Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto

A short polemic arguing that philosophy in the English-speaking world should stop treating itself as an exclusively European tradition. It grew out of a 2016 article in The Stone, the New York Times philosophy series, written with Jay Garfield, who contributes a foreword. The article proposed that departments teaching only Western philosophy should rename themselves to say so. Hostile responses denying that Chinese or Indian thought is philosophy prompted the book. Van Norden traces how non-European thought was pushed out of the canon from the late eighteenth century, partly through racist assumptions in thinkers such as Kant and Hegel, and answers common arguments for exclusion. He then shows the value of dialogue through examples, such as the Buddhist Milindapañha and the Chinese Buddhist Fazang set beside Heraclitus on identity, and the debate between Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming on weakness of will. Later chapters link the narrow canon to wider habits of treating others as alien, and defend philosophy as a way of life open to everyone.

It is a lively, accessible case for a more inclusive idea of philosophy, with a quick introduction to Chinese thought along the way.