How to teach a course that is mainly or exclusively composed of Less Commonly Taught philosophical traditions

In this post, I discuss practical ways to teach Less Commonly Taught (LCT) philosophical traditions in your regular philosophy course. This may include such courses as Introduction to Philosophy, Ethics, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, or Philosophy of Mind.

We commonly teach such courses still with a heavy emphasis around the western canon. But increasingly, instructors are experimenting with ditching the western canon altogether, or at the very least, include a substantial number of other texts. 

This past semester, I taught a Philosophy of Mind course for pre-med students (neuroscience majors, though there were also some Jesuits taking the class). I decided to build the class entirely around LCT philosophies, in conversation with contemporary philosophy of cognitive science and cognitive science.

So, rather than starting from, for instance, Descartes and dualism, I assigned a paper by the Ghanian philosopher Kwame Gyekye on the Akan concept of personhood (where Gyekye argues that the Akan conception of personhood is dualistic). 

The student evaluations were very positive. I know that evaluations are a biased and imperfect tool, but the comments indicate students enjoyed the focus on LCT, for instance "The selection of reading was really amazing! I appreciated that the majority was from LCT philosophy – as my understanding of not only philosophy, but history and anthropology grew" and "I liked being able to read so many primary texts from all kinds of cultures." 

Following this, I was asked to teach a module in our graduate student teaching development course on how to teach LCT philosophies, and I think it may be useful to put some of this on the Cocoon as well. 

1. Obstacles to teaching LCT philosophies in your undergraduate philosophy course

In my experience lots of people would love to teach LCT philosophies but they experience both individual and structural problems in doing so. 

Barrier 1: Lack of expertise

A worry that people often mention is lack of expertise in LCT philosophies, or lack of knowledge of the relevant languages (Sanskrit, Chinese, classical Arabic etc). Now, many of us teach Ancient Greek philosophy, German Idealism etc without knowledge of the relevant languages so this isn't a problem. There are more and more quality translations of many LCT texts. For teaching purposes, you don't need to know Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic etc. 

Barrier 2: Readers and textbooks are still too eurocentric

However, these is a second worry in the vicinity of this first worry that I think merits more serious consideration. It was incapsulated in a recent tweet that said (not the exact quote, which I cannot find back): 

Too much teaching advice is for people with infinite time and energy, someone should make "how to teach well when you're tired all the time."

We need to take into account people's constraints. This includes tiredness of the pandemic, general stress of academia, and high teaching loads. Many of us are playing catchup during breaks to get research done and sent out. Inevitably, innovating in teaching gets on the backburner.

It doesn't help that readers and handbooks often only treat LCT philosophies as an afterthought. Though this has improved in recent years, most of the handbooks are still to a very large extent western, often by white male authors. 

To take just one example, suppose you wish to teach philosophy of religion and use the reader  Philosophy of Religion, selected readings (Peterson et al. 2014). It is currently in its fifth edition and is marketed on OUP’s website as “The most complete and economically priced introductory anthology in the philosophy of religion.” I am taking this example because the editors have done significant effort to introduce texts from Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism and Greek polytheism. I commend them for this effort. Yet, even so, only 12% of this “most complete” textbook engages with non-Christian religious traditions. And this textbook is a great deal better than many others, which engage with almost no LCT philosophies. 

Barrier 3: Are students missing out with an LCT-focused course? 

A worry of building your entire course around LCT philosophies is that students might miss out on "the classics", the "canon" etc. When I shared my syllabus on social media, some people worried that it would be bad if students learned about dualism through Gyekye's paper rather than through Descartes (or another western dualist), or that they learned about eliminative materialism through the carvaka school rather than through the Churchlands. There's something to this worry, but I'm not persuaded. Even if the students were philosophy major, there's no intrinsic rule that says Descartes' demon would be more canonical than Ibn Sina's flying man. I don't think there is any text that is unmissable in intro, or in ethics, or any other lower-level philosophy course.

Barrier 4: Institutional barriers such as core requirements

Finally, there are institutional barriers to teaching LCT philosophies. Sometimes, due to internal requirements or a university-wide core curriculum you are required to teach given texts in a philosophy course. For example, at SLU we're required to teach at least one Socratic dialogue, Aristotle, and some figures from the Catholic tradition. So if anything, institutional requirements push us away from LCT philosophies. It is possible to be creative, even so, and for instance teach Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz as a figure from the Catholic tradition, or to teach about the Jesuits and their translation efforts of Chinese Confucian texts in the early modern period. In this respect, teaching LCT can be perfectly compatible with a university's mission and even help to fulfill it in novel ways. 

