Why Philosophy? Bryan W. Van Norden
Celebrating Philosophy in Its Diversity
What is philosophy to you?
Philosophy used to encompass all of what are now the natural and social sciences. That’s why an advanced degree in those fields is still called a “PhD,” for Philosophiae Doctor. However, part of what is distinctive about the hard sciences today is that there is a consensus about the method for resolving disagreements. Philosophy, in contrast, is dialogue about issues that we regard as important, but that we do not agree about the proper method for resolving. For example, are some ways of life more worthwhile than others? How do values fit into the fabric of the universe? Is there any method that can guarantee good reasoning? Should we obey laws only out of fear of punishment? Is it plausible to believe in God, or the immortality of the soul? The hard sciences can and should provide important background for these questions, but they cannot answer them.
How were you first introduced to philosophy?
In high school, I bought a random book about philosophy (I guess because I wanted to impress others), but I could not see why any of the issues the book discussed were important. However, I later took part in interscholastic debate, and the issue that year was whether military conscription should be reinstated. I realized that I had no framework for thinking about the relationship between individuals and state authority, so I returned to philosophy, but this time I found it fascinating, because I saw how seemingly abstract issues in metaphysics and epistemology relate to topics that make a huge difference to my life. I try to convey that same sense of urgency to my own students.
How do you practice philosophy today?
I teach philosophy at Vassar College, and for me what is most important is to help people see that philosophy is not just an intellectual parlor game. Why do we get up in the morning? Why go to work at your job? If you answer that you do it just to survive, what is it about human survival that has value? You can ignore these questions, but you cannot evade them. They are questions that any self-reflective being has to answer, and trying to answer them involves you in issues of metaphysics (what are the most fundamental kinds of things that exist? and how are they related to one another?), epistemology (what can I know? and how can I know it?), and ethics (is anything intrinsically good? and are there any absolute moral rules?).
What is a philosophical issue that is important to you?
I have spent a lot of my career trying to convince my fellow philosophers that there are rich philosophical traditions in China and other parts of the world that we should learn about, teach, and engage in dialogue with. Because of systemic racism, many Anglo-European philosophers make the dogmatic assumption that there was never any philosophy outside the tradition that goes back to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. For many years, I despaired of making any progress in changing people’s minds, but in the last decade or so I have found more and more graduate students, assistant professors, and even some senior colleagues who acknowledge that philosophy must diversify or become irrelevant in our multicultural world. We still have a long way to go, though. For example, there is not a single Ivy League university that has a faculty member in its philosophy department qualified to supervise a dissertation in Chinese philosophy. Stanford University, where I did my own doctoral work, no longer has anyone teaching Chinese thought in its philosophy department. And a professor in a top philosophy recently bragged to me that they had hired someone who specializes in Chinese thought; I did some research and discovered that they had hired a Leibniz scholar who happens to be ethnically Chinese, and he would be teaching an undergraduate survey course on Chinese philosophy based on a syllabus that I gave him!
What books, podcasts, or other media would you recommend to anyone interested in philosophy?
If you want to read about why philosophy is worth studying, and why we should study more than just Western philosophy, I’d recommend my book, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. For other readings, take a look at my website, where I maintain a bibliography of translations and secondary works on East Asian, South Asian, Africana, and Indigenous American philosophy. You can also find a link to my YouTube channel, which has a series of lectures on Chinese philosophy from Confucius to Xi Jinping. Some of my favorite philosophy podcasts are Hi-Phi Nation, by my friend and former Vassar colleague Barry Lam, which takes a philosophical perspective on quirky topics, This Is the Way, a Chinese philosophy podcast by my friends Justin Tiwald and Richard Kim, and New Books in Philosophy, which is just what you think it is about.
Bryan W. Van Norden is James Monroe Taylor Chair in Philosophy at Vassar College (USA), and Chair Professor in the School of Philosophy at Wuhan University (China). Van Norden has published ten books on Chinese and comparative philosophy, including Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. In his role as a public intellectual, Van Norden has published award-winning opinion pieces, including several in The New York Times. A recipient of Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Mellon fellowships, Van Norden has been honored as one of The Best 300 Professors in the US by The Princeton Review.
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