
Park, Peter K. J., 19, 21, 168n56, philosophy; weakness of will
169n65 Pigliucci, Masimo, 13–14, 27
Parmenides, 3, 16, 29, 39, 163n9 pipeline problem, 33–34
Pascal, Blaise, 104, 136 Pittenger, Robert, 184n6
Patil, Parimil, 163n6 Plato, xxvi, 1, 14, 30, 86, 116, 124,
Pattern, 59–60, 69 148, 159, 200n28; on Heraclitus,
Index Z 213
45; influence on other thinkers, Ramsey, F. P., 83

18, 27, 101, 131, 134, 157–58, Rawls, John, 136, 155–56, 164n16
196n55, 199n9; quoted, xvi–xvii, Reagan, Ronald, 119, 121, 126,
145–47, 155; refutation of 194n30; anti-intellectualism of,
relativism, 140–41; Republic, 124, 125, 128; press secretary
xiv–xv, 10, 16, 104, 157. See also joked about AIDS, 107; quoted
Socrates Daodejing, 20–21; on states’
Poincaré, Henri, 51 rights, 85, 87–88
political correctness, xiii, 12, 116–17 Red Guards. See Cultural
political philosophy. See Revolution
philosophy, political re-formation model of ethical
Popper, Karl, 148–49 cultivation. See virtue, models
Powell, Colin, 125 of cultivation of
Pratt, Scott L., 163n7 Regarding Henry, 42, 48–49
Prichard, H. A., 70–71 relativism, 18, 139, 140–42,
Priest, Graham, 162–63n6, 165n22 198n1
prime matter, 44, 60, 178n70; Republican party, 2, 110, 177n62,
defined, 41 184–85n7, 189n43, 194n32;
psychology: philosophical, 52, anti-intellectualism in, 116–21,
55–56, 68–69, 75, 135, 174–75n36, 124–27, 130; denial of
181n100; scientific, 6, 56–57, 80, evolutionary theory in, 121–22;
107, 126 opposition to LGBTQ rights
Putnam, Hilary, brain-in-a-vat in, 107, 190n57; racism and
thought experiment of, 10, 151 ethnocentrism in, 87–88,
Pythagoras, 16–17 184n6, 188n38. See also Bush,
George W.; Carson, Ben; Paul,
Quesnay, François, 20 Rand; Rubio, Marco; Trump,
Quine, W. V. O., 13 Donald J.
Ricoeur, Paul, 148–49, 195n40
racism, xii–xiii, 21–22, 87–88, 94, Rida, Rashid, 195n39
101, 105–6, 107–8, 139, 158, rights, human, 53, 61, 87, 101, 107,
169nn65–66, 184n6; structural, 113, 124, 129, 136, 156. See also
xix–xx, 7–8, 26–28, 108. See also states’ rights
Orientalism Robinson Crusoe, 61, 177n63
rafter dialogue, 14, 49–50, 59–60, Rome, 23; fall of, 116–19, 193n19.
174n31 See also Hellenistic philosophy
214 Y Index
Roosevelt, Teddy (Theodore), 120, 49–51, 58–59, 74–75; unity and