How to teach LCT philosophies: focus on primary texts 

In the absence of comprehensive resources, we need to DIY teaching LCT-focused philosophy courses to some extent. This requires a bit of satisficing. You don't need to do everything perfectly in your first run of an LCT-focused course. For example, my course in Biology and Mind had excellent student evals, but the one negative that students noted was not enough innovative exercises and special assignments.

I focused on lecturing, slow reading primary texts with students, and then breaking them into groups to answer specific questions. While we value innovative and novel teaching techniques, I think it is okay to stick to time-tested techniques, and much as lecturing is now maligned, an inspiring lecture does help students to take in a lot of new information they might struggle on their own to digest (I found lecturing in person very effective for this). 

I found it helpful in my Philosophy of Mind course to focus on some primary texts and read those slowly with the students, in the classic and time-tested technique of close reading. This helps to guard against students skimming or altogether skipping the readings. By reading slowly in class from primary texts, students get a good idea of ideas from a broad range of cultures and they can formulate their own objections and ideas. Texts I have used over the years (not only in Philosophy of Mind, but also in earlier courses I taught in Ethics, Philosophy of Religion) include

• King Milinda and the Chariot: In this short dialogue, Nagasena (a Buddhist Indian philosopher) tells his patron King Milinda that he is not a permanent individual self, using a chariot as an analogy for the human person. The dialogue is short, to the point, and conveys a lot of Buddhist ideas in a very concise manner
• The Butcher by Zhuangzi: This is a 500-word or so account of a butcher explaining how he is able to cut up an ox by essentially not acting. 
• The Flying Man, by Ibn Sina: Ibn Sina has several versions of this thought experiment to resist Aristotelian notions of the soul, and to resist the idea that the soul is inextricably linked to the body
• Universal love, by Mozi. Mozi explains why we need to care impartially and without distinction, and that a lot of ills are caused by partiality (thieves steal because they value their own possessions more than others, countries invade because they value their own citizens more than others)

There are so many texts to choose from! I usually proceed as follows: I contextualize the thinker in their time, add also some biographical details (the lives of some of LCT authors are so interesting, e.g., Ibn Sina or Wang Yangming). Then, we slow-read a short text (no more than 1.5 page) together in class where I regularly pause and provide more explanation. Next, I split the students into groups and give them some questions to think about the text and discuss together. Finally, I ask them to write and submit a one-page reflection as homework on the text in the course of the week. This makes sure students do the reading at some point, and more than once (once in class, once at home as they write their reflection.)

In the student evals, some students complained that I provided little incentive to read in advance. This is true, but I was trying to mitigate pandemic burnout I'm seeing in many students combined with the fact that even prior to 2020, not many students came terribly prepared to class. By making advance reading in effect optional, but requiring reading at some point after class, I hoped the students would gain an appreciation for the texts. I also purposively kept the reading load quite low. 

Obviously, this is just one way of teaching (and it is quite traditional, though effective) and you can teach LCT philosophies any way that you deem fits your teaching style best. 

Resources for teaching LCT philosophies

In the absence of textbooks and readers that are LCT focused for specific philosophy courses, I have put here some helpful texts and resources that focus on specific geographic areas. I have used several of these myself (it is not an exhaustive list, of course, but may be a start for those wanting to try e.g., incorporating LCT philosophies in their Intro course or other lower-level course). Note that the coverage of geography is not comprehensive. For example, for Asian philosophy I only have Chinese and Indian philosophies and not, e.g., Japanese or Korean philosophy. 

African philosophy

Textbook: Wiredu, Kwasi. 2004. A Companion to African Philosophy. Blackwell: Malden, MA. 

Online resource: Alex Guerero, 2017: slides on how to teach African philosophy, first delivered as a talk. 

Arabic philosophy

Reader: McGinnis, John & D.C. Reissman (Eds.), Classical Arabic Philosophy, an anthology of sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.

Textbook: Adamson, Peter 2016. Philosophy in the Islamic world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Online resource: "So you want to teach Arabic Philosophy" by Peter Adamson, on the APA blog.

Latinx philosophy

Textbook: Robert Eli Sanchez (Ed). 2020. Latin American and Latinx philosophy. A collaborative Introduction. London: Routledge. 

Online resource: Robert Sanchez wrote a comprehensive guide on how to teach Latin American philosophy for us on the Cocoon here. 

Chinese philosophy

Textbook: Lai, Karyn, 2017, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, 2nd, Cambridge University Press.

Reader: Justin Tiwald & Bryan Van Norden (Eds.), 2014. Readings in later Chinese philosophy. Han Dynasty to the 20th Century. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett (for later Chinese philosophy)

Reader: Philip Ivanhoe & Bryan Van Norden (Eds), 20o5. Readings in Classical Chinese philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett (for pre-Qin Chinese philosophy). 

