Outraged headlines erupted when students launched a campaign to challenge the great western philosophers. We went to the source of dissent – London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to investigate“They Kant be serious!”,spluttered the Daily Mail headline in its most McEnroe-ish tone. “PC students demand white philosophers including Plato and Descartes be dropped from university syllabus”. “Great thinkers too male and pale, students declare”, and trumpeted the Times. The Telegraph,too, was outraged: “They are said to be the founding fathers of western philosophy, or whose ideas underpin civilised society. But students at a prestigious London university are demanding that figures such as Plato,Descartes and Immanuel Kant should be largely dropped from the curriculum because they are white.”Whiteness is not a useful category when talking of philosophy. When people speak, they speak ideas, and not identity.
On my course in political theory we discussed 26 thinkers. Just two were non-European Related: Soas students occupy a point. Philosophy degrees should study beyond white Europeans | Tom Whyman Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com