121 conflict as ideals of, 181n100. See
Rorty, Richard, 13, 149–50, 198n4 also personal identity problem
Rosenthal, Andrew, 177n62 Sellars, Wilfred, xvii, 13
Rosenzweig, Franz, 195n39 Seneca, 172n95
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 6, 68, 104 sexism, 23, 101, 105–6, 139, 181n98;
Rove, Karl, 125, 195n43 reflected in use of effeminacy as
Rubio, Marco, 1–2, 110–11, 114, symptom of decay, 99, 118;
115–16, 122, 126–27 structural, 7–8
Russell, Bertrand, 30, 82, 113, 148; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 200n26
moral vision of, 153–55, 200n26; Shen Dao, 29, 61–62, 171n88
philosophical views of, 3, 6, 133, Shun (king). See wúwéi
136, 153 (non-interference)
Ryle, Gilbert, 148 Shun, Kwong-loi, 162n4, 175n46
Sidgwick, Henry, 180n93
Said, Edward. See Orientalism Siger of Brabant, 18
Sarkissian, Hagop, 162n4 Sim, May, 164n15
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 82, 83, 113, 178n71 skepticism, 14, 116–117, 192n14
Scalia, Antonin, 12–13, 14, 24, 27, Skinner, B. F., 66
167n35 Slingerland, Edward, 162n4,
Schiff, Stacy, 120, 193n26 171n86, 179–180n89
Schofer, Jonathan, 178n78 Slote, Michael, 178n72
Scholl, Sophie, 113 Smith, Justin E. H., 30, 166n28,
Schrödinger, Erwin, 134; on 198n3, 199n7
limitations of science, 136–37 Socrates, 1, 83, 126, 138, 145–47, 151,
Schweitzer, Albert, 113 152, 157–59
Schwitzgebel, Eric, 7–8, 28–29, 80, Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 113
162n4, 164n18, 179n82 Soros, George, 112
science, natural, 11, 22, 51, 63–64, soul, 39, 40, 41–43, 46–47, 49, 147,
78, 112, 122, 123, 195n44; and 154, 172n5
philosophy, 1–2, 9–10, 13, 32, Souter, David, 112
130–37, 143, 144, 148–49, 198n4. Speakes, Larry, 107
See also evolutionary theory; Spinoza, Baruch, 39, 104, 124, 126
mathematics Spivak, Gayatri, 25
self: nonexistence of, 43–49, 172n4, sprout metaphor, 68
173n18, 174n28; transpersonal, Stalnaker, Aaron, 162n4, 164n19
Index Z 215
Stanford University, 102–3, 105–6, traditions, philosophical, 5, 8–11, 13,

112, 156 27, 43, 82–84, 85–86, 91, 92, 99,
Star Trek, 103 101–5, 108, 148, 149–51, 158–59;
state of nature argument, 14, 52–53, icons distinguished from idols
57, 61, 175nn40–41 in, 97–98; not hermetic or
states’ rights, 85, 87–88 static, 17–18, 29–30, 38–39, 65,
Stockdale, James, 156–57 101. See also Burke, Edmund
Stoicism, 36, 102, 117–18. See also Trebek, Alex, 113
Cicero; Epictetus; Seneca Trinity Washington University, 11
Strauss, Leo, 189n48 Trivers, Robert L., 176n52
Strawson, Peter, 3 Truman, Harry S., 87
Stump, Eleanore, 195n40 Trump, Donald J., 85, 86–87,
substance, 40–44, 48, 60, 172n5, 93–94, 97, 106, 107, 116, 121, 126,
172n7; Aristotelian definition of, 127, 184n2, 184–85n7, 190n53,
40; Chinese concepts related to, 194n32
58, 59, 95, 176n56 Turner, Dale, 83
Suppes, Patrick, 178n70 Twilight Zone, 175n41
Suskind, Ron, 125, 195n43 Tyson, Neil deGrasse, 1–2, 130, 134,
Swanton, Christine, 178n72 137
Taber, John, 163n6 unity of knowing and acting. See

Taiwan (Republic of China), 93–94 Wang Yangming; weakness of
Tampio, Nicholas, xiv–xviii, 16 will
Taoism. See Daoism University of Michigan, 112, 162n4
Taylor, Charles, 186n15, 195n40 University of Paris, 18
Terence, 38 University of Pennsylvania, xi, xxv,
Teresa (saint), 48 8; Wharton School of, 106
Terkel, Studs, 113 utilitarianism. See ethics, utilitarian
theism, 20, 97, 102, 104, 117–18,
122–24, 130, 136, 172n5, 177n63. See Vedanta, 15, 149
also Christianity; Islam; Judaism Vidal, Gore, 107
Thiel, Peter, 112 virtue, 4, 14, 23, 24, 26, 54, 73,
Thomas Aquinas, 5, 18, 124, 136 94–96 (passim), 117, 118, 129, 148,
THX 1138, 199n9 149, 157, 180n97; benevolence as
Tibet, 93 a, 5, 54–58, 66, 74–75, 81, 149,
Tillich, Paul, 195n39 174–75n36, 175n41, 176n49;
216 Y Index
virtue (cont.) Wolff, Christian, 20