Indian philosophy 

Textbook: Gupta, Bina, 2012. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. London: Routledge. 

Reader: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore (Eds). 1989. A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

Online resource: "So you want to teach some Indian philosophy" by Jonardon Ganeri, at the APA Blog (2018).

Indigenous/Native American philosophy

Textbook: Waters, Anne. 2004. American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Reader: Marshall, J. (2001). The Lakota way. Stories and lessons for living. New York: Penguin. -- note: this is not a comprehensive collection of texts but a book on one ethical tradition, namely Lakota virtue ethics. It works very well to teach this in a section on virtue ethics, as the text goes in detail into virtues such as humility and honesty. 

Gender and LCT philosophies

I find seeking gender balance a bit tricky with teaching LCT philosophies, because so many of the most well-known (canonical!) figures are male. You can mitigate by seeking gender balance in your secondary readings.

In addition, the following women in LCT traditions are interesting and fun to teach, and they also help to explain some of the main traditions and ideas such as Sufism, neo-Confucianism and more: the already-mentioned Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Im Yoonjidang (Korean neo-Confucian philosopher), Viola Cordova (Indigenous Apache philosopher), Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley (Indigenous Canadian Inuit philosopher), Rabia al-Adhawiyya (Arabic philosopher, Sufi), and Zen Buddhist nuns such as the 17th century Chinese Jingnuo.

In conclusion

It may seem daunting to teach LCT philosophies particularly given that many of us did not receive education about these traditions and aren't experts. Still, I think it is much better to try to teach these traditions, even imperfectly, to our students than to avoid them.

For one thing, many of my premed students have Indian or Pakistani heritage, and they were delighted with the coverage (even if only a small part, and a focus on Buddhist rather than Hindu philosophies) of Indian philosophy. I have noticed also a lot of interest from my non-minority (white, midwestern) students who are keen to expand their horizons and want to gain a global philosophical perspective. 

It may help to introduce LCT materials gradually if you run the same course several years. For example, for Ethics you might want to add African philosophy and use Wiredu's textbook to introduce this, then in the next years, add more traditions. As you become more knowledgeable about these different traditions you will find you feel more confident. The vast chasm that seems to loom between us and for example, Buddhist philosophers in classical India is not greater than between us and Plato and Aristotle, who also lived in very different cultural contexts.

Teaching this material also gives us a sense of how, in spite of that big cultural divide, there are so many things that unite humanity across cultures. Our concerns with how to live well, how to organize society, what the mind is, what the fundaments of nature are, what we can know, recur across the ages. Incorporating LCT can thus help the students to see not only how these questions come back, but how humanity is fundamentally a philosophical species, questioning its place in the universe. 

Comments

[Tammo]

I've really struggled trying to make my teaching less Western-centric, so this is incredibly useful to me! One note I'd like to add, specifically on the issue of philosophy of religion: I agree that the Peterson et al. anthology makes a commendable effort to include non-Western figures. I think what limits it is in part the fact that philosophy of religion emphasizes arguments about God's existence so much. These arguments are great (including as sample material for logic courses), but they are only relevant to monotheistic religions. I've found it useful to frontload the question about the nature of religion. That way, these arguments become an example of a rationalistic understanding of religion, but they can be usefully contrasted with authors who think of religion being about experience, feelings, or ways of life (many but not all of which are non-Western).

(In case anyone is interested, I'll use this opportunity to shamelessly plug a poster I did about this for the APTA Teaching Hub: http://tammolossau.com/files/poster.pdf It's still pretty limited, though, in that it doesn't include African or Indigenous texts and lacks female authors, for the reason Helen describes - I'd be very interested in suggestions about that.)

[Helen De Cruz]

Tammo, thank you so much for the poster. Very nice! This brings up a related point namely the topics/themes we seek to cover in Intro, Philosophy of Religion, Ethics and other courses place constraints on what readings are suitable. For example, an enduring topic in Chinese pre-Qin philosophy is the question to what extent morality is something that arises from within you (e.g., Mengzi) or rather something that needs to be imposed through external rules (e.g., Xunzi, Mozi). This is such a central question in pre-Qin ethics but not to the same extent in western ethics.
Similarly, as Brian Burkhart has pointed out in Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land, treating the question "what is truth" as central in epistemology lands you on all sorts of (traditional) epistemological readings from the western canon. Sometimes asking different questions and making the focus different can change what readings present themselves as most suitable!

[Malcolm]

As someone who teaches Indian philosophy and also works in it, I'd like to say a few things about translations. One of the major difficulties in translations of Sanskrit materials is that translators often leave Sanskrit untranslated or translate it into a kind of hybrid English/Sanskrit which becomes impenetrable. This is one problem with the Sourcebook. Another is that when translators do translate into English, there are often idiosyncratic choices which make connections among texts difficult. The same term may not be used for the same Sanskrit word (even when contextually appropriate), and students may not know that there is an argument tracking across texts. This puts a burden on instructors to know where the same idea is being discussed in different contexts.

