XPost: alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.philosophy.zen   
   From: invalid@invalid.invalid   
      
   Tang Huyen  wrote:   
   > On 11/11/2016 3:44 PM, {:-]))) wrote:   
   >   
   >> I have no idea what constitutes white scholars in your view.   
   >>   
   >> Does being a white scholar exclude being a mystic?   
   >>   
   >> Most all forms of mysticism can be lumped into New Age   
   >> or New Thought or some other all-encompassing category,   
   >> going back to gnosticism and before then.   
   >>   
   >> Maybe all the white mystics were banned as heretics   
   >> no matter how much scholarship went into their writings,   
   >> and, hence, they are not considered white scholars   
   >> in your view of what white scholars are.   
   >>   
   >> Is there a date in time   
   >> at which these white scholars of yours appear?   
   >> And before which did not exist?   
   >>   
   >> Can a white poet be a scholar?   
   >> Or does poetry exclude one from being one?   
   >>   
   >> I'm thinking about the likes of James, Emerson, Dickinson,   
   >> and others who  might have been white, but I don't know.   
   >> Nor if they'd be considered to be scholars who identify   
   >> with some sort of mystical or religious experience.   
   >>   
   >> Are Middle Easterners and Muslims white?   
   >> Or are all white scholars European Christians?   
   >>   
   >> Why carve people into white and non-white?   
   >> Are all non-white people Asians in your view?   
   >>   
   >> What's up with that?   
   >>   
   >> - just curious   
   >   
   > In the present western world, academic philosophy in   
   > general is largely limited to whites, with a rare sprinkling of   
   > non-whites, but German philosophy is an exacting, rarefied   
   > discipline that is almost wholly white, ditto with classical   
   > philosophy. Asians go into music, surely, but most go into the   
   > hard disciplines where jobs are plentiful and remuneration is   
   > high (Indians swamp medicine, Chinese slightly less, and the   
   > computer fields are famously staffed mostly by whites and   
   > Asians). There are non-whites who study religions, but the   
   > humanities scarcely attract them.   
   >   
   > So the famous German philosophers are studied and written   
   > on mostly by whites, ditto with ancient European religions   
   > not associated with Jewish mythology, like Stoicism. I rarely   
   > encounter papers and books on German philosophy and   
   > classical philosophy by non-whites, and if you go to the web   
   > sites of various humanities departments in the US, the   
   > pictures that greet you are largely of white faces. Heaven   
   > forbid, most scholars who study Oriental philosophy and   
   > religion are whites, with a smattering of Asians, but the most   
   > prestigious posts (like endowed chairs) go to whites.   
   >   
   > The white scholars in the humanities are busy teaching   
   > methodology to the rest of the world, meaning critical   
   > methodology, presumably as part of the White Man's Burden,   
   > but they themselves are clumsy in the practice of criticality.   
   > They preach criticality but can scarcely practice what they   
   > preach, except at low levels of abstraction. Previously I   
   > quoted Michael Friedman of Stanford on "what we might call   
   > the conceptual history of all of human culture as a whole."   
   > Such a project has never been anywhere near accomplished,   
   > not even the conceptual history of European culture alone. I   
   > specialise in pure reason and the a priori, and I have   
   > mentioned in the past some scholars in France and Belgium   
   > who put up some creditable efforts in that direction, but who   
   > are mostly lost about just what constitute pure reason and   
   > the a priori, even as famous white (German) philosophers like   
   > Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger claim that philosophy was a   
   > European invention.   
   >   
   > Non-white scholars in the humanities, in the West and Asia,   
   > are busy learning methodology, meaning critical methodology,   
   > from white scholars, and are still acclimating themselves to   
   > the Western spirit of critical methodology, and have also to   
   > learn the stuff of their own disciplines, like sociology or   
   > philosophy, so they are overburdened in general and surely   
   > with critical methodology in particular, therefore I do not   
   > include them in the general and institutional failure to figure   
   > out "what we might call the conceptual history of all of human   
   > culture as a whole", or even more so pure reason and the a   
   > priori, and rather limit myself to the white scholars in the   
   > humanities, including the big names, like Kant, Hegel, Husserl   
   > and Heidegger, and smaller fish, like Cassirer and Friedman.   
   > White philosophers of science like Kuhn, Feyerabend, Koyré,   
   > etc. are often mentioned as mentors of critical methodology,   
   > and some white scholars in linguistics, psychology,   
   > anthropology, like Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Piaget, Chomsky   
   > also count in that luminary league. No non-white is currently   
   > named in that exclusive company.   
   >   
   > What is piquant (and relevant to these boards) is that white   
   > scholars massively fail to understand a major strand of   
   > European thought, Stoicism (they don't even know that it is a   
   > major strand of European thought), and therefore miss the   
   > sweeping influence of it on European thought, specially in   
   > philosophy, theology and mysticism. And without an   
   > understanding of Stoicism, they are unlikely to understand   
   > Oriental philosophy and religion, like Buddhism and Daoism,   
   > which are very similar to it in both structure and content. I   
   > quoted the passage from Hegel to indicate the Stoic nature of   
   > it, and the similarity of it to Buddhism and Daoism, though   
   > have not elaborated on such purviews.   
   >   
   > Tang Huyen   
   >   
      
   You sure wasted a lot of mental twisting and tearing on that defense.   
      
   White, yellow, brown, black, green, orange, flourescent-green, hello, none   
   of that means much.  You are sorting by color where sound and shape are   
   equally, or more, relevant.   
      
   It seems to me that you're not talking about "white scholars" but about   
   "establishment scholars".  Those who have grown up within any establishment   
   are inherently tainted by that establishment and can only scrape off the   
   tinfoil-hats of their upbringing through what you refer to as   
   "mental-culture", it isn't going to go away by itself, and you can't write   
   a check to make it go away.   
      
   The idea of "western philosophy" may hold some water but that bucket is so   
   full of the things it knows with surety that it can't find room to think   
   about whether thinking applies to this or that or nothing at all.   
      
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