I noted before how there are two objections to the idea of “the West” or “Western”. I dealt beforehand with the objection that “the West” is meaningless, and the subpoint that it’s tied to whiteness. Now I flip to individuals who settle for that one thing like “the West” exists, however don’t need to use the time period.
This latter strategy appears pretty particular to philosophy. Garfield and Van Norden and others understandably don’t need to use “Western” – however, for causes I can’t fathom, they change it with the far worse time period “Euro-American”, a time period with completely nothing to suggest it. As a approach of changing “Western”, the dreadful neologism “Euro-American”, seems to be in use just about solely amongst Twenty first-century philosophers. In the event you Google “Euro-American”, you’ll principally discover references on People of European descent, together with the Wikipedia web page on European-Americans – also referred to as “white People”. When regular folks hear “Euro-American”, they don’t hear it to incorporate Europeans who remained in Europe – or philosophy made by non-white People. That’s one strike towards “Euro-American” proper there, although I believe it’s removed from the worst.
Me, I naturally recoil from the phrase “Euro-American” having been born and raised English Canadian, in a spot the place we outline ourselves towards the folks I now belong to, the individuals who truly name themselves People. So it’s apparent to me that “Euro-American philosophy” excludes Charles Taylor or James Doull.
That a lot is outwardly not apparent to others on-line, together with others in Canada, as I’ve received pushback multiple times once I’ve claimed that Canadians usually are not People and get offended when they’re known as such. I discovered it a bit of startling to get such pushback on one thing which has all the time appeared apparent to me, after being born and raised in Canada and having lived there for greater than twenty years. However for the sake of the current argument, let’s assume one thing I might by no means dare say in Ottawa or Halifax – i.e. that Canadians are completely high-quality with being known as “People”. Even so, even with that assumption, the time period “Euro-American” remains to be nugatory for attaining its supposed functions.
I’m comfortable to confess that “Western” will not be a very good time period. It’s fuzzy: west of what? However it’s the time period we’ve got, the acquainted one. As such, if and when it’s changed, it ought to on the very least get replaced by one thing extra correct. It confuses issues and wastes folks’s time to attempt to change an current and understood time period with one which’s no higher. It’s far worse to switch such a time period with a time period that’s much less correct. And that’s precisely what “Euro-American” is.
One of many larger disadvantages of “Western” is that it semantically excludes Australia and New Zealand, that are clearly culturally Western. Peter Singer and Annette Baier have been Western philosophers lengthy earlier than they got here to the UK and US. However after all “Euro-American” excludes them too – even extra explicitly than “Western” does. At the least you would preserve going west from the Americas and get to Australia. It’s a stretch, however that’s higher than you possibly can say for together with Australia and New Zealand in “Euro-American”.
An analogous drawback of “Western” is that it implies that the non-West is “the East”, when main elements of the non-West (particularly elements of sub-Saharan Africa) are geographically additional west than elements of “the West”. Earlier than the conquest, notably, the Americas and their indigenous folks weren’t a part of “the West” however have been nonetheless west of it. But “Euro-American” does nothing to repair that drawback both, since within the sense implied by “Euro-American” they too have been American!
And “Euro-American” has disadvantages which can be far worse than all of this. It contributes to the racist discourse that equates Western civilization with “whiteness” – as a result of it forgets how a lot of the historical past of Western philosophy by no means was both European or American. It makes the West white when it isn’t. From its very starting, as I noted last time, Western philosophy is neither European nor American, and a time period that limits it to these two is taking part in into the arms of racists.
An extra drawback of “Western” as a time period is that it has traditionally excluded the Islamic world – the Center East, as opposed to the West. And that is yet one more exclusion that “Euro-American” makes worse! Islamic tradition begins in precisely the identical elements of the world as the opposite cultures labeled beneath the West: its founding on the identical West Asian peninsula as Judaism and Christianity, its philosophy from Greece. The central function of Islam in Western historical past, identical to the origin of Western philosophy in Asia, is hidden from view by “Euro-American”. And naturally, that Islamic philosophy then turns into important to the historical past of later European thought: there is no such thing as a Aquinas with out ibn Rushd, probably even no Hume without al-Ghazālī. Excluding Islam from “the West” is yet another approach of whitening “the West” illegitimately – and that’s what “Euro-American” does but once more, by leaving out the southern and jap shores of the Mediterranean. (ibn Rushd himself was “Euro-American”, residing in Spain as he did, however the thinkers he realized from weren’t – thinkers like ibn Sīnā, who started ibn Rushd’s challenge of integrating Aristotle into an Abrahamic monotheism).
Within the lengthy span of historical past, these Asians, and Africans like Augustine, have arguably been general extra necessary to the event of Western philosophy than has anybody within the Americas. The latter, in spite of everything, have solely begun to be related to Western philosophy up to now century and a half. Why then isn’t it “Euro-Asian-African” custom? (On the Americas’ previous relevance I suppose one may strive to make an exception for Bartolomé de las Casas, the sixteenth-century bishop of Chiapas, sinceBrian Tierney’s history importantly notes that his defence of indigenous folks formed trendy Western concepts of rights. However Las Casas was born and raised in Spain, and composed his defence there too, so it’s a stretch to think about him as being of the Americas.)
If the thought was to be speaking solely concerning the present state and never the historical past of philosophy, properly, the Twentieth-century Western traditions of analytic and “Continental” philosophy are actually practised in educational departments in a lot of Africa and Asia too. It’s their historical past, not their present state, that makes these philosophical traditions “Western” or “Euro-American”. And that historical past factors us away from “Euro-American” for all the explanations above.
There may be, briefly, completely no good motive to make use of “Euro-American” over “Western”, and there are many causes to not use it. All the things that’s improper with “Western” as a time period is much more improper with “Euro-American”. I hope that somebody will ultimately give you a superb different time period that’s truly superior to “Western”, after which I shall be comfortable to embrace that. However the nugatory “Euro-American” positive isn’t it. Allow us to banish “Euro-American” from our philosophical vocabularies. It ought to by no means have been there.
Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.