For these reasons, I'd also suggest looking for recent subject-specific readers where a single translator is responsible for all of the texts or the editor has been involved in their production, as they make some of these connections. For instance, Columbia UP has a series of readers, with more to come: Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought
https://cup.columbia.edu/series/historical-sourcebooks-in-classical-indian-thought

For Nyāya philosophy, Hackett has a translation of the Nyāyasūtras with some early commentaries by Stephen Phillips & Matt Dasti (https://www.hackettpublishing.com/the-nyaya-sutra-4164) as well as a collection of material on topics related to metaphysics/philosophy of religion by Phillips, Dasti, and Guha (https://www.hackettpublishing.com/god-and-the-world-s-arrangement-4465)

And for Buddhist philosophy, there is Jay
Garfield and William Edelglass' Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/buddhist-philosophy-9780195328172?cc=sg&lang=en&) as well as a new edition of Mark Siderits' Buddhism as Philosophy which includes translations of primary texts (https://www.hackettpublishing.com/new-forthcoming/forthcoming-2021-titles/buddhism-as-philosophy-second-edition). He has also, with Shoryu Katsura, created a new a translation of an important Buddhist text by Nāgārjuna: (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nagarjunas-Middle-Way/Mark-Siderits/Classics-of-Indian-Buddhism/9781614290506)

Deepak Sarma's reader is another possibility (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/classical-indian-philosophy/9780231133999) though it has some of the same limitations as the Sarvepalli sourcebook, and so I strongly encourage instructors to look at book reviews to get a sense of potential limitations in the classroom (Andrew Nicholson has one of Sarma's reader, and you can find ones for most of the above easily, too). Thankfully, more philosophers competent in Sanskrit and philosophically-oriented Indologists are working on this problem, as evidenced by the increasing number of translations being published and even workshops on this challenge.

[Helen De Cruz]

Malcolm: thank you so much! It is an effect of my personal prior reading, but the tradition I feel least competent in but include anyway because it is so important is classical Indian philosophy. (I also cannot read Sanskrit at all. I took a summer course in Pali and was assured that Sanskrit is a bit like Pali, only even more difficult and given my difficulties with Pali and the cases etc I felt too daunted to try. So I'm at the mercy of translators).
The sourcebook is a bit dated, but I could not find a comprehensive contemporary sourcebook. It might be a worthwhile idea to have an updated sourcebook with readings that reflect the stuff that philosophy instructors are now really interested in teaching, maybe also with readings by female authors etc. Thank you for these resources in the meantime, which I'll definitely look into.

[Mike Titelbaum]

Under #1, my biggest concern about expertise is not my inability to read the relevant languages, but my lack of knowledge about the broader cultural and philosophical traditions in which the readings are situated. I got lots of years of training about a particular Western philosophical dialectic that unfolded over millennia, and of course I also come from a Western background so I have lots of historical context I can bring to bear. I also think that situating our readings in a broader set of contexts, conversations, distinctions, etc. is one of the valuable things I bring into the classroom as an instructor. Is there any good way to get a crash course in these other contexts that can put me in anything like a similar position wrt them? Thanks!

[Malcolm]

Helen, yes, I think an updated sourcebook is a great idea. Including female authors would require looking to modern/contemporary Indian philosophy, which is not a bad idea, either.

Mike, for "crash course" style material on the broader traditions (by which I take it you mostly mean the other texts to which individual texts are indebted?) for Indian philosophy, a combination of the SEP and the History of Philosophy without Any Gaps Podcast will get you started pretty well. There's also the STCP website (http://stcp.weebly.com/course-materials.html) There are a number of books on the history of Indian philosophy, but they can be daunting, so those might be best after some initial work on a favorite topic/text whose context you look at. Also, you're in an enviable position being at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, given the experts right there in Asian Languages & Cultures, as I'm sure you know!

[Joe]

Mike Titelbaum: there is no way to 'crash course' something like this. Most people who teach, say, Ancient Greek philosophy and are not experts, have taken courses, often graduate ones, on it and read quite a bit of greek philosophers (in good translations) and quite a bit of the tradition that reacts to them (all the way to the 21st century). And many still butcher it, to be honest. You cannot just make up for this by reading an intro book of some sort. These are who philosophical traditions with thousands of years of history. I attempted to teach both Indian and Chinese in my courses, and I took at least some courses on it. It was a mixed result and I am not sure I manage to persuade, rather than dissuade students from pursuing it further. Especially Chinese philosophy has a very different approach to what even constitutes a successful philosophical moves..