courage as a, 5, 65, 148, 157; Wong, David, 68–69, 162n4,
ethics, 5, 29, 62–66, 164n15, 164n20
165n21, 177n66, 178n72, 181n98; Wordsworth, William, xxvi
models of cultivation of, 66–72; Wu Wanwei, xxiv, 186n22
righteousness (or integrity) as a, wúwéi (non-interference), 20–21,
54, 66, 67, 81, 94, 95, 148, 156, 168n61
175n41; wisdom as a, 5, 24, 99,
130, 146, 200n27. See also justice xiào. See filial piety
virtus dormitiva. See Molière Xi Jinping, 4, 85, 93–96, 107–8,
(Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 187nn25–28
Xunzi, 6, 29, 67, 81, 171n88
Walker, Scott, 121
Walking Dead, The, 52, 175n41 Yale University, 91, 102, 106, 119,
Wang, Robin R., 167n48, 171n92 121, 157
Wang Bi, 171n86 Yale-NUS College, 192n10
Wang Chong, 144–45 Yang Zhu, 55
Wang Yangming, vii, 14, 74, 77–81 Yearley, Lee H., 5, 178n78,
Washington, Booker T., 120 199n13
Waters, Anne, 83 Yijing. See Changes
wax example, 40–41 Youzi, 149
weakness of will, 14, 76–80, Yu, Jiyuan, 164n15
181n104, 182n107; defined, 72
Whitman, Walt, 181n100 Zengzi, 180n94
Whittier College, 121, 192n10 Zhuangzi, 14, 29, 164n18, 171n88,
Whyte, Kyle Powys, xxiv, 163n7, 186n19, 198n1
165n25 Zhu Xi, 31, 59–60, 76–77, 80–82
Williams, Bernard, 151 (passim), 159, 180n97, 187n26,
Wills, Garry, 194n28 199n14
Wiredu, Kwasi, 10, 83 Zigong, 38
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 29 Zongmi, 14

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TA K I N G B A C K

BRYAN W. VAN NORDEN

Columbia University Press New York

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and

Only those who are petty regard themselves as separate from

1 A Manifesto for Multicultural Philosophy 1

Building Walls to Protect Chinese Civilization 88

4 Welders and Philosophers 110

5 The Way of Confucius and Socrates 138

One philosopher wrote that Native Americans have not been

And indeed this invocation of White Privilege is common

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.—But I have

Nicholas Tampio wrote a sustained reply to our editorial, ti-

point that this ignores all of Plato’s earlier dialogues as well as

not an irrelevant factual error, but a form of condescending

them in that category is to justify ignoring them as sources of

dresses similar issues, albeit with distinct perspectives, and that

the impression—willingly or not—that no other culture was

filling those lacunae as an internal intellectual need and as a

both for feedback on the manuscript and for putting up with my

U.S. Philosophy Departments: Should We Care?” Conversation,

Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient.

recognize the continuing importance of philosophy. Einstein

Indigenous peoples of the Americas.7 Most US philosophy de-

WHY MULTICULTUR AL PHILOSOPHY?

In order to appreciate why the narrowness of philosophy de-

both economically and geopolitically—and traditional philoso-

would reply that students can learn about Confucianism from

Many philosophers are doing fascinating work on other

millennia: the ancient Mohist philosophers recognized that

Women still receive only about 28% of philosophy PhDs in the

Least well represented among PhDs in philosophy are Native

men as examples of great philosophers. They think ‘that’s me’

A SECOND - BEST APPROACH

At the “Minorities and Philosophy” conference on non-Western

gested, half-jokingly, that any philosophy department that does

We ask those who sincerely believe that it does make sense to

and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are mar-

The editorial produced a storm of controversy. The previous

Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University,

However, many responses were quite negative:

Sure, name the departments in a way that accurately reflects the

(Personally, I will only fly in a plane built with non-Western

invented quadratic equations.)31 Another reader of our editorial

THE QUALIT Y ARGUMENT

These critical comments suggest that non-European thought

only Confucius earned his contempt. Ironically, Confucius is

I would ask Pigliucci (or the ghost of Scalia) why he thinks

Moore was a great master of this method—greeting one’s re-

It should come as no surprise that Moore treated non-Western

that is typically used to dismiss philosophy that is outside the

Another argument against multicultural philosophy appeared

attributed to Pythagoras, it is Euclid who gives the first surviv-

A very similar transformation actually occurred in Western

THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL

The second reason that essentialist arguments against multicul-

tion of business.62 (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philo-

1. “The race of the whites contains all talents and motives in